“Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.”
Kevin Kelly, Blog
“Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.”
Kevin Kelly, Blog
“A dojo is a miniature cosmos where we make contact with ourselves—our fears, anxieties, reactions, and habits. It is an arena of confined conflict where we confront an opponent who is not an opponent but rather a partner engaged in helping us understand ourselves more fully. It is a place where we can learn a great deal in a short time about who we are and how we react in the world. The conflicts that take place inside the dojo help us handle the conflicts that take place outside. The total concentration and discipline required to study martial arts carries over to daily life. The activity in the dojo calls on us to constantly attempt new things, so it is also a source of learning—in Zen terminology, a source of self-enlightenment.”
Joe Hyams, Zen in the Martial Arts
“We are an ‘out there’ society, accustomed to thinking in terms of them against us. We want to fix the world so that we can remain the same. And for an ‘out there’ society, coming ‘inside’ is a problem. But now is the time to learn how. Now is the time to change. Because unless we do, the chaos will remain. And we can’t afford this kind of chaos much longer. We’re simply running out of time.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 261)
“We can’t change the world ‘out there.’ And fortunately, we don’t have to; we can begin much slower to home. We can begin ‘in here.’ In fact, if we’re to succeed, we must. Because the chaos isn’t ‘out there’ in everyone else. It’s not ‘out there’ in the world. The chaos is ‘in here’ in you and me. The world’s not the problem; you and I are. The world’s not in chaos; we are. The world’s apparent chaos is only a reflection of our own inner turmoil.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 260)
“We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 207)
“The business is a place where everything we know how to do is tested by what we don’t know how to do, and that the conflict between the two is what creates growth, what creates meaning.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 201)
“The customer is not always right, but whether he is or not, it is our job to make him feel that way.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 201)
“You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most people, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object, one thing, to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.”
Thomas Edison, How They Succeeded
“You always hold the rights to your effort, but never to your results. Results are entitled to no one. At best, they are on loan and must be renewed each day. All you own is the right to try.”
James Clear, Blog
“‘History has failed us, but no matter’ serves as my thesis statement. I believe history has failed almost everybody who is ordinary in the world …I am also arguing that the discipline of history has failed. It is not that historians aren’t doing their jobs but rather that the memory of history has been reconstructed by the elite, because the overwhelming majority of ordinary people rarely leave sufficient primary documents; they do not have others recording their lives in real time. The phrase ‘but no matter’ is a statement of defiance. It doesn’t matter that history has failed us because ordinary people have persisted anyway. This idea gives me an enormous amount of strength and hope as a writer because I am an ordinary person. Those of us who may be women of color, immigrants, or working class aren’t often meant to be people who write novels about ideas, but no matter.”
Min Jin Lee, The Guardian
“Nobody is interested in the commodity. People buy feelings. And as the world becomes more and more complex, and the commodities more varied, the feelings we want become more urgent, less rational, more unconscious. How your business anticipates those feelings and satisfies them is your product.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 155)
“I believe it’s true that the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing. The difference between the two is living intentionally and living by accident.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 139)
“Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 139)
“The master is connected to the apprentice as though to her past. As you are to your childhood. The master knows that the process of growing, of change, of transformation, is always moving, never still. It is in the face of the apprentice that the master sees herself anew. It is in the face of the craftsperson that the master renews her pilgrimage and finds the beauty of giving herself up to work. It is in the face of the work that the master discovers anew why she is so enraptured and, in so doing, brings her rapture to the apprentice to start all over again.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 131)
“A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your people know what they’re doing. A business that looks orderly says to your people that you know what you’re doing. A business that looks orderly says that while the world may not work, some things can. A business that looks orderly says to your customer that he can trust in the result delivered and assures your people that they can trust in their future with you. A business that looks orderly says that the structure is in place.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 103)
“…most people surveying the world around them today see only chaos. They suffer a sense of personal powerlessness and pointlessness. Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensive structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown. Structure provides the relatively fixed points of reference we need.”
Alvin Toffler, via The E-Myth Revisited (Page 103)
“The key is to plan, envision, and articulate what you see in the future both for yourself and for your employees. Because if you don’t articulate it—I mean, write it down, clearly, so others can understand it—you don’t own it! And do you know that in all the years I’ve been doing this work with small business owners, out of the thousands upon thousands we’ve met, there have only been a few who had any plan at all! Nothing written, nothing committed to paper, nothing concrete at all.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 65)
“What makes people work is an idea worth working for, along with a clear understanding of what needs to be done.”
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page 4)
“Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.“
Michael Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited (Page xiii)