Seth Godin Quotes
Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it's easier, it scales and it's profitable. But people don't like it - we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.
Quotes to Explore
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The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
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I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
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I've done loads of things people have never seen - dramas on BBC4 and plays upstairs at the Royal Court and the Bush - and because I didn't go to drama school, they gave me an education.
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Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality.
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People are very curious and have written a lot of things about me. Right or not. I never comment on those things, because it's not much of my thing to comment on everything that's written about me.
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A lot of people put pressure on me, but I don't think I feel that type of pressure. It is more of a good thing that people are trying to do that.
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Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I'm not sure we do.
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My dad doesn't get any of my jokes. He laughs at them, but he doesn't understand them. He's just laughing because people around him are laughing.
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When you rely on incentives, you undermine virtues. Then when you discover that you actually need people who want to do the right thing, those people don't exist because you've crushed anyone's desire to do the right thing with all these incentives.
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My father came from nothing, so he believed that people could do anything if they worked hard enough. I think he liked that I chose to be an actor. Both he and my mom were totally supportive.
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I learned how to handle myself in the kitchen - where to stand and how to be out of people's way and how to function like a machine.
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While the public school rewards failure by throwing more government money at failing school systems, the voucher system does the opposite.
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I did four movies where I gained, like, fifty pounds. I had curly hair, and I had all of this facial hair. I had put on all this weight for these movies, and I did four or five of them back-to-back. Then I cut the weight and I got fit again. I cut my beard and I took away the mustache, and people were like, 'What are you doing?'
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During the 19th-century struggle for women's rights in America, many saw a competition between rights for black people and those for women.
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When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
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A lot of people have called me the black Bette Midler, and I regard that as a compliment.
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Occasionally I talk with people who see doctors as people who do nothing but give of themselves and never receive from anyone else – especially not from their patients. That is totally false. The longer I remain in my profession, the more I realize how much I receive from those who come to me for help.
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Traditions are the inventions of people who mean to routinely put love and comfort and meaning into their lives and in the lives of those they live with.
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I'm a little bit of an eternal optimist. People always say to me, 'If you go do this and it fails, what are you going to do?' I don't care. I'm going to give it my best shot. That's what I'm going to do. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And I'll try again.
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People love in different ways. You may have a man who brings you flowers every Monday but doesn't give two hooty-hoots about Valentine's Day. Just because he doesn't give you a valentine doesn't mean he doesn't love you!
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Today we hear that the gains from economic growth accrue to the highest-income earners while the standard of living of the poor and middle America stagnates and the gap between the richest and the poorest grows ever wider. That portrait of the country is wrong.
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As shadow foreign secretary, I have been as clear in my support for the government when it does something we agree with as I am in highlighting that which we oppose.
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I'm a lawyer by training, of course.
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Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it's easier, it scales and it's profitable. But people don't like it - we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.
