Seth Godin Quotes
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Those that spend the most effort in search of shortcuts are often the most disappointed and the least successful.
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The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.
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Lack of resources (payroll), time and competing priorities are why so many nonprofits haven't done well. It's that simple.
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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.
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I was amplifying the negative at the expense of the positive, not to serve any useful function, not to make my writing better, but to destroy it. The lizard brain, so attuned to people laughing behind our backs, was on high alert for this sort of criticism and would do anything it could to stop me from writing again. I haven't sought out and read a review or a tweet since.
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Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
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If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist.
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A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.
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If you demand that everything that happens be something you are adequately prepared for, I wonder if you’ve chosen never to leap in ways that we need you to leap. Once we embrace this chasm, then for the things for which we can never be prepared, we are of course, always prepared.
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Busy does not equal important. Measured doesn't mean mattered.
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The enemy of fear is creativity.
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Part of leadership (a big part of it actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time.
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Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator... Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.
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Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
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We need to care enough to connect, to put ourselves at emotional risk and play one note worth hearing.
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It's not reckless, because when we leap, when we dive in, when we begin, only begin, we bring our true nature to the project, we make it personal and urgent. And it's not abandon, not in the sense that we've abandoned our senses or our responsibility. In fact, abandoning the fear of fear that is holding us back is the single best way not to abandon the work, the pure execution of the work. Later, there's time to backpedal and water down. But right now, reckless please.
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Dreamers don't have special genes. They find circumstances that amplify their dreams.
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Turn strangers into friends. Turn friends into donors. And then do the most important job: Turn your donors into fundraisers.
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The resistance is the voice in your head telling you to use bullets in your PowerPoint slides...It’s the voice that tells you to leave controversial ideas out of the paper you’re writing, because the teacher won’t like them. The resistance pushes relentlessly for you to fit in.
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The goal in blogging/ business/ inspiring non-fiction is to share a truth, or at least a truth as the writer sees it. To not just share it, but to spread it and to cause change to happen. You can do that in at least three ways: with research (your own or reporting on others), by building and describing conceptual structures, or with stories that resonate.
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The status quo is leaving the building, and quickly.
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Competence is the enemy of change!
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The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity.
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I don't think we have any choice. I think we have an obligation to change the rules, to raise the bar, to play a different game, and to play it better than anyone has any right to believe is possible.