Top 180 Daniel H. Pink Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”

— Daniel H. Pink

Featured in: Engagement Quotes

2. “The three things that motivate creative people – autonomy, mastery, purpose!”

— Daniel H. Pink

Featured in: Professional Growth Quotes, Engagement Quotes, Mastery Quotes

3. “Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.”

— Daniel H. Pink

Featured in: Empathy Quotes

4. “Asking “Why?” can lead to understanding. Asking “Why not?” can lead to breakthroughs.”

— Daniel H. Pink

5. “Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.”

— Daniel H. Pink

6. “The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.”

— Daniel H. Pink

7. “Money can extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, encourage unethical behavior, foster short-term thinking, and become addictive.”

— Daniel H. Pink

8. “All of us want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, something that matters.”

— Daniel H. Pink

9. “One of the best predictors of ultimate success in either sales or non – sales selling isn’t natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections.”

— Daniel H. Pink

10. “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.”

— Daniel H. Pink

11. “For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation-the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing-is essential for high levels of creativity.”

— Daniel H. Pink

12. “Harness the power of peers.”

— Daniel H. Pink

13. “Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behavior, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation. Use care when applying goals in your organization.”

— Daniel H. Pink

14. “Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.”

— Daniel H. Pink

15. “The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: artists, inventors, storytellers-creative and holistic ‘right-brain’ thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn’t.”

— Daniel H. Pink

16. “Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together. I experienced this myself by trying to learn to draw.”

— Daniel H. Pink

17. “When the reward is the activity itself – deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best – there are no shortcuts.”

— Daniel H. Pink

18. “Anytime you’re tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you’re doing and upserve instead.”

— Daniel H. Pink

19. “What’s important now are the characteristics of the brain’s right hemisphere: artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big-picture thinking. These skills have become first among equals in a whole range of business fields.”

— Daniel H. Pink

20. “Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate and to connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.”

— Daniel H. Pink

21. “One aspect of play is the importance of laughter, which has physiological and psychological benefits. Did you know that there are thousands of laughter clubs around the world? People get together and laugh for no reason at all!”

— Daniel H. Pink

22. “The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.”

— Daniel H. Pink

23. “I don’t think it’s a Western thing to really talk about intrinsic motivation and the drive for autonomy, mastery and purpose. You have to not be struggling for survival. For people who don’t know where their next meal is coming, notions of finding inner motivation are comical.”

— Daniel H. Pink

24. “What do artists do? Artists give people something they didn’t know they were missing: a dance, a piece of music, a painting, a piece of sculpture. Catering to that need is the best business strategy.”

— Daniel H. Pink

25. “Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These six senses increasingly will guide our lives and shape our world.”

— Daniel H. Pink

26. “The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.”

— Daniel H. Pink

27. “Psychological detachment from work, in addition to physical detachment, is crucial.”

— Daniel H. Pink

28. “You know, I’m not a huge fan of the concept of ‘passion’ when it comes to careers. Instead of trying to answer the daunting question of ‘What’s your passion?’ it’s better simply to watch what you do when you’ve got time of your own and nobody’s looking.”

— Daniel H. Pink

29. “For many of us, the opposite of talking isn’t listening. It’s waiting. When others speak, we typically divide our attention between what they’re saying now and what we’re going to say next – and end up doing a mediocre job at both.”

— Daniel H. Pink

30. “Large companies are not going to disappear. Multinational companies with tens of thousands of employees are not going to disappear. In fact, many of them are getting larger because they can benefit from economies of scale.”

— Daniel H. Pink

31. “An object in motion will stay in motion, and an object at rest will stay at rest, unless acted on by an outside force.”

— Daniel H. Pink

32. “The right brain is finally being taken seriously.”

— Daniel H. Pink

33. “To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources – not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.”

— Daniel H. Pink

34. “The ultimate pitch for an era of short attention spans begins with a single word – and doesn’t go any further.”

— Daniel H. Pink

35. “The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas.”

— Daniel H. Pink

36. “Most of what we know about sales comes from a world of information asymmetry, where for a very long time sellers had more information than buyers. That meant sellers could hoodwink buyers, especially if buyers did not have a lot of choices or a way to talk back.”

— Daniel H. Pink

37. “The teacher showed us how to see proportions, relationships, light and shadow, negative space, and space between space – something I never noticed before! In one week, I went from not knowing how to draw to sketching a detailed portrait. It literally changed the way I see things...”

— Daniel H. Pink

38. “Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and goodness of others.”

— Daniel H. Pink

39. “Especially for fostering creative, conceptual work, the best way to use money as a motivator is to take the issue of money off the table so people concentrate on the work.”

— Daniel H. Pink

40. “In many professions, what used to matter most were abilities associated with the left side of the brain: linear, sequential, spreadsheet kind of faculties. Those still matter, but they’re not enough.”

— Daniel H. Pink

41. “In large organizations there are discrete functions. I do this; you do that. I swim in my lane; you swim in your lane. That can be very effective for certain processes and in certain stable conditions. But it doesn’t work in unstable conditions.”

— Daniel H. Pink

42. “Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.”

— Daniel H. Pink

43. “The best endings don’t leave us happy. Instead, they produce something richer – a rush of unexpected insight, a fleeting moment of transcendence, the possibility that by discarding what we wanted we’ve gotten what we need.”

— Daniel H. Pink

44. “Rewards can deliver a short-term boost – just as a jolt of caffeine can keep you cranking for a few more hours. But the effect wears off – and, worse, can reduce a person’s longer-term motivation to continue the project.”

— Daniel H. Pink

45. “Were born to be players, not pawns.”

— Daniel H. Pink

46. “Sawyer Effect: A weird behavioral alchemy inspired by the scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom and friends whitewash Aunt Polly’s fence. This effect has two aspects. The negative: Rewards can turn play into work. The positive: Focusing on mastery can turn work into play.”

— Daniel H. Pink

47. “This is the nature of mastery: Mastery is an asymptote. You.”

— Daniel H. Pink

48. “Questions are often more effective than statements in moving others. Or to put it more appropriately, since the research shows that when the facts are on your side, questions are more persuasive than statements, don’t you think you should be pitching more with questions?”

— Daniel H. Pink

49. “I happen to be extremely left-brained; my instinct is to draw a chart rather than a picture. I’m trying to get my right-brain muscles into shape. I actually think this shift toward right-brain abilities has the potential to make us both better off and better in a deeper sense.”

— Daniel H. Pink

50. “The problem with making an extrinsic reward the only destination that matters is that some people will choose the quickest route there, even if it means taking the low road. Indeed, most of the scandals and misbehavior that have seemed endemic to modern life involve shortcuts.”

— Daniel H. Pink