Top 180 Daniel H. Pink Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “We simply don’t take issues of when as seriously as we take questions of what.”

— Daniel H. Pink

152. “Nineteen centuries ago, the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”

— Daniel H. Pink

153. “Living a satisfying life requires more than simply meeting the demands of those in control. Yet in our offices and our classrooms we have way too much compliance and way too little engagement. The former might get you through the day, but the latter will get you through the night.”

— Daniel H. Pink

154. “If you’re an educator, know that all times are not created equal:.”

— Daniel H. Pink

155. “Say it with me now, brothers and sisters: Lunch is the most important meal.”

— Daniel H. Pink

156. “A sense of autonomy has a powerful effect on individual performance and attitude.”

— Daniel H. Pink

157. “If you’ve got an extra minute left, send someone – anyone – a thank-you e-mail.”

— Daniel H. Pink

158. “If you’re a boss, understand these two patterns and allow people to protect their peak.”

— Daniel H. Pink

159. “Economists studied what people did, rather than what we said, because we did what was best for us.”

— Daniel H. Pink

160. “Metaphor is the lifeblood of all art.” – TWYLA THARP.”

— Daniel H. Pink

161. “The freedom they have to do great work is more valuable, and harder to match, than a pay raise – and employees’ spouses, partners, and families are among ROWE’s staunchest advocates.”

— Daniel H. Pink

162. “Type I behavior has an incremental theory of intelligence, prizes learning goals over performance goals, and welcomes effort as a way to improve at something that matters.”

— Daniel H. Pink

163. “According to a cluster of recent behavioral science studies, autonomous motivation promotes greater conceptual understanding, better grades, enhanced persistence at school and in sporting activities, higher productivity, less burnout, and greater levels of psychological well-being.3.”

— Daniel H. Pink

164. “The most fulfilling jobs share a common trait: They prod us to work at our highest level but in a way that we, not someone else, control.”

— Daniel H. Pink

165. “Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time,” Collins wrote in Good to Great. “If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?”

— Daniel H. Pink

166. “Wikipedia represents the most powerful new business model of the twenty-first century: open source.”

— Daniel H. Pink

167. “Happiness is love. Full stop.”

— Daniel H. Pink

168. “Taking a Sagmeister,” as I now call it, requires a fair bit of planning and saving, of course. But doesn’t forgoing that big-screen TV seem a small price to pay for an unforgettable – and un-get-backable – year of personal exploration?”

— Daniel H. Pink

169. “Perhaps you’re familiar with the First Law of Holes: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” And perhaps you’ve ignored this law.”

— Daniel H. Pink

170. “If our lives are the stories we tell ourselves, regret reminds us that we have a dual role. We are both the authors and the actors. We can shape the plot but not fully. We can toss aside the script but not always. We live at the intersection of free will and circumstance.”

— Daniel H. Pink

171. “Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice,” they write, “whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self.”

— Daniel H. Pink

172. “The psychological concept is known as “escalation of commitment to a failing course of action.” It’s one of the many cognitive biases that can pollute our decisions.”

— Daniel H. Pink

173. “Think of this book as a new genre altogether – a when-to book.”

— Daniel H. Pink

174. “Connection regrets are the largest category in the deep structure of human regret.”

— Daniel H. Pink

175. “Moral regrets sound like this: If only I’d done the right thing.”

— Daniel H. Pink

176. “But the most common negative emotion – and the second most common emotion of any kind – was regret. The only emotion mentioned more often than regret was love.”

— Daniel H. Pink

177. “A look at the research shows that regret, handled correctly, offers three broad benefits. It can sharpen our decision-making skills. It can elevate our performance on a range of tasks. And it can strengthen our sense of meaning and connectedness.”

— Daniel H. Pink

178. “At the heart of all boldness regrets is the thwarted possibility of growth.”

— Daniel H. Pink

179. “The lesson is plain: Speak up. Ask him out. Take that trip. Start that business. Step off the train.”

— Daniel H. Pink

180. “A little kid’s life bursts with autotelic experiences. Children careen from one flow moment to another, animated by a sense of joy, equipped with a mindset of possibility, and working with the dedication of a West Point cadet. They use their brains and their bodies to probe and draw feedback from the environment in an endless pursuit of mastery. Then – at some point in their lives – they don’t. What happens?”

— Daniel H. Pink

181. “The Regret Optimization Framework holds that we should devote time and effort to anticipate the four core regrets: foundation regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. But anticipating regrets outside these four categories is usually not worthwhile.”

— Daniel H. Pink

182. “The second way to self-distance is through time. We can enlist the same capacity for time travel that gives birth to regret to analyze and strategize about learning from these regrets.”

— Daniel H. Pink

183. “Only contingent rewards – if you do this, then you’ll get that – had the negative effect. Why? “If-then” rewards require people to forfeit some of their autonomy.”

— Daniel H. Pink

184. “Mentally subtract positive events. To take the hurt out of a regret, try a mental trick made famous in the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life. On Christmas Eve, George Bailey stands on the brink of suicide when he’s visited by Clarence, an angel who shows George what life in Bedford Falls would be like had he never been born. Clarence’s technique is called “mentally subtracting positive events.”

— Daniel H. Pink

185. “When feeling is for thinking and thinking is for doing, regret is for making us better.”

— Daniel H. Pink

186. “Self-compassion begins by replacing searing judgment with basic kindness.”

— Daniel H. Pink

187. “Foundation regrets arise from our failures of foresight and conscientiousness. Like all deep structure regrets, they start with a choice. At some early moment, we face a series of decisions. One set represents the path of the ant. These choices require short-term sacrifice, but in the service of a long-term payoff. The other choices represent the path of the grasshopper. This route demands little exertion or assiduousness in the short run, but risks exacting a cost in the long run.”

— Daniel H. Pink

188. “If you have a broken heart, it means you have done something big enough and important enough and valuable enough to have broken your heart.”

— Daniel H. Pink

189. “We don’t always agree on the boundaries between those domains. But when we forsake what we believe is sacred for what we believe is profane, regret is the consequence.”

— Daniel H. Pink

190. “First, we can distance through space. The classic move is known, unsurprisingly, as the “fly-on-the-wall technique.”

— Daniel H. Pink

191. “Foundation regrets sound like this: If only I’d done the work.”

— Daniel H. Pink

192. “3. Study self-compassion.”

— Daniel H. Pink

193. “The days that people make progress are the days they feel most motivated and engaged. By creating conditions for people to make progress, shining a light on that progress, recognizing and celebrating progress, organizations can help their own cause and enrich people’s lives.”

— Daniel H. Pink

194. “The third method of self-distancing, as Julius Caesar and Elmo teach us, is through language. Kross, Ayduk, and others have carried out some fascinating research concluding that “subtle shifts in the language people use to refer to themselves during introspection can influence their capacity to regulate how they think, feel, and behave under stress.”

— Daniel H. Pink

195. “And the most common harm was bullying. Even decades later, hundreds of respondents deeply regretted mistreating their peers.”

— Daniel H. Pink