Top 35 David Amerland Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Leaders lead by example. No leader asks more than he is prepared to give himself.”

— David Amerland

2. “Trust is an ethereal quality. Like oxygen or light we notice it only by its absence.”

— David Amerland

3. “We trust strangers not because they are always trustworthy but because we want to believe in a world where they are.”

— David Amerland

4. “Writing is a highly encoded form of communication that takes place from one mind to another.”

— David Amerland

5. “Every physical response, every psychological change and every mental transformation starts with the mind.”

— David Amerland

6. “Trust is what monetizes the attention economy.”

— David Amerland

7. “Control is about creating that inner dialogue which makes those negative voices fall silent.”

— David Amerland

8. “In the digital domain trust is now important not only because we really need to know how to trust people and whom to trust but because we need others to trust us and have to learn how to help them do so.”

— David Amerland

9. “Social media is addictive precisely because it gives us something which the real world lacks: it gives us immediacy, direction, a sense of clarity and value as an individual.”

— David Amerland

10. “Mindless action without a real understanding of the ramifications is only likely to result in serious miscalculations or a colossal waste of time. Avoid both by using your judgment, filtered through both knowledge and experience. Use common sense and logic as a counterbalance to emotion.”

— David Amerland

11. “Every relationship is governed by motive, capability and reliability and these three factors become the core components of the trust equation.”

— David Amerland

12. “When you work on a book and you have planned everything out and you are putting flesh to an idea and a surmise that before was mainly bones something funny happens. Your brain goes into an altered state where the words you write are not quite the words you want but rather the words dictated by the task at hand.”

— David Amerland

13. “Evolution has geared the human stress response to last about thirty seconds. It’s enough time to facilitate fight or flight. Evolution has not adapted our brains or bodies to handle weeks or months of prolonged stress.”

— David Amerland

14. “There is a fine line deep within the mind that makes self-belief and confidence, the defining elements of success and failure in any circumstance. How we learn to activate them without running the risk of lying to ourselves is the key that unlocks the superhuman lying dormant within us.”

— David Amerland

15. “A business needs a character and an identity, just like a person and just like a person it needs to have a Voice.”

— David Amerland

16. “In many ways semantic search takes us back to the golden days of the Web when in terms of working online anything was possible as long as you had passion, belief in yourself, and energy to work at it.”

— David Amerland

17. “Problems are not problems faced outside ourselves. They are problems that cast deep shadows inside us first. If we cannot find a way to deal with those shadows, the problems appear overwhelming. They raise up fears we all secretly have that can tear us apart.”

— David Amerland

18. “Life at the edge of the world, it was felt, could go on forever.”

— David Amerland

19. “Despite the fact that logic tells us that we should not trust anyone, in any situation where the unknown variables are too many or the risks too high, we nevertheless go ahead and take what can only be called a leap of faith.”

— David Amerland

20. “Everything we do is part of a complex pattern of interwoven relationships which mix personal and professional life.”

— David Amerland

21. “When it comes to identity we are all constructs. Who we think we are is the result of our upbringing, memories, skill set, knowledge, experiences and personal belief system. Of all the onion layers that make us who we are, our belief system is what powers our core. It’s what creates the essence of a human being and makes it possible for each of us to exceed our limits, confound expectations and do the impossible.”

— David Amerland

22. “The presence of Knowledge Based Trust in organizations gives rise to a high level of interpersonal trust amongst their members and creates cohesive units out of a loose bunch of people.”

— David Amerland

23. “Hate and resentment are learned behaviors whose origin is traced to an evolved mental state that’s driving us to achieve some sort of goal. Ultimately they are about seeking a particular outcome. Here’s the thing: so is love and forgiveness.”

— David Amerland

24. “Risks must balance rewards.”

— David Amerland

25. “Ever since I was a child I have been a strong believer in the principle that to under-stand how anything works you need to take it apart and look at it in detail. This principle that worked with toys also works pretty well with search.”

— David Amerland

26. “Attitude then is the lubricant that makes the imperfect fit of the complex system that is the individual work more smoothly with the complex system that is the world.”

— David Amerland

27. “Special as they may appear to us, articulating what makes you special requires a very precise awareness of your existence, and that’s hard to come by.”

— David Amerland

28. “Hope is something that is built from small parts. Perceived actions. Observed effects. Imperfect understanding. Uncertain knowledge. Acknowledged fears. The things each of us projects and says and does in the physical world. Hope then is made up of tiny bits and pieces of us. All of us, together.”

— David Amerland

29. “Before you can act you must choose. Before you can choose you must know. Before you can know you must feel. And before you can feel you must be trained.”

— David Amerland

30. “Our insecurities drive us. Our fears control us. We try to hide the first and deny the second and it is exhausting us.”

— David Amerland

31. “You can’t be everything to everyone. At some point you need to make a choice of what truly matters to you and why.”

— David Amerland

32. “Analysis – Break things down into tiny steps. Look at your feelings. Understand why you feel the way you do. This helps you overcome things like uncertainty, anger, fear. Analyze the problems you face. Don’t look at them as a whole. Break them down into chunks. Look at what you need in order to solve each tiny part of them. Even if you are looking at a dead end from a distance, apply the bit-by-bit approach. Solutions frequently present themselves through action.”

— David Amerland

33. “Purpose gives meaning to action in the same way that structure gives meaning to data.”

— David Amerland

34. “If you really know who you are then you know what you can do.”

— David Amerland

35. “It was the difference that created the feeling, not the conditions themselves.”

— David Amerland

36. “Introspection is painful. We are good at lying to ourselves. Being honest, even when it is just inside our head activates painful realizations and memories. It takes an enormous amount of energy to deal with all this. We usually tend to avoid it.”

— David Amerland

37. “Narratives, stories, help create a deeper sense of shared identity. They generate meaning and foster cooperative actions through neurochemical correlates that kick into motion as the brain responds to the narrative and release elevated levels of oxytocin. Context fixes our sense of who we are in relation to where and when we are.”

— David Amerland

38. “Goals without a sense of hope often fail to be reached. Hope without a set of goals materializes nothing of value. We need both for intentionality to function.”

— David Amerland

39. “The moment you establish a line of communication between two points, you subtly change both. That is also true for the way the brain is affected by the mind.”

— David Amerland