Top 140 David J. Schwartz Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Remember, the main job of the leader is thinking. And the best preparation for leadership is thinking.”

— David J. Schwartz

102. “The point is this: Big thinkers are specialists in creating positive, forward-looking, optimistic pictures in their own minds and in the minds of others. To think big, we must use words and phrases that produce big, positive mental images.”

— David J. Schwartz

103. “Perfection is highly desirable. But nothing man-made or man-designed is, or can be, absolutely perfect. So to wait for the perfect set of conditions is to wait forever.”

— David J. Schwartz

104. “I’m going to live until I die and I’m not going to get life and death confused. While I’m on this earth I’m going to live. Why be only half alive? Every minute a person spends worrying about dying is just one minute that fellow might as well have been dead.”

— David J. Schwartz

105. “As a general rule, the more interest you show in a person, the more he will produce for you. And his production is what carries you forward to greater and greater success.”

— David J. Schwartz

106. “The trainees also discovered something else that is tremendously significant. They discovered that decisions and observations made alone in managed solitude have an uncanny way of being 100 percent right!”

— David J. Schwartz

107. “Be objective. Put yourself in a glass tube and look at yourself as a disinterested third party would look at the situation. See if you have a weakness that you’ve never noticed before. If you have, take action to correct it.”

— David J. Schwartz

108. “The point is this: the successful person in any field takes time out to confer with himself or herself. Leaders use solitude to put the pieces of a problem together, to work out solutions, to plan, and, in one phrase, to do their superthinking.”

— David J. Schwartz

109. “This is a fact of paramount significance: Each human being, whether he lives in India or Indianapolis, whether he’s ignorant or brilliant, civilized or uncivilized, young or old, has this desire: He wants to feel important.”

— David J. Schwartz

110. “Mark this point well. A person is not pulled up to a higher-level job. Rather, he is lifted up. In this day and age nobody has time or patience to pull another up the job ladder, degree by painful degree. The individual is chosen whose record makes him stand higher than the rest.”

— David J. Schwartz

111. “Anybody,” John continued, “can hire a man. But the test of leadership is how one handles the dismissal. By helping that employee relocate before he left us built up a feeling of job security in everyone in my department. I let them know by example that no one gets dumped on the street as long as I’m here.”

— David J. Schwartz

112. “Be constructively self-critical. Don’t run away from inadequacies. Be like the real professionals. They seek out their faults and weaknesses, then correct them. That’s what makes them professionals.”

— David J. Schwartz

113. “Around 1900 a sales executive discovered a “scientific” principle of sales management. It received a lot of publicity and even found its way into textbooks. The principle was this: There is one best way to sell a product. Find the best way. Then never deviate from it.”

— David J. Schwartz

114. “Do something special for your family often. It.”

— David J. Schwartz

115. “Once I heard a young paratrooper instructor explain, “The jump really isn’t so bad. It’s the waiting to jump that gets a fellow.”

— David J. Schwartz

116. “To be on top, you’ve got to feel like you’re on top. Give yourself a pep talk and discover how much bigger and stronger you feel.”

— David J. Schwartz

117. “Here is a basic truth: To do anything, we must first believe it can be done.”

— David J. Schwartz

118. “So think positive toward people and discover how wonderful, really wonderful this world is.”

— David J. Schwartz

119. “It’s not too wild a guess that, of all living creatures, probably not more than one in ten million is a human being. A person is a biological rarity. He is important in God’s scheme of things.”

— David J. Schwartz

120. “In reaching creative decisions, the raw materials are the ideas and suggestions of others. Don’t, of course, expect other people to give you ready-made solutions. That’s not the primary reason for asking and listening. Ideas of others help to spark your own ideas so your mind is more creative.”

— David J. Schwartz

121. “Right then I decided, ‘I’m through feeling second-class. From here on in I’m not going to sell myself short.”

— David J. Schwartz

122. “Give them encouragement, compliment them at every opportunity. Tell.”

— David J. Schwartz

123. “Tell yourself, “I’m in condition right now to begin. I can’t gain a thing by putting it off. I’ll use the ‘get ready’ time and energy to get going instead.”

— David J. Schwartz

124. “As you move higher and higher in the world of success, more and more of your job becomes “people development.”

— David J. Schwartz

125. “Take the initiative in building friendships – leaders always do. It’s easy and natural for us to tell ourselves, “Let him make the first move.” “Let them call us.” “Let her speak first.”

— David J. Schwartz

126. “The way we think toward our jobs determines how our subordinates think toward their jobs.”

— David J. Schwartz

127. “It isn’t what one has that’s important. Rather, it’s how much one is planning to get that counts.”

— David J. Schwartz

128. “Practice calling people by their names.”

— David J. Schwartz

129. “People naturally pay more for acreage and an idea than they do for just acreage.”

— David J. Schwartz

130. “Here’s a technique that works: before complaining or accusing or reprimanding someone or launching a counterattack in self-defense, ask yourself, “Is it really important?” In most cases, it isn’t and you avoid conflict.”

— David J. Schwartz

131. “In hundreds of interviews with people at all levels I’ve made this discovery: The bigger the person, the more apt he is to encourage you to talk; the smaller the person, the more apt he is to preach to you.”

— David J. Schwartz

132. “He believes he is worth little, so he receives little. He believes he can’t do big things, and he doesn’t. He believes he is unimportant, so everything he does has an unimportant mark. As times goes by, lack of belief in himself shows through in the way the fellow talks, walks, acts.”

— David J. Schwartz

133. “Practice calling people by their names. Every year shrewd manufacturers sell more briefcases, pencils, Bibles, and hundreds of other items just by putting the buyer’s name on the product. People like to be called by name. It gives everyone a boost to be addressed by name.”

— David J. Schwartz

134. “Remember, a mind that feeds only on itself soon is undernourished, becoming weak and incapable of creative progressive thought. Stimulation from others is excellent mind food.”

— David J. Schwartz

135. “3. Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts. Use your mind to create and develop ideas, to find new and better ways to do things. Ask yourself, “Am I using my mental ability to make history, or am I using it merely to record history made by others?”

— David J. Schwartz

136. “A person is a product of his own thoughts.”

— David J. Schwartz

137. “Once you’ve mastered the technique of thinking only good thoughts about people, greater success is guaranteed.”

— David J. Schwartz

138. “Remind yourself several times daily, “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.”

— David J. Schwartz

139. “When you beat down your fears of age limitations, you add years to your life as well as success.”

— David J. Schwartz

140. “And, please, as you visualize your future, don’t be afraid to be blue sky. People these days are measured by the size of their dreams. No one accomplishes more than he sets out to accomplish. So visualize a big future.”

— David J. Schwartz

141. “Next time you are in a large group, observe something very significant: the most important person present is the one person most active in introducing himself.”

— David J. Schwartz