Top 120 Gary Keller Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Until my ONE Thing is done – everything else is a distraction.”

— Gary Keller

Featured in: Friday Quotes for Work, Time Management Quotes

2. “There is no failure. You win or you learn. Either one is okay.”

— Gary Keller

3. “People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.” – F. M. Alexander.”

— Gary Keller

4. “What’s the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

— Gary Keller

5. “No one succeeds alone. No one.”

— Gary Keller

6. “Purpose without priority is powerless.”

— Gary Keller

7. “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” – Alan Lakein.”

— Gary Keller

8. “Multitasking is merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time.”

— Gary Keller

9. “Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.” – John Carmack.”

— Gary Keller

10. “Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority.”

— Gary Keller

11. “The key is over time. Success is built sequentially. It’s one thing at a time.”

— Gary Keller

12. “Getting extraordinary results is all about creating a domino effect in your life.”

— Gary Keller

13. “When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn’t actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.”

— Gary Keller

14. “When life happens, you can be either the author of your life or the victim of it. Those are your only two choices – accountable or unaccountable. This may sound harsh, but it’s true. Every day we choose one approach or the other, and the consequences follow us forever.”

— Gary Keller

15. “Be like a postage stamp–stick to one thing until you get there.”

— Gary Keller

16. “Mastery is a commitment to becoming your best, so to achieve extraordinary results you must embrace the extraordinary effort it represents.”

— Gary Keller

17. “Since there is always another level to learn, mastery actually means you’re a master of what you know and an apprentice of what you don’t. In other words, we become masters of what is behind us and apprentices for what is ahead. This is why mastery is a journey. Alex.”

— Gary Keller

18. “In your effort to attend to all things, everything gets shortchanged and nothing gets its due.”

— Gary Keller

19. “MY WAGE By J. B. Rittenhouse I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, He gives you what you ask, But once you have set the wages, Why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menials hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid.”

— Gary Keller

20. “If it’s to be, it will be me.”

— Gary Keller

21. “There can only be one most important thing. Many things may be important, but only one can be the most important.” – Ross Garber.”

— Gary Keller

22. “Going small” is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It’s recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most. It’s a tighter way to connect what you do with what you want. It’s realizing that extraordinary results are directly determined by how narrow you can make your focus.”

— Gary Keller

23. “Instead of a to-do list, you need a success list – a list that is purposefully created around extraordinary results.”

— Gary Keller

24. “When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover.”

— Gary Keller

25. “Think a Million, Earn a Million, Net a Million, and Receive a Million.”

— Gary Keller

26. “When you see someone who has a lot of knowledge, they learned it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of skills, they developed them over time. When you see someone who has done a lot, they accomplished it over time. When you see someone who has a lot of money, they earned it over time. The key is over time. Success.”

— Gary Keller

27. “If you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?” It.”

— Gary Keller

28. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me.”

— Gary Keller

29. “Adopt a growth mindset, and don’t be afraid of where it can take you. Extraordinary results aren’t built solely on extraordinary results. They’re built on failure too. In fact, it would be accurate to say that we fail our way to success. When we fail, we stop, ask what we need to do to succeed, learn from our mistakes, and grow. Don’t be afraid to fail. See it as part of your learning process and keep striving for your true potential.”

— Gary Keller

30. “If you can honestly say, “This is where I’m meant to be right now, doing exactly what I’m doing,” then all the amazing possibilities for your life become possible.”

— Gary Keller

31. “Success builds on success, and as this happens, over and over, you move toward the highest success possible.”

— Gary Keller

32. “It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world.” – Og Mandino.”

— Gary Keller

33. “We are kept from our goal, not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” – Robert Brault.”

— Gary Keller

34. “Give each habit enough time. Stick with the discipline long enough for it to become routine. Habits, on average, take 66 days to form. Once a habit is solidly established, you can either build on that habit or, if appropriate, build another one.”

— Gary Keller

35. “Purpose, meaning, significance – these are what make a successful life. Seek them and you will most certainly live your life out of balance, criss-crossing an invisible middle line as you pursue your priorities. The act of living a full life by giving time to what matters is a balancing act.”

— Gary Keller

36. “It’s important for you to accept this instead of fighting it. Oscar-winning filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola warns us that “anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.” In other words, get used to it and get over it.”

— Gary Keller

37. “To do two things at once is to do neither.” – Publilius Syrus.”

— Gary Keller

38. “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.”

— Gary Keller

39. “The reason we shouldn’t pursue balance is that the magic never happens in the middle; magic happens at the extremes.”

— Gary Keller

40. “When you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.”

— Gary Keller

41. “Equality is a lie. Understanding this is the basis of all great decisions.”

— Gary Keller

42. “Albert Einstein had Max Talmud, his first mentor. It was Max who introduced a ten-year-old Einstein to key texts in math, science, and philosophy. Max took one meal a week with the Einstein family for six years while guiding young Albert. No one is self-made.”

— Gary Keller

43. “One of the most empowering moments of my life came when I realized that life is a question and how we live it is our answer.”

— Gary Keller

44. “Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.”

— Gary Keller

45. “Achievers operate differently. They have an eye for the essential. They pause just long enough to decide what matters and then allow what matters to drive their day. Achievers do sooner what others plan to do later and defer, perhaps indefinitely, what others do sooner. The difference isn’t in intent, but in right of way. Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority.”

— Gary Keller

46. “Your talent and abilities are limited resources. Your time is finite. If you don’t make your life about what you say yes to, then it will almost certainly become what you intended to say no to.”

— Gary Keller

47. “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers.”

— Gary Keller

48. “Everyone has one person who either means the most to them or was the first to influence, train, or manage them. No one succeeds alone. No one.”

— Gary Keller

49. “It’s important to realize that on the journey to achieving big, you get bigger. Big requires growth, and by the time you arrive, you’re big too! What seemed an insurmountable mountain from a distance is just a small hill when you arrive – at least in proportion to the person you’ve become. Your thinking, your skills, your relationships, your sense of what is possible and what it takes all grow on the journey to big. As you experience big, you become big.”

— Gary Keller

50. “When it comes to willpower, timing is everything.”

— Gary Keller