Top 280 James Altucher Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Ultimately, mastery is about connecting the dots of many fields.”

— James Altucher

102. “If you want to be successful, you need to study success, not hate it or be envious of it. If you are envious, then you will distance yourself from success and make it that much harder to get there. Never be jealous. Never think someone is “lucky.” Luck is created by the prepared. Never think that someone is undeserving of the money they have. That only puts you one more.”

— James Altucher

103. “The value of your network goes up exponentially when you view your contacts and resources not as a list but as a network of nodes on a graph. Think of the number of connections that can connect two different nodes on that graph. It’s exponential compared to the number of items in a list that connect directly to you. The way you create the network effect is by encouraging people in your network to connect to each other and to help each other.”

— James Altucher

104. “Freedom to help ourselves so that we can help others. Freedom to live the life we choose to lead, instead of having to live the life that has been chosen for us.”

— James Altucher

105. “Remember: complaining is draining. So I wanted to make better use of that energy rather than fight it.”

— James Altucher

106. “You need to build a positive base: physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Once these four “bodies” are working in harmony, you can reach out into the world. You build the foundation for the house you want to live in.”

— James Altucher

107. “If we truly want to learn, we never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening.”

— James Altucher

108. “The key to success is to approach everything with humility. To know that there is always something new to learn in this surreal art of being human.”

— James Altucher

109. “Always say to yourself, I’d rather be healthy than right. Because the infection of someone so wounded will spread to you if you engage.”

— James Altucher

110. “Honesty is the only way to make money in today’s world.”

— James Altucher

111. “Never underestimate the power of a long, protracted silence.” Out.”

— James Altucher

112. “I’m going to repeat this: I buy experiences and not things. I don’t like to buy my kids’ gifts. But I’ll take them places and won’t hold back. They will lose and forget the “things” in the long run. But they will never forget the experiences.”

— James Altucher

113. “Study the history of the form you want to master.”

— James Altucher

114. “The idea that we need to “pay our dues” is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.”

— James Altucher

115. “Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. 100 years from now your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can make magic.”

— James Altucher

116. “I think it is often easier to make progress on mega-ambitious dreams. Since no one else is crazy enough to do it, you have little competition. In fact, there are so few people this crazy that I feel like I know them all by first name.”

— James Altucher

117. “If you don’t give yourself permission to create a new world, chances are nobody else will.”

— James Altucher

118. “Teaching how to think is better than lecturing how to do it.”

— James Altucher

119. “We all have faith in something: usually a mixture of some personal beliefs with modern science. I am not like that. Mostly I just believe in what personally has worked for me.”

— James Altucher

120. “Life is a gift. Don’t let your ego get in the way of fully experiencing and appreciating it. When we were kids, we laughed and asked question. As adults, we cry and shout answers. Sometimes it’s good to feel like a kid again, even at age 75.”

— James Altucher

121. “The muse, or the inspiration, does not just show up, it requires sweat as an offering.”

— James Altucher

122. “If you think, “Everything would be better off if I were dead,” then think, “That’s really cool. Now I can do anything I want and I can postpone this thought for a while, maybe even a few months.” Because what does it matter now? The planet might not even be around in a few months. Who knows what could happen with all these solar flares.”

— James Altucher

123. “Learning never stops. Many people die at 25 but are not put in the coffin until 75. The learning stopped for them early.”

— James Altucher

124. “Success comes from continually expanding your frontiers in every direction-creatively, financially, spiritually, and physically. Always ask yourself, what can I improve? Who else can I talk to? Where else can I look?”

— James Altucher

125. “Success, in every case, comes from the alchemy of your health, your mind, your positive energy, and the real world situations you persistently improve for yourself.”

— James Altucher

126. “I’m forty-five and I still have no idea what I want to be when I “grow up.” But I’m starting to finally accept the fact that all I want to be is ME.”

— James Altucher

127. “Mother Theresa said if everyone swept in front of their house then the end result would be a clean world.”

— James Altucher

128. “Nobody questions anything if you have confidence, intelligence, and you are proud of your product.”

— James Altucher

129. “The NORMAL thing is to be rejected. To get rejected by jobs, your kids, friends, family members, relationships, businesses, publishers, everyone.”

— James Altucher

130. “Purpose is a man-made fiction. Nobody on their deathbed gets a plaque that says “he focused on only one thing for his entire life!” Those are counterfeit thoughts in a counterfeit society.”

— James Altucher

131. “The media only writes about the sinners and the scandals, but that’s normal, because a tree that falls makes more noise than a forest that grows.” The media sells subscriptions. But every day we have a choice. To focus on what is growing in our lives, or the negativity and fear that try to bring us down.”

— James Altucher

132. “Be honest about mistakes. Even if you are afraid of what people think.”

— James Altucher

133. “The key to an enriched life is to have a burning desire. Wayne.”

— James Altucher

134. “Writing a book makes you an expert in the field. At the very least, when you hand someone a book you wrote, it’s more impressive than handing a business card.”

— James Altucher

135. “Never have your happiness dependent on a yes or no decision from one person.”

— James Altucher

136. “Every game, and almost every life situation, has short cuts: ways you can get better without learning the entire literature of the game from beginning to end.”

— James Altucher

137. “Life is too long to reject the opportunities in front of you every day.”

— James Altucher

138. “My only hope for my future is I learn to dot the landscape of my life once more with question marks instead of periods. To turn judgments into queries. To turn “this” into “that?” To make every problem a maze. To be like a six-year-old.”

— James Altucher

139. “I think bitcoin has about a 1 in 100 chance of being a survivor. So I have 1% of my portfolio in bitcoin.”

— James Altucher

140. “Every successful business, even Google, Facebook, Twitter, started with a combination of manual improvements and friends of the founders using the site.”

— James Altucher

141. “1. Take out a pad. List everything you enjoyed doing from the ages of six to eighteen, before your life was ruled by college, relationships, crappy jobs, mortgages, kids, responsibilities, self-loathing, etc.”

— James Altucher

142. “Often the best way to make friends and customers for life is to direct them to a better service or product than yours. Be the source of valuable information rather than the source of your “product of the day.”

— James Altucher

143. “As Mac Lethal said to me, “Nobody remembers your bad stuff, just keep working at it and you’ll put out good stuff and that’s what they will see and remember.”

— James Altucher

144. “The reality is: when you’re slouched over, not only are you not using the full potential of your brain, but you look untrustworthy.”

— James Altucher

145. “People fool themselves into thinking that the currency of unhappiness will buy them happiness. That we have to “pay our dues,” go on some sort of ride, and then get dropped off at a big location called our “purpose,” where now we can be happy. It doesn’t work that way.”

— James Altucher

146. “People unconsciously know when you are not listening to them. Then they say ‘No’ to you.”

— James Altucher

147. “How do you get past this?” Diversification is everything. You get past “this” by having lots of “that”s.”

— James Altucher

148. “When I was running a software company, we always knew it would take one great programmer to solve a hard problem in one night versus 10 mediocre programmers taking a month to screw up a problem even worse.”

— James Altucher

149. “Chocolate releases phenylephylamine, the same hormone that is released when you fall in love.”

— James Altucher

150. “Someone who is reinventing always has spare time. Part of reinvention is collecting little bits and pieces of time and carving them the way you want them to be. That is the Power of No in action: you say no to the superfluous distractions because you must find some time for you.”

— James Altucher