Top 280 James Altucher Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “People build up a life, it becomes unsatisfactory, and they want to figure out how to change it like an outfit on a doll. But you can’t change life from the outside. We all know this now.”

— James Altucher

152. “A lot of times, people send me emails, and then I forget about them, or I never respond to them, or I respond to them weeks later.”

— James Altucher

153. “Finally, I started to care more about getting better than about winning. I started to study my losses. I would take my losses to my instructor and we would go over them. And that’s how I went from expert-level to master-level.”

— James Altucher

154. “HONESTY COMPOUNDS. It compounds exponentially. No matter what happens in your bank account, in your career, in your promotions, in your startups. Honesty compounds exponentially, not over days or weeks, but years and decades. More people trust your word and spread the news that you are a person to be sought out, sought after, given opportunity, given help, or given money. This is what will build your empire.”

— James Altucher

155. “Life is better when your sinuses are clean, when your arteries are clean, and when your digestive tract is clean.”

— James Altucher

156. “If coming up with ten ideas sounds too hard, then come up with twenty.”

— James Altucher

157. “Anger is a form of dishonesty. Nobody is perfect. It’s a lie to expect the people around you to be perfect.”

— James Altucher

158. “This desire will enable you to seize every opportunity and create the life you want to live.”

— James Altucher

159. “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

160. “Barbara Cortland broke the world record. In 1983, she wrote 23 novels. She was 82 years old. Two novels a month that year. Altogether she wrote 723 published novels. The last she wrote at age 97. When she died a year later, there were 160 unpublished novels still waiting to be published. Did people like her work? Depending on what estimate you use, she sold between 600 million and 2 billion books. Most of her books were romance novels.”

— James Altucher

161. “Arguing with people is like reading your e-mail at 4 in the morning. There is absolutely no good that can come of it. It’s just scratching an itch.”

— James Altucher

162. “Become a beacon of enhancement, and then, when the night is gray, all of the boats will move towards you, bringing their bountiful riches.”

— James Altucher

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

— James Altucher

164. “Maybe most the important thing I learned was one thing he said to me toward the end: “Are you willing to do whatever it takes to make the thing that excites you come true? Are you fearless?”

— James Altucher

165. “Thinking keeps the adventures of life bottled in your head. Action makes you a hero.”

— James Altucher

166. “Requirements are for people who want to be unhappy. Because it’s your rules or the universe’s rules. The universe is going to win. Every time.”

— James Altucher

167. “The best ideas come from collisions between newer and older ideas.”

— James Altucher

168. “You are the average of the 5 things you are reading today.”

— James Altucher

169. “Turn a few hours each day into a memory instead of a cubicle. Something you can laugh about.”

— James Altucher

170. “You either read the book and use these ideas, or you shouldn’t bother.”

— James Altucher

171. “If two people believe in the same story, they might be thousands of miles apart and total strangers, but they still have a sense they can trust each other.”

— James Altucher

172. “Most people are not good people. In business, in art, in almost every ‘world’ I’ve been in, most people I’ve meet are pretty gray to black. It takes practice to be the person who is a source of compassion and honesty.”

— James Altucher

173. “When you get in the door, do not sell your product. People make a decision on your product in five seconds. Sell the dream. Build up images of the dream. Give a taste of what the dream is like. Let it linger.”

— James Altucher

174. “Research your secret options thoroughly. Or else don’t begin the negotiation because you have not prepared properly.”

— James Altucher

175. “There is nobody you need to impress. There is nobody who is judging you. And there will be nobody who can stop you.”

— James Altucher

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

— James Altucher

177. “With each obstacle, turn it into a moment where you can reflect on the bounty that is in your life.”

— James Altucher

178. “You have to ask good questions. “What can I do to improve?” or “How can I find a better job?” or “How can I be grateful that I lost this job?” Because inside of every problem is the seed of a “difficult gratitude problem” and it always improves your life to solve those problems.”

— James Altucher

179. “My feeling, based on my own experience, is that aiming for grandiosity is the fastest route to failure.”

— James Altucher

180. “Products are valued higher than services.”

— James Altucher

181. “Everything you learn in school can be outsourced to someone who learned it more cheaply or learned it more recently.”

— James Altucher

182. “Companies simply don’t need the same amount of people anymore to be as productive as they’ve always been. We are moving toward a society without employees. It’s not here yet. But it will be. And that’s okay.”

— James Altucher

183. “If someone insists they need to be in prison even though the door is unlocked, then I am not going to argue. They are free to stay in prison.”

— James Altucher

184. “Perfectionism is the enemy of the idea muscle. Perfectionism is your brain trying to protect you from harm – from coming up with an idea that is embarrassing and stupid and could cause you to suffer pain.”

— James Altucher

185. “You can’t hate the people who reject you. You can’t let them get the best of you. Nor can you bless the people who love you. Everyone is acting out of his or her own self-interest.”

— James Altucher

186. “The more grateful you are, the more you attract things to be grateful for.”

— James Altucher

187. “Noticing your reactions to suffering, anger, pain is the key to well-being.”

— James Altucher

188. “At any point in your career, you are either a thermostat or a thermometer.”

— James Altucher

189. “Traveling to the past or the future will not help you now.”

— James Altucher

190. “Branding jails corporate America, but honesty sets entrepreneurs free.”

— James Altucher

191. “Talent had destroyed him. Talent is the tiniest of sparks. A spark lights the fire. But you have to feed the fire more fuel to keep it going. Else it dies out.”

— James Altucher

192. “Quote from the pope: “If we start without confidence, already we have lost half the battle and we bury our talents.”

— James Altucher

193. “Not every failure is an opportunity. But figure it out. Look at the times you failed. How many, in retrospect, were opportunities. About.”

— James Altucher

194. “Be an entrepreneur at work. An “entre-ployee.” Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value – any value – to somebody, anybody, and watch that value compound into a career.”

— James Altucher

195. “There’s no way to know in advance if a business idea is a good one. Google started around 1996 but didn’t make a dime of money until around 2001.”

— James Altucher

196. “But the reality is: reinvention is life. This is the call to adventure that constantly whispers to us. Do we answer it? Do we take the call?”

— James Altucher

197. “You can find the tools to be happy right now. I still don’t know what my purpose is. I’m afraid I will never know. That makes me very happy. Maybe I can have lots of adventures between today and the day I die. Maybe I can do lots of different things. And if I don’t – if I die even tomorrow – that’s fine also. What does purpose mean when we are dead? We might as well choose to be happy now.”

— James Altucher

198. “Collisions are the fundamental life-giving processes of the universe. Ideas are no different. The best ideas come from collisions between newer and older ideas.”

— James Altucher

199. “If I had only focused on big successes,” he said, “then I would be disappointed most of the time. You have to focus on the small successes and make sure to celebrate them.”

— James Altucher

200. “But action leaks the panic out of your head.”

— James Altucher