Top 70 Jon Acuff Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “All you have to do is win more today than you did yesterday and repeat the whole thing tomorrow.”

— Jon Acuff

2. “A dream you don’t have to fight for isn’t a dream – it’s a nap. One changes your afternoon. The other changes your world. Keep fighting.”

— Jon Acuff

3. “Choose your attitude every day until eventually it chooses you right back.”

— Jon Acuff

4. “We – not our company – are responsible for our attitudes. What happens each day at work doesn’t get to determine my attitude, I do. Attitude is a decision. And it’s a decision we have to make every day, sometimes every hour if that particular day is especially whack.”

— Jon Acuff

5. “If taking a break from social media sounds intimidating, remember, you’ve already done this for an entire year. It was called 1997.”

— Jon Acuff

6. “The harder you try to be perfect, the less likely you’ll accomplish your goals.”

— Jon Acuff

7. “Your emotions cloud your judgment. They form a perfect smoke screen for denial, making your path in life feel murky and confusing. In the fog of feelings, it’s hard to see what’s really happening. Data doesn’t lie, though. It is not swayed by emotion. It is not subject to the drunken whims of feelings. Disaster is always the final destination of denial.”

— Jon Acuff

8. “Joy is an incredible alarm clock. It will wake you up and keep you up and pick you up and gently pull you through a thousand rejections along the way.”

— Jon Acuff

9. “You have the perfect amount of time each day for the things that matter most. The key is spending time on those things.”

— Jon Acuff

10. “People who can’t be questioned often end up doing questionable things.”

— Jon Acuff

11. “Success always comes when preparation meets opportunity.”4.”

— Jon Acuff

12. “You’ve got today, and today is all you need to start.”

— Jon Acuff

13. “Regardless of your age or station in life, it all comes down to one simple truth: you just have to start.”

— Jon Acuff

14. “People are mistaken when they think chasing your dream is a selfish thing to do. As if perhaps being average is an act of humility. As if perhaps wasting the talents you were given is proof that you’re a considerate individual. It’s not.”

— Jon Acuff

15. “One of the greatest mistakes you can make in life is assuming all your thoughts are true.”

— Jon Acuff

16. “Scars you refuse to hide can become lighthouses that warn other people who are headed to the same rocks you crashed on.”

— Jon Acuff

17. “Complacency is a slow gas leak, not a bomb blast. Like being robbed by a thief in the night who only steals a penny at a time, we awake to find the days have all gone somewhere. Things.”

— Jon Acuff

18. “Cut your goal in half. Choose what you’ll bomb. Make it fun if you want it done.”

— Jon Acuff

19. “That’s all data is. A gift from yesterday that you receive today to make tomorrow better.”

— Jon Acuff

20. “Life is dreamed in big leaps and revealed in small steps.”

— Jon Acuff

21. “In that moment, I learned a simple lesson about being awesome: always play to the size of your heart, not to the size of your audience. Awesome.”

— Jon Acuff

22. “Unfortunately, perfectionism dies slowly. It’s persistent and particularly dangerous because it masquerades as excellence.”

— Jon Acuff

23. “If you’re watching Netflix every time it’s time for you to do X, that’s a hiding place. You’re afraid to face the fear of imperfection that comes along with every endeavor, so you’re hiding from it by doing something that requires no skill. You might write a bad sentence on your blog, but no one’s going to critique the way you watch TV. “I.”

— Jon Acuff

24. “If you want help for your dream, start by helping someone else with their dream. If you want support for your hope, start by giving support to someone else’s hope. If you want encouragement as you work on your calling, start by encouraging other people. Giving support is often the best way to get it.”

— Jon Acuff

25. “I like being a beginner. I like the moment where I look at everyone and say, “I have no idea how to do this, let’s figure it out.”

— Jon Acuff

26. “Intentions are ambitious liars.”

— Jon Acuff

27. “To deal with our secret rules, we have to do three things: Identify them. Destroy them. Replace them.”

— Jon Acuff

28. “If you are ever invited to a late Friday afternoon meeting with your boss, that’s not a meeting, that’s a booby trap.”

— Jon Acuff

29. “This is the first lie that perfectionism tells you about goals: Quit if it isn’t perfect.”

— Jon Acuff

30. “As a child, when his mother would pray that he would have a hedge of protection or a hedge of angels around him, he would think, “Anyone can jump a hedge. How hard is that? Forget the hedge of angels; I’m praying for a dome of angels.”

— Jon Acuff

31. “Perfectionism always makes things harder and more complicated. Finishers make things easier and simpler. The next time you work on a goal, I dare you to ask the following questions during the middle of the project: Could things be easier? Could things be simpler?”

— Jon Acuff

32. “You might be too bored to work on your dream, but just don’t buy into the lie that you are too busy.”

— Jon Acuff

33. “The other problem with learning a new skill is that it takes forever. How long is forever exactly? Longer than you thought.”

— Jon Acuff

34. “Pick ROI, not EGO.”

— Jon Acuff

35. “Not because of my words – those are cheap and untrustworthy. But because of my actions, which are expensive and trustworthy.”

— Jon Acuff

36. “They are four words I want you to keep in mind when critic’s math gets loud. He wrote, “We will miss you.”

— Jon Acuff

37. “You will work harder at something you love than at something you like. You will work harder than you have ever worked when you start chasing a dream. You will hustle and grind and sweat and push and pull. You will get up earlier and go to bed later. But that’s okay.”

— Jon Acuff

38. “Pastors are starting to get wily. When people tell my friend, ‘I’m not being fed,’ he replies, ‘I’m prefectly happy to spoon feed my one-year-old. But if I’m still spoon-feeding him when he’s five, we’ve got a problem. Here’s a fork. Feed yourself.”

— Jon Acuff

39. “Chances are, no one is trying to kill you at your current job. If they are, please read a book on Krav Maga, not this one.”

— Jon Acuff

40. “It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms one would not part. – MARCEL PROUST.”

— Jon Acuff

41. “Someone is going to hate what you do. That’s not a maybe. That’s a definite. And I don’t mean dislike. I mean hate. With energy and vitriol and a passion that surprises you.”

— Jon Acuff

42. “The bigger rule was “For something to count, it has to be difficult.” A lot of high performers carry that sort of secret rule along with them. If an exercise is enjoyable and you have fun doing it, it must not count.”

— Jon Acuff

43. “But more than just analysis, perfectionism offers us two distinct distractions: Hiding places Noble obstacles A hiding place is an activity you focus on instead of your goal. A noble obstacle is a virtuous-sounding reason for not working toward a finish. Both are toxic to your ability to finish.”

— Jon Acuff

44. “A hiding place is the safe place you go to hide from your fear of messing up. It’s the task that lets you get your perfectionism fix by making you feel successful even as you avoid your goal.”

— Jon Acuff

45. “No one pursuing a life of average was ever made fun of by other average people. But if you decide to travel the road to awesome, you will be.”

— Jon Acuff

46. “Generosity is always cheaper than greed.”

— Jon Acuff

47. “It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past. – STEVE GARGUILO.”

— Jon Acuff

48. “I want the peace in knowing that is wasn’t for lack of hustling that I missed a target for my dream. I want to know that the one thing in my control was under control.”

— Jon Acuff

49. “Hiding places are tricky like that. They make you feel like you’re doing well when in reality you’re not getting anywhere on your most important projects.”

— Jon Acuff

50. “Sometimes, people who hate on your dream aren’t really mad about your dream. They’re mad because you’re making them jealous.”

— Jon Acuff