Top 60 M.J. DeMarco Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Your choices are made in a moment, and yet their consequences transcend a lifetime.”

— M.J. DeMarco

2. “There’s a profound difference between interest and commitment. Interest reads a book; commitment applies the book 50 times.”

— M.J. DeMarco

3. “People care about what your business can do for them. How will it help them? What’s in it for them? Will it solve their problem? Make their life easier? Provide.”

— M.J. DeMarco

4. “Stop thinking about business in terms of your selfish desires, whether it’s money, dreams or “do what you love.” Instead, chase needs, problems, pain points, service deficiencies, and emotions.”

— M.J. DeMarco

5. “The owner of an idea is not he who imagines it, but he who executes it.”

— M.J. DeMarco

6. “As Thomas Edison famously said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

— M.J. DeMarco

7. “Change creates millionaires. Those who observe and take advantage of change will be the new millionaires and billionaires.”

— M.J. DeMarco

8. “Instead of digging for gold, sell shovels. Instead of taking a class, offer a class. Instead of borrowing money, lend it. Instead of taking a job, hire for jobs. Instead of taking a mortgage, hold a mortgage. Break free from consumption, switch sides, and reorient to the world as producer.”

— M.J. DeMarco

9. “Someday is dangerous and paralyzing. It traps you in land of Nowheresville. Someday is here, now, pristine and clean and begging no allegiance for tomorrow. The.”

— M.J. DeMarco

10. “I awoke to the epiphany that I was the driver of my life and my problems were the consequences of my choices.”

— M.J. DeMarco

11. “People care about what your business can do for them. How will it help them? What’s in it for them? Will it solve their problem? Make their life easier? Provide them with shelter? Save them money? Educate them? Make them feel something? Tell me, why on God’s green Earth should I give your business money? What value are you adding to my life?”

— M.J. DeMarco

12. “Again, majority thinking yields mediocrity, and for that majority, time is an asset that is undervalued and mindlessly squandered.”

— M.J. DeMarco

13. “All events of wealth are precluded by process, a backstory of trial, risk, hard work, and sacrifice. If you try to skip process, you’ll never experience events.”

— M.J. DeMarco

14. “Wealth eludes most people because they are preoccupied with events while disregarding process. Without process, there is no event.”

— M.J. DeMarco

15. “Thou shalt not invest in a needless business. Thou shalt not trade time for money. Thou shalt not operate on a limited scale. Thou shalt not relinquish control. Thou shalt not let a business startup be an event over process.”

— M.J. DeMarco

16. “Luck is introduced when you play. If you don’t play, you can’t win. Unfortunately, Sidewalkers assign luck to events of mystical chance. They don’t see the manipulated probabilities imbued by process which makes the chance possible. If you want luck, dive.”

— M.J. DeMarco

17. “The problem is not people being educated. The problem is that they are educated just enough to believe what they’ve been taught, but not educated enough to question what they’ve been taught.”

— M.J. DeMarco

18. “Affordability is when you don’t have to think about it. If you have to think about “affordability,” you can’t afford it because affordability carries conditions and consequences.”

— M.J. DeMarco

19. “Skip the big idea and go for the big execution of more value skew. You don’t need an idea that has never been done before. Old ideas suffice; just do it better and execute as no one has!”

— M.J. DeMarco

20. “If millions seek you, you will be paid millions.”

— M.J. DeMarco

21. “You could own the best hotel in the world located on the best beach in California, but if customers are treated like inconveniences and requests go unfulfilled, they won’t return.”

— M.J. DeMarco

22. “My doctor’s preferred method of attack was prescription drugs. I refused because I wanted to fix problems, not mask symptoms.”

— M.J. DeMarco

23. “The King: Your execution – The Queen: Your marketing – The Bishop: Your customer service – The Knight: Your product – The Rook: Your people – The Pawn: Your ideas.”

— M.J. DeMarco

24. “Self-made millionaires don’t become millionaires by stumbling into money. Likewise, financial failures don’t become failures by stumbling into poorness. Both are outcomes of your financial roadmap and the actions and beliefs evolving from that roadmap.”

— M.J. DeMarco

25. “What you know today is not enough to get you where you need to be tomorrow.”

— M.J. DeMarco

26. “If your past defines your existence, it will be impossible for you to become the person you need to become in the future.”

— M.J. DeMarco

27. “When you trust everyone, you engage in business opportunities that violate the Commandment of Control. You allow others to dictate your financial road trip. And when that happens, you crash and burn. There is only one person you can blindly trust in this world, and that is YOU.”

— M.J. DeMarco

28. “The global recession has exposed the Slowlane for the fraud it is. With no job, the plan fails. When the stock market loses 50% of your savings, the plan fails. When a housing crisis erases 40% of your illiquid net worth in one year, the plan fails. The plan is a failure because the plan is based on time and factors you can’t control. Unfortunately, millions of people have faithfully invested decades into the plan only to discover the ugly truth: The Slowlane is risky and insufferably impotent.”

— M.J. DeMarco

29. “Scale creates millionaires. Magnitude creates millionaires. Scale and magnitude creates billionaires.”

— M.J. DeMarco

30. “I believe if you can succeed at network marketing, you can succeed at anything.”

— M.J. DeMarco

31. “The real golden years of life are when you’re young, sentient, and vibrant.”

— M.J. DeMarco

32. “Money is like a mischievous cat; if you chase it around the neighborhood, it eludes you. It hides up a tree, behind the rose bush, or in the garden. However, if you ignore it and focus on what attracts the cat, it comes to you and sits in your lap.”

— M.J. DeMarco

33. “Your business is a spouse. Quit cheating and give one business all of your attention. You will get out what you put in, and rationing your time among mistresses is a slow prescription to lackluster incomes and asset values.”

— M.J. DeMarco

34. “Just as there are greedy rich people, there are greedy poor people. Rich people don’t have a monopoly on greed or evilness – the human species does.”

— M.J. DeMarco

35. “Has life regressed into paying bills and living for a weekend?”

— M.J. DeMarco

36. “Unfortunately, this is the paradox you’ll face if you fear failure and refuse to release the brakes. The sweat of success is failure. While you can’t build cardiovascular endurance without sweating, you can’t experience success without failure. Failure is simply a natural response to success. If you avoid failure you will also avoid success. You can’t drive the road to wealth with the brakes engaged.”

— M.J. DeMarco

37. “If you want extraordinary results, you’re going to need extraordinary thinking. Unfortunately, “extraordinary” is not found trapped in society’s mediocracy and the beliefs that fuel them.”

— M.J. DeMarco

38. “No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. – Harry Emerson Fosdick.”

— M.J. DeMarco

39. “The irony of looking wealthy is that it is an enemy to real wealth: It destroys freedom, it destroys health, and it destroys relationships.”

— M.J. DeMarco

40. “Jim Rohn, the legendary motivational speaker, once said, “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”

— M.J. DeMarco

41. “Every day, people sacrifice their time for tiny nuggets of wealth, where time is the liability and not the asset. Anything that steals time and doesn’t have the power to free time is a liability.”

— M.J. DeMarco

42. “Debt needs a constant drip of blood, and that blood comes from your gas tank of life: time. And since time is fixed, an increase in indentured time comes from only one source: your free time.”

— M.J. DeMarco

43. “Rich or poor, time is equally possessed, shared, and consumed by all. Every day, you use it. I use it. Your neighbor uses it. No one gets more and no one gets less. Twenty-four hours for everybody. No one has an unfair advantage. You, me, we all have 24 hours to consume, expire, and spend. Time is the ultimate equalizer.”

— M.J. DeMarco

44. “Recluses won’t find purpose living out their days in a sacred bubble. Partake in commerce, start working out, volunteer, go on a mission. Do freaking something.”

— M.J. DeMarco

45. “Time is the greatest asset you own, not money, not the 1969 restored Mustang, not grandpa’s old coin collection.”

— M.J. DeMarco

46. “These people seek the easy life yet want someone else to pay for it. They’re lifetime hitchhikers.”

— M.J. DeMarco

47. “When inventing any product, the invention is always half the battle. Distribution is the other.”

— M.J. DeMarco

48. “The problem is, you’ve allowed ordinary thinking preached by ordinary people to produce exactly that – an ordinary life.”

— M.J. DeMarco

49. “If You Think You Can Afford It – You Can’t Think about the last time you bought a pack of gum. Did you fret over the price? Did you ask, “Hmmm, can I afford this?” Probably not. You bought the gum, and it’s done. The purchase had no impact on your lifestyle or future choices. To a rich woman who walks into a dealership and buys a six-figure Bentley without thought, the acts are the same.”

— M.J. DeMarco

50. “The world has no shortage of people seeking lounge-chair, remote-control success – they want all that life has to offer – just as long as it comes in comfortable harmony. This young man striving to save his mother from poverty? He’s a force-packing Jedi Knight among a legion of soulless stormtroopers.”

— M.J. DeMarco