Top 300 Tim Ferriss Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. – VIKTOR FRANKL, Auschwitz survivor and founder of Logotherapy, Man’s Search for Meaning.”

— Tim Ferriss

252. “When you’re thinking of how to make your business bigger, it’s tempting to try to think all the big thoughts, the world-changing, massive-action plans. But please know that it’s often the tiny details that really thrill someone enough to make them tell all their friends about you.”

— Tim Ferriss

253. “But not having cable or the Internet turns out to be cheaper than having them. And nature is still technically free, even if human beings have tried to make access to it expensive. Time and quiet should not be luxury items.”

— Tim Ferriss

254. “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure. There will be a wide margin for relaxation to his day. He is only earnest to secure the kernels of time, and does not exaggerate the value of the husk.’ Think.”

— Tim Ferriss

255. “Lose an hour in the morning, chase it all day.” – a Yiddish saying, author unknown.”

— Tim Ferriss

256. “Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.”

— Tim Ferriss

257. “Realistic goals, goals restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel. If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.”

— Tim Ferriss

258. “Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all. When people suggest you follow your “passion” or your “bliss,” I propose that they are, in fact, referring to the same singular concept: excitement. This brings us full circle. The question you should be asking isn’t, “What do I want?” or “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”

— Tim Ferriss

259. “I’ve even been known to go to bed while my guests are still partying.”

— Tim Ferriss

260. “Define the worst case, accept it, and do it.”

— Tim Ferriss

261. “But I will say this: the more clear I am about what my goals are, the more easily I can say no.”

— Tim Ferriss

262. “Failure isn’t always durable. You can go back and you can look at it and go, ‘Oh, that wasn’t a failure. That was a key moment of my development that I needed to take, and I can trust my instinct. I really can’.”

— Tim Ferriss

263. “Things in Excess Become Their Opposite. It is possible to have too much of a good thing. In excess, most endeavors and possessions take on the characteristics of their opposite. Thus: Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less.4 Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want.”

— Tim Ferriss

264. “The Shortness of Life: Seneca on Busyness and the Art of Living Wide Rather Than Living Long” “How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love” “9 Learnings from 9 Years of Brain Pickings” Anything about Alan Watts: “Alan Watts has changed my life. I’ve written about him quite a bit.”

— Tim Ferriss

265. “We are simultaneously gods and worms.” – Abraham Maslow.”

— Tim Ferriss

266. “The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.”

— Tim Ferriss

267. “Many a false step was made by standing still.” –Fortune cookie.”

— Tim Ferriss

268. “The best defense is a good offense. – DAN GABLE, Olympic gold medalist in wrestling and the most successful coach in history; personal record: 299–6–3, with 182 pins.”

— Tim Ferriss

269. “As chef Mehdi Chellaoui says, “I use lemon like I use salt.” Mario Batali would agree: if something is missing, it’s probably acid.”

— Tim Ferriss

270. “REMEMBER: it is impossible to evaluate, or even understand, anything that you cannot measure.” 80.”

— Tim Ferriss

271. “Lifestyle Design is thus not interested in creating an excess of idle time, which is poisonous, but the positive use of free time, defined simply as doing what you want as opposed to what you feel obligated to do.”

— Tim Ferriss

272. “There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

— Tim Ferriss

273. “If I want a better-than-average career, I can’t simply ‘go with the flow’ and get it. Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome. If they would just do something most people would find that they get some version of the outcome they’re looking for. That’s been my secret. Stop wishing and start doing.”

— Tim Ferriss

274. “Herbs? Herbs are from the leaves and stems of plants. Spices, on the other hand, are from the root, bark, and seeds.”

— Tim Ferriss

275. “Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with.”

— Tim Ferriss

276. “Seeing progress in changing numbers makes the repetitive fascinating and creates a positive feedback loop. Once again, the act of measuring is often more important than what you measure. To quote the industrial statistician George Box: “Every model is wrong, but some are useful.”

— Tim Ferriss

277. “We want to pick big. Infinity is our friend. Infinity is safe. Infinity gives us a place to hide. So, I want to encourage people instead to look for the small. To be on one medium in a place where people can find you. To have one sort of interaction with one tribe, with one group where you don’t have a lot of lifeboats.”

— Tim Ferriss

278. “I’ve realized that instead of following the trends, you want to identify the trends but not follow them. It’s good to recognize trends, but if you follow them, you get sucked into them, and then you also fall with the trend.”

— Tim Ferriss

279. “Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you, just measure it in inches.” – Andy Warhol.”

— Tim Ferriss

280. “It’s a short reminder that success can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations we are willing to have, and by the number of uncomfortable actions we are willing to take. The most fulfilled and effective people I know – world-famous creatives, billionaires, thought leaders, and more – look at their life’s journey as perhaps 25 percent finding themselves and 75 percent creating themselves.”

— Tim Ferriss

281. “When I wake up in the morning, I’m thinking to myself: What can I do to be ready for that moment, which is coming? That propels me out of bed.”

— Tim Ferriss

282. “The Purpose of Life Is a Life of Purpose.” This is Stan’s answer to “If you could put a billboard anywhere and write anything on it, what would it say?” It is a quote from Robert Byrne.”

— Tim Ferriss

283. “Time is wasted because there is so much time available.”

— Tim Ferriss

284. “Most good chefs believe there is no such thing as too much garlic.”

— Tim Ferriss

285. “Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production; using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.”

— Tim Ferriss

286. “The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.”

— Tim Ferriss

287. “As Bruce Lee said, “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

— Tim Ferriss

288. “To quote the industrial statistician George Box: “Every model is wrong, but some are useful.”

— Tim Ferriss

289. “Follow your intellectual curiosity over whatever is “hot” right now. If your curiosity ever leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you’ll get paid extremely well.”

— Tim Ferriss

290. “So much of the job is more emotion and ‘heart work’ than it is ‘head work.’ The head comes in after, to look at what the heart has presented and to organize it. But the initial inspiration comes from a different place, and it’s not the head, and it’s not an intellectual activity.”

— Tim Ferriss

291. “What will the people who don’t hold you in highest regard say about you?”

— Tim Ferriss

292. “Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.”

— Tim Ferriss

293. “To find the right things, we’ll need to go to the garden.”

— Tim Ferriss

294. “Even if you are predisposed to being overweight, you’re not predestined to be fat.”

— Tim Ferriss

295. “I’m not going to worry about losing one friend if I have a hundred, but if I have two friends I’m really going to be worried. I’m not going to worry about losing my job because my one boss is going to fire me, because I have thousands of bosses at newspapers everywhere. One of the ways to not worry about stress is to eliminate it. I don’t worry about my stock picks because I have a diversified portfolio. Diversification works in almost every area of your life to reduce your stress.”

— Tim Ferriss

296. “As a builder, as an entrepreneur, how can you create something for someone else if you don’t have even enough glancing familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?”

— Tim Ferriss

297. “I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.”

— Tim Ferriss

298. “A Lonely Place Is an Unmotivated Place.”

— Tim Ferriss

299. “It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot. – PAUL THEROUX, To the Ends of the Earth.”

— Tim Ferriss

300. “The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom. With.”

— Tim Ferriss