Seth Godin Quotes

If you took organic chemistry in college, you’ve experienced the Dip. Academia doesn’t want too many unmotivated people to attempt medical school, so they set up a screen. Organic chemistry is the killer class, the screen that separates the doctors from the psychologists. If you can’t handle organic chemistry, well, then, you can’t go to med school.

Marketing is the name we use to describe the promise a company makes, the story it tells, the authentic way it delivers on that promise.

The best way to be missed when you're gone,
Is to stand for something when you're here

Art has no right answer. The best we can hope for is an interesting answer.

In the case of personality, most psychologists agree that there are five traits that are essential in how people look at us: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability.

We hire for perfect, we manage for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward for perfect. So why are we surprised that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect? The problem is simple: Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.

Frequency led to awareness, awareness to familiarity, and familiarity to trust. And trust, almost without exception, leads to profit.

Perfect is an illusion, one that was created to maintain the status quo. The Six Sigma charade is largely about hiding from change, because change is never perfect. Change means reinvention, and until something is reinvented, we have no idea what the spec is.

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do. The reasons are pretty obvious: If it’s someone else’s map, it’s not your fault if it doesn’t work out. If you’ve memorized the sales script I gave you and you don’t make the sale, who’s in trouble now? Not only does the map insulate us from responsibility, but it’s also a social talisman. We can tell our friends and family that we’ve found a good map, a safe map, a map worthy of respect.

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt

Art, at least art as I define it, is the intentional act of using your humanity to create a change in another person.

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.

The only choice we have is to begin. And the only place to begin is where we are. Simply begin. But begin.

Don’t worry about your stuff. Worry about making meaning instead.