Quotes from Daniel H. Pink

If you create something, whether it's a painting or a company, I think if you care about it, you have some obligation to go out and tell people about it.

If I really believe that visual representation and narrative are ways to convey important, complex ideas, and if the world is gravitating toward this form, then geez, I better do it myself. I want to do it myself.

I'm not a huge fan of the concept of 'passion' when it comes to careers. Instead of trying to answer the daunting question of, 'What's your passion?' it's better simply to watch what you do when you've got time of your own and nobody's looking.

A lot of times when you have very short-term goals with a high payoff, nasty things can happen. In particular, a lot of people will take the low road there. They'll become myopic. They'll crowd out the longer-term interests of the organization or even of themselves.

Succeeding makes us feel good. But beating someone else makes us feel really good. Comparing ourselves to others and coming out on top creates a sense of entitlement. And when we feel entitled, we cheat more because, of course, the rules don't apply to awesome people like us.

There's an idea out there that salespeople have actually been obliterated by the Internet, which is just not supported by the facts.

Money can extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, encourage unethical behavior, foster short-term thinking, and become addictive.

Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another. And when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives.

Were born to be players, not pawns.

What do artists do? Artists give people something they didn't know they were missing: a dance, a piece of music, a painting, a piece of sculpture. Catering to that need is the best business strategy.

The point of college is more to acquire skills than to acquire domain knowledge. One of the skills that is going to be most necessary: you have to be able to read with rigor and write with clarity. You have to be able to communicate. To make an argument, whether it's in a written piece or in front of a group of people.

Giving people some kind of control over what they do is important. Human beings don't do their best work under conditions of control.

Harness the power of peers.

I happen to be extremely left-brained; my instinct is to draw a chart rather than a picture. I'm trying to get my right-brain muscles into shape. I actually think this shift toward right-brain abilities has the potential to make us both better off and better in a deeper sense.

Clinton was super attuned to other people to the point where he talks about feeling other people's pain. Clinton is probably the most buoyant, resilient person in American political history.

In the past thirty years we have learned more about the workings of the human brain than in all of previous history.

In many professions, what used to matter most were abilities associated with the left side of the brain: linear, sequential, spreadsheet kind of faculties. Those still matter, but they're not enough.

When the reward is the activity itself--deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one's best--there are no shortcuts.

I don't think it's a Western thing to really talk about intrinsic motivation and the drive for autonomy, mastery and purpose. You have to not be struggling for survival. For people who don't know where their next meal is coming, notions of finding inner motivation are comical.

For creative tasks, the best approach is often just to hire great people and get out of their way.

People don't know how to listen, and it's not their fault. In school, we learn how to read, we learn how to write - but nobody teaches you how to listen.

When we make progress and get better at something, it is inherently motivating. In order for people to make progress, they have to get feedback and information on how they're doing.

There is a huge body of evidence showing that people do better in their work when they know why they're doing it in the first place. They do better when they see what they're doing contributes to something in the world.

A lot of white-collar work requires less of the routine, rule-based, what we might call algorithmic set of capabilities, and more of the harder-to-outsource, harder-to-automate, non-routine, creative, juristic - as the scholars call it - abilities.