Quotes from James Altucher

Raymond Chandler's first novel came out at 51.

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

If you want someone to spend one hour of their life helping you, then you need to spend 10 hours of your life, at least, helping them IN ADVANCE and with NO PRESSURE.

When you have ideas, you'll quickly get freedom. When you get freedom, you'll have the energy to build more ideas, to generate more abundance, to live the life you want to live.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. When everyone spills their guts, they lose their sight. The one who holds on to this very precious resource becomes the one-eyed man, the king.

One hundred percent of the time there is a good reason and a real reason for everything.

When you are at the crossroads, and your heart loves one path and doesn't love the other, forget about which path has the money and the work, and take the path you love.

Picasso also says, "I am always doing things I can't do—that's how I get to do them.

So the first thing is to spend less energy digesting food. Skip dinner (so your body is not trying to digest when you sleep), go to sleep early, don't expose yourself to news, avoid pop culture, don't drink alcohol, try to only be around the people you love, and have a sense of surrender and gratitude.

Robots are the new middle class.

You decide whom you say NO to. You are entitled to choose your tribe, regardless of what society imposes on you. You decide who in your life drains you of energy, and then purge them so you can soar. This does not mean you become a hermit; it means you choose your family, your friends, your colleagues, your tribe, your life.

Go to the bookstore. Find a topic you would be willing to read five hundred books on.

Technology, outsourcing, a growing temp staffing industry, productivity efficiencies, have all replaced the middle class.

I've had lots of ups and downs. I've had situations where I've gone against the rules, and I've lost everything.

When I give away a book for free, it gets my name out there. That has lifelong value for me that goes way beyond the few dollars I could maybe charge.

You can't make money without selling something real. You can't make something real without first imagination manifesting itself in your head. You can't have imagination without surrendering yourself to an idea that you want to create something of value to other human beings.

Products are valued higher than services.

The first rule of personal finance is that it's not personal and it's not financial. It's about your ability to make ten changes and not get too depressed over it.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an employee, a student, a homemaker, a writer, it's time to start forgetting about all the ways the world has promised you safety and comfort.

The best way I have ever found to fill that hole is not to seek external motivations to fill the emptiness, but to ignite the internal fire that will never go out. To light up my own inner sky.

Every successful business, even Google, Facebook, Twitter, started with a combination of manual improvements and friends of the founders using the site.

You can say no to people who make you feel bad about yourself. To people who backstab you or make you feel anxious in any way.

You're the average of the five people you spend your time with.

Every time you say yes to something you don't want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, "I did it again.