Quotes from James Altucher

Learning never stops. Many people die at 25 but are not put in the coffin until 75. The learning stopped for them early.

Filtering the people we allow into our lives is probably the most important factor in determining whether we will live a happy life or not.

As Mac Lethal said to me, "Nobody remembers your bad stuff, just keep working at it and you'll put out good stuff and that's what they will see and remember.

Doing my best in any situation is all I can do. If I worry about it while I'm doing it, I won't do my best.

Chocolate releases phenylephylamine, the same hormone that is released when you fall in love.

The value of your network goes up exponentially when you view your contacts and resources not as a list but as a network of nodes on a graph. Think of the number of connections that can connect two different nodes on that graph. It's exponential compared to the number of items in a list that connect directly to you. The way you create the network effect is by encouraging people in your network to connect to each other and to help each other.

The universe has limitless resources. You have limited resources and limited time. The only way to create abundance is to behave more like the universe.

The only way to create value for yourself is to create value for others.

With each obstacle, turn it into a moment where you can reflect on the bounty that is in your life.

I get nonstop hate mail. I got one today saying I was "too Jewish," whatever that means. And over the weekend I got one from a Jewish guy saying I was a disgrace to Jews. So I don't win either way.

Your retirement plan is for shit.

Be an entrepreneur at work. An "entre-ployee." Take control of who you report to, what you do, what you create. Or start a business on the side. Deliver some value—any value—to somebody, anybody, and watch that value compound into a career.

You can either take the blue pill (become depressed about an artificial reality that is never going to return) or take the red pill (fully enter the Choose Yourself era and take advantage of its opportunities).

I'm forty-five and I still have no idea what I want to be when I "grow up." But I'm starting to finally accept the fact that all I want to be is ME.

My only hope for my future is I learn to dot the landscape of my life once more with question marks instead of periods. To turn judgments into queries. To turn "this" into "that?" To make every problem a maze. To be like a six-year-old.

People are walking around blind. If you are the one who can see, you will be able to navigate through this new world.

I'm trying to have fewer things in my life right now. This doesn't always mean fewer trinkets that shine on a shelf. It also might mean fewer things that upset me. Fewer people who bother me. Fewer regrets about things that are long dead and buried. Fewer anxieties about a future that may or may not exist.

You don't have to come up with the new, new thing. Just do the old, old thing slightly better than everyone else.

I hate to sound like a weirdo Buddhist, but the only things that really matter in this world are the relationships you have with the people you love, and the meaningful things that you do. Haters don't fit anywhere into that. Don't devote any mental space to them.

Everything you learn in school can be outsourced to someone who learned it more cheaply or learned it more recently.

And ultimately, a happy you will be the greatest contribution you can make toward a happy society.

count all the things you are grateful for. Even the negative parts of your life. Figure out why you should be grateful for them. Try to get up to one hundred.

IMPROVE. You wanted that ONE job, that ONE scholarship, that TV show, that book, to sell your company, to sell your product, whatever. And they said, no. Take a hard look at the product. Can you improve your offering? Can you take a step back and improve what you are doing? Maybe you can and maybe you can't. But brainstorm first. What are the ten things you can do to improve what you are doing?

Persistence in developing that creativity will make you better at execution, better at idea generation, and more optimistic (simply because over time you will be more confident that you can always awaken it). Creativity becomes your loving friend instead of your enemy. And optimism, creativity, and persistence are all close siblings that want to play together as much as possible.