Category Archives: Quotes
Tim Ferriss Quotes – The Best Of Tim Ferriss
Here on Escape Nine to Five we’re all about getting out of the rat race, being the boss of our own time, traveling and being the masters of our own destiny. If you’re interested in all or some of those things you probably know who Tim Ferriss is and what he has done for the world of the solopreneur and “New Rich” (a term that Tim himself coined). Many of his quotes have been greatly inspirational to me and I hope that by sharing some of my favorites I’ll do my bit to help out your endeavors.
Here are the best of Tim Ferriss Quotes from his books, interviews and speeches.
From the Four Hour Work Week:
“It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them… People are smarter than you think. Give them a chance to prove themselves.”
“The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is… boredom. Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase.”
“True freedom is much more than having enough income and time to do what you want. It is quite possible – actually the rule rather than the exception – to have financial and time freedom but still be caught in the throes of the rat race. One cannot be free from the stresses of a speed-and size-obsessed culture until you are free from the materialistic addictions, time-famine mind-set, and comparative impulses that created it in the first place.”
“For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. “Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it “eventually,” just do it and correct course along the way.”
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
“I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.”
“Pacifists become militants.
Freedom fighters become tyrants.
Blessings become curses.
Help becomes hindrance.
More becomes less.”
“By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: ‘John, I’d love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I’ve got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said ‘no’ yesterday. Gotta run!”
Other Quotes:
“The commonsense rules of the “real world” are a fragile collection of socially reinforced illusions.”
“I have quit 3 jobs and been fired from all the rest. Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.”
For the full low down on Tim’s amazing entrepreneurial career and outlook on life, check out his books on Amazon:
Learn From Your Mistakes
One of the most important lessons you can learn in life, be it career, relationships, working for yourself, money…you can apply it to anything. Of course, nobody wants to make mistakes really, it can be humiliating, damaging, even heartbreaking, but that doesn’t make it unnecessary. Everybody makes them, errors of judgement, accidents, things that you didn’t mean, but you can’t predict the future and you can’t turn back the clock. Whatever your spiritual beliefs, I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that mistakes exist not to humiliate us or damage our egos, but to teach us lessons. You could even argue that it is important to make mistakes, you could definitely argue that it is important to learn from your mistakes.
How many entrepreneurs do you know of that have made it first time, with no big errors along the way. I’ll tell you how many have achieved this, zero, or at least very close to zero, put it this way, those that have a smooth ride are the exceptional cases, not those that experience a lot of turbulence. Walt Disney went bankrupt, Peter Jones went bankrupt, George Foreman, Milton Hershey, Perez Hilton… I could go on. Bankruptcy is an extreme case, I’ll admit, but it demonstrates an important point, that when the chips are down, you can’t give up, you will be knocked back, but you need to come back stronger.
I’m sure psychologists would explain a correlation here. After you saw jaws, how long did it take you to get back in the water? It is a natural reaction that once you’ve been burned, you dont want to play with fire again, but sometimes in life you need to take the big risks. (I’m not endorsing playing with real fire by the way, it is just a metaphor, no law-suits please). Life has a funny way of rewarding those who manage to continue through adversity. Again, I’m getting a bit too spiritual with this, but perhaps there are forces beyond our control playing a part.
Whatever you believe, its common knowledge that mistakes are the best way to learn. Spending your life in fear will get you nowhere unfortunately. How many times did you have to fall of your bike as a kid to work out how to ride smoothly? How many near misses did you have with the pavement, too? All mistakes, but they get you to where you need to be in the end. Try be sensible, of course, I’m not for a second suggesting you put your life savings in stocks you know nothing about with the aim of learning from it if it screws up, but the point is, you cant let the occasional grazed knee put you off trying to gain a skill or get to where you want to be.
Anyway, you don’t have to just take my word for it, I’ve collated some quotes from people from all walks of life here, who have at some point uttered famous words regarding mistakes. Enjoy. Stay inspired.
“The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake – you can’t learn anything from being perfect” – Adam Osborne
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm” – Winston Churchill
“Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom” – General George Patton
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde
“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.” – Vincent Van Gogh
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” – James Joyce