Daniel H. Pink Quotes

The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind - creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers.

The three things that motivate creative people - autonomy, mastery, purpose!

Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.

Asking "Why?" can lead to understanding. Asking "Why not?" can lead to breakthroughs.

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.

All of us want to be part of something bigger than ourselves, something that matters.

The misuse of extrinsic rewards, so common in business, impedes creativity, stifles personal satisfaction and turns play into work.

Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one's sights and pushing toward the horizon.

Do what you can't and experience the beauty of the mistakes you make.

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.

The ultimate freedom for creative groups is the freedom to experiment with new ideas.

One of the best predictors of ultimate success in either sales or non - sales selling isn't natural talent or even industry expertise, but how you explain your failures and rejections.

Abstract thinking leads to greater creativity... But in our businesses and our lives, we often do the opposite. We intensify our focus rather than widen our view.

If you understand the independent worker, the self-employed professional, the freelancer, the e-lancer, the temp, you understand how work and business in the U.S. operate today.

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

Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.

It seems the best approach for any venture is a combo platter - Japan's quality-consciousness paired with America's willingness to experiment and (sometimes) fail.

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

It's a question we all ask ourselves. What have we done lately? It rattles us each birthday.

Experimentalists never know when their work is finished.

It's nothing short of a whole new brain... animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life.

Today it’s economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging.

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.

Carry a notebook and write down examples of good and poor design. After a week, you'll begin to realize that nearly everything is the product of a design decision.

The right brain is finally being taken seriously.

The ultimate pitch for an era of short attention spans begins with a single word - and doesn't go any further.

To sell well is to convince someone else to part with resources—not to deprive that person, but to leave him better off in the end.

I tend to pull nuggets out of many books - rather than having a handful of books that serve as guiding lights.

Were born to be players, not pawns.

The monkeys solved the puzzle simply because they found it gratifying to solve puzzles. They enjoyed it. The joy of the task was its own reward.

Anytime you're tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you're doing and upserve instead.

Harness the power of peers.

Especially for fostering creative, conceptual work, the best way to use money as a motivator is to take the issue of money off the table so people concentrate on the work.

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

Tens of millions of people have iPods, whereas eight years ago, they didn't know they were missing them.

Create some psychological space between you and your project by imagining you're doing it for someone else or contemplating what advice you'd give to another person in your predicament.

"Mad" magazine is like one of my few formative experiences, absolutely. "Mad" magazine teaches a whole generation of people to be irreverent toward power.

Whenever I meet someone new, I always ask the same question... 'So, what do you do?

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.

In economic terms, we've always thought of work as a disutility - as something you do to get something else. Now it's increasingly a utility - something that's valuable and worthy in its own right.

Wikipedia represents a belief in the supremacy of reason and goodness of others.

I think people get satisfaction from living for a cause that's greater than themselves. They want to leave an imprint. By writing books, I'm trying to do that in a modest way.

A few of us are extraverts. A few of us are introverts. But most of us are ambiverts, sitting near the middle, not the edges, happily attuned to those around us. In some sense, we are born to sell.

Never argue. To win an argument is to lose a sale.

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, a book that offers an entertaining and engaging overview of behavioral economics.

Autonomy isn't the opposite of accountability - it's the pathway to it.