Quotes by Scott Adams

By the early-afternoon hours, if your brain is normal, its running strictly on inertia and reflex. All you can do during those hours are the things that are exactly like other things youve done in similar situations. Creativity is out of the question. You might argue that you dont notice any difference in your thinking during the afternoon. Thats because youre too dazed to notice anything during those hours. Im sure its true for me; I believe you could set my eyebrows on fire during the afternoon and I wouldnt notice until sometime the next morning.

Idiocy in the modern age isnt an all-encompassing, twenty-four-hour situation for most people. Its a condition that everybody slips into many times a day. Life is just too complicated to be smart all the time.

Lately...the Peter Principle has given way to the Dilbert Principle. The basic concept of the Dilbert Principle is that the most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.

Theory of Evolution (Summary)First, there were some amoebas. Deviant amoebas adapted better to the environment, thus becoming monkeys. Then came Total Quality Management.

A goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or dont sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, its a system. If youre waiting to achieve it someday in the future, its a goal. If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or set new goals and reenter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure. All Im suggesting is that thinking of goals and systems as very different concepts has power. Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous presuccess failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do. The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good everytime they apply their system. Thats a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.

Things that will someday work out well start out well. Things that will never work start out bad and stay that way.

What you rarely see is a stillborn failure that transmogrifies into a stellar success. Small successes can grow into big ones, but failures rarely grow into successes.I can’t think of an example in my life. It’s generally true that if no one is excited about your art/product/idea in the beginning, they never will be. If the first commercial version of your work excites no one to action, it’s time to move on to something different. Don’t be fooled by the opinions of friends and family. They’re all liars.

If I liked food and disliked exercise as much as a 400 pound guy, Id be a 400 pound guy.

Capitalism is rotten at every level, and yet it adds up to something extraordinarily useful for society over time. The paradox of capitalism is that adding a bunch of bad-sounding ideas together creates something incredible that is far more good than bad. Capitalism inspires people to work hard, to take reasonable risks, and to create value for customers. On the whole, capitalism channels selfishness in a direction that benefits civilization, not counting a few fat cats who have figured out how to game the system. You have the same paradox with personal energy. If you look at any individual action that boosts your personal energy, it might look like selfishness. Why are you going skiing when you should be working at the homeless shelter, you selfish bastard! My proposition is that organizing your life to optimize your personal energy will add up to something incredible that is more good than bad.

You can change only what people know, not what they do.

Losers have goals. Winners have systems.

You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public

You dont have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things theyve taught me.

Im more of a sprinter than a marathoner when it comes to many aspects of life. For example, when Im running. Over short distances--up to two yards--I can run faster than cheap panty hose on an itchy porcupine. But over long distances, Im not so impressive.I try to compensate for my lack of long-distance endurance by having good form. Im told that my running style is quite majestic. Thats probably because I learned to run by watching nature films in which leopards chased frightened zebras. Now when I run, I open my eyes real wide and let my tongue slap the side of my face. If you saw it, youd be saying, Thats very majestic. And then youd run like a frightened zebra. Thats why my homeowners association voted to ask me to do my jogging with a pillowcase over my head.

Realistically, most people have poor filters for sorting truth from fiction, and there’s no objective way to know if you’re particularly good at it or not. Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That’s exactly how you look to them.

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.

Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart.

Beware of advice about successful people and their methods. For starters, no two situations are alike. Your dreams of creating a dry-cleaning empire wont be helped by knowing that Thomas Edison liked to take naps.

It doesnt take many people to have a bad sense of humor to get in trouble at a corporation.

If your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you may wake up each day with failure in mind because the goal is hard to reach, and you are progressing only by small amounts. It takes up all your willpower. I recommend that instead of a goal, you have a system.