75 Best Daniel Pink Quotes

Daniel Pink Quotes are picked from his 7 bestseller books. 

These quotes have the power and wisdom to change your life upside down by altering your mental landscape and bestowing you food for thought.

His books are must-reads! 

He has also given us a “Motivation Theory.” 

• Tap the link to read his mindblowing theory- Daniel Pink Motivational Theory| Best Intrinsic Motivation

Daniel H. Pink is an American author of a total of seven wisdom-packed books.

Owing to his extraordinary skills, Pink was also a chief speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1997.

Five of his books have also been New York Times bestsellers.

Daniel Pink Quotes

Daniel Pink Quotes

1- “Autonomy is different from independence. It means acting with choice.” 

2- “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.”

3- “Clarity on how to think without clarity on how to act can leave people unmoved.”

4- “If you need me to motivate you, I probably don’t want to hire you.” 

5- “Greatness and nearsightedness are incompatible. Meaningful achievement depends on lifting one’s sights and pushing toward the horizon.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

6- “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.”

7- “The best use of money as a motivator is to pay people enough to take the issue of money off the table.”

8- “We should focus our efforts on creating environments for our innate psychological needs to flourish.” 

9- “Human beings have an innate inner drive to be autonomous, self-determined, and connected to one another.”

10- “Questions are often more effective than statements in moving others.” 

Daniel Pink Quotes

11- “Regret is not dangerous or abnormal, a deviation from the steady path to happiness. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human.

12- “Change is inevitable, and when it happens, the wisest response is not to wail or whine but to suck it up and deal with it.” 

13- “Regret makes us human. Regret makes us better.”

14- “Foundation regrets arise from our failures of foresight and conscientiousness.”

15- “When the reward is the activity itself — deepening learning, delighting customers, doing one’s best — there are no shortcuts.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

16- “Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity; controlling extrinsic motivation is detrimental to creativity.”

17- “Too much negative emotion, of course, is debilitating. But too little is also destructive.”

18- “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.”

19- “Artists should agitate and democratize their own work, but they should also work to democratize the arts themselves.”

20- “People at work are thirsting for context, yearning to know that what they do contributes to a larger whole.” 

Daniel Pink Quotes

21- “There’s no going back. Pay your son to take out the trash — and you’ve pretty much guaranteed the kid will never do it again for free.”

22- “This is what it means to serve: improving another’s life and, in turn, improving the world.”

23- “Empathy is an essential part of living a life of meaning.”

24- “Regret is better understood less as a thing and more as a process.”

25- “The left-brainer and the economist in me says watch what people do, not what they say.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

26- “We leave lucrative jobs to take low-paying ones that provide a clearer sense of purpose.”

27- “Human beings have an inherent tendency to seek out novelty and challenges, to extend an exercise their capacities, to explore, and to learn.”

28- “By making us feel worse today, regret helps us do better tomorrow.”

29- “The course of human history has always moved in the direction of greater freedom.”

30- “The lesson of closed doors is to do better next time. The lesson of open doors is to do something now.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

31- “We have three innate psychological needs—competence, autonomy, and relatedness. When those needs are satisfied, we’re motivated, productive, and happy.”

32- “Anytime you’re tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you’re doing and upserve instead.”

33- “When we handle it properly, regret can make us better. Understanding its effects hones our decisions, boosts our performance, and bestows a deeper sense of meaning.”

34- “Design. Story. Symphony. Empathy. Play. Meaning. These six senses increasingly will guide our lives and shape our world.”

35- “Politicians are, in general, receptive to those who make the most noise.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

36- “What entrepreneurs and artists have in common is that they give the world something it didn’t know it was missing.”

37- “Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate and to connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.”

38- “For creative tasks, the best approach is often just to hire great people and get out of their way.”

39- “One source of frustration in the workplace is the frequent mismatch between what people must do and what

people can do.”

40- “The truth is, if we have our own reasons for doing something – reasons that we endorse – we’re more likely to do it; we’re more likely to stick with it.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

• Richard Feynman IQ & 10 Lessons From Richard Feynman’s Life

41- “A life of obligation and no opportunity is crimped. A life of opportunity and no obligation is hollow. A life that fuses opportunity and obligation is true.”

42- “When feeling is for thinking, and thinking is for doing, regret is for making us better.”

43- “A solid foundation. A little boldness. Basic morality. Meaningful connections. The negative emotion of regret reveals the positive path for living.”

44- “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.”

45- “Regret makes me human. Regret makes me better. Regret gives me hope.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

46- “The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes.”

47- “We regret foregone opportunities more often than unfulfilled obligations.”

48- “People can have two different mindsets, she says. Those with a “fixed mindset” believe that their talents and abilities are carved in stone. Those with a “growth mindset” believe that their talents and abilities can be developed. Fixed mindsets see every encounter as a test of their worthiness. Growth mindsets see the same encounters as opportunities to improve.”

49- “Giving people some kind of control over what they do is important. Human beings don’t do their best work under conditions of control.”

50- “Our cognitive apparatus is designed, at least in part, to sustain us in the long term rather than balm us in the near term. We need the ability to regret our poor decisions—to feel bad about them—precisely so we can improve those decisions in the future.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

51- “Asking “Why?” can lead to understanding. Asking “Why not?” can lead to breakthroughs.”

52- “Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place.”

53- “I happen to be extremely left-brained; my instinct is to draw a chart rather than a picture.”

54- “For people who don’t know where their next meal is coming, notions of finding inner motivation are comical.”

55- “You know, I’m not a huge fan of the concept of ‘passion’ when it comes to careers. Instead of trying to answer the daunting question of ‘What’s your passion?’, it’s better simply to watch what you do when you’ve got time of your own and nobody’s looking.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

56- “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.” 

57- “What’s important now are the characteristics of the brain’s right hemisphere: artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big-picture thinking. These skills have become first among equals in a whole range of business fields.”

58- “Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.”

59- “Sellers could hoodwink buyers, especially if buyers did not have a lot of choices or a way to talk back.”

60- “Human beings are natural mimickers. The more you’re conscious of the other side’s posture, mannerisms, and word choices – and the more you subtly reflect those back – the more accurate you’ll be at taking their perspective.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

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

62- “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.”

63- “Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together. I experienced this myself by trying to learn to draw.”

64- “Harness the power of peers.”

65- “We have this myth that extroverts are better salespeople. As a result, extroverts are more likely to enter sales; extroverts are more likely to get promoted in sales jobs. But if you look at the correlation between extroversion and actual sales performance – that is, how many times the cash register actually rings – the correlation’s almost zero.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

66- “One aspect of play is the importance of laughter, which has physiological and psychological benefits. Did you know that there are thousands of laughter clubs around the world? People get together and laugh for no reason at all!”

67- “For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation-the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing-is essential for high levels of creativity.”

68- “The right brain is finally being taken seriously.”

69- “The billable hours are a classic case of restricted autonomy.”

70- “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.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

71- “Psychological detachment from work, in addition to physical detachment, is crucial.”

72- “Do what you can’t and experience the beauty of the mistakes you make.”

73- “Were born to be players, not pawns.”

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

75- “For many of us, the opposite of talking isn’t listening. It’s waiting. When others speak, we typically divide our attention between what they’re saying now and what we’re going to say next – and end up doing a mediocre job at both.”

Daniel Pink Quotes

Conclusion

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We have listed a total of 75 Best Daniel Pink Quotes for you.

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