Quotes from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“you can only know as much depth, happiness, and success in your life as you can know vulnerability.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people do all the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do. Most people don’t want to work more than they have to. They do the minimum they are paid to do. That’s not the way to get ahead. Always do the best you can, not the least you can get away with. When you do your job, even if its just cleaning an office, do it as if somebody you want to impress is watching your every step.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“if you alter your work for every rejection, you’ll end up running in all different directions trying to please an imaginary audience. It can be damaging and destructive.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“Most behavior is habitual. They say the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“you become the company you keep.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“Success unshared is failure. If you’ve “made it” and don’t help others out along the way—if you don’t do something to make the planet a better place—you’re not successful at all; you are a failure. But remember that you can’t help everybody out. You have to focus and contribute in ways that you think are most beneficial.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“The most important thing in terms of your circle of competence is not how large it is but how well you define the perimeter.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“Warren Buffett explains the vast benefits of being a good communicator—and why the people you choose to surround yourself with, even as friends, affect your own behavior and destiny”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“You must do something that you are passionate about—and something that is “within your circle of competence,” as Warren Buffett puts it. The road to get there is almost guaranteed to be arduous, but if you love what you do, you’ll thrive on the inevitable challenges and have the stamina to achieve your potential.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“Treat your employees with respect, and they will remain an asset. Treat them as expendable, and you will have difficulty holding your team together. We”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“A great idea is worthless; execution is everything.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“He didn’t think that trying something entrepreneurial was an objective risk because I’d always be able to rejoin the work force if it didn’t work out. It seemed like a risky thing to do because it looked very likely to fail, but the real risk was not doing it. The objective risk was wasting years of my life stuck in something that appeared attractive but that I really didn’t enjoy. A lot of entrepreneurship and innovation seems perilous, but it’s not. And a lot of things that seem safe and comfortable are, in fact, profoundly risky. That’s subjective versus objective risk.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“Over the years, people have come to me and said, “You can’t do everything.” That is total bullshit. You certainly can do everything. The people who do some things can do more.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“My father was a bookkeeper for a little dairy company. He worked seven days a week until he checked himself into the hospital to die.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“It’s important not to be either too encouraged or too discouraged by what’s happening at any particular moment. No matter what you do, there will be times when things go well and times when things go badly. The only thing for sure, in either scenario, is that things will change. When something good happens, I try to enjoy it. When something bad happens, I try to understand why it happened. But in either case, the next day I’m on to something else.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“I knew I needed a couple of hundred bucks to live off of, so I borrowed $350 from my mom to match Paul’s contribution. John Paul Mitchell Systems was started with only $700. Too proud to tell anyone about my situation, I moved into my car and figured out how to get by on two dollars and fifty cents a day.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“Being an academic is real work. It’s just a different kind of real work.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people do all the things unsuccessful people don’t want to do.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

“If you draw with your right hand and become so skilled that you can even close your eyes and make any kind of drawing, immediately change to the left. Repetition will kill you.”
― Gillian Zoe Segal, quote from Getting There: A Book of Mentors

About the author

Popular quotes

“The islanders, while employed in erecting this tenement, reminded me of a colony of beavers at work. To be sure, they were hardly as silent and demure as those wonderful creatures, nor were they by any means as diligent. To tell the truth they were somewhat inclined to be lazy, but a perfect tumult of hilarity prevailed; and they worked together so unitedly, and seemed actuated by such an instinct of friendliness, that it was truly beautiful to behold. Not”
― Herman Melville, quote from Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life

“Too young. When did I start thinking of a hundred and ten as being young?”
― Teyla Branton, quote from The Change

“-... dime: ¿qué otra cosa podemos hacer?
— Abandonar.
— ¿Y volver a la ciudad? —inquirió Gacel en tono despectivo —. ¿O volver a vagabundear como leprosos? Nadie nos quiere en ninguna parte, pequeña. Nadie quiere saber nada de la familia Sayah, y no podemos obligar a la gente a que nos acepte. Pero sí podemos obligar al desierto a que nos acepte, aunque sea profundizando en él hasta que lleguemos a su mismísimo corazón.
— ¿Pero y si no llegamos nunca?
— Llegaremos — replicó su hermano mayor con absoluta firmeza —. Si las palmeras han conseguido llegar, nosotros también.
—¿Cómo puedes estar tan seguro?
—Porque el día que un imohag no sea capaz de hacer lo que es capaz de hacer una palmera, nuestra raza estará condenada a desaparecer de la faz de la tierra. Y aún no ha llegado ese momento.
— Pero una palmera tiene raíces y nosotros no.
— Las raíces de nuestro pueblo son más profundas y están más firmemente asentadas en esta tierra que las de la más alta de las palmeras — intervino su madre con voz pausada...”
― Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa, quote from Tuareg

“The best armour of old age is a well spent life preceding it.”
― Charles T. Munger, quote from Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

“So he’s gonna want to get out of Dodge as fast as he can.” Sure enough, the caravan was racing down the”
― Stuart Gibbs, quote from Spy Ski School

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.