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

“From this day forward, you won’t walk alone. My heart will be your shelter and my arms will be your home.”
― Jamie McGuire, quote from Eden

“Nobody gets praised for the right reasons.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Castle in the Air

“You can't simply turn off love. It's part of life, and it's everywhere. You have to reach out and try to take it.”
― Lauren Morrill, quote from Meant to Be

“Kids, Roberts,” she said, just to be clear. “I have fertile eggs in me, and I’m talking about having
babies.”
She waited for the eye twitch. Or hell, even a tiny twinge.
Instead, with a smile, he pulled her in for a kiss.”
― Julie James, quote from It Happened One Wedding

“It’s like putting a band-aid on an amputation!”
― Natasha Anders, quote from The Unwanted Wife

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.