Quotes from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“The average human being is actually quite bad at predicting what he or she should do in order to be happier, and this inability to predict keeps people from, well, being happier. In fact, psychologist Daniel Gilbert has made a career out of demonstrating that human beings are downright awful at predicting their own likes and dislikes. For example, most research subjects strongly believe that another $30,000 a year in income would make them much happier. And they feel equally strongly that adding a 30-minute walk to their daily routine would be of trivial import. And yet Dr. Gilbert’s research suggests that the added income is far less likely to produce an increase in happiness than the addition of a regular walk.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“It is not enough to do your best; you must know what to do, and THEN do your best. —W. Edwards Deming”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“You are a product of your environment. So choose the environment that will best develop you toward your objective. Analyze your life in terms of its environment. Are the things around you helping you toward success—or are they holding you back? —Clement Stone”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“people who climb to the top of just about any field eclipse their peers through something as basic as deliberate practice.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“Influencers use four tactics to help people love what they hate: 1. Allow for choice. 2. Create direct experiences. 3. Tell meaningful stories. 4. Make it a game.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“At the end of the day, what qualifies people to be called “leaders” is their capacity to influence others to change their behavior in order to achieve important results.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“So, what’s the first step to changing norms? It’s breaking the code of silence around the problem that always sustains the status quo.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“You can talk about results all you want, but they remain nothing more than ideas until you decide exactly how you’re going to measure them.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“Instead, success relies on the capacity to systematically create rapid, profound, and sustainable changes in a handful of key behaviors.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“Instead, they count on three keys to success—keys that all influencers adhere to and that you can use to your own benefit: 1. Focus and measure. Influencers are crystal clear about the result they are trying to achieve and are zealous about measuring it. 2. Find vital behaviors. Influencers focus on high-leverage behaviors that drive results. More specifically, they focus on the two or three vital actions that produce the greatest amount of change. 3. Engage all six sources of influence. Finally, influencers break from the pack by overdetermining change. Where most of us apply a favorite influence tool or two to our important challenges, influencers identify all of the varied forces that are shaping the behavior they want to change and then get them working for rather than against them. And now for the really good news. According to our research, by getting six different sources of influence to work in their favor, influencers increase their odds of success tenfold.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out. —David Sedaris”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“Not everyone forgets to take measures and to do so frequently, but people still fail to create measures that generate the right kind of influence. They do so by measuring the wrong variable.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“look vigilantly for one or two actions that create a cascade of change.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“With simple tasks such as typing, driving, or playing golf and tennis, we reach our highest level of proficiency after about 50 hours of practice; then our performance skills become automated. We’re able to execute them smoothly and with minimal effort, but further development stops. We assume we’ve reached our highest performance level, and we don’t think to learn new and better methods.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“most professionals progress until they reach an “acceptable” level, and then they plateau. Software engineers, for instance, usually stop progressing somewhere around five years after entering the workforce. Beyond this level of mediocrity, further improvements are not correlated to years of work in the field.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“Every time you try to convince others through verbal persuasion, you suffer from your inability to select and share language in a way that reproduces in the mind of the listener exactly the same thoughts you are having. You say your words, but others hear their words, which in turn stimulate their images, their past histories, and their overall meaning—all of which may be very different from what you intended.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“So, start every change project with a clear and compelling statement of the goal you’re trying to achieve. Measure your progress. Don’t leave it to intuition or hunches. Measure your measures by the behavior they influence. And finally, measure the right thing, and measure it frequently.”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“At the end of the day, what qualifies people to be called “leaders” is their capacity to influence others to change their behavior in order to achieve important results. Now,”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

“The lion’s share of the problems that really bother us don’t call for additional technology, theory, philosophy, or data (we’re up to our necks in that); instead, the problems call for the ability to change what people do. And when it comes to this particular skill, demand far exceeds supply. Given”
― Kerry Patterson, quote from Influencer: The Power to Change Anything

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“Jets are nice,” Kat said. “I also like candy. And I need socks.”
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“Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue green shoots and the plant called "audacity", which poets mistake for violets. I began to copy out everything that was said. ... I will do anything to escape boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough.”
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“Well, thank the gods,' he sighed.
'Oh? And what would it be you're thanking them for?' Bahzell inquired, and Brandark grinned.
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― David Weber, quote from Oath of Swords

“I’ve downed two shots and a tumbler of whiskey by the time Racer and Tucker show up. The House of Reardon, our go-to bar, isn’t very far from where we all live, kind of in the middle, but given my race to get some alcohol into my system, I’m a few drinks in already.

“I brought reinforcements,” Racer says as he tosses a box of Swiss Rolls in front of me. I can always count on Racer to bring Little Debbie snacks, our sacred lover. “Your text made it seem like you needed to suckle at Debbie’s teet tonight.”

“I do.” I rip open the box, tear open a wrapper, and pop an entire roll in my mouth in seconds.

“I guess so,” Racer says, a little astonished.

“Tucker close?”

“Right here,” Tucker says, pulling up a chair next to me at the bar. He pats my shoulder and tosses a box of Zebra Cakes in front of me. My boys know me well.

“Zebra Cakes? Dude, I brought Swiss Rolls. Zebra Cakes are piss when it comes to times like this.”

“It’s all I had left. Emma’s been eating all my Nutty Bars.”

“Why even buy Zebra Cakes? You know that frosting turns into a paste.”

From the corner of my eye, I see Tucker run his hand over his face. “Emma got them. When she shops, she literally doesn’t consider which ones she buys; it’s just a sweep of her arm over the shelf. Can’t complain about that.”

“I guess you can’t.”
― Meghan Quinn, quote from The Other Brother

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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.