Quotes from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don't know.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“The Cul-de-Sac ( French for "dead end" ) ... is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can't see it”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“No one knows more about the way you think than you do.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“The time to look for a new job is when you don't need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“The Dip creates scarcity; scarcity creates value”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“The market ... demands a signal from you that you're serious, powerful, accepted, and safe.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Here’s a quote from ultramarathoner Dick Collins: Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop and drop out. You don’t want to be out there saying, “Well gee, my leg hurts, I’m a little dehydrated, I’m sleepy, I’m tired, and it’s cold and windy.” And talk yourself into quitting. If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Selling is about a transference of emotion, not a presentation of facts.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“There’s not a lot to say about the Cul-de-Sac except to realize that it exists and to embrace the fact that when you find one, you need to get off it, fast. That’s because a dead end is keeping you from doing something else. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“الموهوبون فقط هم الذين يقلقون من الأداء المتواضع”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Here’s an assignment for you: Write it down. Write down under what circumstances you’re willing to quit. And when. And then stick with it.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“It’s Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“You and your organization have the power to change everything. To create remarkable products and services. To over deliver. To be the best in the world. How dare you squander that resource by spreading it too thin. How dare you settle for mediocre just because you’re busy coping with too many things on your agenda, racing against the clock to get it all done.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that makes it to the top.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

“If you took organic chemistry in college, you’ve experienced the Dip. Academia doesn’t want too many unmotivated people to attempt medical school, so they set up a screen. Organic chemistry is the killer class, the screen that separates the doctors from the psychologists. If you can’t handle organic chemistry, well, then, you can’t go to med school.”
― Seth Godin, quote from The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)

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Popular quotes

“There were lives in those books, and deaths. Families and friends and lovers and enemies. Joy and despair, jealousy, envy, madness, and rage. All there. I reached out and touched the cover of one called The Earth. I could almost hear the characters inside, murmuring and jostling, impatient for me to open the cover and let them out.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from A Gathering Light

“So let the reader who expects this book to be a political exposé slam its covers shut right now.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: Know thyself!

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1

“Sam found a chair under Robin’s butt and evicted him from it, bringing it over to his pregnant wife.“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Robin apologized.
“Thanks,” Alyssa said to Robin as she sat down, even as she gave Sam a darkly amused look.
“What?” he said. “I was just helping him think.”
― Suzanne Brockmann, quote from All Through the Night

“There is not a living man who does not wish to play the despot when he is stiff: it seems to him his joy is less when others appear to have as much fun as he; by an impulse of pride, very natural at this juncture, he would like to be the only one in the world capable of experiencing what he feels: the idea of seeing another enjoy as he enjoys reduces him to a kind of equality with that other, which impairs the unspeakable charm despotism causes him to feel.”
― Marquis de Sade, quote from Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings

“Music is art, and art is an integral part of the human experience.”
― Anne Frasier, quote from Hush

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