TED Quotes

“If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.” — Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” — Ken Robinson

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

“Whatever happens, whether you succeed or you fail, people with high expectations always feel better, because how we feel — when we get dumped or we win employee of the month — depends on how we interpret that event.” — Tali Sharot

Tali Sharot: The optimism bias

“There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.” — Susan Cain

Susan Cain: The power of introverts

“There are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.” — Nigel Marsh

Nigel Marsh: How to make work-life balance work

“Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?” — Joshua Foer

Joshua Foer: Feats of memory anyone can do

“Vulnerability is our most accurate measurement of courage.” — Brené Brown

Brené Brown: Listening to shame

“If we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average.” — Shawn Achor

Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

“The secret to happiness is low expectations.” — Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice

“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” — Brené Brown

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability

“Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.” — Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong: Let's revive the Golden Rule

“Don't assume that what we currently think is out there is the full story. Go after the dark matter, in whatever field you choose to explore.” — Nathan Wolfe

Nathan Wolfe: What's left to explore?

“The circumstances of our lives actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control we feel over our lives.” — Rory Sutherland

Rory Sutherland: Perspective is everything

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

“The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations.” — Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas: Music and emotion through time

“People don’t buy what you do; people buy why you do it.” — Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

“My wife could turn to me and she may say, ‘Why do you love me?’ And I can with all honesty look her in the eye and say, ‘Because our pheromones matched our olfactory receptors.’” — Robin Ince

Robin Ince: Science versus wonder?

“The feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.” — Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?

“[Images of the brain] are very beautiful, but they're also very powerful. They have great explanatory power.” — Carl Schoonover

Carl Schoonover: How to look inside the brain

“Very many people go through their whole lives having no real sense of what their talents may be, or if they have any to speak of.” — Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!