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

“This is the gay agenda: equality. Not special rights, but the rights that are already written by [our Founding Fathers].” — LZ Granderson

LZ Granderson: The myth of the gay agenda

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

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

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

Susan Cain: The power of introverts

“Because of writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye … I realized that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate, whose kinky hair could not form ponytails, could also exist in literature.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

“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

“Most people assume that meditation is all about stopping thoughts, getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind. But actually it's … about stepping back, seeing the thought clearly, witnessing it coming and going.” — Andy Puddicombe

Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

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

Brené Brown: Listening to shame

“Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.” — Amy Cuddy

Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are

“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

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

Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

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

Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

“The kindness of strangers and the support of the international community are truly the rays of hope we North Korean people need.” — Hyeonseo Lee

Hyeonseo Lee: My escape from North Korea

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

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action

“I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is.” — Jill Bolte Taylor

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight

“The first follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself. … The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.” — Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers: How to start a movement

“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?

“People are mostly focused on defending the computers on the Internet, and there's been surprisingly little attention to defending the Internet itself as a communications medium. [We] need to pay some more attention to that, because it's actually kind of fragile.” — Danny Hillis

Danny Hillis: The Internet could crash. We need a Plan B