Top 28 Quotes by Daniel H. Pink

A lot of white-collar work requires less of the routine, rule-based, what we might call algorithmic set of capabilities, and more of the harder-to-outsource, harder-to-automate, non-routine, creative, juristic - as the scholars call it - abilities.

The billable hours is a classic case of restricted autonomy. I mean, you're working on - I mean, sometimes on these six-minute increments. So you're not focused on doing a good job. You're focused on hitting your numbers. It's one reason why lawyers typically are so unhappy. And I want a world of happy lawyers.

My generation's parents told their children, 'Become an accountant, a lawyer, or an engineer; that will give you a solid foothold in the middle class.' But these jobs are now being sent overseas. So in order to make it today, you have to do work that's hard to outsource, hard to automate.

Large companies are not going to disappear. Multinational companies with tens of thousands of employees are not going to disappear. In fact, many of them are getting larger because they can benefit from economies of scale.

You know, I'm not a huge fan of the concept of 'passion' when it comes to careers. Instead of trying to answer the daunting question of 'What's your passion?' it's better simply to watch what you do when you've got time of your own and nobody's looking.

What's important now are the characteristics of the brain's right hemisphere: artistry, empathy, inventiveness, big-picture thinking. These skills have become first among equals in a whole range of business fields.

Now it's easy for someone to set up a storefront and reach the entire world in very modest ways. So these technologies that we thought would dis-intermediate traditional sellers gave more people the tools to be sellers. It also changed the balance of power between sellers and buyers.

The ability to take another perspective has become one of the keys to both sales and non-sales selling. And the social science research on perspective-taking yields some important lessons for all of us.