Top 60 Scott Adams Quotes

When you hire that first person, then you’re a boss. You’ve got performance reviews. You’ve got complaints about not making enough money. You’ve got people who are just going to sell your story to the tabloids.

Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.

I try to manage my day by my circadian rhythms because the creativity is such an elusive thing, and I could easily just stomp over it doing my administrative stuff.

There’s kind of a toll you have to pay with a cat; if you don’t pet her for 10 minutes she’ll bother you for six hours.

In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn’t have to ride around with jerks.

My old life – no amount of getting used to it would have made it right.

I’ve tried lots of things. The reality is, I’m excited by everything on Day 1. And if by Day X things aren’t working the way I hoped, I lose my passion. I have not seen the correlation between my passion and my success.

If a job’s worth doing, it’s too hard.

I don’t get embarrassed by the same things that other people do. I would say that probably the biggest thing that holds people back is, ‘If I do this, I’m going to look like an idiot if it doesn’t work out.’

Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.

The computer cuts my production time in half. I love it.

I think if you talk to anybody who ever went from not having much to having enough to buy what they wanted, they’re always happier. Now I get that whole ‘$75,000 a year is some kind of magic number,’ but my experience is ‘more is better, up to a point.’ Then there’s a point where it doesn’t make any difference.

In fact, most people are being squeezed in their little cubicle, and their creativity is forced out elsewhere, because the company can’t use it. The company is organized to get rid of variants.

There’s nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.

If your current get-rich project fails, take what you learned and try something else. Keep repeating until something lucky happens. The universe has plenty of luck to go around; you just need to keep your hand raised until it’s your turn. It helps to see failure as a road and not a wall.

Normal people… believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.

I had several different bosses during the early years of ‘Dilbert.’ They were all pretty sure I was mocking someone else.

There are always deadlines I have to meet. I don’t let myself get too close to the deadlines, so it’s not like I’m just sweating bullets or anything if the clock is ticking. I never let myself get in that situation.

When times are bad, the gloves come off and employers are less nice. People become disposable.

Women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently.

My investments have been hurt.

We don’t always have an accurate view of our own potential. I think most people who are frightened of public speaking and can’t imagine they might feel different as a result of training. Don’t assume you know how much potential you have. Sometimes the only way to know what you can do is to test yourself.

I try to avoid giving advice.

Most success springs from an obstacle or failure. I became a cartoonist largely because I failed in my goal of becoming a successful executive.

I’m not happy on vacation. In those rare times when I have three hours with no work I have to do, I’m terribly uncomfortable.

There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.

I’m a poor artist. Through brute force, I brought myself up to mediocre. I’ve never taken a writing class, but I can write okay.

You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public.

Work is like the rest of life. The best parts are free.

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

I think ‘Dilbert’ will remain popular as long as employees are frustrated and they fear the consequences of complaining too loudly. ‘Dilbert’ is the designated voice of discontent for the workplace. I never planned it that way. It just happened.

Let’s form proactive synergy restructuring teams.

One of the reasons why you like to do your own drawings is, your style changes over time. And there’s something about that that keeps it fresh to the viewer.

Rotten bosses don’t get better. Any strategy that assumes they can is doomed.

I burned out my drawing hand by using it too much. The common word for it is writer’s cramp. The fancy words for it are focal dystonia. The symptom in my case was a pinky finger that went spastic when I tried to draw.

I’ve always defined myself not as a cartoonist, but as an entrepreneur. That was true before I tried cartooning. I always imagined cartooning would be how I got my seed capital. I always thought my other businesses would be the less dominant part of my life.

I get mail; therefore I am.

If you drill down on any success story, you always discover that luck was a huge part of it. You can’t control luck, but you can move from a game with bad odds to one with better odds. You can make it easier for luck to find you. The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game.

Be careful that what you write does not offend anybody or cause problems within the company. The safest approach is to remove all useful information.

Home is pretty utopian.

I respectfully decline the invitation to join your hallucination.

The best things in life are silly.

I have an endless stream of suggestions coming in from readers who are in cubicles. That keeps me going.

The longer you work here, diverse it gets.

It doesn’t take many people to have a bad sense of humor to get in trouble at a corporation.

‘Dilbert’ became popular during the downsizing of the ’90s, and job security was a major theme of the strip.

Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.

Many, if not most, career opportunities come to you through people you know. So the more people you know, the more opportunities you have. Improving your social network is a great example of a system for moving from lower odds to better odds without having a specific goal.

Every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.

People vote based on emotion. Period.

Success is entirely accessible, even if you happen to be a huge screw-up 95 percent of the time.

Some of my best friends are Venture Capitalists, but let’s face it, a hamster with Alzheimer’s could make those kind of numbers. It’s great work if you can get it.

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

I’m primarily just an investor.

Nothing inspires forgiveness quite like revenge.

Technology will definitely solve all our problems, but in the process it will create brand new ones. But that’s O.K. because the most you can expect from life is to get to solve better and better problems.

Happiness is nothing but good health and freedom, and money is the single best way you can buy your freedom.

I hated my work. It never seemed to me to be what I should be doing.

We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings.