Incentives Quotes

• An incentive is a bullet, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation

  Steven Levitt

  Keys, Bullets, Tiny

  Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (2006). “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”, p.22, Penguin UK

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• Call it what you will, incentives are what get people to work harder.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Hard Work, People, Work Harder

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• There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something tomorrow.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Hope, Powerful, Get Well Soon

  Orison Swett Marden (2015). “He Can Who Thinks He Can, and Other Papers on Success in Life: From the Renowned Author of Inspirational Works like How to Get what You Want, Prosperity and How to Get It, The Miracles of Right Thought, Self-Investment and Masterful Personality”, p.37, e-artnow

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• Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome

  Charlie Munger

  Outcomes, Show Me, Shows

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• Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable.

  William Pollard

  Creativity, Opportunity, Innovation

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• The basic idea that incentives can be used to motivate behavior is a powerful one. It works for employees, and it has a clear place in parenting, as anyone who has tried to potty-train a recalcitrant toddler with sticker rewards knows.

  Emily Oster

  Powerful, Ideas, Rewards

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• If you look at history, innovation doesn't come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.

  Steven Johnson

  Ideas, Creating, People

  "Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson on Where Ideas Come From". www.wired.com. September 27, 2010.

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• Without change, there is no innovation, creativity or incentive for improvement

  William Pollard

  Creativity, Innovation, Inevitable Change

  "Why It’s Dangerous to Become ‘Too Comfortable’" by Alicia T. Glenn, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 3, 2015.

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• The solution to our problems is not more paternalism, laws, decrees, and controls, but the restoration of liberty and free enterprise, the restoration of incentives, to let loose the tremendous constructive energies of 300 million Americans.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Law, Liberty, Energy

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• If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else.

  John Stossel

  Taken, Littles, Common

  John Stossel (2012). “No, They Can't: Why Government Fails-But Individuals Succeed”, p.55, Simon and Schuster

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• Find people who believe the world will be better when your company succeeds. That's an incentive that money can never buy.

  Leah Busque

  Believe, People, World

  "How to Hire Extraordinary People" by Leah Busque, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 9, 2012.

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• If one felt successful, there'd be so little incentive to be successful.

  Alain de Botton

  Successful, Littles, Felt

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• Incentives are not strategy, they are tactics. Defensive measures.

  Carlos Ghosn

  Tactics, Tactics And Strategy, Strategy

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• Pleasure is the greatest incentive to evil.

  Plato

  Plato, Pleasure Love, Evil

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• Making wise decisions requires more than incentives. It requires wisdom.

  James Taranto

  Wise, Decision, Wise Decision

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• Every company, every boardroom in which I sit, has a plan, and they have objectives, goals, and a process. And to make it work, the pressure and incentive have to come from the top.

  Vernon Jordan

  Goal, Pressure, Process

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• Tell a child, a husband or an employee that he is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, that he has no gift for it, and that he is doing it all wrong and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve. But use the opposite technique, be liberal with encouragement; make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it - and he will practice until the dawn comes in at the window in order to excel.

  Dale Carnegie

  Encouragement, Children, Husband

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• I always felt that I hadn't achieved what I wanted to achieve. I always felt I could get better. That's the whole incentive.

  Virginia Wade

  Achievement, Get Better, Wanted

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• The incentive to ambition is the love of power.

  William Hazlitt

  Ambition

  William Hazlitt (1845). “Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners”

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• I get a bit of a kick out of exporting private enterprise and incentives.

  Fred L. Turner

  Exporting, Enterprise, Kicks

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• Frustrated love has been the incentive for many great works.

  John N. Mitchell

  Love, Frustrated, Great Work

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• Above all, though, children are linked to adults by the simple fact that they are in process of turning into them. For this they may be forgiven much. Children are bound to be inferior to adults, or there is no incentive to grow up.

  Philip Larkin

  Children, Growing Up, Simple

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• First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Order, Should Have

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• When I was a child and teenager I read whenever I had the opportunity, but since then I've found it hard to read as much as I'd like, children, work, and pets all providing powerful incentives to escape into a book and a practical reason why I rarely do so.

  Louise Brown

  Powerful, Children, Teenager

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• We need to fashion policies with proper incentives to reduce the amount of carbon we are putting in the atmosphere.

  William Ruckelshaus

  Fashion, Atmosphere, Needs

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