Jimmy Wales Quotes

We are human beings. We operate from wanting to be rewarded.

Behavior change is critical. While we’re working upstream, developing solutions, we’ve got to be thinking of delivery: How should we develop and deliver those solutions so that they will be adopted.

You've got to change incentives for good behavior as opposed to just disincentivizing bad behavior.

What motivates most people to change their behavior is consequences. No consequences? No behavior modification.

Life needs penalties and rewards for people. You can't control people with only penalties. You have to think how to create rewards.

People will do odd things if you give them money.

The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people.

In most cases, no matter what it is, if you measure it and reward it, people will try to excel at it

Monetary rewards are not a substitute for intrinsic motivation.

I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

Too little attention is paid to the dark side of incentives. They are anything but a magic bullet. Psychologists have known this for years, but it seems largely hidden from the world of commerce.

Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.

I don't know what's better gettin' laid or gettin' paid.

Too many people hold a very narrow view of what motivates us. They believe that the only way to get us moving is with the jab of a stick or the promise of a carrot. But if you look at over 50 years of research on motivation, or simply scrutinize your own behavior, it's pretty clear human beings are more complicated than that.

Like everyone else, rich people respond to incentives.

As every successful parent learns, one way to encourage good behavior, from room-cleaning to tooth-brushing, is to make it fun. Not surprisingly, the same principle applies to adults. Adults like to have fun, too.

Experts are human, and humans respond to incentives. How any given expert treats you, therefore, will depend on how that expert's incentives are set up.

When rewards go up, people are more inclined to take risks.

In total, by giving people $30 bonus, Intel lost almost 5 percent of productivity. That's a lot. Now, think about it. You give money because you think this would increase motivation. It actually decreases motivation.

Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.

The key to motivation is motive.

A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn't depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.

There are two areas where you can't stop people misbehaving: eating and sex

It's a funny thing... but people mostly have it backward. They think they live by what they want. But really, what guides them is what they're afraid of. What they don't want.

Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.