External Rewards Quotes

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

Motivation is an inner force that compels behavior. Your inner drives will propel you further and faster than external perks.

My motivation wasn't really to get a $95 million contract, you know?

If you pay a child a dollar to read a book, as some schools have tried, you not only create an expectation that reading makes you money, you also run the risk of depriving the child for ever of the value of it. Markets are not innocent.

The best work never was and never will be done for money.

I think that players play, and they compete, and it's not about incentives.

From the time I was growing up, if I felt that there was some, like, pot of gold waiting for me, I don't know that I would have been so motivated.

I am not motivated by money.

Monetary rewards are not a substitute for intrinsic motivation.

My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.

The thirst after fame is greater than that after virtue; for who embraces virtue if you take away its rewards?

The moment money becomes your motivation, you are immediately not as good as someone who is stimulated by passion and internal will.

I was not intrigued with the accouterments of success and fame, the furs, jewels, expensive automobiles and mansions... I can assure you that these things were not on my mind when I sat spellbound in that Pozzuoli movie house. It was what these performers on the screen were doing, not what they received for doing it.

Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers - a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars - and on up through the university. On the job people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable.

I feel like I'm the same scientist I was back when I couldn't get a grant. Now I'm that same person thinking that same way getting grants. That system of external rewards in science has always mystified me. It's fickle. And I also don't think it was constructed with people like me in mind.

When you're motivated by external rewards, it's often because you're trying to accomplish goals you didn't create yourself.

I don't work for awards; they're just an icing on the cake.

The prize and punishments are incentives toward unnatural or forced effort, and, therefore we certainly cannot speak of the natural development of the child in connection with them.

I'm not a huge award type person, that's not really what lights my fire.

Every kind of reward constitutes a degradation of energy.

To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one's entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one's life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.

I have had quite a lot of prizes, but I don't think it makes any difference to the ease or difficulty to the writing process.

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.

I don't think about awards when I set out to do something. If that happens, it's great.

Now the greatest external good we should assume to be the thing which we offer as a tribute to the gods, and which is most coveted by men of high station, and is the prize awarded for the noblest deeds; and such a thing is honor, for honor is clearly the greatest of external goods.