Reward System Quotes

Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome

People say, "I wish I had more motivation today, because then I would try something." But our thinking is backward. The way our brain works is that dopamine - the so-called feel-good chemical - is released the second we actually do something. So the motivation doesn't come before, it comes after.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.

The human brain long ago evolved a mechanism for rewarding us when we encountered new information: a little shot of dopamine in the brain each time we learned something new. Across evolutionary history, compulsively seeking information was adaptive behavior.

When I was a kid, I reckoned things in Hershey bars. Is this worth three Hershey bars to me?

While we are clear that it is right that those who work hard, generate wealth and create jobs for our country are rewarded, where failure is rewarded or people award themselves huge pay rises that bear no relation to performance or what their companies can bear, trust is severely undermined.

The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term, is the indispensable prerequisite for success.

Surround yourself with strong people, make sure they fully understand your principles, give them room to work, reward good performance and correct bad performance—and be sure they know you can tell the difference.

Attention is the way social primates measure status. It is highly rewarding because it causes the release of brain chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.

You start doing the addictive behavior to feel good and then your receptors get overloaded with dopamine, then you stop doing the addictive thing and some of the receptors have shut down and you don't have enough dopamine to feel good. So then you feel bad and go back to the addictive behavior to get more dopamine. The strange thing is that it works with what we think of as uppers and downers and whatever you call gambling - sidewaysers.

Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.

Forest nations willing to do more than their fair share to solve the climate crisis should be rewarded through results-based payments.

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.

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

I have an odd theory on happiness, and it bothers people. My general theory is that happiness is a reward for an animal doing what it should be doing. So if a horse runs, it feels happy. Or if you are too thin, you can't be happy, because evolution wants you to be tense and anxious, trying to wake up in the morning looking for food.

There are two means by which states are maintained in their weal and greatness--reward and penalty: the one for the good, the other for the bad. And, if the distribution of these two be faulty, nothing else is to be expected than the inevitable ruin of the state... .

If we think we can make winning more important and the racing more exciting, that's what we'll do.

If you're not going to be rewarded for your virtues, and instead you're going to be punished for them, then what's your motivation to continue?

While the public school rewards failure by throwing more government money at failing school systems, the voucher system does the opposite.

There's definitely evidence that capitalism at its most ruthless rewards psychopathic behavior. When you look at the worst corners of the American health insurance industry or the sub-prime banking market, it really feels like the more psychopathically someone behaves, the more it's rewarded.

The more is given, the less the people will work for themselves

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature

Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all those things effectively, you can't miss.

Your rewards in life are determined by the kinds of problems you are willing to solve for someone.