John D. Gartner > Quotes

“Virtually every new movement in human history—religious, political, intellectual, and economic—has been led by a charismatic leader.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“For the hypomanic, the only escape from a black hole is a big bang.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Ideas pour out of hypomanics, a mix of the ridiculous and the brilliant.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Every hypomanic child or young adult has a larger-than-life historic figure with whom he identifies, who becomes the raw material for a secret grandiose identity.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Machiavelli once said that if a prince had to choose between being loved and feared, he is better off being feared. Or as Lyndon Johnson put it more crudely, “If you have their balls in your pocket, their hearts and minds will follow.” Scratch away the thin veneer of civilization and the psychology of human leadership is not that different from that of our closest cousins, the chimpanzees. The alpha male rules because the other males fear he will physically hurt them if they challenge him. But”
― John Gartner, In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography

“A compulsion to take risks is another classic sign of hypomania.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“With this advance, it is easier to imagine, in the not-too-distant future, a colony of specially designed microbes living within the emission-control system of a coal-fired plant, consuming its pollution and its carbon dioxide, or employing microbes to radically reduce water pollution, or to reduce the toxic effects of radioactive waste.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Today’s scientists would not be surprised if our grandchildren lived to 120. But ultimately, there is no absolute limit that we know of.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Most of the people who came here without official sanction overcame many obstacles, proving they are people of drive, initiative, and courage.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“If a scientist wanted to design a giant petri dish with all the right nutrients to make hypomanic genius flourish, he would be hard-pressed to imagine a better natural experiment than America. A “nation of immigrants” represents a highly skewed and unusual “self-selected” population. Do men and women who risk everything to leap into a new world differ temperamentally from those who stay home? It would be surprising if they didn’t.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“There is also some value to inspiring a certain amount of fear in the people who work for you. When Clinton began as president, one White House veteran gave him a sage piece of advice: “Your own staff won’t take you seriously until you fire someone.” Clinton demurred, “I’m not very good at that.” He wasn’t, and it hurt him. His administration was plagued by leaks to the press. Had he made an example of even one staffer, they might have stopped, or at least slowed. In a fit of rage Clinton sometimes demanded that someone be fired. Because he didn’t have the heart to fire them himself, he’d tell a staffer to do it, but then unfire them the next day. In”
― John Gartner, In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography

“In fact, Clinton feels others’ pain to the point that he not infrequently openly weeps for them, and his teary response is so infectious that it can trigger tears in others. This creates the opportunity for powerful political theater, all the more powerful because it is genuinely felt. Leopoulos was with Clinton in New Hampshire, and recalled how Clinton’s empathy routinely triggered an epidemic of tears. “He had to hear everyone’s story. Some of the people were crying, and had terribly sad stories. Clinton started crying, too, and then we were all crying.” Stephanopoulos recalled one such encounter during the New Hampshire primary: “When Mary Annie Davis confessed tearfully that she had to choose each month between buying food or medicine, he knelt down, took her hand, and comforted her with a hug. Even the hardest bitten reporters in the room were wiping tears from their eyes.”27”
― John Gartner, In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography

“Successful entrepreneurs are not just braggarts. They are highly creative people who quickly generate a tremendous number of ideas—some clever, others ridiculous.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“man progressed through the “ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.”127 It was actually Spencer, and not Darwin, as most people assume, who coined the term “survival of the fittest.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Classically, most people think of mania and depression as two opposite states that alternate, but they often coexist simultaneously—a “mixed” mood state is one that combines depressive affect with manic or hypomanic impulsivity.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Human nature is harder to bend than steel, and evolution doesn’t hurry easily.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Bipolar military leaders take inspired risks that seem brilliant in retrospect—if they work.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Clinton’s fundamental agreeableness comes in direct conflict at times with his hypomanic temper. After he impulsively explodes, he immediately feels bad and wants to heal the breach between himself and the person he has just attacked. The contradictory combination of a temper and empathic warmth sometimes leads to humorous situations. Ernie”
― John Gartner, In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography

“For most of human history, the average person lived to age twenty-five, basically long enough to reproduce. Our average life span has been steadily on the rise, with improvements in nutrition, sanitation, and medicine, particularly the discovery of antibiotics.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“In 1900, the average life expectancy was fifty. Now it is in the mid-eighties in industrialized nations. Clearly, the elimination of cancer and advances in regenerative medicine will push that average higher. But genetic research on aging itself promises to make even more dramatic improvements in longevity.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Like many hypomanic entrepreneurs, Lewis Selznick’s problem was that “he always went too far too fast,”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“In politics it can be as important to punish your enemies as it is to reward your friends. It’s a limitation to be all carrot and no stick.”
― John Gartner, In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography

“The flow of immigrants into the United States was a “golden stream” which contributed more to her national wealth than “all the gold mines in the world.” Immigrants were America’s economic secret weapon.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“By 1920, there were 3,600,000 Jews in America, 23 percent of the world’s Jewish population. It was the greatest exodus since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Venter has called himself “a super enzyme” because “I catalyze things.”105 That’s probably a good description of the function hypomanics like Venter play in society.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Great entrepreneurs often do not create original ideas—they grasp the significance of an idea, wherever it comes from, and leap on it with everything they have.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Movies were the only industry to see an increase in business during the Depression.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“Most of the movie moguls were Jewish immigrants who began their career as theater owners in their own neighborhood and later expanded into production.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“The cure to cancer exists on the level of the genome.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

“As with most hypomanics, the meaning of risk simply failed to register with him emotionally.”
― John D. Gartner, The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America