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I Think In American Culture, We Put Value On Economic Success But Tell People You Don't Have To Be Economically Successful To Be Happy.
-John Hodgman
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I Think In American

John Hodgman
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I Think In American Culture, We Put Value On Economic Success But Tell People You Don't Have To Be Economically Successful To Be Happy.

Understanding the Quote: "i think in american culture, we put value on economic success but..."

This quote by John Hodgman reflects deeply on the theme of successful. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Successful, Thinking, People, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how John Hodgman interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About John Hodgman

John Hodgman is celebrated for insightful thoughts on successful and thinking. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Successful
Thinking
People
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Teenager
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Lies Are Just Another Kind Of Storytelling, But With The Very Distinct And Enlivening Motive Of Desperation. Since Writers Are By Nature Desperate Creatures, They Usually Do A Pretty Good (or Pretty Awful, But Always Interesting) Job Of Lying.
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Interesting
This Is One Of The Defining Sorrows Of Books: That We Cannot See One Another.
Book
Sorrow
Defining
I Have An Unfortunate Compulsion. I Really Would Rather Not Do It, As It Is Very Nerve-wracking And Un-fun. But When It Works, There Is Nothing Like It.
Fun
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Compulsion
I've Only Ever Been Mistaken For Myself. People Draw A Lot Of Comparisons To All Of The Round-faced, Mustached Men Of Entertainment That Make Me Cringe And Sick To My Stomach About How The World Really Sees Me And They're Right.
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People
Sick
I Have A Lot Of Cultural References That Have Amassed In My Brain Like Shrapnel Over The Years That Are Meaningful To Me.
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Years
Brain
There Is No Metaphor For Death. All Comparisons Are Odious, But I'll Do One Anyway. We All Have These Moments Of Harsh Clarity Where We Realize That Something Is Gone, Whether That Is Youth, Whether That Is Someone We Care About, Whether That Is Where We Literally Lose Someone We Care About To Death. Or We End A Relationship That We Thought Would Last Forever, Or Have One Ended For Us. We All Have These Moments In Life Where It Seems Impossible To Fill Up The Time That We Have Left For Us, And Yet We Have To Do It Somehow.
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Care
Impossible
I Actually Own A Copy Of My Own Book; That's How Dedicated I Am As An Author.
Book
Dedicated
Copies
Writing For Me Always Requires Trickery. Tricking Myself Into Sitting Down, Letting Words Tumble Out Until You Find The Good Ones. It's Sort Of A Trance. And When A Piece Is Done, I Have Little Memory Of How I Wrote It, And Zero Confidence I'd Ever Be Able To Do It Again.
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Writing
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Stories Hold Power Because They Convey The Illusion That Life Has Purpose And Direction. Where God Is Absent From The Lives Of All But The Most Blessed, The Writer, Of All People, Replaces That Ordering Principle. Stories Make Sense When So Much Around Us Is Senseless, And Perhaps What Makes Them Most Comforting Is That, While Life Goes On And Pain Goes On, Stories Do Us The Favor Of Ending.
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Here's The Thing: I Am Not Only A Creature Of Civilization, I'm An Asthmatic Person. I Will Only Live So Long As I Have Stockpiled The Proper Inhalers. I'm Effectively A Cyborg. You Know How In Jurassic Park, They Bred Those Dinosaurs With The Lysine Deficiencies, So If They Ever Got Off The Island, They'd Die? That's Me.
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Earth
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Careers
People
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Enjoy
Copies
What I've Discovered More Recently Is Copies Of Books That I Didn't Represent, But That My Boss Represented When I Assisted Her On The Dollar Pile. I Won't Mention Any Names, But It Is This Profoundly Bittersweet Time Of Realizing, "oh, I Had A Wonderful Time Working On This Book And Now It Is A Dollar Relic On The Side Of The Road."
Book
Names
Boss
Well, I Always Had This Desire To Celebrate And Somehow Be A Part Of Things That I Thought Were Really Great.
Desire
Celebrate
Really Great
We Estimate That There Are Perhaps 20,000 Prehistoric Hunter-gatherers Frozen Up In Those Glaciers. Now, If They Simply Thaw And Wander Around, It's Not A Problem, But If They Find A Leader - A Captain Caveman, If You Will - We'll Be Facing An Even More Serious Problem.
Leader
Hunters
Frozen
That Catharsis Is Really The Core Of The Incredibly Personal Comedy Of Louis C.k. Or Marc Maron Or Whatever. And Look - I Find It Fascinating That I'm Sitting Here Talking About Some Of These Things, And Not To Low Tones, And My Kids Are In The Other Room. I Have To Trust That If They Hear What I'm Saying And They Have Questions About It, I'll Be Able To Answer It, And That's Fine. But That's Part Of The Scariness Of It - The Reality Of Opening Up My Own Life And My Own Feelings.
Kids
Reality
Opening Up
I Don't Know If You've Ever Been Shoved Into The Bow Of A Nutshell Pram, A Boat That Is Very Easily Almost Liftable With One Hand, And Quite Tippy, And Is Being Piloted By A 12-year-old, But It Is The True Feeling Of Having Your Life In Someone Else's Hands, And It's Very Precarious.
Feelings
Boat
True Feelings
My Biggest Superhero Of Writing Is Jorge Luis Borges, The Argentine Fabulist. He's An Amazingly Perceptive Writer, But Also Willing To Make A Joke.
Writing
Superhero
Borges
Specificity Is The Soul Of Narrative.
Soul
Narrative
Specificity
I Am Not An Internet Superstar.
Superstar
Internet
First Of All, I Wish I Could Grow A Beard.
Wish
Beard
Firsts
I Realized That We're Now At A Point Of Self-reference With The Internet Culture That There's Almost No There Left, You Know? It's Important To Make New Things. It's Important To Make Culture, Rather Than Simply Reference It. I Love A Good Cultural Reference, And It's One Of The Great Joys In My Life, But It Has To All Be In Balance With The Core Job, Which Is To Make Something New. And That Sort Of Brings Me Around To Why I Started Talking About My Fondness For Marijuana.
Jobs
Marijuana
Talking
I Think That By The Time I Start Writing The Third Book, Of Course, I Will Be President Of The United States, And That Also Will Have Something To Do With It. I'll Probably Have To Acknowledge That Somehow.
Book
Writing
Thinking
Unfortunately For Humanity, I've Gotten Into The Habit Of Providing My Own Closing Music For Shows By Singing A Song And Playing The Ukulele.
Song
Ukulele
Humanity
Sports Is A Bloodless Rehearsal Of Confrontation, And Everyone Shakes Hands Or High Fives Or Fist Bumps At The End To Show That Everything Is Okay.
Sports
Confrontation
Okay
Terry Gross Has Never Had Me On Her Show And You Know, It's Her Show; She Sets The Agenda And That's Not Hodgman. But I'll Still Listen To It.
Agendas
Gross
Shows
It Seems That Every Generation Needs Its Public, Tweedy, Literary Personality To Sell Its Consumer Electronics. To Whatever Degree I Can Live Up To The Plimptonian Legacy, I Am Humble And Proud.
Humble
Personality
Degrees
It Was Inevitable That In The Proliferation Of Media And Media Channels And The Natural Debasing Of Authority That Comes When You Make An Expert Of Someone Who Knows A Few Things And Can Be On Television And You Put The Word "expert" Underneath Them, That Is To Say Me, Then Eventually The Very Concept Of Expertise Itself Would Become Meaningless.
Media
Experts
Television
I Am A Marginally Employed Person Who Can Escape With My School Teacher Wife To The Waters Of Maine For Much Of The Summer.
Summer
Teacher
School
Once You're Out In A Place Where There's One Sheriff For The County, People Have To Learn How To Get Along With Each Other And That Means Going To The Dump Illegally And Dumping Your Garbage And Hoping The Guys Don't Call You On It And Being Terrified Of This To Your Core Until You Realize After Many Years That The Guys At The Dump Don't Really Care Where Your Garbage Is Coming From.
Mean
Years
People
Hosting A Tv Show Is A Full-time Job In Which Success Is Defined By It Never Ending.
Jobs
Tv Shows
Tvs
My Favorite Season Is Autumn, And Maine Is Lovely For That Reason. In Maine, Autumn Begins On July 29. That's When You Start Building A Fire In The Fireplace And The Leaves Literally Start Falling From The Trees. It Is A Cold And Rugged And A Beautiful Place That Reminds You With Its Many Death Traps - Its Painfully Cold Oceans, Its Sharp, Jagged Beaches, And Perilous Cliffsides - That Nature Doesn't Care Whether You Live Or Die.
Beautiful
Beach
Fall
I Think There Are Very Few Invisible Musical Instrument Players Out There Who Can Claim The Chops And Sheer Perseverance Of Björn Türoque, The World's Perennial Second-place Air Guitar Champion. Whoever This Dan Crane Might Be, He's Captured The Mad, Seductive Spirit Of The Arbitrary Skill Contest Perfectly, And Rocks It Hard Into The Hot Finnish Night. There Is No Number Of Umlauts That Do This Jekyll And Hyde Of Air-rocking Justice.
Perseverance
Player
Night
Even The Worst Job Has Its Benefits And So Does Being A Professional Literary Agent, And - I Know I Said This At The Time But I Still Believe It - The Worst Job Is The One That You Know Is Wrong For You, But You Still Do It. You're Afraid To Quit.
Jobs
Believe
Doe
Tonally, There Was No Discussion; I Just Don’t Know Any Other Way To Do It. I Don’t Want To Make People Feel Bad, And I Don’t Want To Make Their Problems Into A Joke. I Do Love Telling People When They’re Right And Wrong, But For The Most Part, It Was Always Going To Be About Real Fights Where People Have A Real Difference Of Opinion And A Real Dispute. I Want To Make Jokes, But I Also Want To Make A Decision That Is Fair.
Real
Fighting
Differences
I Know Nothing About Letting Go.
Letting Go
Knows
The Understanding That We Reach A Point Where We Stop Becoming Something And Start Ending As Something. That Comes At Different Times In Different Points In Different People's Lives, And Obviously There Are Lots Of People Who Experience The Presence Of Death Much More Keenly And Much Earlier Than I Did. But We All Come To Grips With It Eventually.
People
Understanding
Different
Anyone Of Conscience Could Come Look At My Book And See It As An Esoteric Oddity Or Be Intrigued By It. It Could Happen Either Way On A Thousand Different Little Decisions Each Individual Might Make.
Book
Oddities
Decision
The Very Idea That There Is No Truth, But Only The Filter Of Narrative Through Which Truth Is Invented Is Something I Learned At The Feet Of The Most Leftist Professors At Yale And Am Learning Again From Sarah Palin During The Vice Presidential Debate, And I Find That Very Disorienting.
Yale
Ideas
Feet
We Have All Been Empowered By The Web: Everyone With A Keyboard Can Now Effectively Broadcast To A National Audience. In A Sense, It Puts Each Of Us On The Same Footing As The Major Media Conglomerates, Except For Aol, Who Now Apparently Own All Our Thoughts And Teeth.
Media
Teeth
Keyboards
Borges Was Unapologetically Smart And Equally Sentimental; A Proto-geek, Blind To Distinctions Between Low Pulp Fiction And High Criticism, Experimental But Never Arch, And Always Playful, With A Humor As Dry As Dust.
Smart
Dust
Criticism
I Had Some Very, Very Fond Memories Of The People I Worked With And The Authors I Worked With - And I Won't Mention Any Names - But As I Have Been Traveling Through Rural Maine Over The Past Few Weeks, One Of My Favorite Things To Do Is To Go Into Bookstores On The Side Of Rural Routes And Paw Through The Old Copies Of Tom Clancy And Trevanian Books They Have In There For Weird Old 1970s Thrillers That I Haven't Read Yet.
Memories
Book
Past
I Was Always Fascinated With The Way That Things Pop On The Internet - The Ways You Build Communities And Create Little Stories And Ideas That People Play Around With And Send Back To You.
Play
Ideas
People
The Villain Of Any Story Is Often The Most Compelling Character.
Character
Stories
Villain
I Have No Skills. I Mean, I Can Make Jokes, I'm Pretty Good At Talking To People On The Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I Can Figure Out What Makes A Pretty Good Story, And I Can Make Eggs Really Well.
Mean
Talking
Skills
It’s Been A Tough Couple Of Years For Condescending Nerds. And If Bookstores Fall, Jon, America Will Be Inundated With A Wandering, Snarky Underclass Of Unemployable Purveyors Of Useless And Arcane Esoterica.
Couple
Fall
Years
All Books Should Be Trilogies; I Mean I Think We All Agree On That.
Book
Mean
Thinking
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