Shoe Dog (Young Readers Edition)

by Phil Knight

I did decide that the world is made up of crazy ideas. History is one long processional of crazy ideas.

You tell yourself that you’re running toward some goal, chasing some rush, but really you run because the alternative, stopping, scares you to death.

Let everyone else call your idea crazy . . . just keep going. Don’t stop. Don’t even think about stopping until you get there, and don’t give much thought to where “there” is. Whatever comes, just don’t stop.

More, I knew how to speak the truth. People seemed to like that.

I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen, linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.

You cannot travel the path until you have become the path yourself,

The Japanese believe climbing Fuji is a mystical experience, a ritual act of celebration,

The Japanese do not react well to the hard sell. Negotiations here tend to be soft. It’s a culture of indirection. No one ever turns you down flat. No one ever says, straight out, no. But they don’t say yes, either. They speak in circles, sentences with no clear subject or object.

Expect nothing, seek nothing, grasp nothing—the immortal Japanese poets wrote lines that seemed polished and polished until they gleamed like the blade of a samurai’s sword, or the stones of a mountain brook.

“tycoon” came from taikun, Japanese for “warlord.”

man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones

Lead me from the unreal to the real.

Don’t go to sleep one night, wrote Rūmī, the thirteenth-century Persian poet. What you most want will come to you then. Warmed by a sun inside you’ll see wonders.

Love truth, but pardon error.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn’t selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in.

People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

To study the self is to forget the self.

I needed to put aside hurt feelings, put aside all thoughts of injustice, which would only make me emotional and keep me from thinking clearly. Emotion would be fatal. I needed to remain cool.

People reflexively assume that competition is always a good thing, that it always brings out the best in people, but that’s only true of people who can forget the competition. The art of competing, I’d learned from track, is the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past. You must forget that internal voice screaming, begging, Not one more step! And when it’s not possible to forget it, you must negotiate with it.

The world is without beauty when you lose,

All the guidebooks said to climb Mount Fuji at night. A proper climb, they said, must culminate with a view of sunrise from the summit.

“A wise man climbs Fuji once. A fool climbs it twice.”

the Japanese place torii gates at sacral borderlands, portals between this world and the world beyond.

“happiness is a how, not a what.”

Fight not to win, but to avoid losing. A surefire losing strategy.

One lesson I took from all my homeschooling about heroes was that they didn’t say much. None was a blabbermouth. None micromanaged.

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

Wisdom seemed an intangible asset, but an asset all the same, one that justified the risk.

Starting my own business was the only thing that made life’s other risks—marriage, Vegas, alligator wrestling—seem like sure things.

when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons. I wasn’t much for setting goals, but this goal kept flashing through my mind e...

Assets equal liabilities plus equity.

The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say good-bye.

Because they were inspired by what we were trying to do, and because they worked solely on commission

People were telling me constantly that advertising was important, that advertising was the next wave.

Plenty of athletes were training in Tigers, Bowerman reported. We just didn’t have anybody actually competing in them. Part of the reason was quality; Tigers just weren’t good enough yet. The main reason, however, was money. We had not a penny for endorsement deals.

In Japan you couldn’t predict what either your competition or your partner might do.

Life is growth. You grow or you die.

Don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I’m here to kill you.

Each of us found pleasure, whenever possible, in focusing on one small task. One task, we often said, clears the mind.

we took turns describing what our little company was, and what it might be, and what it must never be.

Our surroundings, I felt, had much to do with our spirit, and our spirit was a big part of our success,

“At the decisive moment, be somewhere else.”

As always I politely took the abuse they dished out, playing the role of meek small business owner. Long on contrition, short on credit.

Whenever I felt stressed, whenever I wanted to choke someone, I’d wrap my arms good and tight around my torso.

But it was more than the Stroganoff. Somehow, I’d gotten out of the running habit.

Keep going, I told myself. Don’t stop.

Pre’s secret weapon was his confidence,

Confidence. More than equity, more than liquidity, that’s what a man needs.

confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.