Chris Gardner Quotes

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Chris Gardner

Profession : Businessman

Birth : February 9, 1954

If you're having a hard time recognizing your gifts, look to someone else you know who's been resourceful. You may be surprised by how your own strengths rise to the surface by watching someone else.

Chris Gardner

If you're passionate about something, you can develop the abilities.

Chris Gardner

Fortunately, our digital age has created some wonderful tools for finding employers and showing your strengths. But when it comes to discovering or keeping a job, nothing beats good old-fashioned face time and up-to-date skills.

Chris Gardner

Remember: If you don't schmooze, you lose. Used wisely, a bit of chitchat helps create a personal connection with your boss and colleagues.

Chris Gardner

You want be young and have fun, that's great. But while you're having fun, someone you don't see is studying and preparing. You might end up working for that person. No one wants to hear that! But I try to tell young people: You want to be the one signing the front of the check, not the back.

Chris Gardner

I'm known to be aggressively early.

Chris Gardner

I made a decision as a five-year-old boy that my kids will know who their father is.

Chris Gardner

I went through pain as a child so my children wouldn't have to.

Chris Gardner

I have one of those old-fashioned mothers who told me every single day, 'Son, you can do or be anything that you want to do or be.' And I believed it. I bought into it 100%.

Chris Gardner

I've said that if you're not doing something that you're passionate about, you're compromising yourself every single day.

Chris Gardner

I chose to embrace the spirit of my mother, who, though she had too many of her own dreams denied, deferred, and destroyed, she still instilled in me, her child, that I could have dreams and that I did have a responsibility and the power.

Chris Gardner

So many men have holes in their souls the shape of their fathers. You can pass that on to your kid, or you can do something about it, and I'm seeing a lot of men doing something about it.

Chris Gardner

I had never gone to college. I was not from a politically connected family. I had no money of my own. Who is going to do business with you?

Chris Gardner

I'm encouraged by what I see of men trying to be there for their children.

Chris Gardner

Probably the hardest question I get asked is, 'How do I choose between passion and practicality?' I can't answer that. I had to do both. I was passionate about pursuing a career in financial services. But I was also passionate about feeding my child.

Chris Gardner

Will Smith played Chris Gardner better than Chris Gardner ever did.

Chris Gardner

I cut grass, I did yard work, I did roofing, I cleaned basements to take care of my family.

Chris Gardner

I didn't grow up in a household where dinner conversation was, 'How did the market do today?'

Chris Gardner

I had spent years in the United States military. Specifically in the U.S. Navy.

Chris Gardner

Everything that I learned in the Navy, I took it with me into the next phase of my life.

Chris Gardner