When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
- Paul Theroux
Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.
- John C. Maxwell
Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.
- Ben Horowitz
Maybe you’ve invested a lot of time, effort, money, emotion, and energy in a relationship; you did your best to make it work out. But for some reason, things got off course. And now you feel as though you have been robbed. When we focus on or disappointments, we stop God from ringing fresh new blessing into our lives.
- Joel Olsteen
For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better.
- Seth Godin
The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
- Peter Thiel
And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
- Peter Drucker
Diversification and globalization are the keys to the future.
- Fujio Mitarai
The residential leasing market remained robust with expatriates from the banking and financial sectors continuing to be the major source of tenant demand for luxury properties on Hong Kong Island.
- Lee Shau Kee
The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.
- Peter Drucker
Every twenty-four hours God has a fresh new supply of grace, of favor, of wisdom, of forgiveness.
- Joel Olsteen
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that good ones slip through.
- Seth Godin
I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.
- Ray Kroc
The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It’s in the blood.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.
- Bill Gates
Accountability breeds response-ability.
- Stephen R. Covey
As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now.
- Joel Olsteen
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
- Robert J. Sawyer
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
- Jack Welch
SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over.
- Timothy Ferriss
I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It’s hard to memorize objectives, but it’s easy to remember a story.
- Ben Horowitz
India has the potential to be our biggest market in Asia, bigger than China, in as much as two to five years.
- John Chambers
Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time.
- John C. Maxwell
The single reason for a salesperson’s existence is to get the Buyer’s commitment. Just how poor are salespeople at their jobs? In a study of professional sales people (those who sell full time), 50% failed to ask for the buyer’s commitment to buy.
- Jerry Vass
All of us, in a sense, struggle continuously all the time, because we never get what we want. The important thing which I’ve really learned is how do you not give up, because you never succeed in the first attempt.
- Mukesh Ambani
It’s no surprise that these fields all attract disproportionate numbers of high-achieving Ivy League optionality chasers; what could be a more appropriate reward for two decades of résumé-building than a seemingly elite, process-oriented career that promises to “keep options open”?
- Peter Thiel
I already told you that it is 100% outside buyers.
- Lee Shau Kee
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
- Bill Gates
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Hire the best staff you can find develop them as much as you can, and hand off everything you possibly you can to them…The power of this can be seen in explosive growth.
- Napoleon Hill
we can not prepare for defeat and expect to live a life in Victory.
- Joel Olsteen
On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
What we know about the destination resort business is clearly established. But it’s all about one thing, and one thing only. All of the razzmatazz and jazz we hear about facilities and everything else doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. It’s customer experience that determines the longevity and endurance of these enterprises.
- Stephen Wynn
If this market transition truly evolves the way that I think it’s most likely to, the worst decision you could make is not to move.
- John Chambers
I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
- Bill Gates
Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.
- Bill Gates
If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.
- Sara Blakely
I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.
- Bill Gates
People really criticize professional athletes going into the Olympics. People don’t like change. A bunch of people don’t like the Olympics now because we’ve added skateboarding… We’re modernizing the sport.
- Larry Ellison
All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
- Brian Tracy
When York’s son, hitherto Earl of March, learned that his father’s cause had devolved upon him he did not shrink. He fell upon the Earl of Wiltshire and the Welsh Lancastrians, and on February 2, 1461, at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, near Hereford, he beat and broke.
- Winston Churchill
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
- Winston Churchill
You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog.
- Carl Icahn
Two things about Sam Walton distinguish him from almost everyone else I know. First he gets up everyday bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I’ve ever know. And once he sees he’s wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction. (qualities of great leaders)
- David Glass
If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
The Group adopts a two-pronged strategy in its business development in mainland China. In the prime cities, the Group targets those prime sites with heavy pedestrian flow and easy access for development into large-scale complexes of exceptional design and quality. In the second-tier cities, which are mostly provincial capitals or municipalities with a preponderance of middle class residents, the Group focuses on large-scale developments so as to achieve an efficient use of land as well as long-term appreciation in property value.
- Lee Shau Kee
Ultimately, the goal of any public relations campaign is to either reorient or solidify the perception of a product, client, policy or event. From there nature takes its course. If the public perceives the product as good, the movie stars as sexy, the pet rock as indispensable, then the public will fork over its money. One will succeed in a P.R. campaign only if the perception fostered truly resonates with the public. People respect wisdom but obey pain.
- Michael Levine
We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.
- Seth Godin
A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.
- Peter Thiel
Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.
- Reed Hastings
A waitress goes up to Winston Churchill and says, ‘Sir, your drunk.’ To which he replies, ‘I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
I think Les Moonves is the most highly overrated person in television.
- Donald Trump
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known
- Walt Disney
The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don’t like to use the word efficiency. It’s creativity. It’s a belief that every person counts.
- Jack Welch
We live in an age where everything is based on the short term.
- Howard Schultz
At the end of the day you have to keep emotions away.
- Lakshmi Mittal
You can be committed to Church but not committed to Christ, but you cannot be committed to Christ and not committed to church.
- Joel Olsteen
A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.
- Winston Churchill
A decade and a half ago an ‘Esquire’ magazine reporter, noting our advertising played up the heros as aspects of great atheletes asked the question, who is your hero? My answer was simple. My college track coach and partner, Bill Bowerman. He had won four national championships, coached more sub four minute milers than anyone when he retired. He was the 1972 Olympic coach yet he insisted he was not a track coach. He was a professor of competitive response.
- Phil Knight
Look at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. They have all entered many sectors, and actually, in many of those sectors, they weren’t as early as Tencent.
- Ma Huateng
The word ‘Spanx’ was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.
- Sara Blakely
The best ideas in a company are the ones that people come up with themselves because then they really own their ideas and are committed to making them work. – David Novak CEO of YUM Brands
- David Novak
We woke up one day, and all the sudden Starbucks was in the middle of this political crossfire between the people who want to bring a gun into Starbucks and the people who want to prevent it. It is a very difficult, fragile situation.
- Howard Schultz
At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.
- Cheng Yu-tung
What is not started will never get finished
- Johann Wolf gang von Goethe
You have to learn to follow your heart. You can’t let other people pressure you into being something that you’re not. If you want God’s favor in your life, you must be the person He made you to be, not the person your boss wants you to be, not even the person your parents or your husband wants you to be. You can’t let outside expectations keep you from following your own heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.
- Seth Godin
Hong Kong still offers the best value.
- Lee Shau Kee
My parents really wanted me to get out of New York, be exposed to other people, other ways of life.
- Howard Schultz
The purpose of process is communication. If there are five people in your company, you don’t need process, because you can just talk to each other.
- Ben Horowitz
The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening carefully to customers; tracking competitors’ actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technological change.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I’m not even sure what it’s getting at … personalities are very wrong although mine is closer … don’t forget that my purpose was inspired by the values of the Homebrew Computer Club along with ideas of the value of such machines and Steve J. wasn’t around and didn’t attend the club so he was the one learning about such social impact of the future.
- Steve Wozniak
Appreciation – Learn to give flowers while people are still living.
- Joel Olsteen
Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.
- Seth Godin
Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‘tap-dancing to work.
- Bill Gates
The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems.
- Napoleon Hill
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
- Peter Drucker
It’s harder, but we’re still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies, but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you, but, yes, it can still be done. That’s the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur.
- Harold Hamm
The problem with pity parties is very few people come, and those who do don’t bring presents.
- Zig Ziglar
Man will occasionally stumble upon the truth but most times he will pick himself up and continue on.
- Winston Churchill
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.
- Dale Carnegie
I never worry about action, but only inaction.
- Winston Churchill
In his rigidgly compartmentalized life, each hour was tightly budgeted, whether for business, religion, family or exercise. Perhaps those daily rituals helped him deal with the underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable, for although he tried to project to an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain the surface, was constantly on edge. In one of his few admissions of weakness he recalled, for years on end I never had a solid night’s sleep, worrying about how it was to come out…I tossed about in bed night after night worrying over the outcome…All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.
- Ron Chernow
My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I’ve given.
- Russell Simmons
We will intensify our efforts to build out our infrastructure overseas and to develop products that are tailored to individual markets
- Sergey Brin
Always have something to say. The man who has something to say and who is known never to speak unless he has, is sure to be listened to.
- Dale Carnegie
We were looking to guide and help people who want to start small businesses.
- David Nilssen
It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.
- Bill Gates
I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.
- Steve Wozniak
Ahhh! Yoda’s little friend you seek!
- Yoda
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.
- Bill Gates
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
- Andrew Carnegie
In the U.S., HBO is a very aggressive service.
- Reed Hastings
I enjoy myself a lot but I derive my joy from working. I believe in hard work and one of my business success secret is hard work.
- Aliko Dangote
Owners don’t fire all the players. They fire the leader and bring in someone they hope the players will buy into.
- Napoleon Hill
A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between right and wrong. It is at best a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong”—but much more often a choice between two courses of action neither of which is provably more nearly right than the other.
- Peter Drucker
As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.
- Peter Thiel
