Notable Quotables

Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That’s the fundamental thing.

- Ben Horowitz

A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, ‘You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish!’ They won. Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.

- Napoleon Hill

Search engine optimization is essentially about obtaining admission to an event in which you are competing. Getting invited to compete in the event has no bearing on how you do within the competition itself, but you don’t get to play in the game unless you are on Page 1 of Google search results.

- Clay Clark

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

- Winston Churchill

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

- Joel Olsteen

I learned this early on in the variety business: You’ve got to give folks responsibility, you’ve got to trust them, and then you’ve got to check on them.

- Sam Walton

Every day were saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy?’ How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.

- Bill Gates

Thus far then have we travelled along the terrible road we chose at the call of duty. The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this: A year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate to all eyes but our own. To-day we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: ‘We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls.

- Winston Churchill

The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.

- Oprah Winfrey

There are only two kinds of employees that I’ve run across in 30 years. There are ones that get results, and ones that make excuses. If you’re in that second camp, you’re not going to like Dish.

- Charles Ergen

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

- Dale Carnegie

It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.

- James C. Collins

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The minute there’s a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.

- Seth Godin

Every dream I’ve ever had in life has come true ten times over.

- Steve Wozniak

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

- Henry Ford

I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

- Harry Truman

I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.

- Ronald Perelman

The timing of your decision is just as important as the decision you make.

- John C. Maxwell

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

- Jack London

When I was 17 or 18 I wanted to become a wine expert, and my parents wouldn’t let me drink. So I was devastated. All I could do was read, and I read and I read. And I’d read something like, you know, ‘Subtle hints of cassis.’

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.

- Joel Olsteen

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.

- Elon Musk

1. What is our mission?2. Who is our customer?3. What does the customer value?4. What are our results?5. What is our plan?

- Peter Drucker

I DECLARE Ephesians 3:20 over my life. God will do exceedingly, abundantly above all that I ask or think. Because I honor Him, His blessings will chase me down and overtake me. I will be in the right place at the right time. People will go out of their way to be good to me. I am surrounded by God’s favor. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic … It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood … it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine’s writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, ‘What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!’ My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.

- Thomas Edison

The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.

- Bill Gates

Nowhere are the benefits of closer economic ties more pronounced than in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The two places have their own advantages. One has the manpower, natural resources and manufacturing might, while the other has the management skills and marketing know-how.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

- Peter Drucker

We have to innovate for a specific reason, and that reason comes from the market. Otherwise, we’ll end up making museum pieces.

- Phil Knight

There are two types of people in the world. One type is known as leaders and the other as followers. Decide at the outset whether you intend to become a leader in your chose calling or remain a follower. The difference in compensation is vast. The follwer cannot reasonably expect the compensation to which a leader is entitled, although many followers make the mistake of expecting such pay.

- Napoleon Hill

One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest.

- Winston Churchill

Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.

- Seth Godin

One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.

- Jeff Bezos

When you face adversity, you need to remind yourself that whatever is trying to defeat you could very well be what God will use to promote you.

- Joel Olsteen

One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you’ve got somebody who’s raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give ’em that shot.

- Jack Welch

Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.

- Bill Gates

The bulk of the universities are about teaching kids.

- Bill Gates

Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body.

- Peter Drucker

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.

- Dale Carnegie

Russia is not a homogenous country, it’s a very fragmented country.

- Alexei Mordashov

I was the night foreman of a galvanizing factory, which is hot and smelly and dirty and miserable.

- Ronald Perelman

When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.

- Carlos Slim Helu

Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.

- Zig Ziglar

In periods of stress and grief, not only does your mind do funny things, you say things that surprise you.

- Phil Knight

I love creating partnerships; I love not having to bear the entire burden of the creative storytelling, and when I have unions like with George Lucas and Peter Jackson, it’s really great; not only do I benefit, but the project is better for it.

- Steven Spielberg

Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn’t have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he’s getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Apply the blacksmith’s homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.

- Dale Carnegie

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

- Seth Godin

I’ve been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I’m getting really tired of Disneyland.

- Elon Musk

Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.

- Bill Gates

I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.

- Og Mandino

We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.

- Dale Carnegie

Steve Jobs had very strong feelings about what makes a company great, what makes products great. He more or less chose Tim Cook to be in that role, in that position.

- Steve Wozniak

This office is smaller than the last one I had. I’m not trying to impress people. I want to be close to them.

- Stephen Wynn

We appreciate size, but only if it is robust growth. Just to be big is not a target.

- Alexei Mordashov

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software.” We had dreams about the impact it could have.

- Bill Gates

by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined.

- James C. Collins

My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them.

- Russell Simmons

One who buys things to write them off for their business whether they need them or not and who borrows massive sums of money to buy frozen yogurt and cupcake franchises that cannot possibly generate enough money to produce a livable wage, much less anything approaching prosperity.

- Clay Clark

You need to have extraordinary wisdom to be the forerunner.

- Ma Huateng

Wal-Mart became Wal-Mart by ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things.

- Sam Walton

If you have a lot of [visionaries], you’ll have a lot of great ideas, something awesome that people will love; but you never get it done. It doesn’t ship. Nothing happens. If you have too many [execution oriented] people on your team, you’re executing like mad, things are getting built, and you’re shipping like crazy – but you’re building something that nobody wants. If you have a good balance of both in your company, you’re more likely to stay on track. Those people compliment each other.

- Caterina Fake

The lizard isn’t listening and the lizard doesn’t care.

- Seth Godin

Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.

- Richard Branson

Stealing Coach Wooden’s sets of three, I have come up with a formula for success no matter what kind of business you happen to be in: 1) Make sure you have the right people around you; 2) Have fun and drive results by recognizing the achievements of others; and 3) Be a passionate learner, and pass on what you know to others. Not only will this make you a success in business, but it will make you a success in life.

- David Novak

Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will be doing things absolutely differently from everybody else.

- Sara Blakely

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

- Dale Carnegie

When you expect your employees to act like adults, they generally do. If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.

- Ben Horowitz

We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

- Winston Churchill

When I was growing up, I always knew I’d be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence.

- Sergey Brin

Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that’s what a number of us are trying to do.

- Richard Branson

We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.

- Seth Godin

Paper money will suffer. I’d be in mortar, not paper (money). We are in a time when paper investments are riskier than in the past. There is also a great amount of sovereign risk.

- Lee Shau Kee

Don’t waste your time trying to win people over that can never be won over.

- Joel Olsteen

The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.

- James Simons

People of excellence go the extra mile to do what’s right.

- Joel Olsteen

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

- Richard Branson

I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it’s something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn’t compute with our existing educational system.

- Peter Thiel

I believe that visualization is one of the most powerful means of achieving personal goals.

- Harvey Mackay

Secret, shall I tell you? Grand Master of Jedi Order am I. Won this job in a raffle I did, think you? “How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?” Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is.

- Yoda

I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.

- Seth Godin

There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.

- Zig Ziglar

The other buzzword that epitomizes a bias toward substitution is “big data.” Today’s companies have an insatiable appetite for data, mistakenly believing that more data always creates more value. But big data is usually dumb data. Computers can find patterns that elude humans, but they don’t know how to compare patterns from different sources or how to interpret complex behaviors. Actionable insights can only come from a human analyst (or the kind of generalized artificial intelligence that exists only in science fiction).

- Peter Thiel

I think Twitter is the future of communications and Square will be the payment network.

- Jack Dorsey

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

- Bill Gates

And being as wicked as any man who ever lived, he exploited his advantage to the full.

- Winston Churchill

They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

- Aldous Huxley

Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money

- Warren Buffett

technology is important—you can’t remain a laggard and hope to be great. But technology by itself is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline.

- James C. Collins

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