Notable Quotables

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

- Bill Gates

Whatever your critics say about you has no bearing on your worth. You are a child of the Most High God. The Creator of the universe breathed life into you. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. You’ve been crowned with favor. God has already equipped and empowered you with everything you need. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to play up to people, trying to win over all your critics, or trying to prove to someone that you’re important.

- Joel Olsteen

Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.

- Stephen R. Covey

Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

If they really don’t want to buy the flats, I’ll take their deposits.

- Lee Shau Kee

PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.

- Ben Horowitz

Most GE business leaders now have digital cockpits on their computer screens that update in real time all the important data to help them manager their businesses.

- Jack Welch

Write your life story as if it has already happened and live it out using your faith in yourself, and in the reality that you are embracing.

- Clay Clark

You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

- Bill Gates

Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you’ll create credit… So you reach a certain point that that you can’t do that anymore… There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?

- Ray Dalio

The economy of Hong Kong was considerably stable in 2000. However, as the global economy experienced a slowdown since the beginning of 2001, the confidence of local home purchasers remained low notwithstanding that Hong Kong followed the footsteps of the United States of America in announcing consecutive reductions of interest rates as well as a series of measures implemented by the Government to stabilise local property prices.

- Lee Shau Kee

To me, failure means not trying; failure isnt the outcome. If i have to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘I didnt try that because I was scared,’ that is failure.

- Sara Blakely

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

- Joel Olsteen

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

- David Novak

You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

- Bill Gates

As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.

- Richard Branson

Dios ve el valor que usted tiene, y sabe en lo que le está convirtiendo. A veces nos miramos a nosotros mismos y pensamos: Tengo muchas imperfecciones. Tengo mal genio. Tengo un problema con mi boca. No soy tan disciplinado”. Vemos el barro, pero Dios ve la hermosa taza. La buena noticia es que usted no es un producto terminado. Dios sigue obrando, y si trabaja usted con Dios y le permite eliminar esas impurezas, Él hará más con su vida de lo que usted nunca soñó.

- Joel Olsteen

No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.

- Napoleon Hill

The reason I was able to grow my business was that every day, after producing 30 minutes of wine television, I spent 15 hours a day replying to every single person’s e-mail and every single person’s Twitter @ reply.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.

- Jack Welch

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

- Napoleon Hill

Doing something different is what’s truly good for society—and it’s also what allows a business to profit by monopolizing a new market. The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve.

- Peter Thiel

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

- Winston Churchill

Who’s your Jedi master? WHO’S your Jedi Master?

- Yoda

Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain.

- Yoda

Certainly, none of us enjoy going through struggles, but you have to understand that your struggle may be an opportunity for advancement and promotion. The very thing you are fighting against so tenaciously may be the springboard that catapults you to a new level of excellence. Your challenges may become your greatest assets.

- Joel Olsteen

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.

- Seth Godin

Ohhh. Great warrior.Wars not make one great.

- Yoda

I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.

- George Soros

I have worked at Nike and its predecessor company for 48 years. Some might call me a short timer.

- Phil Knight

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose . . . only then will you learn the game.

- Zig Ziglar

If he trips he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes they must be covered. If he sleeps he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good he must be pole-axed.

- Winston Churchill

To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.

- Seth Godin

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning.

- John C. Maxwell

Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.

- Jeff Bezos

You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.

- Gary Keller

By combining broadband Internet, phone and video services over a single cable line, we are taking a major step towards implementing future integrated data, voice and video telecommunications on a mass market scale.

- John Chambers

The Cult of Done Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog: 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more.

- Seth Godin

Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.

- Zig Ziglar

The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?

- Mark Zuckerberg

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

- Dale Carnegie

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

- Joel Olsteen

Yes, I think it’s okay to abandon the big, established, stuck tribe. It’s okay to say to them, “You’re not going where I need to go, and there’s no way I’m going to persuade all of you to follow me. So rather than standing here watching the opportunities fade away, I’m heading off. I’m betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me.

- Seth Godin

They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people have their say” so that they could buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.

- James C. Collins

Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.

- Og Mandino

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

- Seth Godin

Every time I find myself stressed out, it’s because I do things primarily driven by growth.

- Timothy Ferriss

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

- Elon Musk

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.What makes someone an artist? I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

- Seth Godin

In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s lonely at the top, so you had better take someone with you…and it’s lonely at the top, so you had better know why you are there.

- Napoleon Hill

I like winning. There’s also a certain joy in it. I feel fulfilled by it.

- Carl Icahn

I believe Success is achieved by ordinary people with Extraordinary Determination.

- Zig Ziglar

I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation…I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire.

- Oprah Winfrey

As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.

- Reid Hoffman

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.

- Walt Disney

I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.

- Elon Musk

That’s the goal, isn’t it? For every crack to be filled with your ideas and innovations and creativity? The only way to achieve this, though, is to be prepared for many of them to fail, to land on pavement, to be perfect yet cease to grow. We can cry about these failures, but that will lead us to hold back on the next idea. Or we can celebrate them, realizing that it’s proof that we’re being promiscuous in our shipping, putting the best work we can into the world, regardless of whether this particular idea actually works. When was the last time you set out to be promiscuous in your failures?

- Seth Godin

Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.

- Winston Churchill

We want Google to be the third half of your brain.

- Sergey Brin

God, You said Your favor is not for a season but for a lifetime.

- Joel Olsteen

Well I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

- Richard Branson

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

- Dale Carnegie

I was hooked and I would make reward and recognition one of my primary focuses as a leader

- David Novak

I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

- Elon Musk

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

- Abraham Lincoln

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

- Elon Musk

Unemployment in America today is too high. And part of the reason, unfortunately, is that many companies cannot fill the high-skilled jobs increasingly at risk of going overseas.

- Michael Bloomberg

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 right quote can inspire people to change their ways.

- Zig Ziglar

The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.

- Bill Gates

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

- Jeff Bezos

One of the things that I’m really proud of is that I have really good timing. It’s very easy for me to see what’s coming up and it’s no coincidence that I went headfirst into wine and then headfirst into new media – none at all.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I’d do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.

- Steve Martin

People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.

- Jack Welch

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.

- Ralph Lauren

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

- Napoleon Hill

Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team.

- James C. Collins

Eroom’s law—that’s Moore’s law backward—observes that the number of new drugs approved per billion dollars spent on R&D has halved every nine years since 1950.

- Peter Thiel

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

- John C. Maxwell

Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.

- Seth Godin

In philosophy, politics, and business, too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.

- Peter Thiel

The warrior mentality, the very fight to survive, is truly what created our culture.

- Herb Kelleher

Like fire across the galaxy the Clone Wars spread. In league with the wicked Count Dooku, more and more planets slip. Against this threat, upon the Jedi Knights falls the duty to lead the newly formed army of the Republic. And as the heat of war grows, so, to, grows the prowess of one most gifted student of the Force.

- Yoda

India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.

- Bill Gates

To all of us comes that moment in life when we are literally tapped on the shoulder to do a very special thing unique to ourselves and our talents. What a pity if that moment finds us unprepared.

- Winston Churchill

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