The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
How many companies have you encountered that articulate a clear ideology at the start of the company, yet cannot articulate a clear idea of what products to make?
- James C. Collins
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
- Seth Godin
I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.
- Joel Olsteen
If we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes, we will never invest in things that are radical.
- Jeff Clavier
By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check.
- Ben Horowitz
We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.
- Seth Godin
Satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels.
- Rupert Murdoch
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
- Bill Cosby
Rockefeller never clarified why he dropped out of high school around May 1855, just 2 months shy of commencement, excercises on July 16…
- Ron Chernow
Diversification does not mean that we have lost confidence in the long term prospects of the property market. Just the contrary is true.One year after the hand-over of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, the people in Hong Kong and around the world have witnessed the successful implementation of the ‘One Country, Two System.’
- Cheng Yu-tung
I believe we are in at least a two-quarter slowdown.
- John Chambers
Always keep your eyes open for people with potential.
- Napoleon Hill
A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know—if anybody does. He said: About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life—and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centered desires.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m not in business to make money for the other guy. I’m in the business to make money for myself.
- Sheldon Adelson
If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.
- Jack Welch
Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.
- Bill Gates
Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs.
- The Millionaire Next Door
Nothing remains permanent in the world, change is just the eternal fact.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The real benefit of having goals is what you become by reaching them.
- Zig Ziglar
Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.
- Elon Musk
It’s my view that solar energy may be the ultimate solution for energy for most of the world. I believe, based on what little I know about it, that there is a possibility of a breakthrough.
- Donald Bren
Making it good at scale means admitting that it must be different and embracing the changes that you’ll need to make to keep things from falling apart.
- Ben Horowitz
It would be nice to design a real briefcase – you open it up and it’s your computer but it also stores your books.
- Steve Wozniak
Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.
- Bill Gates
When Ford sells a car, a dealer isn’t allowed to take out the engine and put a different one in. When a newsstand sells the Washington Post, no one can go to the newsstand and pay them to rip out the classified section and put their own classified section in – if they could, they would do so.
- Bill Gates
Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
- Thomas J Stanley
We survive the market volatility and political changes. We cater for the actual need of the people and keep pace with the country.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Nobody walks this earth thinking he’s better than I think I am – I think I’m great. At the same time, it’s so obvious to me that I’m nobody.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible.
- Larry Ellison
But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill
I think part of the reason we’re successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.
- Larry Page
We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.
- Steve Jobs
We see no major changes in that model for the next several years. In fact, we are more optimistic about Cisco’s position and opportunities in both the enterprise and service provider markets than at any point in the last several years.
- John Chambers
If I had to do it over again, I would have done the same but earlier. It is never too early to start something. The sooner you begin, the sooner you get your experience.
- Warren Buffett
Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.
- Napoleon Hill
If values do not affect daily life, they are not values.
- Marty St. George
In the 1950s, people welcomed big plans and asked whether they would work. Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris. You can still visit the Bay Model in that Sausalito warehouse, but today it’s just a tourist attraction: big plans for the future have become archaic curiosities.
- Peter Thiel
Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.
- Dale Carnegie
How you see your future is much more important than what happened in your past.
- Zig Ziglar
A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
- Winston Churchill
From age 16, I lived and breathed wine. I read every magazine and book about wine.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
- Warren Buffett
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
- Bill Gates
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
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
- Bill Gates
e liked to call them idiots for making it too expensive. Well, one megabyte of RAM back then cost 10,000 of today’s dollars. He made a cheap one — but what he did was he made a really weak, lousy computer, to tell you truth, in the Macintosh, and still at a fairly high price. He made it by cutting the RAM down, by forcing you to swap disks here and there. It was a lousy product. Every time we improved the Macintosh, year by year by year, it got closer to what the Lisa had been.
- Steve Wozniak
There is no such thing as Something for nothing.
- Napoleon Hill
People say the most important thing is building a world-class team.
- Ben Horowitz
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
don’t talk about the way you are. Talk about the way you want to be.
- Joel Olsteen
An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, “If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea.” Churchill’s response, “Ma’am if you were my wife I would drink it.
- Winston Churchill
If you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.
- David Nilssen
An employer has no business with a man’s personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance, and nothing else. Any attempt by an employer to go beyond this is usurpation. It is an immoral as well as illegal intrusion of privacy.
- Peter Drucker
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
- Bill Gates
Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
- Oprah Winfrey
I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread
- Mitch Hedberg
I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.
- Joel Olsteen
Good policies without the right people will achieve nothing.
- Aliko Dangote
Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.
- Seth Godin
With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence?
- Timothy Ferriss
The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
- Winston Churchill
We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.
- Tadashi Yanai
There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
- Timothy Ferriss
When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.
- Joel Olsteen
When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside.
- Joel Olsteen
A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your people know what they’re doing.
- Michael Gerber
Creating value is not enough—you also need to capture some of the value you create.
- Peter Thiel
I would hope that , where possible, the newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is some news that does more harm than good. The risk is that it threatens the commercial or industrial interests of our country.
- Serge Dassault
You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.
- Seth Godin
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I’ve learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that’s what kids are playing. That’s what people are talking about.
- Bill Gates
There’s this great quote…which says ‘The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.’
- Jack Dorsey
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
- Ben Horowitz
Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you’re not called to do it, you’re dividing the audience you’re trying to reach.
- Joel Olsteen
Broadcast TV is like the landline of 20 years ago.
- Reed Hastings
So to hype up PolyGram we placed fake orders for the record into their system by telling retailers and wholesalers to order the 12 inch through PolyGram. PolyGram didn’t own it yet, but we created an appetite for Christmas Rappin that led them to buy it…So in the fall of 1979 Kurtis Blow signed with Mercury Records a division of Polygram Records, making him the first rapper on a major label…Christmas eve 1979 was the first time that I heard Christmas Rappin’ on the radio; I was upstairs at my family’s house. Frankie Crocker the biggest radio DJ in New York played it on WBLS.
- Russell Simmons
If you cannot save money, then the seeds of greatness are not in you.
- Brian Tracy
Growth inside fuels growth outside.
- John C. Maxwell
Ethical decisions ensure that everyone’s best interests are protected. When in doubt, don’t.
- Harvey Mackay
I have the courage to surround myself with people who are smarter than me.
- Andrew Carnegie
Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That’s success.
- Zig Ziglar
A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose, a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.
- John C. Maxwell
You have to get lost in the woods of your own doing and discover a way out. You have to find the right path over the creek, under the rock-whatever mechanism is good for your body’s size and your stride and your cadence and your tolerance for wet or cold or humid weather. That kind of learning comes from having a tolerance for failure, and extracting lessons from your failures.
- Marc Ecko
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.
- Joel Olsteen
[In January 2011] I think Twitter is so unique that we must stay independent.
- Jack Dorsey
Your list is like a garden, tend it well.
- Michael Levine
I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
- Steve Martin
Maybe I was accepted to Harvard only because of my tennis skills, since I definitively had no great academic achievements. I was 17 and only thought about surfing and playing tennis. I had almost never left Rio de Janeiro and had never been to the United States.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
I really don’t think in the past. I sit down with many friends at dinner, and they like to talk about the good old days. I’m respectful of the good old days, but I find myself spending very little time reminiscing. I’m really looking forward.
- Donald Bren
On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you’re doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you’re mediocre. You’re free to contribute.
- Seth Godin
Hong Kong has remained a strong financial centre. It has a solid business environment and geographically, it is well located, being next to China. During this time, there is no city that can match it.
- Lee Shau Kee
If there’s a problem, we at Wine Library never tell ourselves that once we handle this issue, we’ll never have to deal with the person again. We talk to every single person as though we’re going to wind up sitting next to that person at his or her mother’s house that night for dinner.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I got into this habit by attempting to contact celebrities and famous businesspeople for advice.
- Timothy Ferriss
I predict at least one of the rookie drivers will win a race this year. With this strong of a group, two or three of them will likely win.
- Ed Clark
In Russia, or anywhere, people don’t like rich people. Yeah, OK, I have money, but the question is how I use it. It’s not easy, believe me; it’s not easy.
- Viktor Vekselberg
Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof when your own doorstep is unclean.
- Confucius
When you network, your aim is to meet people who are going places in their lives. You want to meet people who are ahead of you in their careers and in their organizations. You want to meet people you can look up to with pride. You want to meet people who can be friends, guides and mentors.
- Brian Tracy
An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.
- George Soros
Spare the conquered and confront the proud.
- Winston Churchill
The Group has always adhered to prudent financial management principles.
- Lee Shau Kee
