By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited… The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
China will become the IT (information technology) center of the world. We believe in giving something back and truly becoming a Chinese company.
- John Chambers
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
No, markets weren’t “efficient” at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion—often the wrong conclusion.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work.
- Jack Dorsey
Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. It is a slavish position to get ill, yet we find many a young man, hardly out of his “teens,” running in debt. He meets a chum and says, “Look at this: I have got trusted for a new suit of clothes.” He seems to look upon the clothes as so much given to him; well, it frequently is so, but, if he succeeds in paying and then gets trusted again, he is adopting a habit which will keep him in poverty through life. Debt robs a man of his self-respect, and makes him almost despise himself.
- P.T. Barnum
Failure to deliver on committments is, in the end, unacceptable.
- Jack Welch
Perfect is an illusion, one that was created to maintain the status quo. The Six Sigma charade is largely about hiding from change, because change is never perfect. Change means reinvention, and until something is reinvented, we have no idea what the spec is.
- Seth Godin
Typically, your corporate e-mail account is not, today, that spam-targeted. It’s more the free e-mail accounts that are spam-targeted.
- Bill Gates
I think the move by Mr. Greenspan was welcomed by everyone here.
- Jack Welch
I learned about why startups should train their people when I worked at Netscape. People at McDonald’s get trained for their positions, but people with far more complicated jobs don’t. It makes no sense.
- Ben Horowitz
There’s no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.
- Bill Gates
Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?
- Ray Kroc
If the employees come first, then they’re happy….A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy, so they keep coming back, which pleases the shareholders. It’s not one of the enduring green mysteries of all time, it is just the way it works.
- Herb Kelleher
I don’t go down the road of condemning.
- Joel Olsteen
The Arab League tells us to go in and take out Qaddafi. We’ve spent billions of dollars already with respect to the Arab League. Billions of dollars, because they told us to do it. Why aren’t they paying for it? They don’t like Qaddafi, Qaddafi’s been a terrible thorn in their side.
- Donald Trump
If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.
- Thomas J Watson
Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.
- George Soros
Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
- Seth Godin
I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.
- Zig Ziglar
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
- Dale Carnegie
One of the greatest failures to execute is the lack of follow-up. This seems so obvious, yet very few companies place as much emphasis on accountability as they do on figuring what they want to get done. Steve Reinemund, who was president of Pizza Hut when I was head of marketing there, is the best I’ve ever seen on this front. He always carried a three-by-five note card in his shirt pocket. When saw something that needed to be done, he’d pull out the card and write it down. Like everyone else who witnessed this, I quickly realized that I had better write down the same things because he’d surely be on me until they got done. Steve got results everywhere he went, whether it was as president of Pizzas Hut or Frito-Lay or chairman of PepsiCo, because he made a point of following up. People often lose track of what they’ve talked about in meetings of what they promised to do, but when you write it down, you won’t forget it.
- David Novak
There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.
- James C. Collins
Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.
- P.T. Barnum
I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I’d have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.
- Sara Blakely
Hong Kong is a good fashion city. The interest is enormous. There’s good potential in the Asian market.
- Stefan Persson
Being an Entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death
- Elon Musk
There is a time to provide advice and offer an opinion, and there is a time not to. Don’t be too quick to offer unsolicited advice. It certainly will not endear you to people.
- Harvey Mackay
There was absolutely no consistency to the experience.
- Michael Gerber
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
- Bill Gates
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London
The guerrilla is obsessed with benefits. Whenever offering a product or service, she focuses on how it will benefit the consumer and builds everything—the product, the delivery, the marketing—around that benefit.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.
- John D. Rockefeller
A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.
- Winston Churchill
If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you—like a fever.
- Sam Walton
I think one of the great dangers here is going and categorizing anybody from one religion as a terrorist. That’s not true… That would let the terrorists win. That’s what they want us to do.
- Michael Bloomberg
Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.
- Ben Horowitz
I taught myself how to program.
- Jack Dorsey
The New Rich ( NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.
- Timothy Ferriss
The Group has always adhered to prudent financial management principles.
- Lee Shau Kee
You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Like technical debt, management debt comes in too many different forms to elaborate entirely, but a few salient examples will help explain the concept. Here are three of the more popular types among startups: 1. Putting two in the box 2. Overcompensating a key employee, because she gets another job offer 3. No performance management or employee feedback process
- Ben Horowitz
Well, sometimes you just don’t like somebody.
- Henry Ford
If I’m in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what’s possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that’s a valuable thing.
- Ben Horowitz
There are no rules here — we’re trying to accomplish something.
- Thomas Edison
Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.
- Howard Schultz
President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.
- Harold Hamm
Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.
- George Soros
Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
- Dale Carnegie
The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
- Bill Gates
The future of gambling is as an entertainment business.
- Lui Che Woo
Culture drives great results.
- Jack Welch
Let’s think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it’s okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea… well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.”
- Elon Musk
My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.
- Bill Gates
Checks should be endorsed immediately: FOR DEPOSIT ONLY.
- Robert Kiyosaki
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
Checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized.
- Atul Gawande
If Google Books is successful, others will follow.
- Sergey Brin
I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.
- Seth Godin
Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce, and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card.
- Seth Godin
We saw that a thousand results weren’t necessarily as useful as 10 good ones.
- Sergey Brin
The book ‘Do You!’ is about your inner voice. And when you connect to that voice then you – then the freedom comes. And we’re only here to be happy. So happy makes money. Money doesn’t make happy.
- Russell Simmons
‘We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
- Publilius Syrus
You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.
- Steve Case
I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education.
- Steve Jobs
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
- Peter Drucker
I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
- Warren Buffett
I’ve found reporters, editors, and producers to be an engaging lot overall, naturally curious and ever on the prowl for good stories.
- Michael Levine
I want the services to look and sound like the Grammys. It’s not showy, but we represent God, and it should be first class.
- Joel Olsteen
Your network is your net worth.
- Porter Gale
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
- Walt Disney
It’s important that the company be a family, that people feel that they’re part of the company, and that the company is like a family to them. When you treat people that way, you get better productivity.
- Larry Page
You should know now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, not by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it.
- Carlos Castaneda
We are more fascinated today by statistical predictions of what the country will be thinking in a few weeks’ time than by visionary predictions of what the country will look like 10 or 20 years from now.
- Peter Thiel
India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.
- Winston Churchill
Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
- Bill Gates
I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.
- Dale Carnegie
If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.
- Joel Olsteen
The legacy of Steve Jobs and the strength of Steve Jobs is that he established a company that’s clearly firing on all cylinders and clicking very well.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Increasingly, the Chinese will own a lot more of the world because they will be converting their dollar reserves and U.S. government bonds into real assets.
- George Soros
I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.
- Elon Musk
If it didn’t happen in your life before, then you’re not paying attention you don’t think it’s possible. But almost all important events never happen in your life before.
- Ray Dalio
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
- Albert Einstein
You have to be responsible when you’re running an organization, and firing people who are your friends is part of that responsibility.
- Ben Horowitz
Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.
- James C. Collins
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
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun together.
- Walt Disney
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
Oracle’s got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP’s got nothin’ but SuccessFactors until 2020.
- Larry Ellison
Most of us have never felt at a disadvantage because we did not receive any inheritance. About 80 percent of us are first-generation affluent.
- Thomas J Stanley
The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed.
- Ben Horowitz
It didn’t matter how bleak the situation or how stultifying their mediocrity, they all maintained unwavering faith that they would not just survive, but prevail as a great company. And yet, at the same time, they became relentlessly disciplined at confronting the most brutal facts of their current reality.
- James C. Collins
The power of this new era is simple: if you want to (need to, must!) lead, then you can. It’s easier than ever and we need you. But if this isn’t the right moment, if this isn’t the right cause, then hold off. Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can.
- Seth Godin
You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.
- Andrew Carnegie
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Seneca
Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.
- Warren G. Tracy
