The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.
- Elon Musk
Notable Quotables
You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
- Jack Welch
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
I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.
- Jack Ma
The Obama representatives like Robert Gibbs attack people viciously, but people like me will not be silent and will answer them back.
- Donald Trump
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
There is nothing in this world that can compare with the Christian fellowship, nothing that can satisfy but Christ.
- John D. Rockefeller
Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
- Timothy Ferriss
Don’t interrupt me while I’m interrupting.
- Winston Churchill
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
- Harvey Mackay
[On a small business class taught at university by Frank Shallenberger] Shallenberger started by defining the type of person who was an entrepreneur, and I realized he was talking to me.
- Phil Knight
The fact is, everyone is in sales.
- Jay Abraham
We got so much better so quickly it was hard to believe. We totally stood Kmart off in those small towns of ours. Almost from the beginning, they weren’t very successful at taking our customers away in Jeff City and Poplar Bluff. Once Kmart arrived, we worked even harder at pleasing our customers, and they stayed loyal. This gave us a great surge of confidence in ourselves. But at that time our sales were 5 percent of Kmart’s. (through competition) Wal-Mart has lowered the gross margin in retailing from around 35 percent in the early 60s to only 22 percent today.
- Sam Walton
Ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman cohabited first.
- Winston Churchill
We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.
- Seth Godin
People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be.
- Harvey Mackay
I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like ‘Letterman’ and ‘The View,’ and I’ve heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven’t felt any negativity toward me or my music.
- Steve Martin
Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
- Napoleon Hill
We have a very wide range of content, but the brand-newest movies, what’s happening with those is a $30 pay-per-view option – not from Netflix but from DirecTV and others – of movies that are in the theater.
- Reed Hastings
Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success.
- Zig Ziglar
I built a conglomerate and emerged the richest black man in the world in 2008 but it didn’t happen overnight, it took me 30 years.
- Aliko Dangote
You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.
- Jack Welch
Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
The missing ingredient for nearly all of the 1,000-plus clients I have worked with directly to improve their businesses is pigheaded discipline and determination. We all get good ideas at seminars and from books, radio talk shows and business-building gurus. The problem is that most companies do not know how to identify and adapt the best ideas to their businesses. Implementation, not ideas, is the key to real success.
- Chet Holmes
Value is achieved primarily through frontline employees who are satisfied, loyal, and productive, in part because of the high degree of capability they possess to deliver results to customers
- Service Profit Chain
We were trading things before we were using language to communicate.
- Jack Dorsey
The culture was strong enough to transcend the original company.
- Peter Thiel
Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he’s hired to do.
- Malcolm Forbes
When SAP, and, specifically Hasso Plattner, said they’re going to build this in-memory database and compete with Oracle, I said. God, get me the name of that pharmacist, they must be on drugs.
- Larry Ellison
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
- Seth Godin
At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.
- Seth Godin
I’m an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.
- Bill Gates
I’ve already figured out when I’m going to be No. 2 and No. 1.
- Sheldon Adelson
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill
Small businesses don’t exist without the nucleus.
- Bryan Smith
You always have to give something when you get something.
- Jack Nadel
Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.
- Winston Churchill
That’s just $30 for two tickets. Racing is a family sport and we strive to make our tickets affordable for any families that want to come watch a race.
- Ed Clark
Among the world’s 500 largest companies, not one has completely relied on its own growth to develop.
- Wang Jianlin
One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a deep dive. It’s spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference…one that looks like it would be fun, and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it meddling….I followed up on all of them with a passion and a mania that often veered toward the lunatic fringe…To make the initiatives work, it took a passionate all-consuming commitment from the top. Beyond passion, there was alot of rigor…Making initiates successful is all about focus and passionate commitment. The drumbeat must be relentlessness. Every leadership action must demonstrate total committment to the initiative….I was an outrageous champion of everything that we did from our early need to face reality and change the culture to our major initiatives that reshaped the company. Whenever I had an idea or message that I wanted to drive into the organization, I could never say it enough. I repeated it over and over, at every meeting and review for years, until I could almost gag on the words.
- Jack Welch
Growth inside fuels growth outside.
- John C. Maxwell
The goal is to be able to live your life the way Michael Jordan played basketball, or Marvin Gaye sang a song. To be able to feel the way you feel when you laugh at a joke, but to feel that way all the time.
- Russell Simmons
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
Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.
- Paula Poundstone
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
If you run a corporation, your job is to maximize the return on investment for your investors. Good for you. But by the same token, we have to remember that corporations have no compassion. That’s why legislation and regulations are necessary.
- Russell Simmons
The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world.
- Bill Gates
We were comfortable with first-quarter results.
- John Chambers
Once a decision is made…problems have to be solved.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Did you eat half an Oreo cookie? No problem. If you’re a 220-pound male, you just need to climb 27 flights of stairs to burn it off.
- Timothy Ferriss
Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie until you can find a rock.
- Will Rogers
Maintaining a consistent platform also helps improve product support – a significant problem in the software industry.
- Bill Gates
They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.
- Larry Ellison
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.
- Timothy Ferriss
In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn’t been the case for teaching.
- Bill Gates
The seed of a bamboo tree is planted, fertilized and watered. Nothing happens for the first year. There´s no sign of growth. Not even a hint. The same thing happens – or doesn´t happen – the second year. And then the third year. The tree is carefully watered and fertilized each year, but nothing shows. No growth. No anything. For eight years it can continue. Eight years! Then – after the eight years of fertilizing and watering have passed, with nothing to show for it – the bamboo tree suddently sprouts and grows thirty feet in three months!
- Zig Ziglar
mean that you can’t do anything else but pray. But it does mean that you are always ready and willing to go before God with any concern or praise. Nothing is too small or too big for prayer. Prayer is simply opening your heart and connecting with God. It’s taking His promises and applying them to your life. Prayer processes the plan of God. You should bathe your life in prayer. Pray for wisdom, peace, and patience. Pray for your relationships, your job, and your children. Pray for your country and leaders. Pray with others, knowing that when two or more are gathered in His name, He is there.
- Joel Olsteen
We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these non-millionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?
- The Millionaire Next Door
I think the currency of leadership is transparency. You’ve got to be truthful. I don’t think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where you’ve got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who you are, and not be afraid of it.
- Howard Schultz
Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.
- Zig Ziglar
Your real boss is the one who walks around under your hat.
- Napoleon Hill
There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.
- Warren Buffett
A man who succeeds in life must sometimes go against the current.
- Ron Chernow
I know something about how to build constituencies in an independent way.
- Michael Bloomberg
Most people have ‘one way’ brains—they acquire information and do nothing. Guerillas have ‘two way’ brains—they obtain relevant information and act on it.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
- Peter Thiel
What has changed is that people have stopped working together.
- Michael Bloomberg
The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know.
- Seth Godin
They have destroyed your weapons,but these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.
- Winston Churchill
This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.
- Clayton M. Christensen
A half-billion-dollar subsidy was unthinkable in the mid-2000s. It’s unthinkable today. There was only one moment where that was possible, and Tesla played it perfectly.
-
If you and I go around grumbling about ingratitude, who is to blame? Is it human nature—or is it our ignorance of human nature? Let’s not expect gratitude. Then, if we get some occasionally, it will come as a delightful surprise. If we don’t get it, we won’t be disturbed. Here is the first point I am trying to make in this chapter: It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches.
- Dale Carnegie
Accessible design is good design.
- Steve Ballmer
We are pleased to look back at another extremely successful financial year 2014 during which we achieved our targets.
- Elmar Degenhart
If you believe as I do that you were born to win, you’re going to have to find your fears and start facing them.
- Zig Ziglar
Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
- Steve Jobs
Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right.
- Dale Carnegie
My priorities are; Family, Church, Business.
- Terry Fischer
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
You can’t move people to action unless you first move them with emotion. The heart comes before the head…to lead yourself use your head, to lead others use your heart.
- John Maxwell
Establish a core value that drives the business and helps promote it in perpetuity.
- Ben Horowitz
THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR – One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Just learn from the guys who have already done it well. You need a mentor, a seasoned coach who is willing to share his wisdom and experience with you. Ask someone who has already been successful to guide you.
- George Foreman
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.
- Matthew 7:12
The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
He has always been like this. His mind works ten times faster than everybody’s else’s. I mean he just gets going and stays two or three jumps ahead, and he’s quick to go with what’s on his mind. If he gets something in his mind that needs to be done – regardless of what else might have been planned – the new idea takes priority, and it has to be done now. Everybody has their angenda already scheduled, and then bang! He just calls a meeting on something. (on CEO leadership and management with speed)
- Loretta Boss Parker
Foreplay, cuddling – a Jedi craves not these things.
- Yoda
Leadership is not dictatorship
- Tony Hsieh
Leadership is hard to train on.
- Ben Horowitz
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
I get energy from one-on-one conversations most often, and I lose energy from group conversations most often.
- Reid Hoffman
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.
- Zig Ziglar
My favorite writers are all Jews – David, Solomon, Matthew, Mark – well, you get the picture.
- Zig Ziglar
Our leaders in business, politics, research, and the arts are all great salespeople or they have great sales people on their payroll.
- Jerry Vass
if you want to keep happiness , you have to share it !
- Dale Carnegie
You can’t worry about the mistakes, because you’re going to make a lot of them. You’ve got to be thinking about your next move.
- Ben Horowitz
People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
- Peter Thiel
