Notable Quotables

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

Winning isn’t everything but wanting to win is.

- Zig Ziglar

Hong Kong is a good fashion city. The interest is enormous. There’s good potential in the Asian market.

- Stefan Persson

I come back to the same thing: We’ve got the greatest pipeline in the company’s history in the next 12 months, and we’ve had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we’re predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year ’06.

- Steve Ballmer

I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.

- Walt Disney

It is expected that Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation will materialise in the near future and the country will see further growth in its economy unfolding at a faster pace.

- Lee Shau Kee

If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth

- Ray Kroc

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

- Bill Gates

Nations that went down fighting rose again, but those who surrendered tamely were finished.

- Winston Churchill

I’m skeptical that the novel will be ‘re-invented.’

- Jeff Bezos

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

- Elon Musk

I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread

- Mitch Hedberg

Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.

- Ben Horowitz

It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.

- Winston Churchill

Insulation prevents you from making the change and finding the understanding you set out to achieve in the first place.

- Seth Godin

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

- Warren Buffett

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

- Andrew Carnegie

Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets, the wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

- Winston Churchill

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

- Walt Disney

We’ve been trained to prefer being right to learning something, to prefer passing the test to making a difference, and most of all, to prefer fitting in with the right people, the people with economic power. Now it’s your turn to stand up and stand out.

- Seth Godin

Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.

- Warren Buffett

I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.

- Warren Buffett

God, I’m not going to look at what I don’t have. I’m looking unto you. I know in my weakness, you show up the strongest.

- Joel Olsteen

Don’t treat your customers like a bunch of purses and wallets.

- Chris Brogan

Most people believe that results matter. The idea that results matter is one that you have to keep letting go of. And most of the time, I believe it.

- Russell Simmons

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.

- Seth Godin

Abundance and scarcity In a society where value is created by the manufacture of goods or the allocation of limited resources, it’s not a surprise that organizations seek scarcity. We hesitate to share, because if I give you this, then I don’t have it any more. We erect barriers and create rules to make it difficult for some people to have access to these limited resources. While we don’t set out to become miserly, it’s an economic instinct, because what’s yours is no long mine. Even though we give lip service to sharing when kids show up for kindergarten classes, most of school is organized around the same ideas. We rank students, we cut players from the roster, we grade on a curve. Success, we teach, is scarce. Our new economy, though, is based on abundance, the abundance that comes from ideas and access. If I benefit when everyone knows my idea, then the more people I give the idea to, the better we all do. If I benefit when I earn a reputation leading, connecting and creating positive change, then I’ll benefit if I can offer these insights to anyone who can benefit from them. With an abundance mindset, we intentionally create goods that can be shared. It’s not based on our traditional factory-based economy, but it works now (in fact, it’s just about all that works)… engaging with the mesh, building communities that benefit from sharing resources instead of destroying them is a strategy that scales. With an abundance mindset, we create ideas and services that do better when people share.

- Seth Godin

Your people give their days (and sometimes their nights) to you. They give their hands, brains, and hearts. Sure, the company pays them. It fills their wallets. But as a leader, you need to fill their souls. You can do that by getting in their skin, by giving the work meaning, by clearing obstacles, and by demonstrating the generosity gene. And you can do it, perhaps most powerfully, by creating an environment that’s exciting and enjoyable.

- Jack Welch

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

- Ben Horowitz

The Internet revolution will determine which companies survive and which get left behind, … Increasingly, the Internet is recognized as the key driver in our global economy.

- John Chambers

God can do in a split second what might otherwise take you many years.

- Joel Olsteen

Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away.

- Napoleon Hill

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

Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. The amount of time you spend on the PC in the browser is just going to grow continuously.

- Reed Hastings

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

- Bill Gates

I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn’t get off the ground.

- Herb Kelleher

What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.

- Zig Ziglar

There is no accountability today… no willingness to focus on big ideas.

- Michael Bloomberg

He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.

- Thomas Edison

In life and in business, you need to be good-hearted and trustworthy, and to have integrity. This is the way to build long-term relationships. It is also important to be optimistic and to look at challenges as opportunities.

- Henry Sy

In view of the good progress made in respect of negotiations relating to Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation and the boost in local economic activities deriving from the emergence of the new economy, a great number of technology-related and international institutions have established and expanded their businesses in Hong Kong, bringing about substantial increases both in rentals as well as capital values for prime office properties and luxury residential properties.

- Lee Shau Kee

What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question, and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at the very least handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open as they will. Read on from the first sentence that turns the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

- Winston Churchill

Restructuring a job usually means restructuring a score of jobs, moving people around, and upsetting everybody. There is one exception: the exceedingly rare, truly exceptional man for whose sake the rule should be broken.

- Peter Drucker

Puffery makes you look weak and not very bright. Representation makes you look strong and smart.

- Jerry Vass

I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen.

- Russell Simmons

Well, we’re about 24 million subscribers today, and that’s up from about 15 million a year ago, so it’s a very high rate of growth, and that’s what’s exciting about the business – more and more people are getting smart TVs, they’re watching Netflix on their iPads.

- Reed Hastings

If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.

- Bill Gates

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.

- Winston Churchill

Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.

- Peter Thiel

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

- Bill Gates

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

- Winston Churchill

People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

- Timothy Ferriss

The key to high-quality communication is trust, and it’s hard to trust somebody that you don’t know.

- Ben Horowitz

We are focusing on the increasing need for mobility and growing demand from our industrial customers. The production volume for vehicles weighing up to six tons is expected to rise to between 100 million and 105 million vehicles. Furthermore, installation of electronics and software will continue to grow substantially, driven by growing demands from end-users and increasingly strict legal requirements for safety and energy consumption. It is partly on this basis that we are aiming for profitable sales of over €50 billion in 2020.

- Elmar Degenhart

I have never met a geologist or leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change.

- Gina Rinehart

The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as ‘What’s that?’ There’s something very compelling about it to certain people; that’s the way I was; that’s the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.

- Steve Martin

Heretics must believe. More than anyone else in an organization, it’s the person who’s challenging the status quo, the one who is daring to be great, who is truly present and not just punching a clock who must have confidence in her beliefs.Can you imagine Steve Jobs showing up for the paycheck? It’s nice to get paid. It’s essential to believe.

- Seth Godin

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he’s got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

- Bill Gates

This first time through has been hectic, but I expect it to be more stream-lined next year.

- Jack Taylor

The main cause of depression is traceable directly to the world-wide habit of trying to REAP without sowing.

- Napoleon Hill

I mean, there’s no arguing. There is no anything. There is no beating around the bush. ‘You’re fired’ is a very strong term.

- Donald Trump

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

- Winston Churchill

A record isn’t like a movie – you can get it together pretty fast.

- Steve Martin

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

I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, ‘Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,’ and he would high-five me and say, ‘Way to go.’

- Sara Blakely

Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.

- Donald Trump

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

- Jack Welch

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.

- Winston Churchill

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

- Joel Olsteen

Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.

- Dale Carnegie

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

- Seth Godin

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

- David Ogilvy

I’ll mix a lot of things. I’ll wear a Temperley dress with flip flops, or I might be in head-to-toe Gucci and have on a ring that I got from a gumball machine for 50 cents.

- Sara Blakely

I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to be Bruce Lee.

- Jack Dorsey

Create a vision and personalize it. People need to say, I understand it, I’m excited about it, and I can make it happen.

- David Novak

The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.

- Seth Godin

Much to learn you still have…my old padawan… This is just the beginning!

- Yoda

If you learn late, you pass it on to people so they can learn early. It’s a step process.

- Russell Simmons

When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would’ve had a chance. Because that’s where my real heart was.

- Steve Martin

Sooner or later, you will see a China-based company that really has a global impact, and I think Baidu has a chance to become one of those companies. We should be able to compete on a global basis.

- Robin Li

There’s this myth that has been exacerbated by others that Starbucks means a $4 cup of coffee, which is not true.

- Howard Schultz

You know, in Saudi Arabia, there is a body of 40 people – 34 people exactly, that once the succession comes, they will meet and they will elect a king in there.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

The real question for me is, do people have the tools that they need in order to make those decisions well? And I think that it’s actually really important that Facebook continually makes it easier and easier to make those decisions… If people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them.

- Mark Zuckerberg

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