Notable Quotables

If you want a successful business, your people must feel that you are working for them—not that they are working for you.

- Sam Walton

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

- Richard Branson

Dear Sir: My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to a rapidly growing bank like yours. In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all phases of banking including depositor relations, credits, loans and administration. I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals. Sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

A penguin cannot become a giraffe, so just be the best penguin you can be.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Every sale has 5 basic obstacles: need, money, hurry, desire, trust.

- Zig Ziglar

I have always believed that if we do well, we must also do something to help others in society.

- Henry Sy

Sunseeker is well placed to take full advantage of opportunities in China, one of the world’s fastest growing luxury yacht markets.

- Wang Jianlin

Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

- Bill Gates

I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat.

- Winston Churchill

E – Edge, ability to make tough yes and no decisions

- Jack Welch

In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there’s such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.

- Bill Gates

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.

- Peter Drucker

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

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away, it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later.

- Peter Thiel

Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases.

- Dale Carnegie

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.

- Bill Gates

You may be sitting around waiting for God to change your circumstances. Then you’re going to be happy, then your’re going to have a good attitude, then you’re going to give God praise. But God is waiting on you to get up on the inside. When you do your part, He’ll begin to change things and work supernaturally in your life.

- Joel Olsteen

Let’s find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. …When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book The Origin Of Species he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.

- Dale Carnegie

It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.

- Joel Olsteen

Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage.

- Zig Ziglar

I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.

- Larry Ellison

On this basis, we intend to increase the dividend for the third time in a row. We are proposing a distribution of €3.25 per share, corresponding to a dividend payout ratio of 27.4 percent, which is again up slightly on the previous year’s level.

- Elmar Degenhart

Whenever a company proudly announces the establishment of its beautiful, new, modern corporate headquarters, you can be sure it’s heading downhill. Why? Because instead of focusing on their business, the company’s managers are focusing on themselves. Messy desks, cramped quarters and unlovely surroundings are the physical manifestations of people too busy getting the work done to care much about their own creature comforts. The greatest danger to a business is not risk. It’s a lack of risk: complacency.

- Harvey Mackay

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.

- Bill Gates

Desire is what takes the hot water of mediocrity and turns it into the steam of outstanding success.

- Zig Ziglar

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 too 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 too 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

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

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.

- Bill Gates

A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

- Peter Thiel

It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.

- Elon Musk

The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

- Henry Ford

That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity. —BERYL MARKHAM, West with the Night1

- James C. Collins

Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

- Sam Walton

The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.

- Ben Horowitz

I first thought maybe I’d do a banjo presentation record, where I’d play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.

- Steve Martin

The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.

- Og Mandino

Lots of people will give you advice… and depending upon how well they know you, the advice might be valid or not so valid.

- Abigail Johnson

An enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.

- Zig Ziglar

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

- Bill Gates

You have no ability, if you’re a financial institution and you’re threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.

- Warren Buffett

Demand is best measured in terms of spending. You know, I think in traditional economics, it’s a mistake to measure it in terms of the quantity of goods.

- Ray Dalio

If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.

- Richard Branson

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

The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.

- Bill Gates

Your first projects aren’t the greatest things in the world, and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere, but that is how you learn – you put so much effort into making something right if it is for yourself.

- Steve Wozniak

Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.

- Dale Carnegie

If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

Our minds were freewheeling. We rushed to get things done.

- Sam Walton

Changes that used to occur over quarters are literally occurring over months.

- John Chambers

To my mind the old masters are not art, their value is in their scarcity.

- Thomas Edison

Most of the reason we don’t do things is because we’re afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not going to do things in my life because of fear.

- Sara Blakely

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. That would be you.

- Seth Godin

Checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized.

- Atul Gawande

I don’t want people in China to have deep pockets but shallow minds.

- Jack Ma

Your first mistake might be assuming that people are rational.Your second mistake could be assuming that people are eager for change.And the marketer’s third mistake is assuming that once someone knows things the way you know them, they will choose what you chose.

- Seth Godin

I am upset with the effect that both of these issues have had on the public,

- Michael Gerber

Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.

- George Soros

It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players. A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.

- Steve Jobs

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

- John C. Maxwell

Ally yourself with a group of as many people as you may need for the creation and carrying out of your plan or plans for the accumulation of money…Compliance with this instruction is absolutely essential. Do not neglect it.

- Napoleon Hill

A magnificent blueprint, a loyal team and a well-coordinated organization… the same applies from ruling a country to maintaining a family.

- Cheng Yu-tung

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

- Thomas Edison

In the middle of that process four power plants just tripped off all at once in unison.

- Ed Clark

In 20 years from now we will all be able to click and watch TV.

- Reed Hastings

The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive. When I was managing thousands of people at Hewlett-Packard after the sale of Opsware, there was an incredible number of incoming demands on my time. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Little companies wanted to partner with me or sell themselves to me, people in my organization needed approvals, other business units needed my help, customers wanted my attention, and so forth. As a result, I spent most of my time optimizing and tuning the existing business. Most of the work that I did was “incoming.” In fact, most skilled big company executives will tell you that if you have more than three new initiatives in a quarter, you are trying to do too much. As a result, big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup executive, nothing happens unless you make it happen. In the early days of a company, you have to take eight to ten new initiatives a day or the company will stand still. There is no inertia that’s putting the company in motion. Without massive input from you, the company will stay at rest.

- Ben Horowitz

Real leaders don’t care [about receiving credit]. If it’s about your mission, about spreading the faith, about seeing something happen, not only do you not care about credit, you actually want other people to take credit…There’s no record of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi whining about credit. Credit isn’t the point. Change is.

- Seth Godin

That’s one of the nice things. I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich. So if I need $600 million, I can put $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage. I must tell you, that’s a huge advantage over the other candidates.

- Donald Trump

Allow yourself to get on the same side of the desk and solve the problems together.

- Jack Nadel

There’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives.

- Tony Dungy

If you’re a person struggling to eat and stay healthy, you might have heard about Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali, but you’ll never have heard of Bill Gates.

- Bill Gates

I find that I have about six bloggable ideas a day. I also find that writing twice as long a post doesn’t increase communication, it usually decreases it. And finally, I found that people get antsy if there are unread posts in their queue.

- Seth Godin

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

- Bill Gates

I don’t know what would have happened to Wal-Mart if we had laid low and never stirred up the competition. My guess is that we would have remained a strictly regional operator.

- Sam Walton

There is no business in America that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions.

- Michael Bloomberg

Doughnuts are a normal part of a healthy, balanced diet.

- Brooke Smith

Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.

- Peter Thiel

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

- John C. Maxwell

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

- Walt Disney

An optimist understands that life can be a bumpy road, but at least it is leading somewhere. They learn from mistakes and failures, and are not afraid to fail again.

- Harvey Mackay

Throughout the 19th century, when there was a laissez-faire mentality and insufficient regulation, you had one crisis after another. Each crisis brought about some reform. That is how central banking developed.

- George Soros

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

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