That’s the goal, isn’t it? For every crack to be filled with your ideas and innovations and creativity? The only way to achieve this, though, is to be prepared for many of them to fail, to land on pavement, to be perfect yet cease to grow. We can cry about these failures, but that will lead us to hold back on the next idea. Or we can celebrate them, realizing that it’s proof that we’re being promiscuous in our shipping, putting the best work we can into the world, regardless of whether this particular idea actually works. When was the last time you set out to be promiscuous in your failures?
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.
- Rupert Murdoch
High expectations are the key to everything.
- Sam Walton
By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Yields will rise with prices, and this will generate steady income.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
People are always coming up to me and saying, ‘I heard your dad’s speech, and it’s really great.’ And they’ll mention some place I didn’t even know my dad was going to.
- Bill Gates
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.
- Steve Martin
We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.
- Winston Churchill
In the 1970s, Japan moved into the U.S. turf with its televisions, cars, chips, and steel. But if you think about it, the only business Japan destroyed was the U.S. television industry.
- Fujio Mitarai
Creating content that allows us to share our experiences, thoughts, and ideas in real time is becoming an intrinsic part of life in the twenty-first century.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.
- James C. Collins
Life is too short to be small.
- Benjamin Disraeli
We don’t have the luxury of time. We spend more because of how we live, but it’s important to be with our family and friends.
- Sara Blakely
Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I’d do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.
- Steve Martin
You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.
- Elon Musk
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
My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers. I only started the company when I realized I could be an engineer forever.
- Steve Wozniak
A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.
- Bob Dylan
We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.
- Winston Churchill
It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.
- Winston Churchill
Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.
- Wayne Gretzky
Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.
- Bill Gates
In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don’t have that in the rocket business. There’s no Foxconn in the rocket business.
- Elon Musk
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
This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.
- Winston Churchill
It took thirty-eight years before 50 million people gained access to radios. It took television thirteen years to earn an audience that size. It took Instagram a year and a half.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.
- Ray Dalio
One of More of the Six Basic Fears.
- Napoleon Hill
I kicked but I also hugged.
- Jack Welch
The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That’s why graceful is in such demand.
- Seth Godin
I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.
- Joel Olsteen
Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
When I hung in, he saw character, and that was the end of it. Later, it was funny to watch him hazing other guys the same way – funny after you’d been through the cycle.
- Phil Knight
A business is a complex system of inter-operating systems.
- Robert Kiyosaki
One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.
- Timothy Ferriss
We think of Starbucks not as a coffee company but a media company.
- Howard Schultz
My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.
- Timothy Ferriss
The austerity policies for the mainland property market will remain intact in 2011.
- Lee Shau Kee
Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.
- Ben Horowitz
Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.
- Jack Ma
The Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own.
- Peter Thiel
The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
- Peter Thiel
Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.
- Dale Carnegie
None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone’s help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.
- Harvey Mackay
When completed the new facility will have the capacity to accommodate approximately 3,000 staff.
- John Chambers
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
- Bill Gates
If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
- Sir Isaac Newton
PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.
- Ben Horowitz
We only get to play this game one time…one life.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.
- John C. Maxwell
A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
- Richard Branson
You can’t spend as much money as I have, even if you try. I’ve been trying.
- Larry Ellison
I was about twenty and the Beatles were meditating and I heard about it and they had a center in New York and I came to the center and I learned about it.
- Ray Dalio
God can do in a split second what might otherwise take you many years.
- Joel Olsteen
The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure.
- Seth Godin
We want Google to be the third half of your brain.
- Sergey Brin
Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
- Reid Hoffman
To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.
- Clayton M. Christensen
You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.
- Steven Spielberg
I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.
- Steve Wozniak
Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new.
- Peter Thiel
The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.
- Seth Godin
I am more of a creative person. I recognize that about myself, which is why I hired my weaknesses early on. I think if most founders don’t relinquish some control, then we hold back the development of our companies.
- Sara Blakely
A company can seize extra-ordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations.
- Marcel Herrmann Telles
We are the safest large city in America, but any crime rate is too high.
- Michael Bloomberg
Wrong Selection of Associates in Business
- Napoleon Hill
It’s our faith that activates the power of God.
- Joel Olsteen
Continually get the word out about how you’re handling the situation.
- David Novak
If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something.
- Rupert Murdoch
Lack of Self-Discipline.
- Napoleon Hill
I believe we are in at least a two-quarter slowdown.
- John Chambers
I’m from the country and I like it that way.
- Tracy Byrd
If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.
- Peter Thiel
There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.
- Ray Dalio
Failing is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.
- Zig Ziglar
The hardest thing about starting a company and running a company is, there’s just so many expectations on you, and there are so many people who have things that they want you to do. It’s a lot like life about that.
- Ben Horowitz
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?
- John Wooden
People are chasing cash, not happiness. When you chase money, you’re going to lose. You’re just going to. Even if you get the money, you’re not going to be happy.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
About half of our wives do not work outside the home. The number-one occupation for those wives who do work is teacher.
- Thomas J Stanley
Six out of 10 Americans believe the American dream is dead according to a recent poll.
- CBSNews.com
In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem.
- Ben Horowitz
You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.
- John C. Maxwell
I said one time that it shouldn’t matter who counts to 30 for filling up retail prescriptions, and I caught a lot of grief for that, and probably rightfully so. But that wasn’t the point. The point is that putting pills in a bottle doesn’t change health outcomes. It doesn’t matter whether you get your pills at Walgreen or CVS or Kroger. The reality is: What happens with that process? Who is taking care of that patient? It’s not counting pills and sticking them in bottles. That doesn’t add any value.
- George Paz
When you are tempted to get discouraged, remind yourself that according to God’s word, your future is getting brighter; you are on your way to a new level of glory. You may think you’ve got a long way to go, but you need to look back at how far you’ve already come. You may not be everything you want to be but atleast you can thank God that you’re not what you used to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Other people do not determine your potential.
- Joel Olsteen
It was much easier to reach a few thousand people who really needed our product than to try to compete for the attention of millions of scattered individuals.
- Peter Thiel
No one ever wants to see his or her name linked to anything bad. Conscience is like a baby. It has to go to sleep before you can.
- Harvey Mackay
Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.
- Seth Godin
For people to be fully committed, they should be properly compensated. Whenever an entrepreneur asks me to invest in his company, I ask him how much he intends to pay himself. A company does better the less it pays the CEO—that’s one of the single clearest patterns I’ve noticed from investing in hundreds of startups. In no case should a CEO of an early-stage, venture-backed startup receive more than $150,000 per year in salary.
- Peter Thiel
Network effects businesses must start with especially small markets.
- Peter Thiel
The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.
- James Simons
As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.
- Peter Thiel
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
- Mark Twain
People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.
- John C. Maxwell
Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals. Management.
- Peter Drucker
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
