Stop talking and start doing
- Walt Disney
Notable Quotables
The fight against AIDS in China is already well underway. The Chinese government and other funders are providing major support, and they’ll continue to bear primary responsibility for delivering prevention and treatment.
- Bill Gates
All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school – my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The mistake that’s so easy to make is to get greedy as you choose your hive, to say, “this product is for everyone” or “anyone can benefit from this idea.” Well, there are seven billion people on the planet, so it’s unlikely your comment is correct; even if it is, there’s little chance that a virus would spread across a hive that big.
- Seth Godin
I’m not speaking defeat into my future. I’m not speaking failure over my life. I will turn it around and speak favor into my future. I will declare, I’m blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy. This will be a great year.” When you do that, you are blessing your future.
- Joel Olsteen
Being nice to people is just 20% of providing good customer service. The important part is designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All the smiles in the world arent going to help you if your product or service is not what the customer wants. –
- Service Profit Chain
Assume employees are going across a lot of networks. So you have to build in security from the home to any number of networks.
- John Chambers
Keeping score is for games, not friendships.
- John C. Maxwell
Be happy with who God made you to be, and quit wishing you were something different.
- Joel Olsteen
Bell took the opposite approach, building multiple restaurants in a single neighborhood to eliminate the competition. It’s a strategy that’s widely used today by many companies like Starbuck’s, Barnes & Noble, and many others, and it worked for Bell.
- David Novak
The thing that I’m going to focus on today is essentially the cloud that has been over Nike’s head over the last couple years.
- Phil Knight
I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.
- Oprah Winfrey
When I started working on Southwest Airlines, I kid you not, only people flying on business and very wealthy people ever flew.
- Herb Kelleher
I’m very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There’s so much opportunity. Let’s just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.
- Steve Ballmer
[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold
- Phil Knight
When I hire someone, I try to get beneath the surface and go deep. The first question I ask is, Has this person demonstrated any leadership potential? I ask for specifics and probe carefully to find out exactly what that person contributed. After all, success has many fathers.’ I also look for enthusiasm, people who lean forward in their chairs, who get up on their haunches a little but when they talk about what they’ve done. I like to see the passion and the excitement because that’s what will allow someone to inspire others. The next thing I look for is an avid learners, someone who is curious, who has an ability to make connections, to pick up on trends, and to apply what’s going on in the rest of the world to his or her business career. You obviously need smart people with a proven track record, but the real stars are passionate about what they do and are avid learners. Those two things make people continually raise the bar on performance.
- David Novak
Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.
- Dale Carnegie
The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.
- John C. Maxwell
All my friends ask me, ‘Am I number one in the world in [receiving] dividend payments?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, ask Forbes.’
- Lee Shau Kee
All salesmen are actors: their priority is persuasion, not sincerity. That’s why the word “salesman” can be a slur and the used car dealer is our archetype of shadiness. But we only react negatively to awkward, obvious salesmen—that is, the bad ones.
- Peter Thiel
Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon. Sorry I’m all out of cards. Boy, does your country ever eat up business cards.
- Phil Knight
I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.
- Elon Musk
I would have never wanted to write another management book. There are so many of them, and everybody says the same thing about them, and they are all the same – they give the exact same advice. It’s like a diet book; they all say eat less calories, exercise more, and every single book has the same conclusion.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they’re simpler for customers.
- Jeff Bezos
The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there. Ironically, it’s those who seek out discomfort that are able to make a difference and find their footing.
- Seth Godin
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
Allowing your kids to watch TV doesn’t have to mean they have no choice but to see commercials for junk food and alcohol.
- Charles Ergen
I was myself so smitten in public opinion that it was the almost universal view that my political life was at last ended.
- Winston Churchill
I mean, you know, we don’t live in a perfect world.
- Michael Bloomberg
A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.
- Zig Ziglar
If Google Books is successful, others will follow.
- Sergey Brin
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Form the habit of systematic saving by putting aside a definite percentage of your income. Money in the bank gives one a very safe foundation of courage…
- Napoleon Hill
The Value of a Smile at Christmas It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.
- Dale Carnegie
I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.
- Elon Musk
So, the judgment that you have to make is (a) is this market really much bigger (more than an order of magnitude) than has been exploited to date? and (b) are we going to be number one? If the answer to either (a) or (b) is no, then you should consider selling.
- Ben Horowitz
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
- Walt Disney
Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.
- Peter Thiel
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
- Simon Sinek
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
- Warren Buffett
I think there’s plenty of room for blogs that exist to pay the blogger, or blogs that exist to turn a profit. That’s just not the kind of blog I’m writing, and I’m not the kind of blogger that could do that.
- Seth Godin
Over-Caution.
- Napoleon Hill
The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on… through each generation. Because we have no social security, the overseas Chinese habit is not to spend a lot and to make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
- Mark Twain
I don’t know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.
- James C. Collins
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
- Winston Churchill
It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
- Paul Theroux
With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.
- Elon Musk
Don’t ally your personal interests with the development of the company.
- Wang Jianlin
Christopher Colombus’ big mistake was that he was looking for a trade route to China, and accidentally bumped into America, the richest, most powerful country in the world.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I really chess-play culture shifts. I’m really good at understanding what worldwide cell-phone use means. That’s what I do. I try to picture it three to four to five steps ahead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Do not look like you are playing the fiddle while Rome is burning….stay focussed – Paraphrased from
- David Novak
Initiative = Happiness
- Seth Godin
There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant—is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a manager and a gentleman.
- Peter Drucker
Top academic institutions are wonderful, but there are unrecognized benefits to not coming out of one. Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income 80-hour-per-week jobs, and 15–30 years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path. How do I know? I’ve been there.
- Timothy Ferriss
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
- Og Mandino
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.
- Russell Simmons
My mission is not to forbid French art. If the quality is there, I buy; if the quality isn’t there, I don’t.
- Francois Pinault
We’ve only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?
- Jack Welch
If he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.
- Peter Thiel
Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants, comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache and their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things.
- Winston Churchill
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
- Napoleon Hill
So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.
- Joel Olsteen
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t.
- Ben Horowitz
Art isn’t only a painting; it’s anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.
- Seth Godin
It’s true that I run a multi-national group but I have no interests in India. So please tell me, what should my identity be?
- Lakshmi Mittal
My natural inclination to be improv rather than an educated character serves me well.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
- Ronald Reagan
The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.
- Jeff Bezos
Companies, exist and evolve over time and in fact they have multiple founding moments.
- Jack Dorsey
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
- Henry Ford
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
- Winston Churchill
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
The Curveball. This approach appeals to the media’s innate curiosity. Whereas a fastball stresses logic over emotion, the curveball stresses emotion over logic.
- Michael Levine
Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I’d put myself in the latter category. But I’d never call myself a normal designer of anything.
- Steve Wozniak
You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.
- Oprah Winfrey
Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.
- Larry Ellison
Soon is not as good as now.
- Seth Godin
My first company, Pure Software, was exciting and innovative in the first few years and bureaucratic and painful in the last few before it got acquired. The problem was we tried to systemize everything and set up perfect procedures.
- Reed Hastings
Be fair. You have to be able to see their point of view.
- Michael Levine
No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.
- Andrew Carnegie
Yes, iD is a machine vision and sensor browser for the physical world. That’s what we have been working on with Coca-Cola, Verizon, Bank of America and Disney to launch content when an image is recognised.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, ‘Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?
- Sara Blakely
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
- Seth Godin
I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as ‘I’m cool, look at how many e-mails I get.’ That perception doesn’t scare me, because I know who I am.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Do you ever worry’ asked Dale Carnegie, I replied: ‘No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?’
- Henry Ford
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Zig Ziglar
I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.
- Reid Hoffman
A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. 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. This is not what young people do today, because everyone around them has long since lost faith in a definite world. No one gets into Stanford by excelling at just one thing, unless that thing happens to involve throwing or catching a leather ball.
- Peter Thiel
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticable from the time he became a personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, and you will begin to understand what the influence of one mind upon another can accomplish.
- Napoleon Hill
Pessimism doesn’t grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
- Harvey Mackay
When you face adversity, you need to remind yourself that whatever is trying to defeat you could very well be what God will use to promote you.
- Joel Olsteen
Lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity.
- Napoleon Hill
The outside of a horse is good for the inside of man.
- Winston Churchill
When evaluating the results, we should not overlook the fact that there was, in some cases, very weak growth in Europe, Russia, and South America. There were also significant exchange rate fluctuations. In addition, the mild winter at the end of 2014 had a negative impact on the winter tire business in Europe. The driving force behind the sales development once again came from China and North America. In light of this, it is remarkable that profit after taxes of just under €2.4 billion or €11.88 per share could be achieved.
- Elmar Degenhart
I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.
- Larry Page
