Notable Quotables

At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas, but the image is that they all come from the top. I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

- Bill Gates

I know a lot of people are upset by our decision but it is something we have deliberated for a number of years.

- Sergey Brin

The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.

- Walt Disney

Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources.

- Seth Godin

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

- Warren Buffett

When plans appear into your mind, they will probably flash into your mind through the sixth sense, in the form of an inspiration. This inspiration may be considered a direct telegram, or message from infinite intelligence. Treat it with respect, and act upon it as soon as you receive it. Failure to do this is fatal to your succeess.

- Napoleon Hill

As I get, I give. Giving as you get is critical. It has everything to do with being happy for yourself, and making others happy is the cause of making yourself happy, and it’s the cycle of giving and getting.

- Russell Simmons

I recall that Harry made a trip to San Bernardino about the time we were really starting to roll, and Dick McDonald asked him what he thought the future of McDonald’s would be. Harry told him that one day this company would be bigger than F. W. Woolworth. Dick really did a double take at that. He told me later, ‘I thought you had a genuine nut on your hands, Ray.’ But Harry knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he knew how to get there.

- Ray Kroc

Market fundamentalists recognize that the role of the state in the economy is always disruptive, inefficient, and generally has negative connotations. This leads them to believe that the market mechanism can take care of all the problems.

- George Soros

When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.

- Ray Dalio

We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries – discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .

- Thomas Edison

I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years – part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.

- Peter Thiel

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

- Joel Olsteen

The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers

- Sam Walton

It is equally important that diversification is an ongoing process.

- Cheng Yu-tung

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

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

- James Cameron

One of the things that school is for is to teach our children to understand and relish the idea of intellectualism, to develop into something more than a purpose-driven tool for the industrial state.

- Seth Godin

The boss would be present at the beginning of each session, laying out the rationale for the Work-Out. He or she would also commit to two things: to give an on-the-spot yes or no to 75 percent of the recommendations that came out of the session, and to resolve the remaining 25 percent within thirty days. The boss would then disappear until the end of the session, so as not to stifle open discussion, returning only at the end to make good on his or her promise.

- Jack Welch

I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years.

- Howard Schultz

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events.

- Joel Olsteen

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

- Warren Buffett

Present my story and the difficulties that I have faced. As an entrepreneur, a CEO.

- Ben Horowitz

Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.

- Peter Thiel

I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was… an arctic wilderness.

- Steve Martin

Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.

- Henry Ford

Computing is kind of a mess. Your computer doesn’t know where you are. It doesn’t know what you’re doing. It doesn’t know what you know.

- Larry Page

What this industry is about is back to the basics in the new Internet economy; and the basics are profitability, cash flow, productivity and market-share gains.

- John Chambers

In the early days, I really felt the pain of not being able to find information easily. I guess that helped me to develop an urge to write things like a search engine.

- Robin Li

Use technology to remind people that we are really human and civilization is meant to connect together. Civilization is meant to be easy, and the technology to completely disappear. And should be easy to pick up.

- Jack Dorsey

Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.

- Bill Gates

I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don’t hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.

- Zig Ziglar

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

- Winston Churchill

I’m optimistic about the country. I’m optimistic about the American people.

- Howard Schultz

I founded Netflix. I’ve built it steadily over 12 years now, first with DVD becoming profitable in 2002, a head-to-head ferocious battle with Blockbuster and evolving the company toward streaming.

- Reed Hastings

Options – the ability to choose – is real power. This book is all about how to see and create those options with the least effort and cost. It just so happens, paradoxically, that you can make more money – a lot more money – by doing half of what you are doing now.

- Timothy Ferriss

We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.

- Oprah Winfrey

I think they are fine. I don’t think you have a choice between iPad models so that’s just saying that the iPad is good … that’s a very different statement (and contrary to the implication) that, if I chose not to upgrade now, less than a year after my last upgrade, then I, Woz, am saying that the new Apple iPad is bad.

- Steve Wozniak

The order for the seats amounted to $90,000. Who do you suppose got the order—James Adamson or one of his competitors? From the time of this story until Mr. Eastman’s death.

- Dale Carnegie

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.

- Seth Godin

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

- Richard Branson

The Internet offers opportunities that are more unique than ever before. With TV, I know I’m making 22 minutes; I know there’s a commercial in the middle. With the Internet, no one knows anything. No rules.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Don’t waste your energy trying to convince people to understand you. Your time is too valuable to try to prove yourself to people.

- Joel Olsteen

Of course people are getting smarter nowadays, they are letting lawyers instead of their conscience be their guides.

- Will Rogers

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Certainly there’s a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.

- Bill Gates

I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, ‘It’s all your fault.’ Your reaction is, ‘It’s not my fault.’ But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it.

- Ben Horowitz

A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest… Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.

- Jack Welch

Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.

- Jack Welch

A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.

- Peter Drucker

All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current.

- Ben Horowitz

What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.

- Peter Thiel

Bill Gates was in his 20s when he started with $50,000 and became the richest man in the world with $90 billion. It’s a good idea that he did not ask too many people for their ideas on what they thought was possible for his life.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The goal is to get the buyer to like and trust you.

- Clay Clark

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

- Joel Olsteen

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.

- Winston Churchill

Like it or not, life is a series of competitions. You may be competing for a grade, a spot on a team, a job, or the largest account in town. The higher your self-esteem is, the better you get along with yourself, with others, and the more you’ll accomplish.

- Harvey Mackay

People were expecting Rouge to go bankrupt, so there was a lot of anxiety. The corporate culture problem was even worse than in Russia. And at the same time, the work rules were more difficult.

- Alexei Mordashov

What do you want? is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer.

- Timothy Ferriss

Litigation is the basic legal right which guarantees every corporation its decade in court.

- David Porter

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

- Zig Ziglar

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

If Wanda can control more than 20 per cent of the world’s three most important film markets – the United States, Europe and China – then it will have an empire with great voice in the industry.

- Wang Jianlin

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

- Winston Churchill

You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years

- Sara Blakely

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

- Jeff Bezos

Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform. Consider for a moment the possibility of your putting on a series of four lectures for members of your department. Let’s count on three hours preparation for each hour of course time—twelve hours of work in total. Say that you have ten students in your class. Next year they will work a total of about twenty thousand hours for your organization. If your training efforts result in a 1 percent improvement in your subordinates’ performance, your company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the result of the expenditure of your twelve hours.

- Ben Horowitz

Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.

- Ben Horowitz

We had gotten people’s attention. So a lot of American shoe distributors were going to Japan and telling Onitsuka, ‘Well, if this two-bit outfit up in the woods in Oregon can do this kind of business, wait till you get somebody that’s really in the business.

- Phil Knight

I cut the feet off of a pair of panty hose and it allowed me to wear a pair of great strappy sandals. I didn’t see lines but the hose rolled up at my feet – and that’s how Spanx born.

- Sara Blakely

I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.

- Timothy Ferriss

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

- Winston Churchill

Take time to be kind and to say ‘thank you.’

- Zig Ziglar

Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.

- John C. Maxwell

If you do not believe in your product or service enough to offer it to your own family and friends, then you should question the value of what you are selling.

- Zig Ziglar

Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

- Elon Musk

What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.

- Oprah Winfrey

You will find only what you bring in.

- Yoda

Save them [Luke and Leia], we must. They are our last hope.

- Yoda

Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie until you can find a rock.

- Will Rogers

Indeed, if there is any one secret” to an enduring great company, it is the ability to manage continuity and change—a discipline that must be consciously practiced, even by the most visionary of companies.

- James C. Collins

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

- Bill Gates

There are two kinds of cultures in this world: cultures where what you do matters and cultures where all that matters is who you are. You can be the former or you can suck.

- Ben Horowitz

The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.

- Michael Bloomberg

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription