I do think – as self-serving as it sounds – that I was the right person, given the very, very strong headwind we had from the economy and our own issues, to come back and rewrite the future of the company.
- Howard Schultz
Notable Quotables
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
- Henry Ford
When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don’t read much anymore.
- Steve Martin
One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a deep dive. It’s spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference…one that looks like it would be fun, and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it meddling….I followed up on all of them with a passion and a mania that often veered toward the lunatic fringe…To make the initiatives work, it took a passionate all-consuming commitment from the top. Beyond passion, there was alot of rigor…Making initiates successful is all about focus and passionate commitment. The drumbeat must be relentlessness. Every leadership action must demonstrate total committment to the initiative….I was an outrageous champion of everything that we did from our early need to face reality and change the culture to our major initiatives that reshaped the company. Whenever I had an idea or message that I wanted to drive into the organization, I could never say it enough. I repeated it over and over, at every meeting and review for years, until I could almost gag on the words.
- Jack Welch
There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.
- Oprah Winfrey
Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares; just run your company.
- Ben Horowitz
The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window.
- Herb Kelleher
There are things money can’t buy and hard work can’t win. One of them is happiness.
- Ray Kroc
A joke is a very serious thing.
- Winston Churchill
My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.
- Elon Musk
If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.
- Vince Lombardi
You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
- Sam Walton
America is built around this premise that you can do it, and there are an awful lot of people who are unlikely to have done it who did.
- Michael Bloomberg
Trees will improve property values, take pollutants out of the air, help with water runoff.
- Michael Bloomberg
I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.
- Seth Godin
It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.
- Winston Churchill
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
- Winston Churchill
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
- Jeff Bezos
Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
- Zig Ziglar
Love your family, work super hard, live your passion.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The best ideas in a company are the ones that people come up with themselves because then they really own their ideas and are committed to making them work. – David Novak CEO of YUM Brands
- David Novak
Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money, non-monopolists can’t.
- Peter Thiel
The basis of persistence is the power of will. Men who accumulate, great fortunes are generally known as cold-blooded and sometimes ruthless. Often they are misunderstood. What they have is willpower, which they mix with persistence and place back of their desires to insure that attainment of their objectives. Henry Ford was generally misunderstood to be ruthless and cold-blooded. This misconception grew out of Ford’s habit of following through in all of his plans with PERSISTENCE…few carry on despite all opposition until they attain their goal. Those few are the Fords, Carnegies, Rockefellers and Edisons.
- Napoleon Hill
The more you talk about negative things in your life, the more you call them in. Speak victory not defeat.
- Joel Olsteen
When those in power use shame to bully the weak into compliance, they are stealing from us. They tell us that they will expose our secrets (not good enough, not hardworking enough, not from the right family, made a huge mistake once) and will use the truth to exile us from our tribe. This shame, the shame that lives deep within each of us, is used as a threat. And when those in power use it, they take away part of our humanity.
- Seth Godin
It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.
- Paul Graham
I felt that it’s best just to be as transparent as possible.
- Rupert Murdoch
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
- Napoleon Hill
This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.
- Winston Churchill
I was reading an article in the ‘New York Times;’ it talked about being in the zone, and being in the zone you’re so focused that time ceases to exist. It’s when you think, ‘Oh, I’ve been doing this for five hours and didn’t even know it.’ It’s the difference between hard work and going, ’12 o’clock, not moving.’
- Steve Martin
The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
- George Orwell
I cut the feet out of my control top pantyhose one night, threw them on under my white pants and realized that the toning and shaping was perfect and that the hosiery material is thin enough that I could make shape wear out of it.
- Sara Blakely
Don’t Walter Cronkite me!
- Jack Welch
If you’re only willing to do what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you’re willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy.
- T. Harv Eker
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.
- Walt Disney
Ultimately, we wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don’t end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.
- Phil Knight
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.
The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me….
- Thomas Edison
You’ve got to eat while you dream. You’ve got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.
- Jack Welch
We can never own property (because of property taxes) we can just control it (by renting it from the government by paying taxes).
- Robert Kiyosaki
Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.
- Sam Walton
They (the competition) need to avoid coming at us head-on, and do their own thing better than we do ours. It doesn’t make any sense to try to underprice Wal-Mart (DJC) on something like toothpaste (DJ Prices). That’s not what the customer is looking to a small store for anyway. Most independents are best off, I think, doing what I prided myself on doing for many years as a storekeeper, getting out on the floor and meeting everyone of the customers. Let them know how much you appreciate them, and ring that cash register yourself. That little personal touch is so important for an independent merchant because no matter how hard Wal-Mart tries to duplicate – and we try awfully hard – we can’t really do it.
- Sam Walton
I usually describe myself as an engineer. That’s basically what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.
- Elon Musk
[In June 2011] We’re focused on building a product and a business. Going public is an instrument and tool to help sustain the company. In the future, there may be an IPO, but I don’t know what the timing is.
- Jack Dorsey
There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.
- Jack Welch
As Americans we do not recognize the jurisdiction of the Hague Tribunal. We only follow court orders from the Chinese judiciary
- Sergey Brin
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
In 20 years from now we will all be able to click and watch TV.
- Reed Hastings
Regardless of what position people originally took, once the decision is made, everyone supports it. That’s why it is critical that no one hold anything back during the discussion.
- Patrick M. Lencioni
The premium single-cup segment is the fastest-growing business within the global coffee industry.
- Howard Schultz
The real benefit of having goals is what you become by reaching them.
- Zig Ziglar
My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.
- Winston Churchill
The good-will of a business which is losing money is not worth much.
- Ron Chernow
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
I was raised with ‘Laurel and Hardy’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it’s the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you’re performing in your bedroom for yourself.
- Steve Martin
One out of every five page views in the United States is on Facebook!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Be the one to stand out in the crowd.
- Joel Olsteen
60% of the bonus was based on financials and 40% on Six Sigma (quality) results.
- Jack Welch
Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.
- Yoda
Now when I consider investing in a startup, I study the founding teams. Technical abilities and complementary skill sets matter, but how well the founders know each other and how well they work together matter just as much. Founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together—otherwise they’re just rolling dice.
- Peter Thiel
You’ve been destined to live in victory, destined to overcome, destined to leave your mark on this generation.
- Joel Olsteen
There is no substitute for hard work.
- Thomas Edison
The most stable companies have strong leaders at every level of the organization. The only way to develop such widespread leadership is to make developing leaders a part of your culture. That is a strong part of Coca-Cola’s legacy.
- John Maxwell
Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people’s lives.”
- John C. Maxwell
There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.
- Mark Zuckerberg
If you run a company, you will experience overwhelming psychological pressure to be overly positive. Stand up to the pressure, face your fear, and tell it like it is.
- Ben Horowitz
Named must your fear be before banish it you can.
- Yoda
Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‘tap-dancing to work.
- Bill Gates
His friends, drunk to the point of speaking in tongues, were asleep.
- Timothy Ferriss
About two-thirds of us work between forty-five and fifty-five hours per week.
- Thomas J Stanley
I just think that it’s strong and it’s important that we recognize what the Christmas season is about; it’s about the birth of our Savior, and there’s a lot of pressure today to be politically correct, but people are realizing, too, that you have to be open to express your faith what you want believe.
- Joel Olsteen
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
People need to buy homes.
- Cheng Yu-tung
How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.
- John C. Maxwell
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
We live well below our means. We wear inexpensive suits and drive American-made cars. Only a minority of us drive the current-model-year automobile. Only a minority ever lease our motor vehicles.
- Thomas J Stanley
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Dale Carnegie
When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‘Oh, it must be so hard.’ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I think the currency of leadership is transparency. You’ve got to be truthful. I don’t think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where you’ve got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who you are, and not be afraid of it.
- Howard Schultz
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
- John F. Kennedy
Our approach as a Group is based on strong economic, social and environmental principles. We strive to create high quality, visually stimulating innovative new homes and commercial developments that enhance, as well as integrate with, their surrounding natural and built environments.
- Lee Shau Kee
A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, ‘You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish!’ They won. Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.
- Napoleon Hill
You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.
- Zig Ziglar
The first quality that is needed is audacity.
- Winston Churchill
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
If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.
- Joel Olsteen
The level of analysis that is done when you see laws created, whether it’s the city or state or federal level – it’s much more horse-trading than analysis.
- Michael Bloomberg
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to gain mighty triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither gain much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory or defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt
How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.
- Winston Churchill
Intolerance.
- Napoleon Hill
I just believe that the way that young people’s minds develop is fascinating. If you are doing something for a grade or salary or a reward, it doesn’t have as much meaning as creating something for yourself and your own life.
- Steve Wozniak
When my partners and I meet with entrepreneurs, the two key characteristics that we look for are brilliance and courage. In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.
- Ben Horowitz
The reason that I have Global Grind is to communicate ideas to people who might otherwise not be listening.
- Russell Simmons
Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of his imagination
- Napoleon Hill
If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.
- Joel Olsteen
American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.
- Russell Simmons
Become genuinely interested in other people.
- Dale Carnegie
I don’t have all the answers.
- Joel Olsteen
At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study.
- Ben Horowitz
Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with anyone in the outside world. Every bit of contact. That means a lot of marketing opportunities. It does not mean investing a lot of money.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
