Notable Quotables

The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window.

- Herb Kelleher

When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley.

- Sergey Brin

You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.

- Jerry Seinfeld

As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.

- Ben Horowitz

The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.

- Bill Gates

Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.

- Oprah Winfrey

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

- Sam Walton

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

- Bill Gates

If you are starting a business I believe it has to be your passion.

- David Robinson

Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I don’t feel under-taxed in any way at all.

- Jack Welch

People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest …But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.

- Thomas Edison

What most people know but don’t realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn’t there, we’d be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.

- Elon Musk

I had already started the learning process by organizing a tour of some of the best companies out there to find out exactly what it was that made them great. I went back to the Partners’ Council and asked them to help me study the best practices of the best companies we could find. We would then use then findings to strengthen our company.

- David Novak

If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.

- Zig Ziglar

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.

- John Maxwell

There are many different kinds of PCs. You have fixed, virtual, tablets, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops, workstations. What you find in commercial PCs, business PCs, is that there’s a really long tail of usage on client devices.

- Michael Dell

Remarkable visions and genuine insights are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths – whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it’s over. If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it’s unlikely to be worth the journey. Persist.

- Seth Godin

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

As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in.

- Howard Schultz

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

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama has no solutions. Obama has failed the country and its great citizens, and they don’t like it when somebody such as myself speaks the truth about this – it hurts too much.

- Donald Trump

Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.

- Clayton M. Christensen

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

- Joel Olsteen

No individual may have great power without availing himself of the Master Mind.

- Napoleon Hill

Our investment in more than 100 projects in China’s property, infrastructure and other sectors makes us one of the country’s largest investors.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.

- Henry Ford

They were making a deal for a property that clearly was a property that we wanted to own, so we had to act, and act as quickly as we could, and make the offer more attractive,

- Jack Welch

It’s not enough to do good things. You have to let people know what you’re doing.

- Phil Knight

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

Forty years ago, Richard Branson, who ultimately founded Virgin Air, found himself in a similar situation in an airport in the Caribbean. They had just canceled his flight, the only flight that day. Instead of freaking out about how essential the flight was, how badly his day was ruined, how his entire career was now in jeopardy, the young Branson walked across the airport to the charter desk and inquired about the cost of chartering a flight out of Puerto Rico. Then he borrowed a portable blackboard and wrote, “Seats to Virgin Islands, $39.” He went back to his gate, sold enough seats to his fellow passengers to completely cover his costs, and made it home on time.

- Seth Godin

Gold is a kind of mortar and offers a form of capital preservation. We’re still bullish about gold.

- Lee Shau Kee

I DECLARE I will live victoriously. I was created in the image of God. I have the DNA of a winner. I am wearing a crown of favor. Royal blood flows through my veins. I am the head, never the tail, above never beneath. I will live with purpose, passion, and praise, knowing that I was destined to live in victory. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

1. Make incremental advances Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward.2. Stay lean and flexible All companies must be “lean,” which is code for “unplanned.” You should not know what your business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out, “iterate,” and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation.3. Improve on the competition 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.4. Focus on product, not sales 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

We gradually came to the realization that we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese people.

- Sergey Brin

Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.

- Sam Walton

We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.

- Phil Knight

Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.

- Ray Kroc

Entrepreneurs are always biased to understate the scale of competition, but that is the biggest mistake a startup can make.

- Peter Thiel

While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap.

- Ray Kroc

It’s not the situation, but whether we react negative or respond positive to the situation that is important.

- Zig Ziglar

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.

- Mark Zuckerberg

It is unhealthy to marinate in your own press clippings.

- Sam Walton

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

- Steve Jobs

It’s just not right that so many things don’t work when they should. I don’t think that will change for a long time.

- Steve Wozniak

Well, all comedy starts with anger. You get angry, and its never for a good reason, right? You know its not a good reason. And then you try and work it from there.

- Jerry Seinfeld

It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

- John Wooden

When you look at a company that’s already succeeded or is at the very top of its game, it isn’t necessarily when it’s executing well. It tends to be peacetime – you’ve defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple.

- Ben Horowitz

I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.

- Elon Musk

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

- Bill Gates

My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she’s at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn’t think it would be fair; plus, they didn’t have any interest anyway.

- Howard Schultz

If I had to single out one element in my life that has made difference for me, it would be a passion to compete.

- Sam Walton

I intentionally abandoned the hard stuff early on because not only do I think it’s useless, I think it’s a distraction.

- Seth Godin

Although office rental in Hong Kong recorded a general downward adjustment and the slowdown in the economy in the past financial year brought along its negative impacts on the local retailing and food sectors, the major retail shopping properties owned by the Group were able to maintain an overall occupancy rate of 93% whilst rental levels generally remained steady.

- Lee Shau Kee

When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.

- Peter Thiel

The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully.

- Napoleon Hill

There is no way of making a business successful that can vie with the policy of promoting those who render exceptional service.

- Andrew Carnegie

I love cities, and I love city governments in particular. But in politics it would have taken me 8 years from implementing a policy before I would get to see the feedback. With programming I could model the same policies and see the impact immediately. Technology is a far more efficient way to test.

- Jack Dorsey

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

- Dale Carnegie

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

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

- Joel Olsteen

Worry is the most significant factor that relates to the root of negative thinking.

- Zig Ziglar

My role has been to pick good people and give them the maximum authority and responsibility.

- Sam Walton

What is closest to my heart is our education program.

- Henry Sy

Salvation and Christ’s love is a gift. You don’t earn it. You’ve got to receive that gift.

- Joel Olsteen

I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.

- Andrew Carnegie

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.

- Thomas Edison

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

- Peter Drucker

Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools.

- Og Mandino

Doing a mall is not only construction of the physical place, what’s important is the merchandising mix.

- Henry Sy

Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.

- Peter Thiel

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.

- Seth Godin

As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.

- Reid Hoffman

I know if I stopped hosting ‘Wine Library TV,’ we’d probably lose 75 percent of our audience, but the remaining 25 percent is still a big number.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

In tennis, you strike a ball just after the rebound for the fastest return. It’s the same with investment.

- Masayoshi Son

A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.

- Jack Ma

By faith you need to walk like a king, talk like a king, think like a king, dress like a king, smile like a king. Don’t go by what you see. Go by what you know. There is royalty in your DNA. You have the blood of a winner. You were created to reign in life.

- Joel Olsteen

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.

- Joel Olsteen

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

- John C. Maxwell

I’d say my mother made more of a difference to me than anyone else did. I know that’s a conventional and perhaps mundane answer, but my family was blown apart at the start of World War II.

- Herb Kelleher

In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.

- Ben Horowitz

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

- Ray Kroc

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