I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.
- Elon Musk
Notable Quotables
My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we’re doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.
- Larry Page
If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying.
- Joel Olsteen
Anyone who prefers owning a part of your company to being paid in cash reveals a preference for the long term and a commitment to increasing your company’s value in the future. Equity can’t create perfect incentives, but it’s the best way for a founder to keep everyone in the company broadly aligned.
- Peter Thiel
All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.
- Walt Disney
Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.
- Elon Musk
In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.
- Seth Godin
I think the advantage of democracy is that it makes us less dependent on a group of leaders.
- Azim Premji
If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.
- George Soros
How you get up in the morning will play a big part in how high you go up in life.
- Zig Ziglar
Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
- John Wayne
Don’t wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves.This is precisely why you’re stuck. Starting without seeing the end is difficult, so we often wait until we see the end, scanning relentlessly for the right way, the best way and the perfect way.The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.Step by step, page by page, interaction by interaction. As you start moving, you can’t help but improve, can’t help but incrementally find yourself getting back toward your north star.You might not end up with perfect, but it’s significantly more valuable than being stuck.Don’t just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.
- Seth Godin
Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.
- Steve Ballmer
The courage take tough yes-or-no decisions. Look, the world is filled with gray. Anyone can look at an issue from every different angle. Some smart people can –and will-analyze those angles indefinitely. But effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.
- Jack Welch
After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.
- Cheng Yu-tung
There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
- Dale Carnegie
Quality is a cornerstone of the [Henderson] Group underpinning all our activities.
- Lee Shau Kee
Eating words has never given me indigestion.
- Winston Churchill
Most of our wives are planners and meticulous budgeters. In fact, only 18 percent of us disagreed with the statement Charity begins at home. Most of us will tell you that our wives are a lot more conservative with money than we are.
- Thomas J Stanley
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
- Peter Drucker
My biggest wish is for government, the private sector and all of us to work together to make the Philippines the best tourism destination in Southeast Asia.
- Henry Sy
I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.
- Bill Gates
Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people’s progress.
- Jeff Bezos
Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.
- Jack Welch
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.
- George Soros
Three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.
- Thomas J Stanley
For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.
- Bill Gates
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
- Steve Martin
From the start, I wanted PayPal to be tightly knit instead of transactional.
- Peter Thiel
Having a personality of caring about people is important. You cant be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.
- Richard Branson
From an operational perspective, this quarter was a home run.
- John Chambers
You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to those situations.
- Zig Ziglar
Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people.
- Dee Hock
When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power of a particular individual’s context as determined by chance. But they miss the even bigger social context for their own preferred explanations: a whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning. Gladwell at first appears to be making a contrarian critique of the myth of the self-made businessman, but actually his own account encapsulates the conventional view of a generation.
- Peter Thiel
Best wine if you’re stranded on a deserted island? 1982 Salon Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.
- Napoleon Hill
I still get up fairly early around six, but I work out for an hour every morning, I read often while excercising and give myself some private team. I’ll speak with administrative my administrative assistant, Donna Hughes, who is an organizational genus on the way into the office and go through the day, so by the time I get to the office around 8:30 or 9:00 I can hit the ground running…In both my workday and my life, what I try to achieve is balance.
- David Novak
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
Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.
- John C. Maxwell
At the same time, we invested more than €4 billion, in property, plant and equipment, software, and research and development. The capital expenditure ratio is again expected to be around 6 percent in the current fiscal year.
- Elmar Degenhart
Surround yourself with the right people
- Tony Hsieh
If you don’t set the tone for the day, the devil will set it for you.
- Joel Olsteen
Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
- Zig Ziglar
To connect with people in a group, connect with them as individuals.
- John Maxwell
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
- John D. Rockefeller
Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character.
- Winston Churchill
Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
- Oprah Winfrey
Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
- Harry Truman
You have to manage money. Particularly with market economies. You may have a great product, but if your bottom line goes bust, then that’s it.
- Mukesh Ambani
As a company it is always better for us to work with more customers than fewer customers. The more people that we serve, the more money that we will make.
- Napoleon Hill
I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic … It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood … it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine’s writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, ‘What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!’ My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.
- Thomas Edison
I don’t have all the answers.
- Joel Olsteen
If you want to be obsessed to be your best, you must get ride of the negative things that are weighing you down.
- George Foreman
Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.
- Winston Churchill
The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more things you’ll have to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
Litigation is the basic legal right which guarantees every corporation its decade in court.
- David Porter
Lack of Controlled Sexual Urge.
- Napoleon Hill
China gets their oil from Libya. Why isn’t China involved? They’re going out spending billions of dollars a day on trying to take over the world economically. And we’re spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on policing the world. Why isn’t China involved with Libya? That – we don’t get oil from Libya, China does.
- Donald Trump
Many businesses forget that a crucial part of cash flow is managing your own bill paying. Make sure you pay your bills promptly. Ask for extended terms up front. After you have paid timely for two or three months, ask for additional extensions on your payable terms. A supplier will usually extend credit for 30 to 90 days to a good customer.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.
- Joel Olsteen
A corporation’s primary goal is to make money. Government’s primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.
- Larry Ellison
This is a learning in the business life that first of all you need to have commitment, dedication and passion for what you are doing.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence – more plow horse than show horse.
- James C. Collins
If somebody’s going on your board, and you’re going to be C.E.O., it will help if that person knows how to be C.E.O., who has done it before.
- Ben Horowitz
The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.
- Winston Churchill
We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.
- Joel Olsteen
The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy.
- Winston Churchill
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
Jobs and businesses are just vehicles to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
- Clay Clark
Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.
- Dale Carnegie
I broke into an industry that was completely money-focused. Nobody was paying attention to the women and thinking about how these undergarments felt, or how they fit…All of a sudden I showed up and charged more for one pair than anybody can comprehendand women lined up in droves to buy them. I think I left the industry in show, but I really believed that we needed to make it better not cheaper.
- Sara Blakely
Never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, you will be successful.
- Brian Tracy
The price of success is much lower than the price of failure.
- Zig Ziglar
Make good decisions based on facts.
- David Novak
As the Readers’s Digest once said: ‘Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.
- Dale Carnegie
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it’s something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn’t compute with our existing educational system.
- Peter Thiel
I would love to do a deal with Walgreen. If they’re willing to come to the table, and offer rates in line with everybody else, then I’m happy to entertain those conversations.
- George Paz
It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.
- Timothy Ferriss
When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.
- Thomas Edison
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
- Winston Churchill
It’s better to have a hundred people that love you, than a million people that sort of like you.
- Paul Graham
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
- Lawrence Bossidy
The price of greatness is responsibility.
- Winston Churchill
Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.
- Napoleon Hill
You have to act and act now.
- Larry Ellison
My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them.
- Russell Simmons
Worrying about the past or the future isn’t productive. When you start chastising yourself for past mistakes, or seeing disaster around every corner, stop and take a breath and ask yourself what you can do right now to succeed.
- Harvey Mackay
IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.
- Jack Welch
I don’t shop online, but my wife buys everything at home. We buy sea crabs, fresh crabs, all kinds of things.
- Jack Ma
…Treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.
- Seth Godin
Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes and the rest of us have to be other people.
- Zig Ziglar
My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.
- Bill Gates
I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.
- Oprah Winfrey
