We should be able to significantly improve health-care outcomes. The government is needing that. When you look at ACOs [accountable care organizations] and look at what the Obama administration is talking about, in trying to improve quality, that’s exactly what Express Scripts does.
- George Paz
Notable Quotables
Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.
- Bill Gates
Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.” Everyone around the table nodded assent. “Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.
- Peter Drucker
The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.
- Larry Ellison
To be sure, real differences of opinion existed between the groups. Compared to pro-life participants, pro-choice participants had more favorable personal attitudes toward the pro-choice issues and less favorable attitudes toward the pro-life issues, and vice versa.
- John Chambers
I believe that uncertainty is really my spirit’s way of whispering, I’m in flux. I can’t decide for you. Something is off-balance here.
- Oprah Winfrey
Projections are just bullshit. They’re just guesses.
- Jason Fried
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
You must practically educate yourself, regardless of your accessibility to formal education.
- Abraham Lincoln
Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.
- Rich Karlgaard
There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.
- Henry Ford
It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double as soon as you give them responsibility and indicate that you trust them. The first month cost perhaps $200 more than if I had been micromanaging.
- Timothy Ferriss
Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple—many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.
- Timothy Ferriss
We’re pleased with the solid revenue and earnings per share results Cisco delivered during its second quarter, but also especially pleased with our strong order momentum. This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data along with our balanced approach to our customer segments, core and advanced technologies, business and technology architecture and key geographic theaters.
- John Chambers
It was the right thing to do.
- Phil Knight
Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‘Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.’
- Joel Olsteen
I have a list of the hardest, most challenging problems that our company needs to solve and I start at the top and work my way down. And I have a list of the coolest most fascinating things that we can invent and I start at the top of the list and I work my way down.
- Travis Kalanick
There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.
- Winston Churchill
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- Walt Disney
The 1990s have a good image. We tend to remember them as a prosperous, optimistic decade that happened to end with the internet boom and bust. But many of those years were not as cheerful as our nostalgia holds. We’ve long since forgotten the global context for the 18 months of dot-com mania at decade’s end.
- Peter Thiel
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
- Winston Churchill
Infrastructure web services had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.
- Dale Carnegie
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
- Peter Drucker
The Internet economy continues to create unprecedented growth opportunities for people, companies and countries on a global basis.
- John Chambers
The Real ReasonNew College Grads Can’t Get Hired shocked many when it reported, The Workforce Solutions Group at St. Louis Community College finds that more than 60% of employers say applicants lack communication and interpersonal skills
- Martha C. White
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
- Bill Gates
At the end, the acquisition of wealth is ignoble in the extreme. I assume that you save and long for wealth only as a means of enabling you the better to do some good in your day and generation.
- Andrew Carnegie
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education.
- Steve Jobs
A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
- Peter Drucker
Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.
- George Soros
I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books.
- Joel Olsteen
I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Oracle’s got 100+ enterprise applications live in the #cloud; today, SAP’s got nothin’ but SuccessFactors until 2020.
- Larry Ellison
The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.
- Peter Drucker
When people are around us, they should leave better off than they were previously. Rather than feeling discouraged or defeated, people should feel challenged and inspired after spending any time with you and me.
- Joel Olsteen
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer, instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.
- Peter Thiel
When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.
- Peter Drucker
Establish late-payment penalties as part of your terms and conditions and enforce them.
- Robert Kiyosaki
With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.
- Oprah Winfrey
For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.
- Bill Gates
Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie until you can find a rock.
- Will Rogers
You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.
- Sam Rayburn
If you have a lot of [visionaries], you’ll have a lot of great ideas, something awesome that people will love; but you never get it done. It doesn’t ship. Nothing happens. If you have too many [execution oriented] people on your team, you’re executing like mad, things are getting built, and you’re shipping like crazy – but you’re building something that nobody wants. If you have a good balance of both in your company, you’re more likely to stay on track. Those people compliment each other.
- Caterina Fake
Be honest, always.
- Jack Dorsey
During the past financial year, development properties sold by the Group amounted to approximately HK$3,592 million in total attributable sales proceeds, representing around 1,700 units…
- Lee Shau Kee
The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.
- Jack Welch
People that call old leads, drive old cars.
- Jason Bailey
I knew, of course, that I had nothing to worry about—personally, at least. But.
- Dale Carnegie
Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.
- Peter Thiel
Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.
- Oprah Winfrey
We thought we ought to put that in because it’s the truth but the (like-for-like) number even with those factors taken into account is still very disappointing.
- Simon Wolfson
My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go.
- Bill Gates
Google actually relies on our users to help with our marketing. We have a very high percentage of our users who often tell others about our search engine.
- Sergey Brin
“What would you do if capital were free?” is a dangerous question to ask an entrepreneur. It’s kind of like asking a fat person, “What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”
- Ben Horowitz
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.
- Winston Churchill
Think about how Google talks about its business. It certainly doesn’t claim to be a monopoly.
- Peter Thiel
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
- Napoleon Hill
You can’t depend on polls.
- Michael Bloomberg
If you don’t plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.
- Zig Ziglar
Innovation comes from long-term thinking and iterative execution.
- Reid Hoffman
We won’t change at all, … We feel consolidation will continue. We’re seeing more and more movement to fewer networking vendors.
- John Chambers
Wealth won’t give you satisfaction, creating a good product that’s well received by users is what matters most.
- Ma Huateng
Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life.
- Dale Carnegie
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
If you don’t agree with the core principles, which are the premise of that compromise, then you have to have what I call principled confrontation. And so that is the thing that we do that I think can rub some people the wrong way.
- Travis Kalanick
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure.
- Seth Godin
Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World.
- Bill Gates
We’ve announced an Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, a bunch of low-cost commodity servers running Linux, integrated in our case, with InfiniBand – connected with InfiniBand vs. the traditional Ethernet.
- Larry Ellison
Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
- Oprah Winfrey
I DECLARE I have the grace I need for today. I am full of power, strength, and determination. Nothing I face will be too much for me. I will overcome every obstacle, outlast every challenge, and come through every difficulty better off than I was before. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.
- Peter Thiel
When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.
- George Soros
We have the brand, and we have the fulfillment capability. Now we had to get the Net, and that’s the easiest part of the game,
- Jack Welch
The boy you trained, gone he is. Consumed by Darth Vader.
- Yoda
I’m sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn’t on our radar screen. We were just making great software.
- Bill Gates
Security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit; your machine can be taken over totally.
- Bill Gates
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
In periods of stress and grief, not only does your mind do funny things, you say things that surprise you.
- Phil Knight
The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy.
- Michael Bloomberg
The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty.
- Francois Pinault
I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
- Bill Gates
If you can’t fail, it doesn’t count.
- Seth Godin
I love the presentation from the more flamboyant guy, who excitedly presents his plans.
- Jack Welch
Of course I needed somebody to run my new store, and I didn’t have much money, so I did something that I would do for the rest of my run in the retail business without any shame or embarrassment whatsoever: nose around other people’s stores searching for good talent. That’s when I made my first real hire, the first manager, Willard Walker.
- Sam Walton
Trust your gut.
- Sara Blakely
If it’s a good idea, someone has already probably thought about it first.
- Jack Nadel
To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’
- Lao Tzu
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Winston Churchill
Meeting sports athletes that are the best in the world is a thrill to this day.
- Phil Knight
When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.
- Howard Schultz
Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee.
- Howard Schultz
You may have made some mistakes, and you may not be where you want to be, but that has NOTHING to do with your future.
- Zig Ziglar
The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.
- Zig Ziglar
It doesn’t hurt to ask Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.
- Seth Godin
