Notable Quotables

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

Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.

- Zig Ziglar

There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

- Winston Churchill

‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.

- Bill Gates

I like to get people fired up, fill them with zeal for McDonald’s, and watch the results in their work.

- Ray Kroc

The soul of business is not making money but making people happy.

- Aliko Dangote

In some parts of life, like mathematics and science, yeah, I was a genius. I would top all the top scores you could ever measure it by.

- Steve Wozniak

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.

- Winston Churchill

just like most nightmares, it’s not that big a deal and is reversible.

- Timothy Ferriss

You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.

- Zig Ziglar

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

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly–until you can learn to do it well.

- Zig Ziglar

There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.

- John Chambers

The strange history of the Baby Boom produced a generation of indefinite optimists so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it. Whether you were born in 1945 or 1950 or 1955, things got better every year for the first 18 years of your life, and it had nothing to do with you.

- Peter Thiel

Don’t fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else’s expense.

- Harvey Mackay

Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.

- Seth Godin

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

- Bill Gates

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

- Winston Churchill

Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.

- Napoleon Hill

My husband is such a healthy eater. Except when it comes to sweets. He never consumes anything except fruit until noon. And then from noon on he might have some brown rice and some tofu, and then, come eight or nine at night, he orders three mud-pie double-chocolate pieces of cake and eats all three of them.

- Sara Blakely

I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.

- Oprah Winfrey

I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

- Thomas Jefferson

You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy, and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because, unless we do all of these things, it just doesn’t work. And what’s good theater and what’s good politics isn’t necessarily good economic policy.

- Michael Bloomberg

Saying yes makes you fail to meet expectations of theobligation.

- David Nilssen

Foreign politicians don’t have resources – or limited resources. It’s useless dealing with them.

- Wang Jianlin

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

We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.

- Bill Gates

So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.

- Winston Churchill

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

The definition of commerce is the activity between buyers and sellers.

- Jack Dorsey

Tell them to grab on to the career that engages their brain and heart and soul and gives them meaning. Tell them that eventually, the money will come, and if it doesn’t, in time, they will find themselves rich with something money can’t buy. And that, obviously, would be happiness.

- Jack Welch

Personally, I just hope they (the LA Lakers) suck forever.

- Mark Cuban

If you’re brilliant and undiscovered and underappreciated (in whatever field you choose), then you’re being too generous about your definition of brilliant.

- Seth Godin

One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

- Dale Carnegie

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.

- Bruce Lee

A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.

- Jack Welch

A wartime C.E.O. may not delegate. They make every decision based on the next product release. They may use a lot of profanity.

- Ben Horowitz

Being excellent is hard. So when you have something hard to do, remember you are being excellent. Do you want to be remembered for being good or great?

- Lee Cockerell

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

- Marilyn vos Savant

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

- Joel Olsteen

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

There is no sale without the story, no knockout without the setup.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I’m very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There’s so much opportunity. Let’s just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.

- Steve Ballmer

This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.

- Peter Thiel

Up until the time I was 14 years old, I was sure that I was going to be a big-league baseball player. But that dream came to a rude awakening when I got cut from my high school baseball team.

- Phil Knight

The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses.

- Dale Carnegie

We’re not going to outgrow our need for information.

- Seth Godin

The sooner you accept the fact that you will have both successes and failures, the easier it will be to get your business and personal life headed in the right direction.

- Harvey Mackay

Let’s realise that criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home. Let’s realise that the person we are going to correct and condemn will probably justify himself o herself, and condemn us in return.

- Dale Carnegie

The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.

- Ben Horowitz

When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.

- Yoda

In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.

- Peter Thiel

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

- Mark Twain

However old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us.

- Cheng Yu-tung

You will give birth to more in the future than you’ve lost in the past.

- Joel Olsteen

When you go through a disappointment, when you go through a loss, don’t stop on that page. Keep moving forward. There’s another chapter in front of you, but you have to be willing to walk into it.

- Joel Olsteen

Great foresight is required to run a multinational corporation. A magnificent blueprint, a loyal team and a well-coordinated organization are the three indispensable factors, and the same applies from ruling a country to maintaining a family.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I try to speak in everyday language. I feel like God has gifted me to take Bible principles and make them practical.

- Joel Olsteen

Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.

- Zig Ziglar

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

- Zig Ziglar

To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone.

- Sergey Brin

I’m a bit of a P. T. Barnum. I make stars out of everyone.

- Donald Trump

Cherish your dreams as they are the children of your soul… –

- Napoleon Hill

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

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

It truly levels the playing field and puts all the emphasis on the content. And all the emphasis on the merit of the idea.

- Jack Dorsey

In almost every job now, people use software and work with information to enable their organisation to operate more effectively.

- Bill Gates

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

- Albert Einstein

Well, it’s the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?

- Russell Simmons

When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don’t read much anymore.

- Steve Martin

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

If you don’t let people flourish in their jobs, why are they going to stay?

- Joel Olsteen

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

The U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar, the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro.

- Peter Thiel

A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn’t depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.

- Timothy Ferriss

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

- Bill Gates

Medicare and Medicaid costs are skyrocketing. The cost of compliance with some pretty tough rules has become very costly. If I’m small, I have to spend the same amount of money to comply with Medicare, whether I’m 10 members or if I’m 10 million.

- George Paz

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

- Oprah Winfrey

Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.

- Zig Ziglar

I’d get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It’s a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.

- Sara Blakely

The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don’t like to use the word efficiency. It’s creativity. It’s a belief that every person counts.

- Jack Welch

Since we happened to be good at shoes, we thought we could be successful with casual shoes. But we got our brains beat out.

- Phil Knight

The one thing coaches cannot tolerate… is the individual who grows arrogant because he excelled at a lower level and believes he has nothing else to learn.

- Zig Ziglar

95% financing arrangement offered by Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited in a period of sustained low interest have added impetus to secondary trading activities in the property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

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