Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.
- Thomas J Watson
Notable Quotables
Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual Motion. The give and take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning and the pain of losing. It’s as good as it gets. You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is the fun…
- Jack Welch
To make a ton of steel on and half tons of iron stone has to be mined, transported by rail a hundred miles to the Lakes, carried by boat hundreds of miles, transferred to cars, transported by rail 150 miles to Pittsburgh; one and a half tons of coal must be mined and manufactured into coke and carried 50 (odd) miles by rail; and one ton of limestone mined and carried 150 miles to Pittsburgh. How then could steel be manufactured and sold without loss at 3 pounds for 2 cents. This, I confess seemed to me incredible, and little less than miraculous, but it was so.
- Andrew Carnegie
I have a calendar life that is complicated, so I use BusyCal and Google Calendar. I keep two different browsers open to avoid some confusion.
- Steve Wozniak
Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.
- Jack Welch
The evidence is inarguable that Australia is becoming too expensive and too uncompetitive to do export-oriented business. Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day. Such statistics make me worry for this country’s future. We are becoming a high-cost and high-risk nation for investment.
- Gina Rinehart
I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing….
- Thomas Edison
I don’t know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.
- James C. Collins
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
- Peter Drucker
Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.
- Bill Gates
Take one cup of love, two cups of loyalty, three cups of forgiveness, four quarts of faith and one barrel of laughter. Take love and loyalty and mix them thoroughly with faith; blend with tenderness, kindness and understanding. Add friendship and hope. Sprinkle abundantly with laughter. Bake it with sunshine. Wrap it regularly with lots of hugs. Serve generous helpings daily.
- Zig Ziglar
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
- Elon Musk
Culture is one of the most precious things a company has…So you must work harder on it than anything else.
- Herb Kelleher
A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.
- Henry Ford
Access to play should be a kid’s inalienable right.
- Phil Knight
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Make the decision and say, I’m not letting that worry in. I’m done being upset when my plans don’t work out. I’m not letting that stress in.” Negative thoughts will still come to your mind, but you don’t have to let them into your spirit.
- Joel Olsteen
In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is.
- Ma Huateng
We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.
- John Chambers
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.
- Thomas Edison
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
- Steve Jobs
The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying
- John C. Maxwell
You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
Nobody in the heavens above or on the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth will ever object to your saying: ‘I may be wrong. Let’s examine the facts.
- Dale Carnegie
Progress really is possible.
- Michael Bloomberg
How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
Dream more than others think practical.
- Howard Schultz
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
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along with it.
- Walt Disney
People will always blame the poets for society’s ills. But these are the true artists.
- Russell Simmons
I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it’s safe.
- Sara Blakely
Don’t find fault, find a remedy.
- Henry Ford
Usually, what we most fear doing is what we most need to do.
- Timothy Ferriss
After relating with the prospect compliment them by using what you have listened to during rapport building.
- Bryan Smith
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
- Thomas Edison
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be likened to the raindrop, which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed.
- Og Mandino
[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold
- Phil Knight
The thought of my mortality – I think about it a lot. I find it motivating. It can be any time that your number’s up.
- Sara Blakely
Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new.
- Peter Thiel
In fact, when I look at it today, I realize that so much of what we did in the beginning was really poorly done. But we managed to sell our merchandise as low as we possibly could, and that kept us right-side-up for the first 10 years – that and consistently improving sales in these smaller markets by buildling up our relationship with the customers. The ideas was simple: when customers thought of Wal-Mart, they should think of low prices and satisfaction guaranteed.
- Sam Walton
Your list is like a garden, tend it well.
- Michael Levine
Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington.
- Stephen Wynn
Opportunity is walking through your life every day in the form of people you meet.
- Zig Ziglar
When you throw dirt at people, you’re not doing a thing but losing ground.
- Zig Ziglar
If you are going to run a successful business you are going to have to be committed to your customers 100% of the time. If customers consistently tell you that they don’t like a certain product or service you offer or an employee that you have working for you, you must be willing to act based upon their feedback if you find it to be factual.
- Clay Clark
Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy
- Jim Rohn
If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the where withal to do what it takes to make your product work.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It’s fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.
- Bill Gates
You don’t need a big close, as many sales reps believe. You risk losing your customer when you save all the good stuff for the end. Keep the customer actively involved throughout your presentation, and watch your results improve.
- Harvey Mackay
You watch television and see what’s going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing’s going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress.
- Stephen Wynn
Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.
- Oprah Winfrey
MARCH 25 From Glory to Glory But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:18 KJV THE SCRIPTURE SAYS we are God’s workmanship” (Ephesians 2:10), which implies that you are a work in progress.” Throughout our lives, God is continually shaping us into the people He wants us to be. The key to future success is to not be discouraged about your past or present while you are in the process of being completed.” God loves you unconditionally. You may not understand everything you are going through right now. But hold your head high, knowing that God is in control and He has a great plan and purpose for your life. Your dreams may not have turned out exactly as you’d hoped, but the Bible says that God’s ways are better and higher than our ways.
- Joel Olsteen
A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
- Peter Thiel
I’m Phil Knight, and I don’t believe in advertising.
- Phil Knight
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
- Dale Carnegie
Corporations that navigate through these rough times will prosper as the region inevitably enters a new era of prosperity.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.
- Bill Gates
There’s a fascinating statistic: One out of every four people in America has visited New York since 9/11. It is astounding. Now, I don’t know how you count it; it’s some people coming multiple times.
- Michael Bloomberg
Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t think it’s a big deal to show opera glasses to someone searching for binoculars that you somehow infer is a woman. But you don’t want to pop up ads for H.I.V. drugs on someone’s page, because you inferred they have H.I.V., when their boss is standing there looking at their computer
- Sergey Brin
Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.
- Timothy Ferriss
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.
- Dale Carnegie
Vision without execution is just hallucination.
- Henry Ford
A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast. Good news travels slow.
- Ben Horowitz
[In January 2011] I think the important thing for Twitter is that it works on any technology.
- Jack Dorsey
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. 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. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
- Winston Churchill
Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.
- John D. Rockefeller
Forty to 60 I would say is your prime. That’s when you know the most, you’ve seen the most, you understand the most, and you still have some physical energy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Most people have never thought through how they’re going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Gas consumption is growing everywhere.
- Vagit Alekperov
The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of poverty.
- Napoleon Hill
Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt.
- Zig Ziglar
Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.
- Jerry Seinfeld
No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility.
- Napoleon Hill
If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.
- Benjamin Hooks
At 25, I was in the audience of my first professional speaker, Bob Bales. His presentation got my attention. I had never seen anyone having so much fun ‘at work’ and getting paid for it!
- Zig Ziglar
Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.
- Joel Olsteen
I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I’d have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.
- Sara Blakely
The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.
- Robert Kiyosaki
It’s absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others.
- Zig Ziglar
Why do you ask so much?
- Lee Shau Kee
The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog.
- Carl Icahn
Giving feels good, but it’s also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot ofcompanies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we’re doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won’t mention an advertisement; they’ll say a friend told them our story.
- Blake Mycoskie
If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.
- Benjamin Franklin
Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
- Peter Thiel
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
Being nice to people is just 20% of providing good customer service. The important part is designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All the smiles in the world aren’t going to help you if your product or service is not what the customer wants,
- James L. Heskett
And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
- Romans 8:28
This is why so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t use tools that bigger firms take for granted. It’s not that small business proprietors are unusually backward or that good tools don’t exist: distribution is the hidden bottleneck.
- Peter Thiel
What I know for sure is that if you want success, you can’t make success your goal. The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant, and the success will naturally follow.”
- Oprah Winfrey
Success is dependent upon the glands – sweat glands.
- Zig Ziglar
Direct your energy toward achieving a goal, and tackle the problems with an emphasis on edging closer to a successful result.
- Harvey Mackay
I always say, ‘To have a big dream requires the same effort as having a small dream. Dream big!’
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
- Peter Drucker
I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.
- Bill Gates
I got my story, my dream, from America. The hero I had is Forrest Gump… I like that guy. I’ve been watching that movie about 10 times. Every time I get frustrated, I watch the movie. I watched the movie before I came here again to New York. I watched the movie again telling me that no matter whatever changed, you are you.
- Jack Ma
