Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?
- Winston Churchill
Notable Quotables
True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.
- Winston Churchill
[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell — a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great — was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing — namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.
- Winston Churchill
Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
- Og Mandino
Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it’s about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it’s less than one ton. It’s an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.
- Bill Gates
Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.
- Steve Martin
It is exactly because we are a city that embraces freedom, that welcomes everyone and encourages their dreams, that New York remains on the front lines in the war on terror.
- Michael Bloomberg
I just think that it’s strong and it’s important that we recognize what the Christmas season is about; it’s about the birth of our Savior, and there’s a lot of pressure today to be politically correct, but people are realizing, too, that you have to be open to express your faith what you want believe.
- Joel Olsteen
Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day.
- Peter Thiel
The first thing I ever invested in was Twitter. Blaine Cook, former CTO, was leaving the company and asked me if I wanted to buy his stock.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
The spread of online information isn’t just good for charities. It’s also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.
- Bill Gates
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
- Winston Churchill
The patterns of success and failure we see among firms faced with sustaining and disruptive technology change are a natural or systematic result of good managerial decisions. That is, in fact, why disruptive technologies confront innovators with such a dilemma. Working harder, being smarter, investing more aggressively, and listening more astutely to customers are all solutions to the problems posed by new sustaining technologies. But these paradigms of sound management are useless—even counterproductive, in many instances—when dealing with disruptive technology.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.
- Tim Westergren
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
- John C. Maxwell
The most “successful” companies seemed to embrace a sort of anti-business model where they lost money as they grew.
- Peter Thiel
The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.
- Bill Gates
Insulation prevents you from making the change and finding the understanding you set out to achieve in the first place.
- Seth Godin
I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.
- Winston Churchill
I usually describe myself as an engineer. That’s basically what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.
- Elon Musk
Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.
- John C. Maxwell
Don’t count the things you do. Do the things that count.
- Zig Ziglar
Everybody at home speaks mandarin except me.
- Rupert Murdoch
Thinking about what might happen if we ran completely out of money—laying off all the employees that I’d so carefully selected and hired, losing all my investors’ money, jeopardizing all the customers who trusted us with their business—made it difficult to concentrate on the possibilities. Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke: Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.
- Ben Horowitz
Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.
- Bill Gates
Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.
- Timothy Ferriss
No matter what any of us has—and how grateful we are for what we have—no one has it all.
- Sheryl Sandberg
You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.
- Ben Horowitz
You can’t explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don’t have to. It’s that simple.
- Phil Knight
Trate siempre de que la otra persona se sienta importante.
- Dale Carnegie
Keep it simple. Tell the truth. People can smell the truth.
- Stephen Wynn
Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.
- Seth Godin
I want get across to not just the church world. I want to get outside those walls to everyday people.
- Joel Olsteen
Hold on to that new, enlarge vision of victory that God has given you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. Dare to boldly declare that you are standing strong against the forces of darkness.
- Joel Olsteen
You don’t make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you’re-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don’t know what’s going to happen.
- Michael Bloomberg
In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren’t management books out there that could help me.
- Ben Horowitz
Differentiate yourself! Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.
- Winston Churchill
I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I’m working at it.
- Steve Martin
Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.
- Bill Gates
Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged.
- Russell Simmons
Many people who I respected were disappointed when I started ‘Wine Library TV.’ They thought I was dumbing down wine, but I always knew I was one of the biggest producers of new wine drinkers in the world, and people are realizing it now.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
- Winston Churchill
A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.
- Bill Gates
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
- Timothy Ferriss
What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.
- Oprah Winfrey
This shows you are never too old to get surprised.
- Jack Welch
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, and do more and become more, you are a leader.
- John Quincy Adams
By providing the systems that make the Internet work, Cisco is playing a major role in helping customers thrive in the explosive Internet economy. As a result, we are growing faster than all of our key competitors and have been the fastest growing and most profitable company in the history of the computer industry.
- John Chambers
Here is the salient fact which distinguishes the English Revolution from all others: that those who wielded irresistible physical force were throughout convinced that it could give them no security. Nothing is more characteristic of the English people than their instinctive reverence even in rebellion for law and tradition. Deep in the nature of the men who had broken the King’s power was the conviction that law in his name was the sole foundation on which they could build.
- Winston Churchill
Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.
- Herb Kelleher
Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.
- Zig Ziglar
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
- Warren Buffett
In many places where coffee is grown, deforestation is a major issue. With Starbucks’ position in the marketplace and the respect and relationships we have, we can – and have, in some cases – been able to educate and influence people.
- Howard Schultz
You may never get to that perfect world that you’re waiting for where everything’s going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.
- Joel Olsteen
David Novak CEO of YUM Brands (on crisis management)
- David Novak
One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.
- Seth Godin
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
- Yoda
I really believe that you cannot use the stock market as a proxy for the economy.
- Howard Schultz
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
Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.
- P.T. Barnum
Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken.
- Donald Trump
I aim to be pretty – I gave up dressing to be sexy in the eighties.
- Sara Blakely
I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‘You’re going to do it my way.’ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‘You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.’
- Joel Olsteen
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.
- Donald Trump
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.
- Jeff Bezos
No one drifts to success.
- Napoleon Hill
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
- Confucius
I’ve never been one to dwell on reverses.
- Sam Walton
Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you’re doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they’re hiding out in the comfortable zone. When your uncomfortable actions lead to success, the organization rewards you and brings you back for more.
- Seth Godin
Allow yourself to get on the same side of the desk and solve the problems together.
- Jack Nadel
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.
- Winston Churchill
Install the proper systems.
- David Green
Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.
- Ben Horowitz
What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.
- Oprah Winfrey
Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.
- Jerry Vass
The U.S., especially Hollywood, is so strong for film production.
- Wang Jianlin
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
- Peter Drucker
If what others say doesn’t match what God has put in your heart, let it go in one ear and out the other.
- Joel Olsteen
If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.
- Zig Ziglar
MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future.
- Peter Thiel
Dreams grow if you grow.
- Zig Ziglar
If you wait until all the lights are green before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.
- Zig Ziglar
If you can get better at your job, you should be an active member of LinkedIn, because LinkedIn should be connecting you to the information, insights and people to be more effective.
- Reid Hoffman
People can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable, but if they don’t really believe in it, then they are not going to really work hard.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.
- Ben Horowitz
There is no such thing as a good tax.
- Winston Churchill
I’ve never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.
- Joel Olsteen
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.
- Winston Churchill
Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.
- Napoleon Hill
I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.
- Joel Olsteen
Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to close it for us.
- Oprah Winfrey
Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
- Og Mandino
The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.
- Seth Godin
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
- Albert Einstein
