When you have no one to answer to, vendetta as investment strategy is as legitimate as anything.
- Carl Icahn
Notable Quotables
Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.
- Timothy Ferriss
Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.
- Peter Thiel
The world’s major metropolitan cities are more or less the same.
- Tadashi Yanai
Health is worth more than learning.
- Thomas Jefferson
No one is guaranteed a job in this.
- Jack Welch
I’ve operated and launched newspapers all over the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
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
From age 16, I lived and breathed wine. I read every magazine and book about wine.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I don’t believe in saturation. We’re thinking and talking worldwide.
- Ray Kroc
If Google Books is successful, others will follow.
- Sergey Brin
Our goal is not to build a platform, it’s to be cross all of them.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Failures are life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.
- Sara Blakely
It’s easy to get negative because you get beat down. You go through a few disappointments and it’s easy to stay in that negative frame of mind. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is a whole cliche, but your attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
- Joel Olsteen
Eliminate the fear of old age by reaching a decision to accept it, not as a handicap, but as a great blessing which carries with it wisdom, self-control, and understanding not known to youth. Whip the fear of poverty by reaching a decision to get along with whatever wealth you can accumulate without worry. Master the fear of loss of love by reaching decision to get along without love, if that is necessary. Kill that habit of worry in all its forms, by reaching a general, blanket decision that that nothing which life has to offer is worth the price of worry. With this decision comes poise, peace of mind, and calmness of thought which will bring happiness.
- Napoleon Hill
Given the uncertainty going into the Y2K quarter, we are very pleased with our quarterly results.
- John Chambers
There is no sale without the story, no knockout without the setup.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.
- Winston Churchill
Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.
- Seth Godin
The garden gleams with summer jewelry. We live vy simply—but with all the essentials of life well understood & well provided for—hot baths, cold champagne, new peas, & old brandy.
- Winston Churchill
Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.
- Bill Gates
My education was interrupted only by my schooling.
- Winston Churchill
An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project.
- Ben Horowitz
Should there be cameras everywhere in outdoor streets? My personal view is having cameras in inner cities is a very good thing. In the case of London, petty crime has gone down. They catch terrorists because of it. And if something really bad happens, most of the time you can figure out who did it.
- Bill Gates
Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
- Confucius
Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, Napster’s then-teenage founders, credibly threatened to disrupt the powerful music recording industry in 1999. The next year, they made the cover of Time magazine. A year and a half after that, they ended up in bankruptcy court.
- Peter Thiel
You need to live every day like it could be your last.
- Joel Olsteen
Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
- George Washington Carver
If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.
- Jeff Bezos
Use money to make money.
- Lee Shau Kee
‘We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
- Publilius Syrus
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We just want to have great people working for us.
- Sergey Brin
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
When I cut the feet out of my pantyhose that one time, I saw it as my sign. I had been visualizing being self employed prior to this happening. It was my mental preparation meeting the opportunity in that moment.
- Sara Blakely
If you and I go around grumbling about ingratitude, who is to blame? Is it human nature—or is it our ignorance of human nature? Let’s not expect gratitude. Then, if we get some occasionally, it will come as a delightful surprise. If we don’t get it, we won’t be disturbed. Here is the first point I am trying to make in this chapter: It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches.
- Dale Carnegie
If you ask me whether the future is better than today, I would say yes; but the people must be ready to pay for services and pay their taxes.
- Aliko Dangote
The Chinese government still would like to see U.S. Internet companies explore the Chinese market, providing they are willing to abide by Chinese law. I think companies like Facebook should think about the Chinese market.
- Robin Li
Concentration is my motto – first honesty, then industry, then concentration.
- Andrew Carnegie
In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.
- Bill Gates
Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.
- Peter Thiel
To do the most good requires saying no to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.
- Peter Drucker
Don’t romance Wall Street. You don’t want investors who are only concerned about the quarter, or who are working on their exit strategy from day one. You want shareholders to own you forever. If we have no trading at all, I consider that a tremendous accomplishment.
- Warren Buffett
God, Family, Country.
- Zig Ziglar
Despite the office rent in Hong Kong generally declining, the Group’s rental is resilient as the major rental properties owned by the Group are retail shopping properties situated in the new towns and mass transportation network.
- Lee Shau Kee
As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there’s always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.
- Peter Drucker
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
- Warren Buffett
Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends, the best paths are new and untried.
- Peter Thiel
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them.
- Seth Godin
Today I will be a successful sales professional, and I will learn something today that will make me even more professional tomorrow.
- Zig Ziglar
People want to watch whatever video they want to watch whenever they want to watch. If you provision your Internet infrastructure adequately, you can do that.
- Bill Gates
Be honest, always.
- Jack Dorsey
I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.
- Herb Kelleher
When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary. If there is some point you haven’t thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention.
- Dale Carnegie
We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
- Jack Welch
When I first joined the Irvine Company, I realized that less than 11,000 acres were designated as open space in the original master plan, and that just didn’t seem adequate to me. So, I began the lengthy process working with public and community organizations to add more open space.
- Donald Bren
Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business.
- Dale Carnegie
I feel like my message is to let people know that God is a good God, that He’s on their side, and no matter what happens, He has a great plan for them.
- Joel Olsteen
I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.
- John D. Rockefeller
You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.
- Seth Godin
When your hobbies get in the way of your work – that’s OK, but when your hobbies get in the way of themselves… well.
- Steve Martin
In any new business, someone has to have a vision. You are as good as the people around you. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Identify your core community and go from there. Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. In my experience it often takes as long as five years to make a business work. Partners can fail you. Staff may not execute properly. You could be too far ahead of the market. SO you have to be willing to hand in there and make it happen. From the founding of Phat Farm in 1992 until 1997, I lost money. By my account, I experienced $10 million in losses. But today Phat Farm is visible, it is imitated and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars. It took time, but good ideas often do need time to take off. Being an entrepreneur requires instinct, fortitude and the ability to accept that the world does not run on your schedule. Sometimes you just have to believe.
- Russell Simmons
Share your experiences, tell your stories, and inspire others along the way.
- Blake Mycoskie
Freedom does not come automatically, it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound
- Rollo May
Over 80% of America’s millionaires are self-made.
- Thomas J Stanley
Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.
- Thomas Edison
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
- Walt Disney
Okay, let’s talk about cartoon labels for half a second – some people think anything with a dog or a car or a colorful alien is garbage, which is not true. Look at Big Moose Red. It’s, like, a $6 wine with a cheesy label, and it’s actually a solid wine.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Visionary companies make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and—quite literally—accident. What looks in retrospect like brilliant foresight and preplanning was often the result of Let’s just try a lot of stuff and keep what works.
- James C. Collins
I’ve always thought if we don’t want to enforce laws on the books, we should remove them from the books. But when you have laws, you breed contempt if you don’t enforce them.
- Michael Bloomberg
It’s Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.
- Seth Godin
I was not naturally talented. I didn’t sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.
- Steve Martin
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
- Henry Ford
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
The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.
- Helen Keller
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.
- Ben Horowitz
When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.
- Howard Schultz
His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.
- Ron Chernow
You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.
- Warren Buffett
You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
- John C. Maxwell
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
The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
- Dale Carnegie
The worst that could happen wasn’t crashing and burning, it was accepting terminal boredom as a tolerable status quo.
- Timothy Ferriss
I consider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment…..the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy. A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only “postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.
- Peter Drucker
This is not to imply that we agree on everything because we don’t. Nor does it mean there are no arguments because there are. It does mean there is never any maliciousness or bitterness in our differences. It does mean each is willing to admit a mistake and apologize if he or she is wrong. It means we enjoy each other and love each other enough to put the other one first. We never part company or go to sleep without settling our differences and reaffirming our love. We’re both grateful that God has let us spend enough years together to develop a relationship and discover what real love is all about. Our prayer is that God will permit us to have many more years together before we start our walk though eternity—together.
- Zig Ziglar
People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.
- Joel Olsteen
There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.
- Winston Churchill
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
Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
For those that have fixed exchange-rate regimes, you will need a greater amount of foreign reserves. That’s the case in Belize, it’s the case in the Eastern Caribbean zone and it’s also the case in Barbados. In those cases, the level of reserve coverage is one of credit weakness. Where you have a bit more flexibility in the exchange rate ? for instance, Jamaica ? you would require a smaller amount of international reserves.
- John Chambers
We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.
- Oprah Winfrey
In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming found that a mysterious antibacterial fungus had grown on a petri dish he’d forgotten to cover in his laboratory: he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since. Modern drug discovery aims to amplify Fleming’s serendipitous circumstances a millionfold: pharmaceutical companies search through combinations of molecular compounds at random, hoping to find a hit.
- Peter Thiel
Thank you is probably the most important thing that a leader can say.
- David Novak
Mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view. About building a business that works not because of you but without you.
- Michael Gerber
Talent is God-given, be humble. Fame is man-given, be thankful. Conceit is self-given, be careful.
- Harvey Mackay
Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.
- Yoda
Keep in mind, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that one does not exist. You simply haven’t discovered it yet.
- Joel Olsteen
