Notable Quotables

Your real boss is the one who walks around under your hat.

- Napoleon Hill

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.

- Zig Ziglar

Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.

- Winston Churchill

What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.

- Napoleon Hill

As it happened, we did extraordinarily well with our Newport Wal-Mart, and it wasn’t too long before the old Ben Franklin store I had run on Front Street had to close its doors. You can’t say we ran that guy – the landlord’s son – out of business. His customers were the ones who shut him down. They voted with their feet. Quite a few smaller stores have gone out of business during the time of Wal-Mart’s growth. Some people have tried to turn it into this big controversy, sort of a Save the Small-Town Merchants deal, like they were whales or whooping cranes of something that has the right to be protected…If you become a large-scale success it’s Katie bar the door. Suddenly, you make a very convenient villian because everybody seems to love shooting at who’s on top.

- Sam Walton

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

- Bill Gates

My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others…. Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

- Thomas Edison

I want to sit with 80- and 90-year-old people more than anyone. They have played this game before. Not one of them has told me, ‘I wish I had more money.’

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Well, real estate is always good, as far as I’m concerned.

- Donald Trump

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

- Andrew Carnegie

I like the fact that I can meet anyone now and have a conversation.

- Larry Page

Faith is about trusting God when you have unanswered questions.

- Joel Olsteen

You should evaluate your organizational design on a regular basis and gather the information that you need to decide without tipping people off to what you plan to do. Once you decide, you should immediately execute the reorg: Don’t leave time for leaks and lobbying.

- Ben Horowitz

I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons

- Russell Simmons

It’s ironic that no matter where I go, I meet people from Brooklyn. I’m proud of that heritage. It’s where I’m from, who I am.

- Howard Schultz

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.

- Sara Blakely

And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world.

- Seth Godin

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

Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.

- Dale Carnegie

The Group is well positioned to meet the challenges ahead and will as ever continue to pursue higher growth.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Owners don’t fire all the players. They fire the leader and bring in someone they hope the players will buy into.

- Napoleon Hill

President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.

- Harold Hamm

If your thinking is limited, then your life is going to be limited.

- Joel Olsteen

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.

- Andrew Carnegie

lasting transformations from good to great follow a general pattern of buildup followed by breakthrough.

- James C. Collins

You read these management books that say, ‘These are the hard things about running a company.’ But those aren’t really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt.

- Ben Horowitz

Saudi Arabia has stability. The social contract and the political contract between the king and the rulers and the royal family and the ruled people in Saudi Arabia is very strong and the bondage is so solid.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

If the employees fundamentally trust the C.E.O., then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust.

- Ben Horowitz

If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from ’87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.

- Howard Schultz

Failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

- Sara Blakely

We’re working toward the ability for all Cisco devices to work together and communicate with each other to stop attacks. The idea is that one device can warn another device of a threat.

- John Chambers

Happiness is not a tangible thing, it’s a byproduct – a byproduct of achievement.

- Ray Kroc

Over the years, Hong Kong has been confronted with various challenges. On every occasion, we were able to rely on our unique qualities – resourcefulness, perseverance, diligence and passion for excellence – to rise above our difficulties.

- Cheng Yu-tung

You either trust someone day one until they prove you wrong, or you say, ‘I don’t trust you until you show me I can trust you.’ I’m the latter.

- Charles Ergen

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

- Peter Drucker

Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.

- Peter Thiel

Perhaps the most important thing that I learned as an entrepreneur was to focus on what I needed to get right and stop worrying about all the things that I did wrong or might do wrong.

- Ben Horowitz

More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.

- Peter Drucker

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

- Joel Olsteen

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

- Jeff Bezos

The steel business is a local business. We do believe in the U.S. economy and would like to have a strong, balanced presence here.

- Alexei Mordashov

When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened

- Winston Churchill

To my mind the old masters are not art, their value is in their scarcity.

- Thomas Edison

If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.

- Jack Ma

I’m healthy as can be – not an ache or a pain. A lot of my prayer is thanking the Lord that I am healthy. I pray for long life and good health.

- Joel Olsteen

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.

- Harvey Mackay

The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.

- Herb Kelleher

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. … The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

- Larry Ellison

This is indicative of how quickly CEO caution can put the foot on the brake.

- John Chambers

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

- Joel Olsteen

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

There should be order if the development of the cyber world is to be sustainable.

- Ma Huateng

[On Twitter and Japan] We’ve had massive success in Japan… In Japan, it’s not 140 characters, it’s 140 words. So you could write a little mini-novel. This is a whole story in the universe.

- Jack Dorsey

If you will focus on meeting other people’s needs, God will always make sure your needs are supplied. God will take care of your problems for you.

- Joel Olsteen

Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

Indeed, the real question is not, Why greatness?” but What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, Why should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough?” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work.

- James C. Collins

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.

- Stephen R. Covey

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

My little girls are the most beautiful women in the world. I am a lucky, lucky man. I will spend every day making sure that they know this.

- Russell Simmons

Don’t sit around depressed and discouraged. Get a new vision for your life.

- Joel Olsteen

I’m an HBO subscriber, and I watch a bunch of great shows on HBO.

- Reed Hastings

I’m just always looking forwards. I spend very little time, looking backwards.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.

- Ben Horowitz

I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.

- Donald Trump

If you count E-mail, I’m on the Internet all day, every day.

- Bill Gates

Improvement is to invent something completely new.

- Peter Thiel

As the Readers’s Digest once said: ‘Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.

- Dale Carnegie

When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.

- Bill Gates

In the 1950s, people welcomed big plans and asked whether they would work. Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris. You can still visit the Bay Model in that Sausalito warehouse, but today it’s just a tourist attraction: big plans for the future have become archaic curiosities.

- Peter Thiel

I influence anybody who is able to get through the chaos of my first impression.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The foundations and the intent of the Affordable Care Act are laudable. The way it’s being implemented is a disaster.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

- Winston Churchill

If they really don’t want to buy the flats, I’ll take their deposits.

- Lee Shau Kee

Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.

- Ben Horowitz

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

- Seneca

What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.

- Larry Ellison

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

American running shoes were still made by offshoots of the tire companies, cheap and terrible. They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters…

- Phil Knight

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

- Elon Musk

Success is the maximum utilization of the ability you have.

- Zig Ziglar

I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that’s a big deal. And if you’re going to be a leader – if you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.

- Jack Welch

One evening, intending to ask my host mother to wake me the next morning (okosu), I ask her to violently rape me (okasu). She is very confused.

- Timothy Ferriss

It’s [the internet] like the flu – it just spreads like crazy.

- Jack Welch

You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts. The good-to-great companies operated.

- James C. Collins

Quality is a cornerstone of the [Henderson] Group underpinning all our activities.

- Lee Shau Kee

No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy — unless you let him.

- Napoleon Hill

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