Notable Quotables

greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.

- James C. Collins

Look – this is the terror of being a founder & CEO. It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do – ultimately, you’re at the end.

- Ben Horowitz

When you write a program for Android, you use the Oracle Java tools for everything, and at the very end, you push a button and say, ‘Convert this to Android format.’

- Larry Ellison

He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.

- Thomas Edison

Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.

- James C. Collins

When it comes to Starbucks, I take every threat very personally.

- Howard Schultz

Obama has no solutions. Obama has failed the country and its great citizens, and they don’t like it when somebody such as myself speaks the truth about this – it hurts too much.

- Donald Trump

Of course people are getting smarter nowadays, they are letting lawyers instead of their conscience be their guides.

- Will Rogers

The depth of your spirit will determine the height of your success.

- Zig Ziglar

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.

- Russell Simmons

Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Just learn from the guys who have already done it well. You need a mentor, a seasoned coach who is willing to share his wisdom and experience with you. Ask someone who has already been successful to guide you.

- George Foreman

Properly run startups place a great deal of emphasis on recruiting and the interview process in order to build their talent base. Too often the investment in people stops there.

- Ben Horowitz

My first professional job was to sell heavy-duty waterless cookware.

- Zig Ziglar

Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say: Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.

- Dale Carnegie

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

- Bill Gates

Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.

- Jack Welch

A CEO’s job is to supervise all systems and to indentify weaknesses before the weaknesses turn into system failures. This can happen in many different ways, but it is exceptionally disconcerting when you company is growing rapidly. Your sales are increasing, your product of service is getting attention from the media, and suddenly you can’t deliver. Why? Uusually, it’s because your systems imploded from the increased demand. You didn’t have enough phone lines, or operators answering the phones. You didn’t have enough production capacity or enough hours in the week to meet the demand; or you didn’t have the money to build the product or hire additional help. Whatever the reason, you missed the opportunity to move your business to the next level of success due to failure of one of your systems…At each new level of growth, the CEO must start planning the systems needed to support the next level of growth, from phone lines to lines of credit for production needs. Systems drive both cash flow management and communication. As your systems get better, you or your employees will have to exert less and less effort. Without well-designed and successful operating systems, your business will be labor intensive. Once you have well-designed and successful operating systems, you will have a saleable business asset.

- Robert Kiyosaki

No matter who you are, you need two kinds of friends in your life. The first kind is one you can call when something good happens, and you need someone who will be excited for you. Not a fake excitement veiling envy, but a real excitement. You need someone who will actually be more excited for you than he would be if it had happened to him. The second kind of friend is somebody you can call when things go horribly wrong—when your life is on the line and you only have one phone call. Who is it going to be? Bill Campbell is both of those friends.

- Ben Horowitz

To grow your company explosively you must have leaders, not just efficient managers.

- John Maxwell

In the beginning, I thought mobile search was not much different from Web search. It’s just a smaller screen, a slower speed; it’s all the bad things. When I thought about mobile Internet, it’s all the disadvantages.

- Robin Li

The three Rs in educationare reading, writing and arithmetic. Without these basic skills, learning becomes almost impossible. In a similar way, business starts with a relationship. You are then judged by the results. Rewards spring from the results.

- Jack Nadel

I understood the importance of hiring for strength rather than for lack of weakness, and I understood the meaning of “fit.”

- Ben Horowitz

It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.

- Ben Horowitz

We must … balance the fact that innovation inside the network is just as important as innovation in services and devices connected to the Internet. Broadband Internet access service providers should remain free to engage in pro-competitive network management techniques to alleviate congestion, ameliorate capacity constraints, and enable new services.

- John Chambers

To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.

- Bill Gates

When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.

- Ray Dalio

I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.

- Bill Gates

Management always bears in mind to ‘lend a hand’ to Hong Kong and Mainland China while we are working hard for shareholders’ benefits.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Your business has to work when it’s small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.

- Seth Godin

Life’s too short to fight the forces of change. Life’s too short to hate what you do all day. Life’s way too short to make mediocre stuff.

- Seth Godin

In absorbing companies, Rockefeller was secretive and asked them to continue operating under their original names and not divulge their Standard Oil Ownership. They were instructed to retain their original stationary, keep secret accounts, and not allude on paper to their Cleveland connection.

- Ron Chernow

Would you believe that in 2011 and 2012, Nigeria paid $30 billion in subsidy, money which would have been used to build at least 20 refineries?

- Aliko Dangote

We know that if you just were to take the drugs that you were supposed to take for diabetes or hypertension, just take it, as opposed to not take it, we could save $7,000, $3,000 per patient per year.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

For the first time in a very long time, I believe the external factors are slowly starting to be more positive, … This is still a minority view, held by a minority of our customers, but we’ve seen early indications that the recovery could be gaining momentum.

- John Chambers

I’m anti-tax, but I’m pro-carbon tax.

- Elon Musk

I feel that people I trusted – I don’t know who, on what level – have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.

- Rupert Murdoch

There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It’s not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well.

- George Soros

The clothes you wear influence you; thereby they form a part of your environment. Soiled or shabby clothes depress you and lower your self-confidence, while clean, modest and refined clothes give you a sort of inner feeling of courage that causes you to quicken your step as you walk

- Napoleon Hill

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

- Warren Buffett

One of [Bill] Bowerman’s more legendary innovations is the Waffle outsole, which he discovered by pouring rubber into a waffle iron.

- Phil Knight

The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.

- Ben Horowitz

Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body.

- Peter Drucker

Most of us have never felt at a disadvantage because we did not receive any inheritance. About 80 percent of us are first-generation affluent.

- Thomas J Stanley

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.

- Mark Zuckerberg

We know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition.

- Peter Thiel

In order to be happy, every individual needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done.

- Peter Thiel

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

- Jim Rohn

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

- General George S. Patton

Profitability comes from loyalty, productivity, and having a character base from which to work.

- Zig Ziglar

So sure, start with a slogan. But don’t bother wasting any time on it if you’re merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.

- Seth Godin

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

- Zig Ziglar

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

- Bill Gates

You are here today because of a decision you made yesterday.

- Bryan Smith

Education comes from within, you get it by struggle and effort and thought.

- Napoleon Hill

I’d always try to remind managers at every level that they had to share my passion for developing people.

- Jack Welch

Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity. The things that we were forced to learn and do, because we started out underfinanced and undercapitalized in these remote small communities, contributed mightily to the way we’ve grown as a company. Had we been capitalized, or had we been the offshoot of a large corporation the way I wanted to be, we might not ever have tried…

- Sam Walton

Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet.

- Zig Ziglar

Changes that used to occur over quarters are literally occurring over months.

- John Chambers

You can succeed at almost anything for which you have unbridled enthusiasm.

- Zig Ziglar

As Google CEO Larry Page put it in his 2014 TED talk: “The main thing that has caused companies to fail, in my view, is that they missed the future.

- Jack Welch

MAY 13 Guard Against Pessimism For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. ROMANS 14:17 NLT I HEARD A STORY ABOUT TWO FARMERS. When the rain fell, one farmer said, Thank You, Lord, for watering our crops.” But the other farmer said, Yeah, but if the rain keeps up, it’s going to rot the roots.” When the sun came out, the positive farmer said, Thank You, Lord, that our crops are getting the vitamins and minerals they need. We’ll have a wonderful harvest this year.” But the negative farmer said, Yeah, but if it keeps up, it’s going to scorch those plants. We’re never going to make a living.” Don’t you know people who are always focused on the negative? Be sure to guard against their negative attitudes infecting your thinking! Stay focused on the positive things in life.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s not always easy to get over some of those bumps in the road, those disillusionments and disappointments. It’s going to take a strong will. Sometimes, it may take courage. Sometimes nothing but faith in God and say, I refuse to be trapped in the past. I’m not going to let the past destroy my future. I’m pressing on. I’m straining forward, knowing that God has great things in store for me.

- Joel Olsteen

You must unlearn what you have learned.

- Yoda

…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day… If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased… I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do… I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. …Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.

- Thomas Edison

The Dip creates scarcity, scarcity creates value.

- Seth Godin

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.

- Jeff Bezos

I am thinking about launching a wine website where there is a deal and the crowd can dictate how cheap it can get.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

You want supply to always be full, and you use price to basically either bring more supply on or get more supply off, or get more demand in the system or get some demand out. It’s classic Econ 101.

- Travis Kalanick

Show a real interest in his problem and helping him solve it.

- Jack Nadel

I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.

- Henry Ford

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

[Less than a week after founding the forerunner to Nike] I forgot to make it part of the original agreement, but I think it ought to be made explicit: There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.

- Phil Knight

The main rule to me is to honor God with your life. To life a life of integrity. Not be selfish. You know, help others. But that’s really the essence of the Christian faith.

- Joel Olsteen

How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?

- Seth Godin

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

Even if you are predisposed to being overweight, you’re not predestined to be fat.

- Timothy Ferriss

This is a strange Christmas Eve,”Churchill told the the crowd of several hundred gathered at the mansion’s garden.”Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and with the most terrible weapons which science can devise the nations advance upon each other.

- Winston Churchill

The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.

- Dale Carnegie

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

- Bill Gates

I attract a crowd, not because I’m an extrovert or I’m over the top or I’m oozing with charisma. It’s because I care.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.

- Peter Drucker

People who couldn’t fit into this informal and entreprenual environment left or were asked to leave. I cut my losses quickly on bad hires that didn’t perform.

- Jack Welch

Smith never wavered. Twenty-five years later, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper outright and beat Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories.12 In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.

- James C. Collins

The relationships we have with people are extremely important to success on and off the job.

- Zig Ziglar

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

- Donald Trump

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