Notable Quotables

Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.

- Dale Carnegie

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.

- Mario Andretti

The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.

- James Simons

The bluegrass community… can be very strict. I didn’t know if I’d be welcomed into the bluegrass community or not, but I think they judge you very fairly… I felt really welcome.

- Steve Martin

The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor.

- Seth Godin

When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out—this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break. Zig Ziglar taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my e-mail for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain will soon be trained to use that escape hatch again and again.

- Seth Godin

I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.

- Steve Wozniak

Today, we’re very dependent on cheap energy. We just take it for granted – all the things you have in the house, the way industry works.

- Bill Gates

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You’d believe that a patient with hypertension, if you know you have hypertension or diabetes, you would take your drug every day. The compliance rate is more like 30% or 40%. Which means that 60% of patients don’t take their drugs, and they actually go into these crises, end up in the hospital.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

As a businessperson, I don’t have the power to change the government. That is in the hands of the political leaders. However, as a taxpayer, we have the right to be critical of the government and demand change.

- Tadashi Yanai

Whether you’re 9 or 90, stop trying to fix the things you’re bad at, and focus on the things you’re good at.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.

- Peter Drucker

Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power.

- Joel Olsteen

Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.

- Herb Kelleher

I can go into restaurants and a whole table will get up and clap if they recognize me, because they love Fox News. Other places – or even the same place – people will turn the other way.

- Rupert Murdoch

There’s this great quote…which says ‘The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.’

- Jack Dorsey

People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.

- Zig Ziglar

It doesn’t matter how many people you offend, as long as you’re getting your message to your consumers. I say to those people who do not want to offend anybody: You are going to have a very, very difficult time having meaningful advertising.

- Phil Knight

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

My personal opinion is that I’m in the media too much. I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman. I would like to be without any extra visibility.

- Viktor Vekselberg

I was raised with ‘Laurel and Hardy’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it’s the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you’re performing in your bedroom for yourself.

- Steve Martin

Thus far then have we travelled along the terrible road we chose at the call of duty. The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this: A year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate to all eyes but our own. To-day we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: ‘We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls.

- Winston Churchill

I think the currency of leadership is transparency. You’ve got to be truthful. I don’t think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where you’ve got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who you are, and not be afraid of it.

- Howard Schultz

A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist.

- Seth Godin

Put all excuses aside and remember this: YOU are capable.

- Zig Ziglar

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

- Steven Wright

Actually, King Abdullah, under his supervision and guidance, has established a dialogue in Saudi Arabia whereby all the population, whether Shiite or Sunnis from north, south, west or east, they can get together and exchange their views.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.

- Bill Gates

Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

-Gardens, not buildings–Great projects start out feeling like buildings. There are architects, materials, staff, rigid timelines, permits, engineers, a structure.It works or it doesn’t.Build something that doesn’t fall down. On time.But in fact, great projects, like great careers and relationships that last, are gardens. They are tended, they shift, they grow. They endure over time, gaining a personality and reflecting their environment. When something dies or fades away, we prune, replant and grow again.Perfection and polish aren’t nearly as important as good light, good drainage and a passionate gardener.By all means, build. But don’t finish. Don’t walk away.Here we grow.

- Seth Godin

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

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

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.

- Jack Welch

Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings.

- Zig Ziglar

Worrying about the past or the future isn’t productive. When you start chastising yourself for past mistakes, or seeing disaster around every corner, stop and take a breath and ask yourself what you can do right now to succeed.

- Harvey Mackay

Lanai at one time grew 98% of the world’s pineapples. But the world’s pineapples are now grown in two places, Costa Rica and Panama, because no one wants to spend $45 for a pineapple from the United States.

- Larry Ellison

Establish a core value that drives the business and helps promote it in perpetuity.

- Ben Horowitz

Taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible.

- Larry Ellison

With residential property prices having dropped by around two-thirds from their peak in 1997 and local interest rates dropping to their historic lows, mortgage payments currently falls below rental payment. This positive carry has led to property purchases by both home purchasers as well as investors. Further, with the local stock market becoming active again and reaching its highest level in the past 17 months, this has resulted in an increase in the number of transactions and a price for the luxury properties.

- Lee Shau Kee

We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

- Jeff Bezos

I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not a politician.

- Robin Li

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

- Bill Gates

Plan and execute your first failure so that you no longer have to fear it.

- John C. Maxwell

They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.

- Winston Churchill

Most of us don’t invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

- Sam Walton

This generation… they have a different attitude. Instead of sitting and watching something, they want to be a part of it – they’re very hedonistic and sensual.

- Stephen Wynn

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

- Donald Trump

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?

- Zig Ziglar

My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results.

- Seth Godin

The success we are now taking in is the natural outcome of our adhesion to our principles to start with: an enterprise shall take care of the people’s livelihood, through thick and thin; an enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.

- Cheng Yu-tung

There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything and an optimist who says, Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway. Either way, nothing happens.

- Yvon Chouinard

The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realise in some subtle way that you realise their importance, and recognise it sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.

- Warren G. Tracy

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862)

- Timothy Ferriss

I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that’s the reason so many liked him and did business in his store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. (on role of managing partner)

- Inez Threet

Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.

- Tadashi Yanai

People with the right kind of ambition would not likely use the word play to describe their effort to work as a team to build something substantial. Finally, people who use the “me” prism find it natural and obvious to speak in terms of “building out my résumé” while people who use the “team” prism find such phrases to be somewhat uncomfortable and awkward, because they clearly indicate an individual goal that is separate from the team goal.

- Ben Horowitz

I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

- Jeff Bezos

Tip 29 – A good Accountant is not just a scorekeeper.

- Jack Nadel

I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven’t done the work that has built the foundation to support it.

- Howard Schultz

I was a great student at a great school, Wharton School of Finance.

- Donald Trump

Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.

- Reed Hastings

When you own your choices, you own their consequences.

- Jack Welch

There are two paths people can take. They can either play now and pay later, or pay now and play later. Regardless of the choice, one thing is certain. Life will demand a payment.

- John C. Maxwell

Keep a good attitude and do the right thing even when it’s hard. When you do that you are passing the test. And God promises you your marked moments are on their way.

- Joel Olsteen

People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.

- Peter Drucker

If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.

- Zig Ziglar

We are in control of the one asset that we all give the most f#%ks about, and that is time.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

We were trading things before we were using language to communicate.

- Jack Dorsey

My parents got one bedroom, my three sisters got the other bedroom, and my brother and I made do with a rollaway in the kitchen.

- David Green

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.

- John Chambers

I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.

- Steve Martin

Fact: If standard of living is your number one objective, quality of life almost never improves. But if quality of life is your number one objective, standard of living invariably improves.

- Zig Ziglar

The most terrifying phrase in the English language is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’

- Ronald Reagan

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

- Timothy Ferriss

I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.

- Zig Ziglar

Extraordinary results are directlydetermined by how narrow you can make your focus.

- Gary Keller

Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.

- Og Mandino

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

- Winston Churchill

No genuine leader is ever too busy to do anything which may be required of him in his capacity as leader. When a man, whether he is a leader of followers, admits he is too busy to change his plans, or to give attention to any emergency, he admits his inefficiency. The successful leader must be the master of all details connected with his position.

- Napoleon Hill

Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic. The best way to approach a potential break is simple: Confide in them honestly but tactfully and explain your concerns. If they bite back, your conclusions have been confirmed. Drop them like any other bad habit. If they promise to change, first spend at least two weeks apart to develop other positive influences in your life and diminish psychological dependency. The next trial period should have a set duration and consist of pass-or-fail criteria. If this approach is too confrontational for you, just politely refuse to interact with them. Be in the middle of something when the call comes, and have a prior commitment when the invitation to hang out comes. Once you see the benefits of decreased time with these people, it will be easier to stop communication altogether.

- Timothy Ferriss

The [Henderson] Group possesses substantial recurrent income.

- Lee Shau Kee

You don’t have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn’t know you possessed.

- Napoleon Hill

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.

- Peter Drucker

Trump has been very influential in helping me expand by vision. Sometimes I talk to Donald two or three times a day, and he’s taught me many things. The best thing was a story he tells me about buying a building. When he built Trump Tower he also bought the rights to use the Tiffany name on the building. It was gonna be Tiffany Tower. He late father said, Yeah right. When you change your name to Tiffany, you call it Tiffany Tower. But for now, you call it Trump. Over a period of years whenever he was in trouble, his name and his promotion of himself as a brand are what saved him. I keep that lesson in mind. I remember how connecting Def Comedy Jam to Def Jam records helped both entities – associating HBO with an established hip-hop brand helped get the show on the air, while linking the label to a hot TV show helped the label survive a cold period.

- Russell Simmons

Positive energy is the ability to get other people revved up. People who energize can inspire their team to take on the impossible and enjoy the hell out of doing it. In fact, people would arm wrestle for a chance to work with them.

- Jack Welch

You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.

- Larry Ellison

Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.

- George Soros

As you schedule individual tasks, give yourself a cushion. Mark the due date a few days ahead of the actual deadline so you have time to deal with changes or last-minute emergencies.

- Harvey Mackay

Freedom does not come automatically, it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound

- Rollo May

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