When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.
- Zig Ziglar
Notable Quotables
Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants, comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache and their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things.
- Winston Churchill
Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
Good product managers crisply define the target, the “what” (as opposed to the “how”), and manage the delivery of the “what.” Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out “how.” Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally. Good product managers don’t give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally.
- Ben Horowitz
I like all kinds of music. I listen to Abigail Washburn, the Punch Brothers, and Marc Johnson, the great clawhammer player. I also listen a lot to Sirius Radio, there’s a lot of bluegrass there.
- Steve Martin
Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.
- James C. Collins
My politics are: I’m a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I’m pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It’s good for everybody; it’s not red or blue.
- Travis Kalanick
The sooner you accept the fact that you will have both successes and failures, the easier it will be to get your business and personal life headed in the right direction.
- Harvey Mackay
Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them.
- Jack Welch
Approach each customer with the idea of helping them solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.
- Brian Tracy
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
- Steve Jobs
You’re asking somebody who has a wife and is really happily married, ‘So, what’s your next wife going to be like?’ And I’m like, ‘What?
- Travis Kalanick
The reason we love our parents is because they loved us first. Every single company should take this advice.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I DECLARE God is going before me making crooked places straight. He has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities and solutions to problems I haven’t had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment, can stop His plan. What he promised will come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.
- Jeff Bezos
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.
- Stephen R. Covey
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
- Stephen R. Covey
Hay que evitar siempre el ángulo agudo.
- Dale Carnegie
A wartime C.E.O. may not delegate. They make every decision based on the next product release. They may use a lot of profanity.
- Ben Horowitz
Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless.
- Warren Buffett
The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE.
- Winston Churchill
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
- Steve Jobs
Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.
- John D. Rockefeller
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Winston Churchill
We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.
- Winston Churchill
I enjoy the hunt much more than the ‘good life’ after the victory.
- Carl Icahn
I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
- Stephen R. Covey
The ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.
- Og Mandino
I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend … if you have one.”— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)”Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”— Churchill’s response.
- Winston Churchill
A definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.
- Richard Branson
If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.
- Sam Walton
I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.
- Wang Jianlin
I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
- John D. Rockefeller
I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out
- Russell Simmons
Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.
- Stephen R. Covey
The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.
- Dale Carnegie
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
- Bill Gates
The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: ‘Does your teacher use class time well?’ and, ‘When you’re confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?
- Bill Gates
PRINCIPLE 1 The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. PRINCIPLE 2 Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, You’re wrong.” PRINCIPLE 3 If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. PRINCIPLE 4 Begin in a friendly way. PRINCIPLE 5 Get the other person saying yes, yes” immediately. PRINCIPLE 6 Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. PRINCIPLE 7 Let the other person feel that the idea.
- Dale Carnegie
Your thoughts about your circumstances have you down. On the other hand, you can be in one of the biggest battles of your life, and still be filled with joy and peace and victory – if you simply learn how to choose the right thought. It’s time to think about what you’re thinking about.
- Joel Olsteen
Don’t find fault, find a remedy.
- Henry Ford
I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who’ve never made any money in business.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. HEBREWS 11:1.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business. Large stores, gilt signs, flaming advertisements, will all prove unavailing if you or your employees treat your patrons abruptly. The truth is, the more kind and liberal a man is, the more generous will be the patronage bestowed upon him.
- P.T. Barnum
In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It’s a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems. A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.
- Ben Horowitz
Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
You are safer here tonight than you would be on the streets of any other city in the world.
- Michael Bloomberg
I was born in Africa. I came to California because it’s really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don’t see a viable competitor.
- Elon Musk
We have to innovate for a specific reason, and that reason comes from the market. Otherwise, we’ll end up making museum pieces.
- Phil Knight
Anyone that makes me a quarter of a billion dollars, I like.
- Carl Icahn
wouldn’t that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling the time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone?
- James C. Collins
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog.
- Carl Icahn
If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.
- Joel Olsteen
Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.
- Napoleon Hill
Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.
- Joel Olsteen
When you do things the right way, you have nothing to lose because you have nothing to fear.
- Zig Ziglar
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
- Bill Gates
Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve operated and launched newspapers all over the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
- Jack Welch
Success always demands a greater effort.
- Winston Churchill
The top salesperson in the organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made.
- Zig Ziglar
It makes no difference where you go, there you are. And it makes no difference what you have, there’s always more to want. Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.
- Zig Ziglar
The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people – including my ex-wives.
- Ronald Perelman
If you wish to build a powerful personal network, branch out. Build a diverse network of professional contacts that includes people that don’t look like you, sound like you, speak like you or have your background, education or history. The only thing they should have in common with you and the other people in your network is that they should be really good at what they do. Create a personal network like that, and you’ll have a network that can help you succeed at anything.
- Ivan Misner
When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—“Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally”—she’s not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she’s reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.
- Seth Godin
Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.
- Bill Gates
The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little.
- Zig Ziglar
A lot of preachers’ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.
- Joel Olsteen
Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.
- Winston Churchill
Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.
- Bill Gates
While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap.
- Ray Kroc
Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.
- Wang Jianlin
Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.
- Steven Spielberg
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …
- Dale Carnegie
The real question for me is, do people have the tools that they need in order to make those decisions well? And I think that it’s actually really important that Facebook continually makes it easier and easier to make those decisions… If people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Being a winner is much different from having the potential to win. Everyone has the potential, it’s what you do with that potential that really matters.
- Zig Ziglar
About half of our wives do not work outside the home. The number-one occupation for those wives who do work is teacher.
- Thomas J Stanley
We know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition.
- Peter Thiel
If I had to do it over again, I would have done the same but earlier. It is never too early to start something. The sooner you begin, the sooner you get your experience.
- Warren Buffett
Execution begins with a vision and your people saying, I understand it. I’m excited about it. I can help make it happen.
- David Novak
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
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
I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.
- Thomas Edison
Stepping back from almost any situation with an underperformer, it’s always easy to see the solution. They need to move on—sooner rather than later. Up close, however, organizations tend to draw out departures, as people fret about the employee’s emotional reaction to being let go. Oftentimes, managers feel guilty about putting a friend out of work, or remorseful they didn’t give candid enough feedback along the way, or both.
- Jack Welch
Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.
- Sam Walton
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.
- Warren Buffett
My father encouraged me to study something I was interested in, not necessarily the basis for a career.
- Michael Balmuth
Money isn’t everything , but it’s right up there with oxygen.
- Zig Ziglar
If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.
- Bill Gates
We will intensify our efforts to build out our infrastructure overseas and to develop products that are tailored to individual markets
- Sergey Brin
After the Apple II was introduced, then came the Commodore and the Tandy TRS-80.
- Steve Wozniak
In the simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up and goes.
- John Erskine
Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.
- Bill Gates
Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.
- Elon Musk
