I was leading a lot of idea and the vision for where the product was going. Ev [Evan Williams] was funding and supporting what we were doing. He put the shelter over our heads. And Biz [Stone] was just an amazingly creative guy.
- Jack Dorsey
Notable Quotables
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- Warren Buffett
The typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.
- Michael Gerber
No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.
- Winston Churchill
Certainly the caffeine in coffee, whether it’s Starbucks or generic coffee, is somewhat of a stimulant. But if you drink it in moderation, which I think four or five cups a day is, you’re fine.
- Howard Schultz
God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days. Why should you and I?
- Dale Carnegie
I like to play cards. I’m not very good, because I don’t want to calculate, I just play by instinct. But I’ve learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker.
- Jack Ma
Great CEOs build exceptional strategies for gathering the required information continuously. They embed their quest for intelligence into all of their daily actions from staff meetings to customer meetings to one-on-ones. Winning strategies are built on comprehensive knowledge gathered in every interaction the CEO has with an employee, a customer, a partner, or an investor.
- Ben Horowitz
No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I have taken six companies public, and three of those are Fortune 1000 companies, but the key to my success has been my ability to sell other people on my dreams.
- Wayne Huizenga
Be a victor , not a victim.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.
- Ben Horowitz
I have never found a ship I wanted to go down with
- Jack Nadel
Everything rises and falls on leadership.
- John C. Maxwell
Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.
- James C. Collins
When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.
- Peter Thiel
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
- Dale Carnegie
You need to have extraordinary wisdom to be the forerunner.
- Ma Huateng
There are certain things I will automate, but when it comes to quality control, I want to keep a very close eye.
- Timothy Ferriss
MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future.
- Peter Thiel
I want to own the New York Jets, that’s what I want. And I absolutely believe I am going to own the Jets.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
When someone expresses some feeling, attitude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately to feel that’s right,” or that’s stupid,” that’s abnormal,” that’s unreasonable,” that’s incorrect,” that’s not nice.” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other person.
- Dale Carnegie
When screening engineers from other companies, its smart to value engineers from great companies more than those from mediocre companies.
- Ben Horowitz
When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.
- Thomas Edison
The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.
- Thomas Edison
you don’t need to understand any of the biology, just as you don’t need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven.
- Timothy Ferriss
Not an hour is lost that is spent in the saddle.
- Winston Churchill
People’s favorite topic is themselves.
- Dale Carnegie
At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study.
- Ben Horowitz
The stark differences between man and machine mean that gains from working with computers are much higher than gains from trade with other people. We don’t trade with computers any more than we trade with livestock or lamps. And that’s the point: computers are tools, not rivals.
- Peter Thiel
The Overseas Chinese habit is to save a lot and make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
Whatever the trend in exchange rates or whatever the external factors, a manufacturing company is always faced with the mission of transforming itself into a company that can produce higher value-added to absorb the increase in the cost of living in the country it’s operating in.
- Fujio Mitarai
As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in.
- Howard Schultz
It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested? Collin’s advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.
- James C. Collins
the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability,” said John D., than for any other under the sun.
- Dale Carnegie
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
- Peter Drucker
I put forward a pretty general theory that financial markets are intrinsically unstable. That we really have a false picture when we think about markets tending towards equilibrium.
- George Soros
Count your blessings—not your troubles!
- Dale Carnegie
You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’
- Jerry Seinfeld
To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict.
- Patrick M. Lencioni
In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.
- Bill Gates
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein
Be more splendid, more extraordinary. Use every moment to fill yourself up.
- Oprah Winfrey
Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
- Warren Buffett
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
- Winston Churchill
Every time you walk down the street people are screaming, ‘You’re fired!’
- Donald Trump
Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present, good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future.
- Peter Thiel
I believe that visualization is one of the most powerful means of achieving personal goals.
- Harvey Mackay
If you end your training now — if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did — you will become an agent of evil.
- Yoda
A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation, a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity, but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.
- Winston Churchill
Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.
- Elon Musk
Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.
- James C. Collins
Don’t lose youself on the way to the top.
- Jack Welch
When you deal with change, you have a couple choices: you can lead it and make the rules, or you can be a fast follower, or you can be a slow follower.
- Charles Ergen
You have to get all agreements in writing.
- Jack Nadel
If you’re lying, you’re lying.
- John C. Maxwell
One of the things that school is for is to teach our children to understand and relish the idea of intellectualism, to develop into something more than a purpose-driven tool for the industrial state.
- Seth Godin
Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.
- John C. Maxwell
Japanese businesspeople and companies are lacking in individuality.
- Tadashi Yanai
…The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.
- Seth Godin
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- John C. Maxwell
Life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot “diversify” herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.
- Peter Thiel
If you don’t agree with the core principles, which are the premise of that compromise, then you have to have what I call principled confrontation. And so that is the thing that we do that I think can rub some people the wrong way.
- Travis Kalanick
Capital isn’t scarce, vision is.
- Sam Walton
What is school for? If you’re not asking that, you’re wasting time and money.
- Seth Godin
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
- Aristotle
Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
- Reid Hoffman
Forty years ago, Richard Branson, who ultimately founded Virgin Air, found himself in a similar situation in an airport in the Caribbean. They had just canceled his flight, the only flight that day. Instead of freaking out about how essential the flight was, how badly his day was ruined, how his entire career was now in jeopardy, the young Branson walked across the airport to the charter desk and inquired about the cost of chartering a flight out of Puerto Rico. Then he borrowed a portable blackboard and wrote, “Seats to Virgin Islands, $39.” He went back to his gate, sold enough seats to his fellow passengers to completely cover his costs, and made it home on time.
- Seth Godin
I’m getting better. I’m improving. My health is coming back,” those words began to create a new image on the inside. Before long, they started seeing themselves strong, healthy, and whole.
- Joel Olsteen
The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.
- James C. Collins
Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials).
- Peter Thiel
You need to be around people who know more than you and have more talent than you. Don’t be intimidated by them, be inspired.
- Joel Olsteen
I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America.
- Sam Walton
Most of the fans have ideas about their perfect phone. But many of them can’t do it because building a phone is tough. So they would give us feedback about the features that they think should be included in our next model. And if we incorporated that in our new phone, they will share the good news with their friends.
- Lei Jun
FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.
- Ben Horowitz
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
- Warren Buffett
Whenever you are speaking, both your passion for your business and your appearance will have a lasting impact on your audience.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.
- James C. Collins
Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.
- Zig Ziglar
The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake or proves to be incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed.
- Napoleon Hill
Yes, iD is a machine vision and sensor browser for the physical world. That’s what we have been working on with Coca-Cola, Verizon, Bank of America and Disney to launch content when an image is recognised.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Too often, sales reps simply regurgitate their presentations and expect to land the sale. It doesn’t work.
- Harvey Mackay
My favorite writers are all Jews – David, Solomon, Matthew, Mark – well, you get the picture.
- Zig Ziglar
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.
- Tom Landry
When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They’re playing the sprint. They’re not worried about lifetime value and retention. They’re worried about short-term goals.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I hate writing about personal stuff. I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don’t use them.
- Elon Musk
I think there is probably no better person to aspire to emulate than Steve Jobs and what he has done at Apple in terms of his leadership, his innovation, not settling for mediocrity.
- Howard Schultz
Teaching’s hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.
- Bill Gates
Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
- Dale Carnegie
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
Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.
- Ben Horowitz
God will lead you from where you are right now to where He wants to you to be, if you’ll let Him.
- George Foreman
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
By the end of the war (the civil war) John D. Rockefeller had established the foundations of his personal and professional life and was set to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunities beckoning him in postwar America. From this point forward, there would be no zigzags, or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business.
- Ron Chernow
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
- Steve Martin
I’ve found that many of the greatest ideas surface in bars because that’s where many people cultivate inspiration.
- Herb Kelleher
9 out of ten new businesses fail in the first five years.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I am concerned about any attrition in customer traffic at Starbucks, but I don’t want to use the economy, commodity prices or consumer confidence as an excuse. We must maintain a value proposition to our customers as well as differentiate the Starbucks Experience. That is the key.
- Howard Schultz
