In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.
- Zig Ziglar
Small businesses don’t exist without the nucleus.
- Bryan Smith
Being too humble can cost you. Not talking about your accomplishments can hit you in the pocketbook. It’s those who visibly take credit for accomplishments who are rewarded with promotions and gem assignments, writes Klaus. As our economy has resulted in less job stability, self-promotion has become more important. Even if you aren’t an entrepreneur, says Klaus, you need to think like one and start talking up your most valuable product: you.
- Peggy Klaus
The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.
- Steve Young
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
- Oprah Winfrey
In taking Dell private, we plan to go back to our roots, focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dell one of the fastest-growing and most successful companies in history.
- Michael Dell
Forty-five years ago, when I was 18, I came to San Francisco by boat and took two weeks to get here. I had a great impression. I think San Francisco is the welcoming gate for people from Asia.
- Tadashi Yanai
Only the paranoid survive.
- Andrew Grove
Soon is not as good as now.
- Seth Godin
I’m not speaking defeat into my future. I’m not speaking failure over my life. I will turn it around and speak favor into my future. I will declare, I’m blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy. This will be a great year.” When you do that, you are blessing your future.
- Joel Olsteen
It is possible to become world-class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6-12 months, or even 6-12 weeks.
- Timothy Ferriss
You don’t want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.
- Jeff Bezos
I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.
- Joel Olsteen
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
- Peter Drucker
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
Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.
- Bill Gates
There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant—is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a manager and a gentleman.
- Peter Drucker
My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.
- Winston Churchill
Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it’s about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it’s less than one ton. It’s an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.
- Bill Gates
Look we gave this thing a good run. We both know it’s not working out. Let’s wrap this thing up.
- Jack Welch
IM is interesting because you look at your buddy list and, at a glance, see what your friends are listening to, what they’re working on, what they’re doing. The problem was that you were bound to the computer keyboard.
- Jack Dorsey
In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.
- Bill Gates
The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
- Peter Thiel
Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.
- Jeff Bezos
I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.
- Bill Gates
We need to and must protect privacy. But I think that people will be willing and even eager to share medical information about themselves for the greater good of mankind.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.
- Azim Premji
If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you’ve got to let it go.
- Sara Blakely
For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.
- Timothy Ferriss
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
- Henry David Thoreau
There is no such thing as a good tax.
- Winston Churchill
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
In whatever you do, strive to be the best at it.
- Aliko Dangote
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
Service is the key to everything in life.
- Russell Simmons
You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.
- Harry Truman
I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn’t get off the ground.
- Herb Kelleher
When you give up yourself, that’s when you will feel the true spirit of Christmas. And that’s giving that’s serving others and that’s when you feel fulfilled.
- Joel Olsteen
The onset of global financial turmoil in the second half of 2008 and the resultant wait-and-see attitude adopted by some homebuyers put the property market into the doldrums, with a general decline in both transaction volume and transacted prices.
- Lee Shau Kee
This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines. If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace.
- Timothy Ferriss
If it’s not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that’s when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you.
- Joel Olsteen
Every pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, but every optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.
- Clayton M. Christensen
We have a number of difficulties facing our nation, but I believe fatherlessness is right at the top of the list.
- Tony Dungy
Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
You can learn from everybody.
- Sam Walton
In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.
- Bill Gates
Use your life to serve the world, and you will find that it also serves you.
- Oprah Winfrey
Sure, ideas that spread, win, but ideas that don’t get spoken always fail.
- Seth Godin
Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.
- Jeff Bezos
To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone
- Sergey Brin
When you reach out to hurting people, that’s when God is going to make sure your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”
- Joel Olsteen
We hate bureaucracy and all the nonsense that comes with it.
- Jack Welch
[In January 2011] I think the important thing for Twitter is that it works on any technology.
- Jack Dorsey
Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.
- Napoleon Hill
I own almost 100 hotels in North America. Some of them are only in management, but some of them we have some small stakes in them.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte… ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual’s taste.
- Reed Hastings
I’m not a fan of the cursing method of management.
- David Robinson
When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant, it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you, that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.
- Michael Bloomberg
How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.
- Winston Churchill
VaynerMedia filters the world how humans interact. This is how people are going to make buying decisions.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I thought Microsoft did a lot of things that were good and right building parts of the browser into the operating system. Then I thought it out and came up with reasons why it was a monopoly.
- Steve Wozniak
You don’t have to be a genius or a visionary or even a college graduate to be successful. You just need a framework and a dream.
- Michael Dell
Nobody is going to delegate a lot of power to a secretary that they can’t control.
- Michael Bloomberg
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
- Warren Buffett
Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.
- Peter Drucker
Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it.
- Elon Musk
The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.
- Elon Musk
Leadership is influence.
- John C. Maxwell
And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.
- John D. Rockefeller
In the middle of that process four power plants just tripped off all at once in unison.
- Ed Clark
My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The earnings from Hong Kong and China Gas and rental property portfolio serve as a solid base for the Group’s sustainable growth.
- Lee Shau Kee
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
- Michael Jordan
Value and purpose are about understanding the specific benefits you will help people receive if they receive what you have for them.
- Zig Ziglar
Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.
- P.T. Barnum
When plans appear into your mind, they will probably flash into your mind through the sixth sense, in the form of an inspiration. This inspiration may be considered a direct telegram, or message from infinite intelligence. Treat it with respect, and act upon it as soon as you receive it. Failure to do this is fatal to your succeess.
- Napoleon Hill
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
- Andrew Carnegie
God can do in a split second what might otherwise take you many years.
- Joel Olsteen
Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care … We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end … Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.
- 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
Eventually you won’t think of ‘the Internet business.’ You’ll think of it more like news, weather, sports, but even that taxonomy isn’t clear.
- Bill Gates
I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
- Winston Churchill
It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players. A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.
- Steve Jobs
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
A half-billion-dollar subsidy was unthinkable in the mid-2000s. It’s unthinkable today. There was only one moment where that was possible, and Tesla played it perfectly.
-
The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.
- George Soros
Everything man creates or acquires begins in the form of desire, that desire is taken on the first lap of its journey, from the abstract to the concrete, into the workshop of the imagination, where plans for its transition are created and organized.
- Napoleon Hill
Lo que una persona diga de ti no define quién eres. Su opinión de ti no determina tu dignidad propia. Deja que eso te resbale como si fuera agua sobre el plumaje de un pato. Esa persona tiene todo el derecho a tener una opinión, y tú tienes todo el derecho a pasarla por alto.
- Joel Olsteen
Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.
- Joel Olsteen
I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.
- Steve Wozniak
Disruption is like an earthquake. Disruption has no purpose. It has not values. It has no organizing principle. It has no direction and it has no leadership… This is not what we want to bring into the world. What we want to bring into the world is revolution.
- Jack Dorsey
The plot is certainly sensational, but it hardly represents what actually happened. It is difficult to believe that the European emigrants by whom America has been populated took away with them all the virtues and left behind them all the vices of the races from which they had sprung; or that a few generations of residence on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is sufficient to create an order of beings definitely superior in morals, in culture, and in humanity to their prototypes in Europe. The American.
- Winston Churchill
‘We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
- Publilius Syrus
Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.
- Dale Carnegie
Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.
- John Maxwell
Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.
- Larry Ellison
