I can’t stress enough the essential nature of really hearing what someone has to say even if it is totally contradictory to your own beliefs, and I wish this was a lesson I only had to learn once.
- David Novak
Notable Quotables
The human being is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses, and mind, is engaged in the work.
- Peter Drucker
We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.
- Richard Branson
Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.
- P.T. Barnum
My two primary areas of focus have been open-space conservation and education, and I expect those to remain my priorities in the future. The Irvine open space and parklands provide serenity and balance to our unique Orange County lifestyle.
- Donald Bren
To all of us comes that moment in life when we are literally tapped on the shoulder to do a very special thing unique to ourselves and our talents. What a pity if that moment finds us unprepared.
- Winston Churchill
[On signing up Michael Jordan in 1984 when he was just 21 years old] We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.
- Phil Knight
“High expectations are the key to everything.”
- Sam Walton
One reason to buy a watch (or a book) is because you want to possess it, show it off, give it to your grandchildren. Holding a book is a luxury, one for which you pay a premium.
- Seth Godin
I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!
- Bill Gates
Age doesn’t matter, an open mind does.
- Timothy Ferriss
In Russia, or anywhere, people don’t like rich people. Yeah, OK, I have money, but the question is how I use it. It’s not easy, believe me; it’s not easy.
- Viktor Vekselberg
I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.
- Elon Musk
Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.
- Seth Godin
Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you’ve got, you’re more likely to do it.And this is precisely why it’s difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.
- Seth Godin
In every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear.
- Seth Godin
It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.
- Bill Gates
The Internet will help achieve friction free capitalism” by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.
- Bill Gates
Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.
- Timothy Ferriss
As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice. Its role is to convert the isolated and “atypical” from exception to “rule” and “system,” and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied.
- Peter Drucker
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
- Jack Welch
Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.
- Warren Buffett
Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.
- John C. Maxwell
For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.
- Elon Musk
We drink the can, not the beverage
- Seth Godin
Speeches will not distribute the future.
- Jack Dorsey
When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
- Ben Horowitz
Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. I challenge you to look at whatever you read or watched today and tell me that it wasn’t at least two of the four. I read the front-page headlines through.
- Timothy Ferriss
Success is best when it’s shared.
- Howard Schultz
You guarantee a good meal by picking the recipes well, not by following recipes well.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
- Zig Ziglar
It it impossible to comprehend Rockefeller’s breathtaking ascent without realizing that he always moved into battle backed by adundant cash. Whether riding out downturns or coasting on booms, he kept plentiful reserves and won many bidding contests simply because his war chest was deeper. Rockefeller vividly described the way he had hastily enlisted the aid of bankers to snap up one rifinery: It required many hundreds of thousands of dollars and in cash, securities would not answer. I received the message at about noon, and had to get off on the 3 o’clock train. I drove from bank to bank asking each president or cashier, whomever I could find first, to get ready for me all the funds he could possibly lay hands on. I told them I would be back to get the money later. I rounded up all of our banks in the city, and made a secondary journey to get the money, and kept going until I secured the necessary amount. With this I was off on the 3 o’clock train and closed the transaction.
- Ron Chernow
Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
- Ben Horowitz
I am very lucky that I have talented and creative people around me. Also, mediation has been a very big part of my freedom, because it allows me to watch all the things going on and allows me to focus.
- Russell Simmons
Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t consciously agree with that statement, your brain sure does.
- Seth Godin
There is no such thing as Something for nothing.
- Napoleon Hill
IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I’m far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read ‘Tech Crunch,’ ‘Ad Age.’ I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I have 2 million Twitter followers. Some of those people are also yogis and activists and people who really go out and make a difference. I do as much as I can with my voice. It’s effortless in some cases. I try to remind everybody that they have that kind of voice.
- Russell Simmons
If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.
- Bill Gates
There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.
- Andrew Carnegie
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain
Don’t confuse the complex with the difficult. Most situations are simple—many are just emotionally difficult to act upon.
- Timothy Ferriss
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
- Warren Buffett
I’m in two modes when I’m on Lanai: In engineering mode, I’m trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I’m in decompression mode. I’m on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins.
- Larry Ellison
Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.
- Bill Gates
I am going to enjoy some other things apart from business.
- Jack Ma
Gold is a kind of mortar and offers a form of capital preservation. We’re still bullish about gold.
- Lee Shau Kee
Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.
- Jack Welch
RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.
- Jack Welch
Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.
- Zig Ziglar
If you’ve found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.
- Bill Gates
I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
We have an average household net worth of $3.7 million. Of course, some of our cohorts have accumulated much more. Nearly 6 percent have a net worth of over $10 million. Again, these people skew our average upward. The typical (median, or 50th percentile) millionaire household has a net worth of $1.6 million.
- Thomas J Stanley
Technological advance seemed to accelerate automatically, so the Boomers grew up with great expectations but few specific plans for how to fulfill them.
- Peter Thiel
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.
- Russell Simmons
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
Age doesn’t matter: an open mind does.
- Timothy Ferriss
I don’t think it’s a big deal to show opera glasses to someone searching for binoculars that you somehow infer is a woman. But you don’t want to pop up ads for H.I.V. drugs on someone’s page, because you inferred they have H.I.V., when their boss is standing there looking at their computer
- Sergey Brin
Pull in your belt, spend less, and reduce debt.
- Ray Dalio
Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.
- James C. Collins
If you are only big in China, you are only a local Chinese company.
- Wang Jianlin
I am a former sabre fencer and fenced as part of the Uzbek republic team.
- Alisher Usmanov
You’re not being responsible with what God gave you if you’re hanging out with time wasters who have no goals and no dreams.
- Joel Olsteen
It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others.
- Dale Carnegie
I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.
- Steve Wozniak
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be likened to the raindrop, which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed.
- Og Mandino
Small businesses don’t exist without the nucleus.
- Bryan Smith
You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.
- Seth Godin
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
We think that athletes are human beings and have foibles just like human beings do…
- Phil Knight
Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.
- John C. Maxwell
To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.
- Peter Thiel
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t believe in saturation. We’re thinking and talking worldwide.
- Ray Kroc
I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
- Reed Hastings
The lifeblood of job creation in America is small business, but they can’t get access to credit.
- Howard Schultz
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
Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.
- Sergey Brin
By faith you need to walk like a king, talk like a king, think like a king, dress like a king, smile like a king. Don’t go by what you see. Go by what you know. There is royalty in your DNA. You have the blood of a winner. You were created to reign in life.
- Joel Olsteen
Even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we’re going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.
- Elon Musk
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
The time will never be just right, you must act now.
- Napoleon Hill
The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
- Jerry Seinfeld
We are in the process of creating a group that has a broader business mix, better quality income streams and a stronger balance sheet. In doing so, our risk profile is spread out and we can better explore the growth potential across our five core businesses – property, hotels, infrastructure, services and telecommunications.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I’m very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There’s so much opportunity. Let’s just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.
- Steve Ballmer
The arrival of the 21st century precedes the onslaught of turmoil and tsunami. The business environment has become unpredictable and the global economy even harsher…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn’t. It’s just the opposite. What I think is brutal and false kindness is keeping people around who aren’t going to grow and prosper. There’s no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don’t belong – just when the options are limited and they’re putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.
- Jack Welch
It enjoys strong network effects from its content ecosystem: thousands of developers write software for Apple devices because that’s where hundreds of millions of users are, and those users stay on the platform because it’s where the apps are.
- Peter Thiel
Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.
- Timothy Ferriss
Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.
- Howard Schultz
It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.
- Harvey Mackay
Fortunately, problems are an everyday part of our life. Consider this: If there were no problems, most of us would be unemployed.
- Zig Ziglar
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
- Winston Churchill
Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.
- Seth Godin
I always follow 4E’s wrapped in a ‘P’.
- Jack Welch
However, when you add competition to consume scarce resources, it’s hard to see how a global plateau could last indefinitely. Without new technology to relieve competitive pressures, stagnation is likely to erupt into conflict. In case of conflict on a global scale, stagnation collapses into extinction.
- Peter Thiel
Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
- Timothy Ferriss
In any new business, someone has to have a vision. You are as good as the people around you. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Identify your core community and go from there. Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. In my experience it often takes as long as five years to make a business work. Partners can fail you. Staff may not execute properly. You could be too far ahead of the market. SO you have to be willing to hand in there and make it happen. From the founding of Phat Farm in 1992 until 1997, I lost money. By my account, I experienced $10 million in losses. But today Phat Farm is visible, it is imitated and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars. It took time, but good ideas often do need time to take off. Being an entrepreneur requires instinct, fortitude and the ability to accept that the world does not run on your schedule. Sometimes you just have to believe.
- Russell Simmons
30 MAJOR CAUSES OF FAILURE: – Napoleon Hill (on leadership and management)
- Napoleon Hill
Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.
- Bill Gates
