The Value of a Smile at Christmas It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.
- Dale Carnegie
Notable Quotables
Always remember that your present situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.
- Zig Ziglar
My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven, he got injured on a job. That was a very important point – because of the injury, he couldn’t walk, and the company he was working for did not pay him. There was no compensation. So there was no money and no food.
- Howard Schultz
The missing ingredient for nearly all of the 1,000-plus clients I have worked with directly to improve their businesses is pigheaded discipline and determination. We all get good ideas at seminars and from books, radio talk shows and business-building gurus. The problem is that most companies do not know how to identify and adapt the best ideas to their businesses. Implementation, not ideas, is the key to real success.
- Chet Holmes
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.
- Winston Churchill
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them…let them be your friends.
- Winston Churchill
Winning ‘Motor Trend’ Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.
- Elon Musk
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
A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate
- Seth Godin
MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS Some things that you want to encourage will be quantifiable, and some will not. If you report on the quantitative goals and ignore the qualitative ones, you won’t get the qualitative goals, which may be the most important ones. Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers—it’s strictly for amateurs. At HP, the company wanted high earnings now and in the future. By focusing entirely on the numbers, HP got them now by sacrificing the future. Note that there were many numbers as well as more qualitative goals that would have helped: Was our competitive win rate increasing or declining? Was customer satisfaction rising or falling? What did our own engineers think of the products? By managing the organization as though it were a black box, some divisions at HP optimized the present at the expense of their downstream competitiveness. The company rewarded managers for achieving short-term objectives in a manner that was bad for the company. It would have been better to take into account the white box. The white box goes beyond the numbers and gets into how the organization produced the numbers. It penalizes managers who sacrifice the future for the short term and rewards those who invest in the future even if that investment cannot be easily measured. CLOSING THOUGHT It is easy to see that there are many ways for leaders to be misinterpreted. To get things right, you must recognize that anything you measure automatically creates a set of employee behaviors. Once you determine the result you want, you need to test the description of the result against the employee behaviors that the description will likely create. Otherwise, the side-effect behaviors may be worse than the situation you were trying to fix.
- Ben Horowitz
I think that the first thing is you should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don’t know what the future is going to hold.
- Ray Dalio
If you cannot read all your books…fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.
- Winston Churchill
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
- Jack Welch
If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.
- Ray Kroc
Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.
- Joel Olsteen
Work in your areas of your greatest strengths.
- John Maxwell
I loved doing ‘Pennies from Heaven.’ Because you have to understand that I’d been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don’t think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
- Steve Martin
Whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh, students and researchers can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 — the historic first landing on the Moon.
- Sergey Brin
There are things money can’t buy and hard work can’t win. One of them is happiness.
- Ray Kroc
Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur.
- Zig Ziglar
Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we’re going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles.
- Bill Gates
The Habit of Saving does not mean that you shall limit your earning capacity, it means just the opposite – that you shall apply this law so that it not only conserves that which you earn, in a systematic manner, but it also places you in the way of greater opportunity and gives you the vision, the self-confidence, the imagination, the enthusiasm, the initiative and leadership actually to increase your earning capacity.
- Napoleon Hill
Hong Kong has gone through many ups and downs in the past. Unavoidably, one needs to go through the lowest point before reaching the peak again.
- Cheng Yu-tung
When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.
- Winston Churchill
What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.
- Michael Bloomberg
I’ve seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all.
- Timothy Ferriss
I am not a best-writing author. I am a best-selling author.
- Robert Kiyosaki
EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t panic.
- David Novak
Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.
- Og Mandino
What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.
- Dave Thomas
I’ve operated and launched newspapers all over the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
You will have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.
- Dale Carnegie
When state funding for Irvine public schools began to diminish some time ago, my Irvine Company colleagues helped me to provide private funding support for continuation of basic science, art and music programs that had been eliminated by lack of state funding.
- Donald Bren
I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.
- Joel Olsteen
Outside of your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have is with yourself. I don’t mean that we are to spend all our time focused on me, me, me to the exclusion of others. Instead, I mean that we must be healthy internally—emotionally and spiritually—in order to create healthy relationships with others. Motivational pep talks and techniques for achieving success are useless if a person is weighed down by guilt, shame, depression, rejection, bitterness, or crushed self-esteem. Countless marriages land on the rocks of divorce because unhealthy people marry thinking that marriage, or their spouse, will make them whole. Wrong. If you’re not a healthy single person you won’t be a healthy married person. Part of God’s purpose for every human life is wholeness and health. I love the words of Jesus in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” God knows we are the walking wounded in this world and He wants the opportunity to remove everything that limits us and heal every wound from which we suffer. Some wonder why God doesn’t just “fix” us automatically so we can get on with life. It’s because He wants our wounds to be our tutors to lead us to Him. Pain is a wonderful motivator and teacher! When the great Russian intellectual Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was released from the horrible Siberian work camp to which he was sent by Joseph Stalin, he said, “Thank you, prison!” It was the pain and suffering he endured that caused his eyes to be opened to the reality of the God of his childhood, to embrace his God anew in a personal way. When we are able to say thank you to the pain we have endured, we know we are ready to fulfill our purpose in life. When we resist the pain life brings us, all of our energy goes into resistance and we have none left for the pursuit of our purpose. It is the better part of wisdom to let pain do its work and shape us as it will. We will be wiser, deeper, and more productive in the long run. There is a great promise in the New Testament that says God comes to us to comfort us so we can turn around and comfort those who are hurting with the comfort we have received from Him (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Make yourself available to God and to those who suffer. A large part of our own healing comes when we reach out with compassion to others.
- Zig Ziglar
Life is a classroom — only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.
- Zig Ziglar
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.
- Siddhartha Gautama
An optimist understands that life can be a bumpy road, but at least it is leading somewhere. They learn from mistakes and failures, and are not afraid to fail again.
- Harvey Mackay
In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it’s not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.
- Mark Zuckerberg
We have the best flat land, you can grow anything in the cheapest possible way; turning Nigeria around is not really that difficult. Nigeria is really the best place to invest, it is one of the places to make money; all over the world it (Nigeria) is the best kept secret actually in terms of investment.
- Aliko Dangote
You will find only what you bring in.
- Yoda
The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It’s in the blood.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory’ was the motto of the King’s Guard in ancient Greece.
- Dale Carnegie
His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.
- Ron Chernow
Perks are good, but they are not culture.
- Ben Horowitz
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
- Winston Churchill
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
I’m optimistic about the country. I’m optimistic about the American people.
- Howard Schultz
The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.
- Elon Musk
We will be one of the most productive residential developers in China in the next few years.
- Lee Shau Kee
If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.
- Joel Olsteen
I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.
- Larry Ellison
My job is to help more people have jobs.
- Jack Ma
It never hurts a fool to appear before an audience, for his capacity is not a capacity for feeling.
- Dale Carnegie
I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
We do lots of Stuff. The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.
- Sergey Brin
It was a big momentum deal, so when the bottom comes out from under it, you have to go back to the well and start the whole thing.
- Travis Kalanick
All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school – my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The bigger your list, the greater your options. That doesn’t mean you contact everyone on your list each time you send out a press release. You pick and choose who gets what, and block out long-term strategy as you go.
- Michael Levine
I don’t need you to be funny. I don’t want to be entertained.
- Jerry Seinfeld
If you want to grow a giant redwood, you need to make sure the seeds are ok, nurture the sapling, and work out what might potentially stop it from growing all the way along. Anything that breaks it at any point stops that growth.
- Elon Musk
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
- Seneca
The steel business is a local business. We do believe in the U.S. economy and would like to have a strong, balanced presence here.
- Alexei Mordashov
A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better.
- Seth Godin
My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.
- Mark Zuckerberg
If you have any more than three priorities, you have no priorities.
- Maggie Fox
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
[On the Nike logo] I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.
- Phil Knight
I do not believe that people want to work hard enough and they want to find the quick Twitter, SEO. Anybody who’s obsessed with SEO has lost already, period. I believe that firmly.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?
- Seth Godin
I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.
- Joel Olsteen
You have enough people against you… be for yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
Stealing Coach Wooden’s sets of three, I have come up with a formula for success no matter what kind of business you happen to be in: 1) Make sure you have the right people around you; 2) Have fun and drive results by recognizing the achievements of others; and 3) Be a passionate learner, and pass on what you know to others. Not only will this make you a success in business, but it will make you a success in life.
- David Novak
The greatest business people I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.
- Michael Gerber
Find a need and fill it.
- Jack Nadel
In this early period, Rockefeller was a chronic worrier who labored under a great deal of self-imposed stress. Though not versed in the scientific side of refining, he often excercised a direct managerial role in the plant. With fluctuating market conditions, he sometimes needed shipments to New York with great dispatch and personally rushed down to the railroad tracks to motivate the freight handlers. I shall never forget how hungry I was in those days. I stayed out of doors day and night; I ran up and down the tops of freight cars, when necessary; I hurried up the boys.
- Ron Chernow
Difference between TV and the internet was how far you sat from the screen. TV was an 8 foot activity, and you were a consumer. The internet was a 16 inch activity, and you participated. I think the sitting down thing is similar. You’re not going to buy an armoir while standing on the subway.
- Seth Godin
But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.
- Dale Carnegie
This I do know beyond any doubt, Regardless of what you are doing, if you PUMP LONG AND HARD ENOUGH and ENTHUSIASTICALLY ENOUGH, sooner or later the EFFORT will bring forth the REWARD.
- Zig Ziglar
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Dale Carnegie
The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.
- Peter Drucker
I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
- Steve Martin
Es interesante que cuando Jesús quiso animar a sus seguidores a expandir su visión, les recordó que no se echa vino nuevo en odres viejos”.2 Jesús estaba diciendo que no puedes tener una vida abundante con actitudes restringidas. Esa.
- Joel Olsteen
You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.
- Seth Godin
Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.
- Leo Burnett
It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, first to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented; how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous…
- Winston Churchill
Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success.
- Zig Ziglar
I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee.
- Howard Schultz
I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.
- Bill Gates
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
- Harvey Mackay
An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.
- Jack Dorsey
When my sister and I came along, my father’s political life was completely over. He ran for president the year I was born. So that was the end of it. He had been congressman first, then governor, before all that. So when we came along, he was running the Dayton newspaper.
- Anne Cox Chambers
The good-to-great companies displayed two distinctive forms of disciplined thought. The first, and the topic of this chapter, is that they infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality. (The second, which we will discuss in the next chapter, is that they developed a simple, yet deeply insightful, frame of reference for all decisions.)
- James C. Collins
You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.
- Joel Olsteen
The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s hard for me to imagine how a $50 million marketing campaign is ever appropriate for any business to launch an ideavirus. If you need to interrupt that many people, you’re doing something wrong.
- Seth Godin
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
- Bill Gates
