One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- Bruce Lee
Notable Quotables
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
One of the first things you learn when you run an engineering organization is that a good quality assurance organization cannot build a high-quality product, but it can tell you when the development team builds a low quality product. Similarly, a high quality human resources organization cannot make you a well-managed company with a great culture, but it can tell you when you and your managers are not getting the job done.
- Ben Horowitz
Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.
- Jerry Vass
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.
- Russell Simmons
A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between right and wrong. It is at best a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong”—but much more often a choice between two courses of action neither of which is provably more nearly right than the other.
- Peter Drucker
The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.
- Seth Godin
You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.
- Warren Buffett
Our mail product, Hotmail, is the market leader globally.
- Steve Ballmer
I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.
- Oprah Winfrey
Thank God for what He’s already done in your life. Thank Him for the victories in your past. Thank Him for how far He’s already brought you. And then take it one step further. Thank Him in advance for the victories He has planned ahead for you. Thank Him for the new doors He’s opening. Thank Him for the situations He’s turning around. Thank Him for the favor He has in your future. If you do that, you will feel a new joy rising up on the inside. You will feel your faith increase. You won’t have that victim mentality; you will have a victor mentality. One thing I’ve learned is you cannot praise and stay defeated at the same time. You cannot give God thanks and stay down and discouraged. Put on the Garment of Praise.
- Joel Olsteen
A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.
- George Soros
Education is the key to unlock the Golden door of freedom.
- George Washington Carver
Though the external environment is still fraught with uncertainties, mainland China, which has been less affected by the global financial tsunami, is expected to keep growing from strength to strength despite fine tuning of its moderately loose monetary policy on concerns of overheating in the property sector and inflation risk.
- Lee Shau Kee
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
- Mark Twain
I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
- Steve Martin
Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.
- Winston Churchill
The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.
- Seth Godin
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
Like technical debt, management debt comes in too many different forms to elaborate entirely, but a few salient examples will help explain the concept. Here are three of the more popular types among startups: 1. Putting two in the box 2. Overcompensating a key employee, because she gets another job offer 3. No performance management or employee feedback process
- Ben Horowitz
It’s not the situation, but whether we react negative or respond positive to the situation that is important.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t consider myself enigmatic, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.
- Phil Knight
I’m a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.
- Carl Icahn
Never under estimate the other guy.
- Jack Welch
To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
- Peter Drucker
The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE.
- Winston Churchill
People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they’re not all growing in their faith, they’re not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior.
- Joel Olsteen
If you have a lot of [visionaries], you’ll have a lot of great ideas, something awesome that people will love; but you never get it done. It doesn’t ship. Nothing happens. If you have too many [execution oriented] people on your team, you’re executing like mad, things are getting built, and you’re shipping like crazy – but you’re building something that nobody wants. If you have a good balance of both in your company, you’re more likely to stay on track. Those people compliment each other.
- Caterina Fake
The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work if you won’t.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s not about toughness, it’s not about attitude. Companies don’t fail for lack of cash or attitude. Companies fail for lack of brains and effort.
- Mark Cuban
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world
- George Washington Carver
If Google Books is successful, others will follow.
- Sergey Brin
the more ‘Yeses’ we can, at the very outset, induce, the more likely we are to succeed in capturing the attention for our ultimate proposal.
- Dale Carnegie
The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on… through each generation. Because we have no social security, the overseas Chinese habit is not to spend a lot and to make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
We live in a culture that relishes tearing others down. It’s ultimately more fulfilling, though, to help people reach their goals. Instead of feeling jealous, remember: If God did it for them, He can do it for you.
- Joel Olsteen
All the best people in life seem to like LINUX.
- Steve Wozniak
Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.
- Zig Ziglar
Man will occasionally stumble upon the truth but most times he will pick himself up and continue on.
- Winston Churchill
It was always a challenge for me to prove that a Russian financial investor can be as successful in the West as back at home in Russia.
- Alisher Usmanov
I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am an investor.
- Warren Buffett
Encouragement is the fuel on which hope runs.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t generally read a lot of fiction.
- Bill Gates
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.
- Walt Disney
Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.
- Peter Thiel
You watch television and see what’s going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing’s going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress.
- Stephen Wynn
Get ready, get ready, get ready, to get ready.
- T.D Jakes
You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.
- Bill Gates
I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. But I’d love to, right?
- Jack Ma
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.
- Winston Churchill
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.
- Steve Martin
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
- John D. Rockefeller
The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
- Warren Buffett
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
- Dave Barry
It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?
- James C. Collins
This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors.
- Winston Churchill
In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.
- Peter Thiel
As Google CEO Larry Page put it in his 2014 TED talk: “The main thing that has caused companies to fail, in my view, is that they missed the future.
- Jack Welch
But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.
- Peter Thiel
The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
- Jack Welch
The path of least resistence is the path of the loser.
- H.G. Wells
At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It’s got the market. It’s got consumer confidence and it’s got banks throwing – I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
- Jack Welch
I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as ‘I’m cool, look at how many e-mails I get.’ That perception doesn’t scare me, because I know who I am.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Men sometimes stumble over the truth, but often pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.
- John Chambers
Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.
- John C. Maxwell
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
- Seth Godin
By altering our attitudes we can alter our lives.
- Zig Ziglar
Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He’s always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.
- Steve Wozniak
Top academic institutions are wonderful, but there are unrecognized benefits to not coming out of one. Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income 80-hour-per-week jobs, and 15–30 years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path. How do I know? I’ve been there.
- Timothy Ferriss
Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.
- Vladimir Potanin
If my life has had a theme, I suppose it has been a typical American theme in that, for most of it, I have been looking for happiness and success.
- Zig Ziglar
There has never been a statue erected in honor of a critic.
- Zig Ziglar
The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
Use money to make money. Save your ‘first bucket of gold.’ or small fortune – but then use it for investments. Don’t just park money in the bank.
- Lee Shau Kee
I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
- Steve Martin
It’s not manufacturers trying to rip anybody off or anything like that. There’s nobody getting rich writing software that I know of.
- Bill Gates
Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.”
- John C. Maxwell
Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
- Zig Ziglar
The little things in life frequently make the difference in success and failure.
- Zig Ziglar
I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.
- Winston Churchill
Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.
- Rich Karlgaard
Remember: There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.
- Timothy Ferriss
Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.
- Howard Schultz
If salespeople don’t probe well for background information, they don’t know how to launch the presentation.
- Jerry Vass
Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.
- Rupert Murdoch
Customers today are strongly value oriented. But just what does that mean? Customers tell us that value means the results they receive in relation to the total costs (both the price and other costs to customers incurred in acquiring the service).
- Gary W. Lo
Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?
- Michael Bloomberg
Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Learn to say No to the good so that you can say Yes to your best.
- John Maxwell
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
- Sun Tzu
Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
- Bill Gates
After the decline in the past few years, the worst moment in the economy of Hong Kong is now behind us. The local property market is expected to show a steady upward trend as from this point.
- Lee Shau Kee
Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.
- Herb Kelleher
A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better.
- Seth Godin
