One challenge is the Peter Principle. Coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book of that name, the Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain being unable to earn further promotions.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
If you say too much or mix in multiple pitches, you diffuse your goal. You must give the media a pitch they can hit.
- Michael Levine
I never worry about action, but only about inaction.
- Winston Churchill
Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.
- Howard Schultz
Gain alignment every step of the way. Again, no involvement means no committment. Skip a layer and you will ultimately pay the price.
- David Novak
What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?
- Winston Churchill
I don’t use my brain about the creative thing. From a business standpoint, I instinctively do things: when I get something right, it’s never because I use my brain
- Russell Simmons
I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one’s children. It’s not constructive for them.
- Bill Gates
I’m a creative guy. And I only do businesses as a result of like I’ve – I’m try to find what my gifts are and give them immediately. As soon as I get them and I understand, I give them back.
- Russell Simmons
I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.
- Richard Branson
The Secret Make up your mind that no matter what comes your way, no matter how difficult, no matter how unfair, you will do more than simply survive. You will thrive in spite of it.
- Joel Olsteen
I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.
- Thomas Edison
It makes no difference where you go, there you are. And it makes no difference what you have, there’s always more to want. Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.
- Zig Ziglar
Canon is basically a very aggressive company. Our company works on competitive principles. It does not treat people equally, but it does treat them fairly.
- Fujio Mitarai
Humans, particularly those who build things, only listen to leading indicators of good news.
- Ben Horowitz
You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.
- Winston Churchill
I think Yahoo is a great company, with great assets.
- Jack Ma
[In January 2011] I think the important thing for Twitter is that it works on any technology.
- Jack Dorsey
I do everything on my phone as a lot of people do.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Now that I have called you on your false accusation, you are using additional smear tactics.
- George Soros
They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.
- Larry Ellison
Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.
- Elon Musk
Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.
- Bill Gates
We’re not going to outgrow our need for information.
- Seth Godin
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
- Andrew Carnegie
I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.
- Elon Musk
Fears are nothing more than states of mind.
- Napoleon Hill
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
Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.
- Winston Churchill
As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.
- Winston Churchill
Our business is about technology, yes. But it’s also about operations and customer relationships.
- Michael Dell
Instead of choosing to focus in the liability column, I chose to focus in the asset column.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.
- Bill Gates
My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others…. Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.
- Thomas Edison
When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.
- Jack Handee
The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor.
- Seth Godin
Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
- Dale Carnegie
I tell college students, when you get to be my age you will be successful if the people who you hope to have love you, do love you.
- Warren Buffett
When the Internet first came, I thought it was just the beacon of freedom. People could communicate with anyone, anywhere, and nobody could stop it.
- Steve Wozniak
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
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.
- Napoleon Hill
View your future wealth as current debt.
- Clay Clark
You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.
- Seth Godin
You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war. – To Neville Chamberlain
- Winston Churchill
Let go of offence. Let go of fear. Let go of revenge. Don’t live angry, let go now!
- Joel Olsteen
Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.
- Harvey Mackay
We are set in our ways, bound by our perspectives and stuck in our thinking.
- Joel Olsteen
I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.
- Joel Olsteen
There are several styles of pitching, but all have two principles in common: they appeal personally to the individual being contacted, even if he or she is a stranger and they rely on logic to make a case.
- Michael Levine
Hay que evitar siempre el ángulo agudo.
- Dale Carnegie
[On Twitter] We believe that fundamentally we are building a utility.
- Jack Dorsey
I am thinking about launching a wine website where there is a deal and the crowd can dictate how cheap it can get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
- Walt Disney
I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family that would have killed for each other – and we still are. x
- Richard Branson
Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.
- Seth Godin
Hong Kong has, throughout it’s history, experienced periods of uncertainties… I believe that the virtues of Hong Kong people – diligent, flexible and entrepreneurial – will once again overcome the obstacles before us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If a job doesn’t excite you on some level—just because of the stuff of it—don’t settle.
- Jack Welch
A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
- John C. Maxwell
Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
- Zig Ziglar
You have enough people against you… be for yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.
- Thomas Edison
You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.
- Gary Keller
Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
- Timothy Ferriss
You don’t build a business –you build people– and then people build the business.
- Zig Ziglar
Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you’ll create credit… So you reach a certain point that that you can’t do that anymore… There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?
- Ray Dalio
Whether changes happen depends on people’s mind and view.
- Cheng Yu-tung
All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.
- John C. Maxwell
I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.
- Bill Gates
Following a period of drastic market fluctuations in Asia during the summer months of the previous year, economies in the region gradually improved and stabilised during the financial year.
- Lee Shau Kee
You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.
- Russell Simmons
Today, we’ve begun to make the extraordinary historic films of the National Archives available to the world for the first time online. Students and researchers whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh 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
This the real world, homie, school finished They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.
- Kanye West
It’s Never Over ’till it’s over! Never Give Up! Never.
- Winston Churchill
My conclusion on Freewill and predestination- they are identical.
- Winston Churchill
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
- Seneca
It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
- Paul Theroux
The Waffle Trainer later became the best-selling training shoe in the United States.
- Phil Knight
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
- Winston Churchill
It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.
- Herb Kelleher
The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.
- Winston Churchill
It takes a leader to create momentum. Followers catch it. And managers are able to continue it once it has begun. But creating it requires someone who can motivate others, not who needs to be motivated. Harry Truman once said, If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But for leaders, that statement should be changed to, If you can’t make some heat, get out of the kitchen.
- John Maxwell
It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.
- Winston Churchill
You can’t get too much done in life if you only work on days when you feel good.
- Jerry West
If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.
- Joel Olsteen
Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and “do well by doing good.” Usually they end up doing neither.
- Peter Thiel
We let folks know we’re interested in them and that they’re vital to us. cause they are.
- Sam Walton
Lack of a well-defined purpose in life.
- Napoleon Hill
My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.
- Elon Musk
Enforce functional training by withholding new employee requisitions. As Andy Grove writes, there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. Therefore, training should be the most basic requirement for all managers in your organization. An effective way to enforce this requirement is by withholding new employee requisitions from managers until they’ve developed a training program for the TBH, “To Be Hired.”
- Ben Horowitz
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
- Napoleon Hill
Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
- Confucius
China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‘us versus them,’ it’s an ‘us and them’ type scenario.
- Bill Gates
China and India will, separately and together, unleash an explosion of demand.
- Mukesh Ambani
Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.
- Gail Devers
If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.
- Ray Kroc
Drucker said: ‘If you weren’t already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?’ … Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.
- Jack Welch
