Notable Quotables

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.

- Colin Powell

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

- Oprah Winfrey

OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me ‘Trey’ because I’m William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I’m also known.

- Bill Gates

Said another way, the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is. When The Entrepreneur creates the model.

- Michael Gerber

But this “spray and pray” approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.

- Peter Thiel

Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.

- Ben Horowitz

In a climate of tight budgets, reduced workforces and stiff competition, internal training can be a great substitute for costly offsite workshops and conferences.

- Harvey Mackay

It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.

- Donald Trump

If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.

- Elon Musk

If you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

- James C. Collins

You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

- Bill Gates

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

- Henry Ford

In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money.

- P.T. Barnum

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

- Albert Einstein

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

Establish late-payment penalties as part of your terms and conditions and enforce them.

- Robert Kiyosaki

[On stopping working and focussing 100% on his company Nike] I was still teaching accounting, but the next year, I told Penny [married in 1968] if we sell $300,000 worth of product, I’m going to go full-time. She was pregnant and a little anxious. We hit $290,000. I said, that ‘s close enough.

- Phil Knight

I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to be Bruce Lee.

- Jack Dorsey

Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ is my go-to song to pump myself up if I’m having a tough time or if I get really nervous right before a speech.

- Sara Blakely

God will lead you from where you are right now to where He wants to you to be, if you’ll let Him.

- George Foreman

I saw a report yesterday. There’s so much oil, all over the world, they don’t know where to dump it. And Saudi Arabia says, ‘Oh, there’s too much oil.’ They – they came back yesterday. Did you see the report? They want to reduce oil production. Do you think they’re our friends? They’re not our friends.

- Donald Trump

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

- Winston Churchill

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

Thinking back to old-time computer programming in the days before programming languages supported internationalization, we used to have to “internationalize” our code. We called this internationalization process “I18N” for short (localization was L10N), which meant I followed by eighteen letters followed by N.

- Ben Horowitz

Many people fail to make a favourable impression because they don’t listen attentively.

- Isaac F. Marcosson

You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual – which nothing is more actual than stand-up – it’s a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time – we miss that.

- Jerry Seinfeld

The sad truth is, if you push hard enough, and if you’re so stubborn that you must have things your way, God will sometimes allow you to undertake a project without His blessing or at the wrong time. The problem with that, of course, is when you start something in your own strength and in your own timing, you’re going to have to finish it and maintain it in your own strength.

- Joel Olsteen

When men are fighting for their lives they are not often disposed to be complimentary to those who are trying to kill them.

- Winston Churchill

In setting goals and executing a strategy, Wanda is sophisticated. We have good systems and departments. If targets are not reached, a yellow light goes off.

- Wang Jianlin

What the Commission is seeking cuts the heart out of the strategic rationale of our deal.

- Jack Welch

I want people to learn what democracy means.

- Jack Ma

I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up as dictators. What I now ask of you is military success and I will risk the dictatorship.

- Dale Carnegie

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.

- George Soros

God accepts you. God approves you. And He has something better in store.

- Joel Olsteen

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

- Thomas Edison

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.

- Dale Carnegie

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.

- Jack Welch

Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.

- Yoda

The interview process takes twelve to fifteen hoursof your team’s time. This process is expensive for your team, so you should vet people in advance. A technique I use is to email the references and say, Rate this person one to ten. No one’s going to reply a five or a three by email; that means they hate the candidate. Call me is usually the response for a sub-seven rating. At the same time, nobody is going to reply with a ten. What you’re really looking for is a bunch of eights and nines. This is an exceptionally quick referencing system when you’re trying to triage a list.

- Reid Hoffman

You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies – all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.

- Steve Martin

It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

- John Wooden

A great accomplishment shouldn’t be the end of the road, just the starting point for the next leap forward.

- Harvey Mackay

The Effective Executive itself is not a book on what people at the top do or should do. It is addressed to everyone who, as a knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization

- Peter Drucker

The future is in green energy, it’s in making steel for energy-efficient cars.

- Alexei Mordashov

We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.

- Seth Godin

The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate.

- Winston Churchill

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

I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.

- Winston Churchill

If a product’s future is unlikely to be remarkable – if you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product – it’s time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.

- Seth Godin

The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.

- Timothy Ferriss

Real leaders don’t care [about receiving credit]. If it’s about your mission, about spreading the faith, about seeing something happen, not only do you not care about credit, you actually want other people to take credit…There’s no record of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi whining about credit. Credit isn’t the point. Change is.

- Seth Godin

I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.

- Oprah Winfrey

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

- Thomas Edison

The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.

- Bill Gates

Problem-solving becomes a very important part of our makeup as we grow into maturity or move up the corporate ladder.

- Zig Ziglar

You should give 80% of your time and attention to your best 20% of employees. If you have one hundred customers, the top twenty will provide you with 80% of your business.

- John Maxwell

We’ve got to put a lot of money into changing behavior.

- Bill Gates

We will intensify our efforts to build out our infrastructure overseas and to develop products that are tailored to individual markets

- Sergey Brin

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

- Joel Olsteen

In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.

- Lee Shau Kee

When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary. If there is some point you haven’t thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention.

- Dale Carnegie

Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

- Zig Ziglar

As bad as your situation may be, someone else always has it worse than you.

- George Foreman

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

- Napoleon Hill

[On the Nike logo] I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.

- Phil Knight

All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.

- Peter Thiel

Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.

- Peter Thiel

The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.

- Seth Godin

A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.

- John C. Maxwell

You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.

- Peter Thiel

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

- Walt Disney

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

- Bob Dylan

Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new.

- Og Mandino

The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.

- Wang Jianlin

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.

- Jack Welch

We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.

- Phil Knight

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

- John D. Rockefeller

We have a go-to-hell fund. In other words, we have accumulated enough wealth to live without working for ten or more years. Thus, those of us with a net worth of $1.6 million could live comfortably for more than twelve years. Actually, we could live longer than that, since we save at least 15 percent of our earned income.

- Thomas J Stanley

The goal is to get the buyer to like and trust you.

- Clay Clark

Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.

- Dale Carnegie

Give your good bacteria an upgrade and get your microbiome in shape. Faster fat-loss and better mental health are just two of the benefits.

- Timothy Ferriss

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