In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don’t know what you are going to do.
- Larry Ellison
Anyone, even a child, can be taught to develop a positive mental attitude. The method is to repeat positive affirmations such as: Day by day, in every way, through the grace of God, I am getting better and better.
- Napoleon Hill
You should evaluate your organizational design on a regular basis and gather the information that you need to decide without tipping people off to what you plan to do. Once you decide, you should immediately execute the reorg: Don’t leave time for leaks and lobbying.
- Ben Horowitz
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
Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.
- Bill Gates
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
- Jack Nadel
Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.
- Og Mandino
First and foremost, there is a difference between being perceived as an expert and being one. In the context of business, the former is what sells product and the latter, relative to your minimal customer base,” is what creates good products and prevents returns.
- Timothy Ferriss
The basis of persistence is the power of will. Men who accumulate, great fortunes are generally known as cold-blooded and sometimes ruthless. Often they are misunderstood. What they have is willpower, which they mix with persistence and place back of their desires to insure that attainment of their objectives. Henry Ford was generally misunderstood to be ruthless and cold-blooded. This misconception grew out of Ford’s habit of following through in all of his plans with PERSISTENCE…few carry on despite all opposition until they attain their goal. Those few are the Fords, Carnegies, Rockefellers and Edisons.
- Napoleon Hill
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
- Benjamin Franklin
We wouldn’t survive if people didn’t trust us.
- Sergey Brin
Your faith is very important. I have done the math, and you are going to be dead a whole lot longer that you will be alive.
- Zig Ziglar
Although it’s admirable to be ambitious and hard-working, it’s more desirable to be smart-working.
- John C. Maxwell
You need to take pride in what God has given you.
- Joel Olsteen
I started the site when I was 19. I didn’t know much about business back then.
- Mark Zuckerberg
This is not to imply that we agree on everything because we don’t. Nor does it mean there are no arguments because there are. It does mean there is never any maliciousness or bitterness in our differences. It does mean each is willing to admit a mistake and apologize if he or she is wrong. It means we enjoy each other and love each other enough to put the other one first. We never part company or go to sleep without settling our differences and reaffirming our love. We’re both grateful that God has let us spend enough years together to develop a relationship and discover what real love is all about. Our prayer is that God will permit us to have many more years together before we start our walk though eternity—together.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m killing two birds at once, so to speak. Animal-based food kills people. This way, by going vegan… we get healthy and save animals. I’m being selfish, too, because if I can get my employees healthier, we cut down on sick days and gain more productivity.
- Stephen Wynn
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
- Bill Gates
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
I learned this early on in the variety business: You’ve got to give folks responsibility, you’ve got to trust them, and then you’ve got to check on them.
- Sam Walton
There are only two kinds of employees that I’ve run across in 30 years. There are ones that get results, and ones that make excuses. If you’re in that second camp, you’re not going to like Dish.
- Charles Ergen
I’ve always been very happy. I’ve always been easy going and I’ve always been very encouraging, it’s just my personality.
- Joel Olsteen
When people get at each other’s throat, the rich and the poor and the Left and the Right and so on, and you have a basic breakdown, that becomes very threatening.
- Ray Dalio
My first transistor radio was the heart of my gadget love today. It fit in my hand and brought me a world of music 24 / 7.
- Steve Wozniak
If I want a better-than-average career, I can’t simply ‘go with the flow’ and get it. Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome. If they would just do something most people would find that they get some version of the outcome they’re looking for. That’s been my secret. Stop wishing and start doing.
- Timothy Ferriss
The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.
- Mark Zuckerberg
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.
- Seth Godin
I always saw myself wanting to do something deemed successful and good at the same time.
- Howard Schultz
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 want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.
- Tony Robbins
Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.
- Bill Gates
Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.
- Seth Godin
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
When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky – poor parents! – I would be home before it got dark.
- Larry Ellison
Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one.
- Peter Thiel
I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted ‘Mary had a little lamb’, etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.
- Thomas Edison
You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
Security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit; your machine can be taken over totally.
- Bill Gates
Most books on management are written by management consultants, and they study successful companies after they’ve succeeded, so they only hear winning stories.
- Ben Horowitz
Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows? Maybe just like that little baby, putting your arm around somebody and letting him or her know that you care can help begin to heal that person’s heart. Maybe you can give a rescuing hug.
- Joel Olsteen
Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man.
- Winston Churchill
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
- Seth Godin
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
- Bill Gates
We create stress for ourselves because you feel like you have to do it. You have to. I don’t feel that anymore.
- Oprah Winfrey
Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you are ready or not to put this plan into action.
- Napoleon Hill
business to be paid a salary of over a million dollars a year.
- Dale Carnegie
You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Leading, not following We’ve been trained to follow. In fact, the very nature of training has following built right into it. We follow instructions. We follow the rules. We follow the leader. The challenge in a six-billion person world is that we don’t have a shortage of followers. Followers are easy to find, and the tools for compliance are more powerful (but less useful) than ever. Now the economy is demanding leaders. Human beings who can engage in what it really means to be a person—to forge connections, to see a path and to make a difference.
- Seth Godin
Those who do not know how to fight worry die young.
- Dale Carnegie
Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.
- John C. Maxwell
The minimum effective dose (MED) is defined simply: the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome.
- Timothy Ferriss
Rockefeller succeeded because he believed in the long –term prospects of the business and never treated it as a mirage that would soon fade.
- Ron Chernow
So sure, start with a slogan. But don’t bother wasting any time on it if you’re merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.
- Seth Godin
Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.
- Bill Cosby
If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag.
- Zig Ziglar
A business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.
- Peter Thiel
Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.
- Oprah Winfrey
It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs.
- Reed Hastings
The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure.
- Seth Godin
I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. But I’d love to, right?
- Jack Ma
Call it the emergence of a “world’s bank” – a system built by and for the people, delivering credit in America and across the globe in a radically decentralized, highly scalable, and crucially equitable way. The World Bank funds institutions.The world’s bank funds people.
- Reid Hoffman
I’m a geek.
- Bill Gates
[On a small business class taught at university by Frank Shallenberger] Shallenberger started by defining the type of person who was an entrepreneur, and I realized he was talking to me.
- Phil Knight
There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.
- Ben Horowitz
When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
- Winston Churchill
I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.
- Joel Olsteen
In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare.
- Winston Churchill
When you import goods, you import poverty and you export jobs to other parts of the globe where such goods are produced.
- Aliko Dangote
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.
- Seth Godin
I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that’s a big deal. And if you’re going to be a leader – if you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.
- Jack Welch
As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.
- Peter Thiel
As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.
- Winston Churchill
Names are the sweetest, most important sound in any language.
- Dale Carnegie
I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.
- Elon Musk
Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.
- Santana
If you are satisfied with the results you are now getting, why change? If you are not satisfied, why not experiment?
- Dale Carnegie
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
- Warren Buffett
The words Think and Thank are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches of England. These words ought to be inscribed in our hearts, too: Think and Thank. Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
- Dale Carnegie
I’ve never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m not gonna give up, shut up, or let up… as a matter of fact, I’m just getting warmed up.
- Zig Ziglar
Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.
- Bill Gates
You have no ability, if you’re a financial institution and you’re threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.
- Warren Buffett
Do it now! can affect every phase of your life. It can help you do the things you should do but don’t feel like doing. It can keep you from procrastinating when an unpleasant duty faces you. But it can also help you do those things that you want to do. It helps you seize those precious moments that, if lost, may never be retrieved.
- Napoleon Hill
Residential property prices will pick up steadily.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
We allow no geniuses around our Studio.
- Walt Disney
Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.
- Yoda
A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die without publicizing it, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another….
- Thomas Edison
Creative leaders inherently know when rules need to be challenged, and they can see when a more flexible approach should be taken.
- John C. Maxwell
Satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels.
- Rupert Murdoch
Indeed, if there is any one secret” to an enduring great company, it is the ability to manage continuity and change—a discipline that must be consciously practiced, even by the most visionary of companies.
- James C. Collins
Life is too short for long-term grudges.
- Elon Musk
I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.
- Bill Gates
all information and interruptions that are irrelevant, unimportant, or unactionable.
- Timothy Ferriss
