The choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Notable Quotables
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
- Bill Gates
Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless.
- Warren Buffett
The world’s major metropolitan cities are more or less the same.
- Tadashi Yanai
Exploring how you could make a bad situation worse can sometimes tell you what not to do.
- Harvey Mackay
Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory.
- Harvey Mackay
Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you’ll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it’s twice the efficiency of a Prius.
- Elon Musk
No matter who you are, you need two kinds of friends in your life. The first kind is one you can call when something good happens, and you need someone who will be excited for you. Not a fake excitement veiling envy, but a real excitement. You need someone who will actually be more excited for you than he would be if it had happened to him. The second kind of friend is somebody you can call when things go horribly wrong—when your life is on the line and you only have one phone call. Who is it going to be? Bill Campbell is both of those friends.
- Ben Horowitz
If you’re interested in ‘balancing’ work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable.
- Donald Trump
greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
- James C. Collins
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
I believe God’s keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, someway, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can’t give God something without God giving you more in return, whether it’s peace or joy or satisfaction.
- Joel Olsteen
The trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.
- Peter Thiel
The final relationship that cannot be ignored is with disrupters: They are individuals who cause trouble for sport – inciting opposition to management for a variety of reasons, most of them petty. Usually these people have good performance – that’s their cover – and so they are endured or appeased. A company that manages people well takes disrupters head-on. First they give them very tough evaluations, naming their bad behaviour and demanding it change. Usually it won’t. Disrupters are a personality type. If that’s the case, get them out of the way of people trying to do their jobs. They’re poison.
- Jack Welch
Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.
- Bill Gates
All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.
- Ray Kroc
I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
- Timothy Ferriss
Don’t solicit feedback on your product, your idea, or your business just for validation purposes. Be really careful about that. You want to tell the people that can help move your idea forward. But if you’re just looking to your friend, coworker, husband, wife, for validation, be careful. Because out of love… a lot of people will express some concerns, and it can stop a lot of multi-million dollar ideas right in their tracks.
- Sara Blakely
If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.
- John C. Maxwell
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
- Peter Drucker
U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.
- Bill Gates
By getting your customers to agree with you in small steps along the way, you have a better chance of reaching agreement when it’s time to do business.
- Harvey Mackay
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
- Og Mandino
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
People say the most important thing is building a world-class team.
- Ben Horowitz
There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.
- Zig Ziglar
Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.
- Bill Gates
Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.
- John C. Maxwell
When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate.
- Seth Godin
Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.
- Caterina Fake
Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
- Dale Carnegie
Be willing to make the mistakes and realizing that something can happen later – the patience are some of the things I would advise.
- Jack Dorsey
In the States, there’s ESPN3, and each country has different options, and other than premiere league football, there tends to be very little global content. And movie and TV rights are pretty broad content.
- Reed Hastings
Don’t blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.
- John D. Rockefeller
Allow yourself to get on the same side of the desk and solve the problems together.
- Jack Nadel
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
- Winston Churchill
most people go through college and learn to read Virgil and master the mysteries of calculus without ever discovering how their own minds function.
- Dale Carnegie
Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.
- Timothy Ferriss
Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
- Richard Branson
If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The problem we have with America is that you come over here and want to make a deal. We meet you and want to form a relationship from which we can make a deal. We meet you and want to form a relationship from which we can make many deals. Most importantly and the basis of everything is that we have a relationship where we honor and trust each other.
- Akio Morita
It truly levels the playing field and puts all the emphasis on the content. And all the emphasis on the merit of the idea.
- Jack Dorsey
Play long enough and you might get lucky. In the technology game, tomorrow looks nothing like today. If you survive long enough to see tomorrow, it may bring you the answer that seems so impossible today.
- Ben Horowitz
Experience has taught me,” says Sam Wood, that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren’t.
- Dale Carnegie
In 2008, people who invested in hedge funds needed capital badly, but many of the funds would not return their money. However, I gave money back to any investor who requested it. It was the bottom of the market and a pretty tough time.
- Carl Icahn
Strive to be the very best you can be. Run the race against yourself and not the guy in the other lane. The reason I say that is, as long as you give it 110% you are going to succeed. But as long as you’re trying to beat the guy over there, you are worried about him; you’re not worrying about how you’ve got to perform
- Herschel Walker
The potential for Twitter is spectacular and great.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
It’s difficult for any single company to develop all the applications and services.
- Ma Huateng
Certainly there are times in all of our lives when bad things happen, or things don’t turn out as we had hoped. But that’s when we we must a decision that we’re going to be happy inspite of our circumstances.
- Joel Olsteen
At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas, but the image is that they all come from the top. I’m afraid that’s not quite right.
- Bill Gates
My parents got one bedroom, my three sisters got the other bedroom, and my brother and I made do with a rollaway in the kitchen.
- David Green
A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.
- Elon Musk
Anything that’s not necessary for you to do personally should be delegated or eliminated.
- John Maxwell
There are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.
- Mark Twain
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
- Winston Churchill
Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.
- Peter Thiel
Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.
- Elon Musk
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
- Winston Churchill
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.
- Winston Churchill
Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?
- Rupert Murdoch
To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.
- Seth Godin
You must focus on WIN. What’s important now.
- Lee Cockerell
Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.
- Bill Gates
In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.
- Ben Horowitz
Substantial growth in GDP, rising wages, improved employment prospects and favourable bank mortgage terms have all resulted in a buoyant property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- Walt Disney
Ideas are cheap. The difficult part is finding the team to execute them.
- Raymond Kwok
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
It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.
- Jeff Bezos
The public is upset. If they haven’t lost their job, they know somebody that has. If they haven’t lost their house, they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something’s wrong, it’s government’s job to fix it, it must be government that’s responsible for causing it.
- Michael Bloomberg
We’re profitable and have the potential to be very profitable, … We generate cash from operations of over $1 billion per quarter. We have $19 billion in cash and equivalents in an industry that is in debt. We’ve gained more market share than we’ve ever gained in this last quarter. We’ve got the customer loyalty and strategy for where the industry’s going, which is combining networks for service providers and enterprises. So I’m very optimistic about our future if we execute right.
- John Chambers
‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.
- Bill Gates
[As a child] I would just question things…
- Elon Musk
Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.
- Richard Branson
Every pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, but every optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
In War: Resolution,In Defeat: Defiance,In Victory: MagnaminityIn Peace: Good Will.
- Winston Churchill
Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.
- Bill Gates
There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain – do something to make more money yourself.
- Gina Rinehart
There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
- Dale Carnegie
You may think there is a lot wrong with you, but there is also a lot right with you.
- Joel Olsteen
The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.
- Ray Dalio
A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere.
- Zig Ziglar
If you wish to build a powerful personal network, branch out. Build a diverse network of professional contacts that includes people that don’t look like you, sound like you, speak like you or have your background, education or history. The only thing they should have in common with you and the other people in your network is that they should be really good at what they do. Create a personal network like that, and you’ll have a network that can help you succeed at anything.
- Ivan Misner
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean, if a few drops of ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
- Mahatma Gandhi
The local property market witnessed a slowdown following the 9-11 incident in the United States, under an environment of high unemployment and sustained deflation in Hong Kong. On the whole, property prices showed a slight decline as compared with the price levels recorded in the previous financial year.
- Lee Shau Kee
Do you know of the water and the moon? The river flows endlessly, yet it never disappears. The moon waxes and wanes, yet it never grows bigger or smaller. Therefore, if you look in the eyes of change, everything in this world changes in an instant. But if you look in the eyes of stability, everything in the world, including humanity, is eternal. Dozens of worlds have demonstrated precisely the truth of the changing universe. The changes of the water and the moon happen on their appearances, but never on their physical natures. Therefore, whether changes happen depends on people’s mind and view. Since nothing remains permanent in the world, change is just the eternal fact.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The time will never be just right, you must act now.
- Napoleon Hill
A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily.
- John D. Rockefeller
When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.
- Steve Wozniak
A good deed, said the prophet Mohammed, is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another.Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts on the doer?Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the verything that produces worry and fear and melancholia.
- Dale Carnegie
In the 1950s, people welcomed big plans and asked whether they would work. Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris. You can still visit the Bay Model in that Sausalito warehouse, but today it’s just a tourist attraction: big plans for the future have become archaic curiosities.
- Peter Thiel
Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.
- James C. Collins
I usually describe myself as an engineer. That’s basically what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.
- Elon Musk
Your list is like a garden, tend it well.
- Michael Levine
