I am looking to buy companies that are run by painters. Most great artists have a hard time letting go of their paintings. That’s because the joy is not in the finished work, the joys is in the painting. They are constantly adding a dab of color here, a little more texture there. I’m looking for the boss who is always tweaking his company, constantly trying to make it better. No matter how successful he may have already been, what he still sees is a master-piece-in-progress.
- Warren Buffett
Notable Quotables
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
- Oprah Winfrey
The number of units that were sold by the Group including those for which the Group acted as sales agent summed up to 2,960 residential units, amounting to approximately HK$9.2 billion in total sales proceeds.
- Lee Shau Kee
One who starts a business without written plans of any kind, without a pro-forma or any concept of their overall profitability per customer, yet believes that if they work hard enough and give enough money away to those in need that eventually they will not be in need.
- Clay Clark
Don’t settle in the land of barely enough. That is where you are, it is not who you are. That’s your location, it’s not your identity. No matter what it looks like, have an abundant mentality.
- Joel Olsteen
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
- Wayne Gretzky
Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future.
- Zig Ziglar
When I was growing up my dad would encourage my brother and me to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, so what did you guys fail at this week? If we didn’t have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he’d high-five me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn’t the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, I didn’t try that because I was scared, that is failure.
- Sara Blakely
The first thing the secretary types is the boss.
- Donald Trump
Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.
- Ben Horowitz
I wanted to be a sailor, I wanted to sail the world, to navigate it.
- Jack Dorsey
Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.
- Andrew Carnegie
I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It’s a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that’s what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.
- Elon Musk
I support health care for people. I want people well taken care of. But I also want health care that we can afford as a country. I have people and friends closing down their businesses because of Obamacare.
- Donald Trump
All of us profit from being corrected – if we’re corrected in a positive way.
- Sam Walton
Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
- Yoda
Other people do not determine your potential.
- Joel Olsteen
I am a self-made brat.
- Stephen Wynn
Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individuals and businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators.
- Peter Thiel
There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.
- Winston Churchill
Success must never be measured by how much money you have.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.
- Bill Gates
I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.
- Michael Bloomberg
The time to look for a new job is when you don’t need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable.
- Seth Godin
Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.
- Bill Gates
1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.
- Peter Thiel
You either trust someone day one until they prove you wrong, or you say, ‘I don’t trust you until you show me I can trust you.’ I’m the latter.
- Charles Ergen
Poker is a game where you don’t have to have the best hand to win. Poker is really reading other people and reading human emotion, which certainly comes into play in business.
- Charles Ergen
I remember clearly when the financial plan – If i may call it so – of my life was formed. It was out in Ohio, under the ministration of a dear old minister who preached, Get money; get it honestly, and then give it away wisely. I wrote that down in a little book.
- Ron Chernow
Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged.
- Russell Simmons
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
In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.
- Ben Horowitz
One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.
- Timothy Ferriss
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
- Peter Drucker
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
- Sergey Brin
As Americans we do not recognize the jurisdiction of the Hague Tribunal. We only follow court orders from the Chinese judiciary
- Sergey Brin
Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.
- Elon Musk
[In January 2011] I think Twitter is so unique that we must stay independent.
- Jack Dorsey
One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.
- Dale Carnegie
He declared he never stepped in front of the footlights without first saying to himself over and over: I love my audience. I love my audience.
- Dale Carnegie
I never lie, so if somebody asked me a question, I told them.
- Michael Bloomberg
For any Silicon Valley company, the most important thing is the company. And any great founders need to get out of the way of the company. We presented a spark with an idea.
- Jack Dorsey
You know, the diversity that America has is so special. It’s starting to really become a cool thing for young people.
- Russell Simmons
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.
- Bill Gates
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.
- Donald Trump
People always underestimate Africa. If you want to follow what’s on ground, you would not want to invest in Nigeria; when you look at it from the patriotism point of view, you will ask yourself: how did those great countries become great?
- Aliko Dangote
The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
There is no business in America that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions.
- Michael Bloomberg
The Minden prospect originated this past summer through a large acreage acquisition from a major oil company and Cabot now controls 3,500 acres over the area. We are pleased with our initial results and will remain active in this area throughout 2006. On forty-acre spacing, the prospect has the potential for 80 plus locations.
- Dan Dinges
There’s always a wine bully. The one person who did read the ‘Wine Spectator,’ who tells you what to drink and why the ’97 is better than the ’98. I want to punch the wine bully in the face. I want to make sure this generation of wine drinkers isn’t elitist and snotty. I want it to be about family and bringing people together.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.
- Michael Gerber
We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.
- Larry Page
You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.
- Joel Olsteen
Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.
- Peter Thiel
Younglings, younglings gather ’round.
- Yoda
The earnings from Hong Kong and China Gas and rental property portfolio serve as a solid base for the Group’s sustainable growth.
- Lee Shau Kee
One definition of hope is happy anticipation of something good.
- Joel Olsteen
Well, excuuuuuse me!
- Steve Martin
You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
- Oprah Winfrey
Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.
- Richard Branson
If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.
- Woodrow Wilson
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
We so much time putting these organizations and public figures on this massive, massive pedestal, but we have to remember they go through all the small details of live that we do. And you can make them human again and you can interact with them.
- Jack Dorsey
Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
- Winston Churchill
It’s easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.
- Seth Godin
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
- Peter Drucker
This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
- Bill Gates
Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
- Theodore Roosevelt
I think our main real estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and letting the population build out to us.
- Sam Walton
Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity.
- P.T. Barnum
To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.
- George Soros
The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
- Bill Gates
Sometimes I look out there and I get goosebumps…
- Phil Knight
Be more splendid, more extraordinary. Use every moment to fill yourself up.
- Oprah Winfrey
I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.
- Bill Gates
Trust your gut.
- Sara Blakely
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
- Winston Churchill
Twitter was around communication and visualizing what was happening in the world in real-time. Square was allowing everyone to accept the form of payment people have in their pocket today, which is a credit card.
- Jack Dorsey
Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.
- Peter Thiel
You can achieve difficult things, but you can’t achieve the impossible.
- Peter Thiel
What’s dangerous is not to evolve.
- Jeff Bezos
the world belongs to the man or woman who got up today and did something
- Jim Stovall
Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.
- Steve Martin
We know that if you just were to take the drugs that you were supposed to take for diabetes or hypertension, just take it, as opposed to not take it, we could save $7,000, $3,000 per patient per year.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
We want Google to be the third half of your brain.
- Sergey Brin
There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.
- Napoleon Hill
It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.
- Winston Churchill
Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.
- Bill Gates
I will always serve my country in any capacity, but I’m very happy with what I’m doing right now.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.
- Yoda
To be awake is to be fully present, no noise, just you and God. Most of us only have seconds of full consciousness. To live in a state of Samadhi – that’s what we’re here for.
- Russell Simmons
To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas, and focusing on the essentials.
- Richard Branson
God will never ask you for something without first depositing it within you. If you will dare to take a step of faith, you will discover gifts inside that you never before realized were there.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Learning is truly a value, growth for every employee is a real objective, mistakes aren’t always fatal, and there are lots of people around whom you can reach out to for coaching and mentoring.
- Jack Welch
Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
- Zig Ziglar
You can’t get too much done in life if you only work on days when you feel good.
- Jerry West
I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
- Jeff Bezos
