The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.
- Elon Musk
Notable Quotables
Opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison
You must be the change to wish to see in the world.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Everything we did we were setting the tone for the world.
- Steve Wozniak
Every great business is built on friendship.
- JC Penney
Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining – it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn’t solve any problems.
- Zig Ziglar
Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition all profits get competed away.
- Peter Thiel
I didn’t like the way it looked in white trousers, and I couldn’t find anything to work underneath them.
- Sara Blakely
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
You watch television and see what’s going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing’s going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress.
- Stephen Wynn
For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.
- Bill Gates
This morning did you wake up to an alarm clock, or an “opportunity” clock?
- Zig Ziglar
Success is not final…Failure is not fatal…it’s the courage to continue that counts.
- Winston Churchill
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
- Dale Carnegie
I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.
- Warren Buffett
It’s not about how to get started, it’s about how to get noticed.
- Steve Case
It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.
- Larry Ellison
I say, don’t try to fight your own battles because God will do it.
- Joel Olsteen
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly–until you can learn to do it well.
- Zig Ziglar
People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.
- Peter Drucker
Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.”
- Bill Gates
The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi
Doubts [can] be swept away only by deeds.
- Winston Churchill
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
Here’s a quote from ultramarathoner Dick Collins: Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop and drop out. You don’t want to be out there saying, “Well gee, my leg hurts, I’m a little dehydrated, I’m sleepy, I’m tired, and it’s cold and windy.” And talk yourself into quitting. If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.
- Seth Godin
Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone needs to be appreciated. Every person needs that blessing.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.
- Larry Ellison
Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines, the one who actually talk to the customer, are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble within it, you must listen to what your associates are telling you.
- Sam Walton
I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.
- Bill Gates
Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.
- Ben Horowitz
If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
- Bill Gates
I’m not afraid to call a wine that tastes like Skittles or green peppers mixed with orange marmalade. I’ll say, ‘It tastes like chicken.’ I mean, that’s not what people think of when they think of wine, but that’s what it tastes like to me and it hits home.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
It’s almost unfathomable how much I still have to learn. Learning never ends…I always have another mountain to climb is what keeps you going.
- David Novak
Don’t waste your energy trying to convince people to understand you. Your time is too valuable to try to prove yourself to people.
- Joel Olsteen
Dear Sir: My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to a rapidly growing bank like yours. In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all phases of banking including depositor relations, credits, loans and administration. I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals. Sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
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
Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.
- Steve Ballmer
Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me – they’re going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, ‘This guy is obnoxious.’ I spend enormous time with them – every negative review of ‘Crush It!’ on Amazon has a response from me – and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
- Steve Martin
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.
- Seth Godin
Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business—the creation of new value—cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.
- Peter Thiel
Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.
- Og Mandino
The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks.
- Andrew Carnegie
Wal-Mart’s leaders had obviously made a point of educating and informing everyone at all levels about all aspects of the company, and that shows a real respect for their people.
- David Novak
I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.
- Donald Bren
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
- George Soros
I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.
- Elon Musk
I’d never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn’t exist.
- Sara Blakely
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit
- Napoleon Hill
You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The question you should be asking isn’t, What do I want? or What are my goals? but What would excite me?
- Timothy Ferriss
Happiness is not a tangible thing, it’s a byproduct – a byproduct of achievement.
- Ray Kroc
If you complain you will remain, if you praise you will be raised.
- Joel Olsteen
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.
- Russell Simmons
As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.
- Seth Godin
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
- Warren Buffett
For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.
- Joel Olsteen
Even though about 60% of our product is bought by people who don’t use it for the actual sport, everything we did was aimed at the top.
- Phil Knight
Beverages have to be created. And they’re created by looking at what trend is in, say, the fashion industry – what color’s hot right now.
- Howard Schultz
You cannot play with fire.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
It is hard to realize today that “government” during the American Civil War a hundred years ago meant the merest handful of people. Lincoln’s Secretary of War had fewer than fifty civilian subordinates, most of them not “executives” and policy-makers but telegraph clerks. The entire Washington establishment of the U.S. government in Theodore Roosevelt’s time, around 1900, could be comfortably housed in any one of the government buildings along the Mall today.
- Peter Drucker
Most people have ‘one way’ brains—they acquire information and do nothing. Guerillas have ‘two way’ brains—they obtain relevant information and act on it.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
I do everything on my phone as a lot of people do.
- Mark Zuckerberg
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
- Winston Churchill
I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.
- Thomas Edison
In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.
- Bill Gates
When we bought it, Spiegel was in a difficult situation; it made a loss at that time. We invested in it and then it turned around, and then we bought Eddie Bauer and Newport News.
- Michael Otto
Maintain ‘baseball cards’ and/or ‘believability matrixes’ for your people. Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats. 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 are satisfied with the results you are now getting, why change? If you are not satisfied, why not experiment?
- Dale Carnegie
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known
- Walt Disney
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
- Stephen King
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.
- Joel Olsteen
With the inherent value in Cabot’s capital program, we recommenced buying shares in late November and early December with the market pull back. We still see a lot of merit and long-term value for the shareholders in looking at COG stock as an investment alternative.
- Dan Dinges
If we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes, we will never invest in things that are radical.
- Jeff Clavier
The problem is not getting rid of fear, but using it properly.
- Zig Ziglar
One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But… I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
- Thomas Edison
Without passion, you don’t have energy; without energy, you have nothing. Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
- Donald Trump
All your ideas may be solid or even good .. But you have to Actually EXECUTE on them for them to matter.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The most stable companies have strong leaders at every level of the organization. The only way to develop such widespread leadership is to make developing leaders a part of your culture. That is a strong part of Coca-Cola’s legacy.
- John Maxwell
The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people – including my ex-wives.
- Ronald Perelman
The Habit of Indiscriminate Spending.
- Napoleon Hill
The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.
- Bill Gates
A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
- Winston Churchill
I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that’s in my head.
- Steve Martin
On average, our total annual realized income is less than 7 percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than 7 percent of our wealth.
- Thomas J Stanley
College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.
- Peter Thiel
Wanda and Reliance are two of the largest private conglomerates in their respective countries. By joining our strengths together, we hope our cooperation will bring mutual benefits and great results.
- Wang Jianlin
I have no sense of nostalgia. Tomorrow is what interests me.
- Francois Pinault
I’ve never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s insane to me to ask anybody to be what they’re not. Know what you know the best, love the most. That’s always going to be the answer to the thing that you have the best shot at winning at.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I’m much more concerned about America than the Democratic Party.
- Howard Schultz
The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m not ashamed of any of my papers at all and I’m rather sick of snobs that tell us that they’re bad papers, snobs who only read papers that no one else wants. I doubt if they read many papers at all.
- Rupert Murdoch
Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.
- Henry Ford
Out that expending emotional labor, working without a map, and driving in the dark involve confronting fear and living with the pain of vulnerability. The artist comes to a détente with these emotions and, instead of fighting with them, dances with them. The linchpin connects as a result of the indispensable nature of her contribution. The artist, on the other hand, connects because that’s what art is. The artist touches part of what it means to be truly human and does that work again and again.
- Seth Godin
Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
I’m a storyteller. I love to tell stories about brands. I love to tell stories, period. I like painting pictures through the words, and that’s what I do.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
