Notable Quotables

If it didn’t happen in your life before, then you’re not paying attention you don’t think it’s possible. But almost all important events never happen in your life before.

- Ray Dalio

An analysis of several hundred people who had accumulated fortunes well beyond the million dollar mark, disclosed the fact that every one of theme had the habit of reaching decisions promptly, and changing these decisions slowly if and when they were changed…The major weaknes of all educational systems is that they neither teach nor encourage the habit of DEFINITE DECISION…Most individuals lack the will-power to reach decisions promptly, and to stand by them after they have been made, even during normal business conditions.

- Napoleon Hill

True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing that a title can buy is a little time.

- Napoleon Hill

It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.

- Paul Theroux

the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.

- Dale Carnegie

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

- Peter Drucker

The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.

- Peter Drucker

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

- Joel Olsteen

CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It’s not what they say. It’s what they highlight.

- Rupert Murdoch

Your business has to work when it’s small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.

- Seth Godin

I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one’s children. It’s not constructive for them.

- Bill Gates

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

- Bill Gates

The ultimate search engine would basically understand everything in the world, and it would always give you the right thing. And we’re a long, long ways from that.

- Larry Page

You can succeed at almost anything for which you have unbridled enthusiasm.

- Zig Ziglar

Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.

- Seth Godin

We remain confident about the market opportunity ahead of us over the next three to five years.

- John Chambers

The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy.

- Winston Churchill

You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.

- Seth Godin

when praise is specific, it comes across as sincere—not something the other person may be saying just to make one feel good.

- Dale Carnegie

I DECLARE I have the grace I need for today. I am full of power, strength, and determination. Nothing I face will be too much for me. I will overcome every obstacle, outlast every challenge, and come through every difficulty better off than I was before. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

I don’t know why you should be proud of something. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. You are what you are.

- Michael Bloomberg

I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years – part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.

- Peter Thiel

Artists don’t think outside the box, because outside the box there’s a vacumm. Outside the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you’ll never be able to do the real work of art. You can’t ship if you’re far outside the box. Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done. That’s where the audience is, that’s where the means of production are available, and that’s where you can make impact.

- Seth Godin

If you sell business-to-business, get a letter off to your client within an hour or two of your meeting…Start with something personal from the meeting and include a compliment.

- Chet Holmes

Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you.

- Zig Ziglar

We believe the competitive and economic environment will remain very challenging in the year ahead. Whilst we think we have the opportunity to make improvements to some of our ranges, we are still budgeting on the basis of negative like-for-like retail sales for the year.

- Simon Wolfson

In all the difficult decisions that I made through the course of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I never once felt brave. In fact, I often felt scared to death. I never lost those feelings, but after much practice, I learned to ignore them. That learning process might also be called the courage development process.

- Ben Horowitz

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

- Napoleon Hill

I would summarize the quarter as a solid quarter from a revenue and earnings per share perspective and a strong quarter from an orders perspective.

- John Chambers

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.

- Thomas Edison

A record isn’t like a movie – you can get it together pretty fast.

- Steve Martin

I always wanted to find oil. It was always an irresistible calling.

- Harold Hamm

My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

- Elon Musk

I’m trying to change the culture in New York City, that’s hard enough!

- Michael Bloomberg

That was so much fun. It’s been such a neat experience racing with these guys.

- Ed Clark

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

- Andrew Carnegie

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

- Abraham Lincoln

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

- John C. Maxwell

Success is the maximum utilization of the ability you have.

- Zig Ziglar

Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.

- Kyle Chandler

Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.

- Winston Churchill

What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear.

- Timothy Ferriss

If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.

- Dave Ramsey

The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.

- Timothy Ferriss

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

- Andrew Carnegie

If you don’t have peace, it isn’t because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.

- John C. Maxwell

It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don’t feel like an oligarch.

- Vladimir Potanin

Rockefeller’s supreme insight was that he could solve the oil industry’s problems by solving the railroad’s problems at the same time, creating a double cartel in oil and rails. One of Rockefeller’s strength in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and then crafted mutually advanteous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper, albeit in away that fortified his own position.

- Ron Chernow

I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they’re doing. People don’t look at me. They don’t even know I’m there.

- Jerry Seinfeld

The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.

- Thomas Edison

‘You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.’

- Joel Olsteen

I wish I could do a lot of things different. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I’d go, ‘Okay, I’ll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.’ Really. But I’ve made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?

- Steve Martin

If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.

- Bill Gates

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

Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.

- Jeff Bezos

Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.

- Elon Musk

Law of Credibility – Don’t say anything you can’t prove. Be able to prove anything you say.

- Jerry Vass

The New Rich ( NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.

- Timothy Ferriss

You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.

- Elon Musk

If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.

- Elon Musk

The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.

- Elon Musk

The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself.

- Joel Olsteen

PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.

- Ben Horowitz

People tend to over-weigh risks on a personal level. It’s one thing if you’ve got a mortgage to pay and kids to support, so that if you were to deviate from your job, well, how are you going to feed your family and pay the rent? That’s understandable, but let’s say you’re young and you’re just coming out of college, what are your risks? You’re not going to starve, certainly not in any kind of modern economy. It’s so easy to earn enough money just to live somewhere and eat food. Very easy to do. So I don’t know what they’re afraid of. Mostly afraid of failure, I think, but people should be less risk averse, when there’s not much at risk.

- Elon Musk

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.

- Bill Gates

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!

- Michael Gerber

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.

- John C. Maxwell

I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.

- Brian Tracy

Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

- Sam Walton

Uber is “way more” evil than Google, the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley.

- Peter Thiel

Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson – from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers.

- Sara Blakely

About half of our wives do not work outside the home. The number-one occupation for those wives who do work is teacher.

- Thomas J Stanley

The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it’s hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you’ll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero.

- Peter Thiel

One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn’t elect those people. Isn’t it supposed to be different? Aren’t we supposed to like the people that we elected?

- Bill Gates

Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!

- Winston Churchill

when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.

- Dale Carnegie

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed, A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden of weeds.

- John D. Rockefeller

As you begin changing your thinking, start immediately to change your behavior. Begin to act the part of the person you would like to become. Take action on your behavior. Too many people want to feel, then take action. This never works.

- John C. Maxwell

What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

- Peter Drucker

Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.

- Seth Godin

Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.

- Tim Westergren

It will be disastrous when a leader or manager shows up with one attitude one day and treats people with a different attitude the next day.

- Zig Ziglar

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.

- Bill Gates

People really criticize professional athletes going into the Olympics. People don’t like change. A bunch of people don’t like the Olympics now because we’ve added skateboarding… We’re modernizing the sport.

- Larry Ellison

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription