Notable Quotables

Why does a 67-year-old guy who got his start running an athletic shoe company think he can enter a field famous for gobbling up fortunes.

- Phil Knight

Historians will record 1998 as a time when the impossible happened in Asia

- Cheng Yu-tung

Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.

- Napoleon Hill

Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.

- Napoleon Hill

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn’t even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

- Sara Blakely

No one’s going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful, although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.

- Rupert Murdoch

Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and time, usually hours.

- Timothy Ferriss

I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I’m not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.

- Howard Schultz

Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.

- Walt Disney

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

- John C. Maxwell

I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.

- Steve Martin

I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple.

- Joel Olsteen

I’ve run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over. I’ve had that happen to me, and I’ve seen it happen to other people. I find it fascinating.

- Steve Martin

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.

- Peter Drucker

It is important for a husband to understand that his words have tremendous power in his wife’s life. He needs to bless her with words. She’s given her life to love and care for him, to partner with him, to create a family together, to nurture his children. If he is always finding fault in something she’s doing, always putting her down, he will reap horrendous problems in his marriage and in his life. Moreover, many women today are depressed and feel emotionally abused because their husbands do not bless them with their words. One of the leading causes of emotional breakdowns among married women is the fact that women do not feel valued. One of the main reasons for that deficiency is because husbands are willfully or unwittingly withholding the words of approval women so desperately desire. If you want to see God do wonders in your marriage, start praising your spouse. Start appreciating and encouraging her. Every single day, a husband should tell his wife, I love you. I appreciate you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” A wife should do the same for her husband. Your relationship would improve immensely if you’d simply start speaking kind, positive words, blessing your spouse instead of cursing him or her.

- Joel Olsteen

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 have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven’t done the work that has built the foundation to support it.

- Howard Schultz

The knowledge worker is not poverty-prone. He is in danger of alienation, to use the fashionable word for boredom, frustration, and silent despair.

- Peter Drucker

Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual Motion. The give and take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning and the pain of losing. It’s as good as it gets. You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is the fun…

- Jack Welch

In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.

- Ben Horowitz

When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.

- Bill Gates

My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

- Winston Churchill

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

- Jerry Seinfeld

For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.

- Bill Gates

If there is any one secret of success,’ said Henry Ford, ‘it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

- Dale Carnegie

I do limit my exposure to the public. You only have so much time.

- Donald Bren

I may be over the top on this, but I just don’t want to like my competitors. I want my people to believe that whenever he and our other competitors succeed, we will be less able to do all the things we want to do.

- Phil Knight

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

- Richard Branson

Here’s to the crazy ones…The ones who see things differently. They push thehuman race forward. And while some may see them as thecrazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

- Steve Jobs

TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.

- Jack Dorsey

Instead of choosing to focus in the liability column, I chose to focus in the asset column.

- Robert Kiyosaki

If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.

- Joel Olsteen

Success is doing what you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want and as much as you want.

- Tony Robbins

The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.

- Peter Drucker

Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!

- Yoda

When you are the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you are basically saying, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong.’ That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilaration and the same time an invitation to be attacked.

- Larry Ellison

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

- David Novak

Whenever you are speaking, both your passion for your business and your appearance will have a lasting impact on your audience.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The expensive act of planning on late When you’re late, there’s not a lot of room for choice or decision or initiative. When you’re late, the path is well lit, and the choices are clear. Run! Run down the path you’ve run down before. Late is a tool for people unable to find the guts to stand for their acts. Late gives us cover; it permits us to trample forward, without creativity or panache. “Can’t you see I’m late!” we shout, as we do what we have to do, without even pausing to think about what we could do instead. Late might be useful, except that late is incredibly expensive. This strategy, the one we choose so we can avoid the fear of choice, costs us in so many ways. It degrades quality, misses airplanes, charges overtime, and shuts down those around us. It’s also exhausting. The alternative to planning on late is to initiate before it’s required, to ship before deadline, to put the idea out there before the crisis hits. This act of bravery actually gives you influence, leverage, and control in a way that planning on late never can.

- Seth Godin

In setting goals and executing a strategy, Wanda is sophisticated. We have good systems and departments. If targets are not reached, a yellow light goes off.

- Wang Jianlin

I believe the government of the United States should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Secret, shall I tell you? Grand Master of Jedi Order am I. Won this job in a raffle I did, think you? “How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?” Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is.

- Yoda

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.

- Steve Jobs

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.

- Larry Ellison

I wish HP nothing but the best. I think HP is an icon. Those of us who had their careers in the Valley think of Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett as role models. We would love to be half as good as they were.

- Larry Ellison

The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.

- Seth Godin

Lanai at one time grew 98% of the world’s pineapples. But the world’s pineapples are now grown in two places, Costa Rica and Panama, because no one wants to spend $45 for a pineapple from the United States.

- Larry Ellison

Anyone who has held an iDevice or a smoothly machined MacBook has felt the result of Steve Jobs’s obsession with visual and experiential perfection. But the most important lesson to learn from Jobs has nothing to do with aesthetics. The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively.

- Peter Thiel

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

Self-disciplined begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.

- Napoleon Hill

You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.

- Warren Buffett

If you’ve found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

- Bill Gates

If you can discipline yourself to read, you can free up two years of your life for the good stuff!

- Seth Godin

We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.

- Tadashi Yanai

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

- Bill Gates

Stubborn isn’t a word I would use to describe myself, pigheaded is more appropriate.

- Michael Bloomberg

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

- Steve Jobs

Hong Kong has, throughout it’s history, experienced periods of uncertainties… I believe that the virtues of Hong Kong people – diligent, flexible and entrepreneurial – will once again overcome the obstacles before us.

- Cheng Yu-tung

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

- Peter Drucker

Money doesn’t make people happy. People make people happy.

- Stephen Wynn

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

- Jim Rohn

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.

- Warren Buffett

Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that’s what a number of us are trying to do.

- Richard Branson

One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.

- Seth Godin

I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.

- Seth Godin

[On January 30, 1964] With a hearty ichi ban Blue Ribbon Sports got off the ground on Monday with an order for 300 pairs of shoes.

- Phil Knight

Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.

- Timothy Ferriss

The recovering economic environment will lead to an increase in local demand for home purchases and the purchasing power which has accumulated in the past two years due to uncertainty surrounding the local economy will result in increased demand for residential properties, particularly for residential units of small to medium size which match well with your [Henderson] Group’s property development focus.

- Lee Shau Kee

The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo, the job is to invent the status quo.

- Seth Godin

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

- Randy Pausch

I had a terrible time hiring rich people. It sounds funny, but the problem is when things go wrong they can ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You don’t ever want anybody asking that question. You want them to say, ‘I know why I’m doing it, I need the money, let’s go’ or whatever it is that draws them.

- 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

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

- Timothy Ferriss

Same problem as every Hollywood studio: how can you reliably produce a constant stream of popular entertainment for a fickle audience? (Nobody knows.)

- Peter Thiel

We’re totally legal, like totally legal, and the government is telling us to shut down. And you can either do what they say or you can fight for what you believe.

- Travis Kalanick

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

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.

- Thomas Edison

It’s [the internet] like the flu – it just spreads like crazy.

- Jack Welch

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

- Albert Einstein

If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong—yes, even that you know is wrong—isn’t it better to begin by saying: Well, now, look. I thought otherwise, but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong, I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.” There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.

- Dale Carnegie

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