Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don’t approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison
Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was… just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But…it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since [1945]…. And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.
- James C. Collins
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
- Walt Disney
We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life. And it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001.
- Michael Bloomberg
Thinking about what might happen if we ran completely out of money—laying off all the employees that I’d so carefully selected and hired, losing all my investors’ money, jeopardizing all the customers who trusted us with their business—made it difficult to concentrate on the possibilities. Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke: Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.
- Ben Horowitz
To live your best life now, you must learn to trust God’s timing, you may not think He’s working, but you can be sure that right now, behind the scenes, God is arranging all the pieces to come together to work out His plan for your life.
- Joel Olsteen
Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
- Andrew Carnegie
If David our CEO, devotes so much of his time to this, then all this stuff about teamwork and learning how to be a great leader must be pretty important.
- David Novak
Thee may be some concern about rising inflation, shortage of labour and increased trade protectionism but the economy is generally in good shape.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
- Elon Musk
Our economy now rewards artists far more than any other economy in history ever has.
- Seth Godin
Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.
- Peter Thiel
What’s important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn’t satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn’t right, or if the offerings aren’t right, it’s the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don’t get hung up on zeros.
- Jack Welch
If a man’s heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.
- Dale Carnegie
At Uniqlo, we’re thinking ahead. We’re thinking about how to create new, innovative products… and sell that to everyone.
- Tadashi Yanai
Okay, let’s talk about cartoon labels for half a second – some people think anything with a dog or a car or a colorful alien is garbage, which is not true. Look at Big Moose Red. It’s, like, a $6 wine with a cheesy label, and it’s actually a solid wine.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We all know now that the 747 became the flagship jumbo jet of the airline industry, but the decision looks much different from the perspective of the late 1960s. Yet—and this is the key point—Boeing was willing to make the bold move in the face of the risks. As in Boeing’s case, the risks do not always come without pain.
- James C. Collins
Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that’s associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.
- Bill Gates
I made a conscious decision not to tell anyone in my life. Now I tell people–don’t tell anyone your idea until you have invested enough of yourself in it that you are not going to turn back. When a person has an idea at that conception moment, it is the most vulnerable–one negative comment could knock you off course.
- Sara Blakely
I think it’d be crazy not to have the plan encompass the entire reservoir. If we have (the smaller map), we’ve got a bunch of other folks telling us what they want to see happen in our community.
- Jack Taylor
Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.
- Peter Thiel
Not only was the casual shoe effort a failure, but it was diluting our trademark and hurting us in running.
- Phil Knight
Our customers call and e-mai us to say that’s how it feels when a Zappos box arrives. And that’s how we view this company.
- Tony Hsieh
People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
- Peter Thiel
I am amazed that CNN can’t get its act together.
- Rupert Murdoch
A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.
- Bill Gates
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
- Warren Buffett
You have to come up with what the consumer wants, and you need a vehicle to understand it.
- Phil Knight
The most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest.
- Bill Gates
When you are committed to doing what’s right, you are sowing seeds for God’s blessings. You will never go wrong by taking the high road and doing more that is required.
- Joel Olsteen
A company is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies.
- Larry Ellison
It’s not Pinterest where people are putting up pins. You’re changing the way cities work, and that’s fundamentally a third rail. We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an as—hole named Taxi.
- Travis Kalanick
The ability to lead is more valuable than sugar or any other commodity
- John D. Rockefeller
Why should I clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I acquire.
- Henry Ford
Facing a market which awaited exploration and development, the Group decided to become a pioneer in its economic reform by taking up the responsibility to engage in the development of the Mainland.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.
- Bill Gates
The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.
- Bill Gates
In the Soviet Union I was the head of all oil production. And you know in the Soviet Union, you didn’t get that job unless you were really worth it.
- Vagit Alekperov
Leadership must wake up every day with the mission of Finding a Better Way Every Day…There are no modest revolutions…GE was a place where the people got up everyday to searching for a better way.
- Jack Welch
Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.
- Seth Godin
Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.
- Howard Schultz
I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.
- Ronald Perelman
No matter how many times people say it – ‘Oh, I’m just writing this for myself’ ‘Oh, I’m just doing this for myself’ – nobody’s doing it for themselves! You’re doing it for an audience. So whether I’m performing or writing a book or playing music, it’s definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
- Steve Martin
The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.
- Thomas Edison
Lay out what you’re doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
- David Novak
You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‘Well gee, let’s not mess this up.’ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don’t have that in the rocket business. There’s no Foxconn in the rocket business.
- Elon Musk
Make it just like a Mac.
- Bill Gates
Consumers, we’re too busy to pay attention to advertising, but we’re desperate to find good stuff that solves our problems.
- Seth Godin
Will flash cards invade the disk drive makers’ core markets and supplant magnetic memory? If they do, what will happen to the disk drive makers? Will they stay atop their markets, catching this new technological wave? Or will they be driven out?
- Clayton M. Christensen
Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while.
- Jack Welch
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
A stubborn man can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
- Winston Churchill
To me, the idea and expectation that the day is slowly and surely coming when we will be able to honestly say we are our brother’s keeper and not his oppressor is very beautiful .
- Thomas Edison
Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.
- Bill Gates
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
The craftsman and the artist say, “Here, I made this.” The workingman is asked to follow instructions.
- Seth Godin
Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.
- Peter Thiel
When people get at each other’s throat, the rich and the poor and the Left and the Right and so on, and you have a basic breakdown, that becomes very threatening.
- Ray Dalio
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You’ve got to be before you can do and do before you can have.
- Zig Ziglar
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
- Socrates
War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:
- Peter Thiel
It has been almost a decade since the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Hong Kong has gone through both good times and bad times. During the past decade, Hong Kong has undoubtedly played an increasingly important role in the economic development of China.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.
- General George S. Patton
Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.
- Ray Kroc
Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.
- Jeff Bezos
I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
- John D. Rockefeller
You can’t build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.
- Rupert Murdoch
I hate writing about personal stuff. I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don’t use them.
- Elon Musk
I updated my grilling app, iGrill, today and it now has Facebook integration that lets you see what other people are grilling right now around the world. Awesome.
- Mark Zuckerberg
NO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OR EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK PROCESS Your company now employs twenty-five people and you know that you should formalize the performance management process, but you don’t want to pay the price. You worry that doing so will make it feel like a “big company.” Moreover, you do not want your employees to be offended by the feedback, because you can’t afford to lose anyone right now. And people are happy, so why rock the boat? Why not take on a little management debt? The first noticeable payments will be due when somebody performs below expectations: CEO: “He was good when we hired him; what happened?” Manager: “He’s not doing the things that we need him to do.” CEO: “Did we clearly tell him that?” Manager: “Maybe not clearly . . .” However, the larger payment will be a silent tax. Companies execute well when everybody is on the same page and everybody is constantly improving. In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally across either dimension. Directions with no corrections will seem fuzzy and obtuse. People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of. The ultimate price you will pay for not giving feedback: systematically crappy company performance.
- Ben Horowitz
Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.
- John C. Maxwell
I think how you start the day many times determines what kind of day you’re going to have.
- Joel Olsteen
By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.
- Mark Zuckerberg
And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: … man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / … Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.
- Dale Carnegie
If you have any more than three priorities, you have no priorities.
- Maggie Fox
In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.
- James C. Collins
Where does the family start? It starts with a young man falling in love with a girl – no superior alternative has yet been found.
- Winston Churchill
If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.
- Dave Ramsey
If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it.
- Winston Churchill
You don’t have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn’t know you possessed.
- Napoleon Hill
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
- Peter Drucker
It’s really a full-time job to manage our lives.
- Sara Blakely
Will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer, instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.
- Peter Thiel
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.
- Napoleon Hill
You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.
- Joel Olsteen
The Buck Stops Here
- Harry Truman
Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.
- Oprah Winfrey
I want the entire smartphone, the entire Internet, on my wrist.
- Steve Wozniak
Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.
- Jeff Bezos
The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
- Dale Carnegie
Be there for your kids. Later, when you need them, they’ll be there for you.
- Zig Ziglar
True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.
- P.T. Barnum
Fear is one of the worst things in business.
- Jack Nadel
If you can’t communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you’re giving up your potential.
- Warren Buffett
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
- Donald Trump
Rap helps me connect emotionally.
- Ben Horowitz
