[On the Nike logo] I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.
- Phil Knight
Notable Quotables
Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
- Walt Disney
The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
Perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular.
- Peter Thiel
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
I am optimistic that we can achieve a better future. It’s not true that the Philippines is a hopeless case.
- Henry Sy
Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.
- Bill Gates
The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.
- Winston Churchill
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
Once you go from 10 people to 100, you already don’t know who everyone is. So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale.
- Sergey Brin
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
Happiness does not depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.
- Dale Carnegie
When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.
- George Soros
Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.
- Zig Ziglar
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
- Winston Churchill
You don’t need a big close, as many sales reps believe. You risk losing your customer when you save all the good stuff for the end. Keep the customer actively involved throughout your presentation, and watch your results improve.
- Harvey Mackay
The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window.
- Herb Kelleher
I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.
- Sara Blakely
The time will never be just right, you must act now.
- Napoleon Hill
Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
- Reid Hoffman
So you need two professions: the one you have studied all this time, and your other profession the profession of persuasion that allows you to make good use of all those years of education, practice and dues-paying.
- Jerry Vass
Faith is easy. I think people complicate it.
- Joel Olsteen
Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
With the right pitch, you’ll get no argument. This is where the salesmanship comes in…It requires of you a substantial degree of self-confidence to pull it off, but your belief in your own project will help you muster that.
- Michael Levine
Here is the salient fact which distinguishes the English Revolution from all others: that those who wielded irresistible physical force were throughout convinced that it could give them no security. Nothing is more characteristic of the English people than their instinctive reverence even in rebellion for law and tradition. Deep in the nature of the men who had broken the King’s power was the conviction that law in his name was the sole foundation on which they could build.
- Winston Churchill
Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.
- Seth Godin
All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.
- Peter Thiel
Anatomy of a MovementSenator Bill Bradley defines a movement as having three elements: (1) A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we’re trying to build. (2) A connection between and among the leader and the tribe. (3) Something to do – the fewer limits the better. Too often organizations fail to do anything but the third.
- Seth Godin
In the middle of that process four power plants just tripped off all at once in unison.
- Ed Clark
I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.
- Andrew Carnegie
I am excited for the opportunity to pursue new interests, including my work with a few public company boards, several universities in the U.S. and the UK and ophthalmic charities whose goals are to improve eye health in emerging markets.
- David Pyott
I shall pass this way but once. Therefore any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show-let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
- Dale Carnegie
Don’t let any opportunity lead you away from serving God. That’s a price that’s too high to pay.
- George Foreman
Education comes from within, you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
- Napoleon Hill
There’s no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.
- Bill Gates
As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there’s always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
From my experience, there are so many regulations for investing in the United States that they become an impediment, a barrier to investing.
- Michael Otto
When I started working on Southwest Airlines, I kid you not, only people flying on business and very wealthy people ever flew.
- Herb Kelleher
Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path.
- Seth Godin
Emerson said: Every man I meet is my superior in some way, In that, I learn of him.
- Dale Carnegie
Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s here in the United States.
- Sara Blakely
I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons
- Russell Simmons
I really don’t think in the past. I sit down with many friends at dinner, and they like to talk about the good old days. I’m respectful of the good old days, but I find myself spending very little time reminiscing. I’m really looking forward.
- Donald Bren
We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.
- Winston Churchill
Capitalism works.
- Michael Bloomberg
Today, we exaggerate the differences between left-liberal egalitarianism and libertarian individualism because almost everyone shares their common indefinite attitude.
- Peter Thiel
Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.
- Bill Gates
Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you.
- Tony Hsieh
When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.
- Bill Gates
One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That’s why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.
- Ben Horowitz
Digital technology has several features that can make it much easier for teachers to pay special attention to all their students.
- Bill Gates
If you wake up deciding what you want to give versus what you’re going to get, you become a more successful person. In other words, if you want to make money, you have to help someone else make money.
- Russell Simmons
I think the currency of leadership is transparency. You’ve got to be truthful. I don’t think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where you’ve got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who you are, and not be afraid of it.
- Howard Schultz
In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.
- Bill Gates
My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.
- Joel Olsteen
Disruption is like an earthquake. Disruption has no purpose. It has not values. It has no organizing principle. It has no direction and it has no leadership… This is not what we want to bring into the world. What we want to bring into the world is revolution.
- Jack Dorsey
You are here to enrich.
- Woodrow Wilson
What I know for sure is that if you want success, you can’t make success your goal. The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant, and the success will naturally follow.”
- Oprah Winfrey
Property prices depend mainly on the supply and demand of a particular point in time, in much the same way as the price for a commodity is fixed.
- Lee Shau Kee
A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.
- George Soros
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.
- Winston Churchill
Computers already have enough power to outperform people in activities we used to think of as distinctively human. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Jeopardy!’s best-ever contestant, Ken Jennings, succumbed to IBM’s Watson in 2011. And Google’s self-driving cars are already on California roads today. Dale Earnhardt Jr. needn’t feel threatened by them, but the Guardian worries (on behalf of the millions of chauffeurs and cabbies in the world) that self-driving cars “could drive the next wave of unemployment.
- Peter Thiel
Life is too short for long-term grudges.
- Elon Musk
The Franchise Prototype is also the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.
- Michael Gerber
I’ve always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.
- Hakeem Olajuwon
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
- Timothy Ferriss
Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.
- Warren Buffett
Bill Milliken is a big hero of mine.
- Anne Cox Chambers
I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we feel, but no one follows me.
- Tadashi Yanai
Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.
- Tim Westergren
Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
- John F. Kennedy
We don’t have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.
- Larry Page
On this basis, we intend to increase the dividend for the third time in a row. We are proposing a distribution of €3.25 per share, corresponding to a dividend payout ratio of 27.4 percent, which is again up slightly on the previous year’s level.
- Elmar Degenhart
I’m not gonna give up, shut up, or let up… as a matter of fact, I’m just getting warmed up.
- Zig Ziglar
Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.
- Dale Carnegie
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
Remember—boredom is the enemy, not some abstract failure.
- Timothy Ferriss
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.
- Warren Buffett
Every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.
- Peter Thiel
I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players…I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other. Because they’ve never had a chance to do that before. And they don’t want to work with B and C players and so it becomes self-policing and they only want to hire more A players. And so you build up these pockets of A players, and it propagates.
- Steve Jobs
You must go through the process before you get the product.
- Paul Pressey
At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.
- George Paz
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
As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.
- Winston Churchill
There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
- Peter Thiel
Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
- Andrew Carnegie
This is not a book for the wild-haired crazies your company keeps in a corner. It is a book for you, your boss, and your employees, because the best future available to us is a future where you contriubute your true self and your best work. Are you up for that?
- Seth Godin
Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing, cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover it must be fed, not only with flesh but with oil.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.
- Elon Musk
I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don’t laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that’s not real laughter.
- Steve Martin
Almost everything is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
I encourage active skepticism – when people are being skeptical because they’re trying to identify the best course of action. They’re trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.
- Timothy Ferriss
Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything I’ve learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX.
- Peter Thiel
Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.
- Reed Hastings
Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.
- Ray Dalio
Obama has no solutions. Obama has failed the country and its great citizens, and they don’t like it when somebody such as myself speaks the truth about this – it hurts too much.
- Donald Trump
Of this I am quite sure. If we open up a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
- Winston Churchill
A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation, a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity, but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.
- Winston Churchill
