Notable Quotables

The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.

- Dale Carnegie

The typical project design time for a large company like IBM – and they keep track of this – is a little over four years.

- Bill Gates

You need to have extraordinary wisdom to be the forerunner.

- Ma Huateng

A company has a monopoly on its own brand by definition, so creating a strong brand is a powerful way to claim a monopoly.

- Peter Thiel

One reason to buy a watch (or a book) is because you want to possess it, show it off, give it to your grandchildren. Holding a book is a luxury, one for which you pay a premium.

- Seth Godin

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

- Richard Branson

I meet people overseas that know five languages – that the only language I’m comfortable in is English.

- Bill Gates

There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.

- Warren Buffett

Ego stops you from getting things done and getting people to work with you. That’s why I firmly believe that ego and success are not compatible.

- Harvey Mackay

Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.

- Bill Gates

Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.

- Bill Gates

We can’t wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious.

- Howard Schultz

WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.

- James C. Collins

Keep doing the right. God is building character in you, and you are passing that test. Remember, the greater the struggle, the greater the reward.

- Joel Olsteen

Today, we’ve begun to make the extraordinary historic films of the National Archives available to the world for the first time online. Students and researchers whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 — the historic first landing on the Moon.

- Sergey Brin

I am more of a creative person. I recognize that about myself, which is why I hired my weaknesses early on. I think if most founders don’t relinquish some control, then we hold back the development of our companies.

- Sara Blakely

Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.

- Seth Godin

Plant a seed of greatness in your children. Speak a word of encourgement to someone who needs to hear it. Inspire someone to be a better person. One day you’ll reap a harvest, and your world will become a better place to live.

- George Foreman

It is well documented that I am a lifelong football fan. My love of the British game started with the 1966 World Cup.

- Alisher Usmanov

One incident preserved by General Ismay in an apocryphal and somewhat lively form may be allowed to lighten the narrative. His orderly, a Royal Marine, was shown the sights of Moscow by one of the Intourist guides. “This,” said the Russian, “is the Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel. Here is Churchill Street, formerly Hitler Street. Here is the Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station. Will you have a cigarette, comrade?” The Marine replied, “Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!” This tale, though jocular, illustrates none the less the strange atmosphere of these meetings.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Uber is efficiency with elegance on top. That’s why I buy an iPhone instead of an average cell phone, why I go to a nice restaurant and pay a little bit more. It’s for the experience.

- Travis Kalanick

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

- Jeff Bezos

These two chefs will play an important role in managing the company’s growing appetites.

- Sergey Brin

I’m just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.

- Ray Dalio

Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.

- Peter Drucker

Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.

- Bill Gates

Every morning when I wake up, I make up my mind to solve as many problems before returning home.

- Aliko Dangote

You may have made a lot of wrong choices, but you’ve also made a lot of choices that were right. Focus on your good qualities. Focus on your victories. Get off the treadmill of guilt.

- Joel Olsteen

mejor mamá que usted puede ser. Posiblemente, yo nunca seré el mejor pastor del mundo. Quizá no seré el mejor esposo ni el mejor padre, pero he decidido ser lo mejor que yo puedo ser y no me sentiré mal conmigo. Si otra persona puede hacer lo que hago mejor que yo, que bueno, yo no estoy en una competencia ni me estoy comparando con nadie. A mi manera de pensar, ¡yo soy el mejor! Y sé que estoy haciendo lo mejor que puedo. Eso es lo que nos enseña la Escritura. Dice: Así que, cada uno someta a prueba su propia obra…

- Joel Olsteen

Any area of achievement in your life required you to stick with the basics until you became great…it’s not about learning 4,000 moves but about doing just a handful of moves 4,000 times.

- Chet Holmes

We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.

- Walt Disney

The invaders brought into Britain a principle common to all Germanic tribes, namely, the use of the money power to regulate all the legal relations of men. If there was any equality it was equality within each social grade. If there was liberty it was mainly liberty for the rich. If there were rights they were primarily the rights of property. There was no crime committed which could not be compounded by a money payment.

- Winston Churchill

I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know anything about the speaker so there’s nothing that makes me want to get up early and go to it. I might catch it on TV.

- John Chambers

There are some people that can get things done, and it seems there are others who just can’t. That’s why we move heaven and earth to retain our stars and the main reason we manage out our lowest performers – the bottom 10% at least – each year.

- David Novak

If a product’s future is unlikely to be remarkable – if you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product – it’s time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.

- Seth Godin

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

- Timothy Ferriss

Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.

- Ben Horowitz

Put time limits on each item. Set an agenda for your meeting and your trips to Disney World.

- David Robinson

The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.

- Bill Gates

She came up with what is now the Swoosh for $35 which is a pretty good bargain.

- Phil Knight

The only time to buy these is on a day with no ‘y’ in it.

- Warren Buffett

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

A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose, a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.

- John C. Maxwell

Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.

- Elon Musk

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

Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose…

- Thomas Edison

Follow the GOLDEN RULE. Do unto others as you would have them do onto you.

- David Robinson

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

It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

- John Wooden

Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.

- Peter Thiel

This is like the Six Sigma approach to quality. Six Sigma refers to the quest for continuous improvement, ultimately leading to 3.4 defects per million units. The problem is that once you’re heading down this road, there’s no room left for amazing improvements and remarkable innovations. Either you rolled ten strikes or you didn’t. Organizations that earn dramatic success always do it in markets where asymptotes don’t exist, or where they can be shattered. If you could figure out how to bowl 320, that would be amazing. Until that happens, pick a different sport if you want to be a linchpin.

- Seth Godin

PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE my young padawan.

- Yoda

There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

- Timothy Ferriss

If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you’ve got to let it go.

- Sara Blakely

We should remember the warning of the wise Grail knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: You must choose, but choose wisely, for as the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.Choose the highest-yield material and you can be an idiot and enjoy stunning success. Choose poorly and, as the Grail knight implied, you’re screwed no matter what. You’ll chase your own tail for years.

- Timothy Ferriss

He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.

- Thomas Edison

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.

- Jeff Bezos

We have the best flat land, you can grow anything in the cheapest possible way; turning Nigeria around is not really that difficult. Nigeria is really the best place to invest, it is one of the places to make money; all over the world it (Nigeria) is the best kept secret actually in terms of investment.

- Aliko Dangote

My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’

- Richard Branson

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

- Andrew Carnegie

I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.

- Howard Schultz

Eventually we’ll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system.

- Bill Gates

I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.

- Thomas Edison

Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don’t have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.

- Tony Robbins

I think there’s a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they’re not sufficient because markets don’t look after social needs.

- George Soros

Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.

- Sam Walton

Some people do really find fault like there’s a reward for it.

- Zig Ziglar

I didn’t follow up on the exchanges we had on Time Warner Cable (TWC) that were mentioned in the media because we were not ready.

- Patrick Drahi

Just saying you are better than good won’t make it so. But, when you understand what it takes to live the better than good life, and you apply yourself, your life will truly be better than good.

- Zig Ziglar

Japanese tend to put sales and market share first. They make many products with the aim of raising sales. But then profits decline, and companies find themselves falling into debt… I changed the mindset at Canon by getting people to realize that profits come first.

- Fujio Mitarai

If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.

- Richard Branson

So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.

- Reed Hastings

1. Make incremental advances Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward.2. Stay lean and flexible All companies must be “lean,” which is code for “unplanned.” You should not know what your business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out, “iterate,” and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation.3. Improve on the competition Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.4. Focus on product, not sales If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.

- Peter Thiel

Yes, it’s absolutely true that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly – until you can learn to do it well.

- Zig Ziglar

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

- Warren Buffett

It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

- Bill Gates

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you.

- Winston Churchill

All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.

- Peter Thiel

Maintain a pragmatic approach, keep up with the multitude of trials and strive to remain its level of attainment in order for achieving sound performance and scaling new heights.

- Cheng Yu-tung

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

- Winston Churchill

I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, ‘You guys are doing too much stuff.’ He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.

- Larry Page

An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes—the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions. People are quite flexible, in that they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. An employee of IBM, for example, can quite readily change the way he or she works, in order to work successfully in a small start-up company. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Similarly, values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high-margin products, cannot simultaneously accord priority to low-margin products. The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context.

- Clayton M. Christensen

We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone.

- Richard Branson

I say, don’t try to fight your own battles because God will do it.

- Joel Olsteen

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