Notable Quotables

I’d learned enough about circuitry in high school electronics to know how to drive a TV and get it to draw – shapes of characters and things.

- Steve Wozniak

I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.

- Oprah Winfrey

Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic. The best way to approach a potential break is simple: Confide in them honestly but tactfully and explain your concerns. If they bite back, your conclusions have been confirmed. Drop them like any other bad habit. If they promise to change, first spend at least two weeks apart to develop other positive influences in your life and diminish psychological dependency. The next trial period should have a set duration and consist of pass-or-fail criteria. If this approach is too confrontational for you, just politely refuse to interact with them. Be in the middle of something when the call comes, and have a prior commitment when the invitation to hang out comes. Once you see the benefits of decreased time with these people, it will be easier to stop communication altogether.

- Timothy Ferriss

A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Organizations that achieve both market and operating focus are nearly unbeatable Customers don’t buy products or services. They buy results. They were designed to break what Schlesinger and his colleagues called the cycle of failure practiced by many of Au Bon Pain’s competitors who paid their employees and managers low wages, offered them little training and other support, and suffered high turnover of employees and limited customer loyalty as a result.

- James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser and Leonard

Stones of judgment, discouragement or doubt may be thrown at you. You can’t stop them, but you can make the choice to keep your walls up and not let them affect you.

- Joel Olsteen

The Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is.

- Michael Gerber

If you want to build a dynasty, you need to always be focused on getting better and beating last year’s performance in everything you do. You want to eliminate peaks and valleys, what we call boom, splat, and go for a good steady incline.

- David Novak

We all need a check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitude.

- Zig Ziglar

The thing about hip-hop is that it’s from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.

- Russell Simmons

No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.

- Andrew Carnegie

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

- Elon Musk

I always try to acknowledge what someone’s done well before talking about what could be done better. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands

- David Novak

Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up.

- Sam Walton

I think there’s plenty of room for blogs that exist to pay the blogger, or blogs that exist to turn a profit. That’s just not the kind of blog I’m writing, and I’m not the kind of blogger that could do that.

- Seth Godin

I loved the work – and that’s an important point: To succeed in retail, you have to love it. The process of bringing items in, displaying them attractively, and seeing them miraculously change into actual cash in the drawer has to gt your blood racing. You can triple the sale of an item just by how and where you display it.

- David Green

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

- Sergey Brin

Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.

- Jack Welch

Being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.

- Peter Thiel

When evaluating the results, we should not overlook the fact that there was, in some cases, very weak growth in Europe, Russia, and South America. There were also significant exchange rate fluctuations. In addition, the mild winter at the end of 2014 had a negative impact on the winter tire business in Europe. The driving force behind the sales development once again came from China and North America. In light of this, it is remarkable that profit after taxes of just under €2.4 billion or €11.88 per share could be achieved.

- Elmar Degenhart

America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

- Elon Musk

We’re working toward the ability for all Cisco devices to work together and communicate with each other to stop attacks. The idea is that one device can warn another device of a threat.

- John Chambers

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

- Warren Buffett

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

- John C. Maxwell

Problems, as a rule, solve themselves or disappear if you remove yourself as an information bottleneck and empower others.

- Timothy Ferriss

When your head of sales interviews for her next job, she won’t want to say that despite the fact that she ran a global sales force with hundreds of employees, her title was “Dude.”

- Ben Horowitz

If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you—like a fever.

- Sam Walton

Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.

- Seth Godin

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.

- Peter Drucker

We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.

- Joel Olsteen

Courage is on display every day, and only the courageous wring the most out of life.

- Zig Ziglar

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

- Bishop Desmond TuTu

I think you have a danger of regulating, putting regulations in place which will mean there will be no press in 10 years to regulate.

- Rupert Murdoch

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

- Jerry Seinfeld

You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.

- John C. Maxwell

Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.

- Dale Carnegie

As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.

- Elon Musk

If you think about computing, there isn’t just one way to compute, just like there’s not just one way to move around. You can have shoes, you can have a car, you can have a bicycle, submarine, rocket, plane, train, glider, whatever. Because you have one doesn’t mean you get rid of another one… But PCs continue to be important.

- Michael Dell

The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.

- Andrew Carnegie

Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it.

- Bill Gates

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

- Winston Churchill

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

- Joel Olsteen

The first complaint we hear from everyone is: ‘Why would I want to join this stupid useless thing and know what my brother’s eating for lunch?’ But that really misses the point because Twitter is fundamentally recipient-controlled – you choose to listen and you choose to leave. But you also choose what to put down and what to share.

- Jack Dorsey

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

- David Robinson

But use the opposite technique – be liberal with your encouragement, make the thing seem easy to do, let the other person know that you have faith in his ability to do it, that he has an undeveloped flair for it – and he will practise until the dawn comes in the window in order to excel.

- Dale Carnegie

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

- Bill Gates

Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines, the one who actually talk to the customer, are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble within it, you must listen to what your associates are telling you.

- Sam Walton

Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.

- Peter Thiel

When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right. It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

- Steve Jobs

I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.

- Thomas Edison

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

- Bill Gates

God created you to leave your mark on this generation. You have gifts and talents that you have not tapped into. There are new levels of your destiny still in front of you. But break out starts in your thinking. As you put these keys into action, making room for increase, expecting shifts of God’s favor, praying bold prayers, and keeping the right perspective, then God will release floods of His goodness that will thrust you beyond barriers of the past into the extraordinary life you were designed to live.

- Joel Olsteen

It is not the rich man’s son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.

- Andrew Carnegie

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

- Dale Carnegie

Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.

- Peter Drucker

When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal. And it has nothing to do with money. I mean, you buy clothes with money, and cars. But I really wanted to work with people I enjoyed working with, who I admired and liked.

- Larry Ellison

There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in.

- Seth Godin

A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.

- Peter Thiel

I want to sit with 80- and 90-year-old people more than anyone. They have played this game before. Not one of them has told me, ‘I wish I had more money.’

- Gary Vaynerchuk

You have to keep your goal in mind and never lose sight of it. I envisioned myself winning the heavyweight title for ten years before I actually captured it. If you’re not driven to do your best, you’ll never reach the level of excellence in your life.

- George Foreman

Delay taking a salary until your business is generating cash flow from sales…by delaying taking a salary, you can reinvest sales to help grow your business.

- Robert Kiyosaki

If you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

- James C. Collins

Giving feels good, but it’s also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot ofcompanies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we’re doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won’t mention an advertisement; they’ll say a friend told them our story.

- Blake Mycoskie

I know I could be the host of ‘SportsCenter’ in two years if I changed my show today to sports.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Beverages have to be created. And they’re created by looking at what trend is in, say, the fashion industry – what color’s hot right now.

- Howard Schultz

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.

- Jack Welch

Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done.

- Ben Horowitz

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

- Bill Gates

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

- Bill Cosby

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 believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.

- Joel Olsteen

The main cause of depression is traceable directly to the world-wide habit of trying to REAP without sowing.

- Napoleon Hill

People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amounts of virtual cash, 25-30 cents, for each hour of good behaviour. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun – whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise – come out of their own individual accounts. No balance, no goodies. This often requires more self-control on the part of the parents than the children.

- Timothy Ferriss

We’re taking these steps because of the continuing slowdown in the U.S. economy and initial signs of a slowdown expanding to other parts of the world.

- John Chambers

Ahhh! Yoda’s little friend you seek!

- Yoda

$1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.

- Timothy Ferriss

All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

- Peter Thiel

I care about our employees more than anybody in my company. I care about my kids, too, but that doesn’t mean I give them everything that they want.

- Charles Ergen

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

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

- Bill Gates

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

- Seth Godin

Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.

- Henry Ford

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

- Haruki Murakami

With an export-driven economy, Hong Kong is unavoidably affected by any hiccup in the outside world.

- Cheng Yu-tung

It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.

- Seth Godin

I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.

- Ray Dalio

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