Notable Quotables

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

- Bill Gates

People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be.

- Harvey Mackay

I’m going to retain a lot of Microsoft’s stock.

- Bill Gates

The world is facing a new networked, digital lifestyle, and we will ensure that Canon remains ahead of the game.

- Fujio Mitarai

There’s this myth that has been exacerbated by others that Starbucks means a $4 cup of coffee, which is not true.

- Howard Schultz

Never allow anyone to get between you and your customers and suppliers.

- Jack Welch

We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference.

- Steve Ballmer

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

we can not prepare for defeat and expect to live a life in Victory.

- Joel Olsteen

If you have enough push, you don’t have to worry about the pull.

- Zig Ziglar

After putting economics aside, I found that there were two primary reasons why people quit: They hated their manager; generally the employees were appalled by the lack of guidance, career development, and feedback they were receiving. They weren’t learning anything: The company wasn’t investing resources in helping employees develop new skills.

- Ben Horowitz

Residential properties that were sold by the Group summed up to around 5,800 units and amounted to approximately HK$12.8 billion.

- Lee Shau Kee

We have an ideal location for a couple of organic wineries on the island. But the reintroduction of commercial agriculture to Lanai is 100% dependent upon increasing the available water on the island. So we’re going to use solar energy to convert seawater to fresh water.

- Larry Ellison

You’ve got to listen to what God’s telling you and not to what other people may tell you. People will try to talk you out of the dream in your heart.

- Joel Olsteen

The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.

- Ray Dalio

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

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

- Jerry Seinfeld

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

If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.

- Zig Ziglar

The main thing that’s missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics.

- Bill Gates

If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.

- John C. Maxwell

You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.

- Seth Godin

CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.

- Jack Welch

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

- David Ogilvy

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, ‘Goodbye, Daddy!’ and I frowned, and said in reply, ‘Hold your shoulders back!’ Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. ‘What is it you want?’ I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed! It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: ‘He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!’ I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much. Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. ‘To know all is to forgive all.

- Dale Carnegie

The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.

- Jack Welch

And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thoughts and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged in. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line; to lead in it. Adopt every improvement, have the best machinery and know the most about it.

- Andrew Carnegie

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

- Winston Churchill

Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can’t – you can’t put a wall up around here. We tried that in the ’30s. It didn’t work.

- Jack Welch

You walk into a retail store, whatever it is, and if there’s a sense of entertainment and excitement and electricity, you wanna be there.

- Howard Schultz

You’re got to worry about what’s coming up to stay ahead of the curve…

- Phil Knight

I think Twitter is the future of communications and Square will be the payment network.

- Jack Dorsey

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

- Albert Einstein

The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader.

- Albert Einstein

In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.

- Peter Thiel

I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it’s something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn’t compute with our existing educational system.

- Peter Thiel

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

- Peter Drucker

Smith never wavered. Twenty-five years later, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper outright and beat Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories.12 In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.

- James C. Collins

1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.

- 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

It’s different when you’re trying to turn something around, especially something that you built, at a time when so many constituents – the media, Wall Street, competitors, ex-employees – are all saying that Starbucks’s best days are behind it, and that Schultz is never going to be able to bring it back.

- Howard Schultz

You can build a successful career, regardless of your field of endeavor, by the dozens of little things you do on and off the job.

- Zig Ziglar

Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.

- Peter Thiel

Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand.

- Ben Horowitz

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

- Joel Olsteen

My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.

- Jack Ma

There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.

- Phil Knight

If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.

- Elon Musk

No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.

- Napoleon Hill

I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee.

- Howard Schultz

When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.

- Napoleon Hill

It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.

- Winston Churchill

PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs.

- P.T. Barnum

Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

- Bill Gates

Your business has to work when it’s small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.

- Seth Godin

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

But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.

- Timothy Ferriss

You can literally force yourself to be courteous, happy and enthusiastic with every person you meet. After you have forced yourself to be so for a short period of time… the habit takes over.

- Zig Ziglar

I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.

- Larry Ellison

So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.

- Steve Ballmer

We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.

- Bill Gates

People have been indoctrinated so completely by their jobs that they don’t want to know how something works, they’re willing to accept that perhaps the laws of nature don’t work as they expect, and by the way, can I have the remote?

- Seth Godin

Over three hundred years ago Galileo said: You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.

- Dale Carnegie

One of the cornerstones of what I believe will be the future is wave after wave of applications.

- John Chambers

Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions. It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

- Dale Carnegie

Daca ceea ce doriti sa faceti este corect si credeti in el, porniti spre implinire! Puneti visele inainte, si nu conteaza ce spune gura lumii daca va confruntati cu infrangerea temporara, caci poate ca lumea nu stie ca orice esec aduce cu el germenele unui eventual succes.

- Dale Carnegie

I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.

- Oprah Winfrey

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

- Henry Ford

The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.

- Bill Gates

You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.

- Joel Olsteen

When advice is freely given, the receiver is free to use it as he or she sees fit.

- Harvey Mackay

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

- John C. Maxwell

If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved. The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.

- Ben Horowitz

I learned about why startups should train their people when I worked at Netscape. People at McDonald’s get trained for their positions, but people with far more complicated jobs don’t. It makes no sense.

- Ben Horowitz

Americans believe cotton is best, but we’ve invented new fabrics that will change your lifestyle.

- Tadashi Yanai

Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you’re not called to do it, you’re dividing the audience you’re trying to reach.

- Joel Olsteen

You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.

- Elon Musk

When we put $4 billion into the U.S. economy, they were OK with this. When we preserved jobs in Dearborn, or preserved jobs in Columbus, or preserved jobs in Pennsylvania, everyone was happy.

- Alexei Mordashov

You must have a vision and not just a vision but you must have a plan that would make you fulfil that vision.

- Aliko Dangote

Yesterday ended last night. Today is a brand new day and it’s yours.

- Zig Ziglar

We don’t want disruption where we just move things around from point a to point b. We want a direction, we want a purpose.

- Jack Dorsey

Having a personality of caring about people is important. You cant be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.

- Richard Branson

greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.

- James C. Collins

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