Notable Quotables

In the Networked Age, we’re all like the little kid from The Sixth Sense. If you’re not seeing networks when you enter a room, you might want to check your pulse.

- Reid Hoffman

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

- David Novak

Great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future.

- Peter Thiel

I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, ‘That’s the company that honoured me, even though I don’t have an education’. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience.

- Howard Schultz

It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.

- Timothy Ferriss

Middle-income countries are the biggest users of GMOs. Places like Brazil.”

- Bill Gates

Don’t kill competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you – the entrepreneur – on your toes.

- Aliko Dangote

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligent and honest purpose as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

- Thomas Edison

The response to the Starbucks brand has been phenomenal in our international markets.

- Howard Schultz

Performance of the local property leasing market showed gradual improvement, particularly with demand rising substantially for the leasing of grade A as well as grad B office properties, and part of these properties registered an increase of over 50% as compared to the level as at the end of last year.

- Lee Shau Kee

A person convinced against their will Is of the same opinion still.

- Dale Carnegie

Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.

- John Naisbitt

From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.

- Elon Musk

Who you associate with makes a difference in how far you go in life.

- Joel Olsteen

The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.

- Seth Godin

As God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days.Why should you and I?

- Dr. Spencer Johnson

Every one of my positions cuts – out half the country. I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-gay rights, I’m pro-immigration, I’m against guns, I believe in Darwin.

- Michael Bloomberg

I love comedy. That’s what got me into the arts. I don’t even know how to categorize myself anymore.

- Steve Martin

[On the Nike logo] I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.

- Phil Knight

I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.

- Bill Gates

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

- Zig Ziglar

A girl child who is even a little bit educated is more conscious of family planning, health care and, in turn, her children’s own education.

- Azim Premji

Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.

- Herb Kelleher

I am someone who tweets about what I have for breakfast, what I have for lunch, what I have for dinner, and for 99.99999 percent of the world, it’s useless. It’s meaningless. But for my mother, she loves it.

- Jack Dorsey

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.

- Richard Branson

Although my spelling is still sometimes poor, I have managed to overcome the worst of my difficulties through training myself to concentrate.

- Richard Branson

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

- Bill Gates

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

- Richard Branson

We survive the market volatility and political changes. We cater for the actual need of the people and keep pace with the country.

- Cheng Yu-tung

You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.

- Joel Olsteen

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

- Peter Drucker

The biggest part of my job now is to quickly develop successors, and around the world I am working to develop new business leaders in the company.

- Tadashi Yanai

Hope is the engine of your attitude, and your attitude determines your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

- Warren Buffett

My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.

- Mark Zuckerberg

God, You said You would restore health unto me and heal me of my wounds. You said I would live and not die. You said what is impossible with men is possible with God. When you pray.

- Joel Olsteen

As long as people are clear on what they need to do and what’s going on, you’re very likely to succeed. When nobody is clear, then you’re guaranteed to fail.

- Ben Horowitz

The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

- Dale Carnegie

Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.

- Bill Gates

Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.

- Peter Drucker

Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.

- Timothy Ferriss

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship.

- Seth Godin

Never Cease to Proclaim in Fearless Tones the Great Principles of Freedom

- Winston Churchill

Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.

- Howard Schultz

But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.

- Dale Carnegie

The greatest decision of all time, as far as any American citizen is concerned was reached in Philadelphia, July 4th 1776, when 56 men signed their names to a document, which they well knew would bring freedom to all Americans, or leave every one of the fifty-six hanging from the gallows. On July 4th 1776 Thomas Jefferson stood before the Assembly and fearlessly read the most momentus Decision ever placed upon paper.

- Napoleon Hill

I own a home in Kyoto, Japan actually on the temple on grounds in Nanzenji that is going to become a Japanese art museum.

- Larry Ellison

The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.

- James Simons

Let your motto then always be ‘Excelsior’, for by living up to it there is no such word as fail.

- P.T. Barnum

The guerrilla is obsessed with benefits. Whenever offering a product or service, she focuses on how it will benefit the consumer and builds everything—the product, the delivery, the marketing—around that benefit.

- Jay Conrad Levinson

Anger is a waste of energy. Steam which is used to blow off a safety valve would be better used to drive an engine.

- Winston Churchill

Allowing your kids to watch TV doesn’t have to mean they have no choice but to see commercials for junk food and alcohol.

- Charles Ergen

the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants.

- Dale Carnegie

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.

- Jack Welch

It’s nice to be important, but more important to be nice. You don’t know who your top customers will be five years from now or where you will be in 10 years. You may have a fancy title, but you will always need help from the people around you.

- Harvey Mackay

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.

- Bill Gates

Arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.

- Dale Carnegie

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

- Joel Olsteen

To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can’t stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do ‘anything.’ If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it.

- Zig Ziglar

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

- Bill Gates

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

- Jim Rohn

The strange history of the Baby Boom produced a generation of indefinite optimists so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it. Whether you were born in 1945 or 1950 or 1955, things got better every year for the first 18 years of your life, and it had nothing to do with you.

- Peter Thiel

If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: 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

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

- Bob Dylan

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.

- Jack Ma

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

I never hid my thoughts or feelings. During a business meeting I could get so emotionally charged and involved that I’d stammer out what others might consider to be outrageous things like, My six year old could do better than that! Or Don’t Walter Cronkite me!

- Solutions

When you own your choices, you own their consequences.

- Jack Welch

In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone.

- Peter Thiel

Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money, non-monopolists can’t.

- Peter Thiel

Role play with yourself to answer questions to a cynic, optimist, and be able play devil’s advocate.

- Maurice Kanbar

I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation…I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire.

- Oprah Winfrey

You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we’ve come up with doing that is through companies.

- Larry Page

Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

- Napoleon Hill

Management always bears in mind to ‘lend a hand’ to Hong Kong and Mainland China while we are working hard for shareholders’ benefits.

- Cheng Yu-tung

We believed we could build a better search. We had a simple idea that not all pages are created equal. Some are more important.

- Sergey Brin

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I think it is a sad day for the company and we are going to miss him. But, typically of him, he has planned his own succession immaculately. We will have a dinner and a nice party for him.

- Simon Wolfson

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

- Winston Churchill

Google’s done a super good job on search. Apple’s done a great job on the iPod.

- Bill Gates

I don’t think we’re going to run out of important things to do, compared with the resources that we have. There are many, many problems in the world that need solving.

- Larry Page

By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.

- Bill Gates

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

I consider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment…..the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy. A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only “postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

- Peter Drucker

Fibre optic is becoming like electricity. If you look at how electricity spread around the globe 100 years ago, that’s what’s happening now.

- Reed Hastings

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