Notable Quotables

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If Google Books is successful, others will follow.

- Sergey Brin

Our brand at Netflix is really focused on movies and TV shows.

- Reed Hastings

I support Democrats and Republicans. And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.

- Stephen Wynn

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

- Seneca

I think if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve got to dream big and then dream bigger.

- Howard Schultz

It may look like the difficulty is going to defeat you. But you need to keep telling yourself, This sickness can’t take my life.” This cancer can’t defeat me.” No bad break, no disappointment, no accident can shorten one second of my divine destiny.

- Joel Olsteen

What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.”

- James C. Collins

I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.

- Donald Bren

I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

- Sara Blakely

most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings.

- Timothy Ferriss

Uber is “way more” evil than Google, the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley.

- Peter Thiel

But the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole.

- Sergey Brin

Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward….

- Thomas Edison

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

- Bill Gates

Well, you know, News Corp is the only real media global – that has a global presence that’s involved in TV production, in movies, in publishing, in newspapers, digital media, et cetera. So for a company like that to function, clearly it does not depend only on Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities.

- Peter Thiel

[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.

- Jack Dorsey

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

- Winston Churchill

I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

- Timothy Ferriss

What you receive is directly connected to what you believe.

- Joel Olsteen

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

- Dr. Spencer Johnson

The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.

- Michael Bloomberg

Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.”

- Sam Walton

Your business plan is fluid, not concrete. Once you a build plan, the market place validates what works and what does not. Be flexible and evolve your business strategy.

- David Nilssen

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

- Winston Churchill

Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.

- Bill Gates

Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that’s what a number of us are trying to do.

- Richard Branson

I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the site, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the site.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.

- Seth Godin

I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted ‘Mary had a little lamb’, etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.

- Thomas Edison

There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain – do something to make more money yourself.

- Gina Rinehart

I think when I was young, let’s call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That’s really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.

- Steve Martin

One has to live with the fact that some corporate decisions are going to be wrong. As long as most of the decisions are right.

- Michael Otto

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

- Richard Branson

We are in control of the one asset that we all give the most f#%ks about, and that is time.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Big companies have always needed and cooperated in areas where it made sense.

- Larry Page

What destroys more self-confidence than any other educational thing in America is being assigned to some remedial math when you get into some college, and then it’s not taught very well and you end up with this sense of, ‘Hey, I can’t really figure those things out.’

- Bill Gates

No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

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

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.

- Elon Musk

I am looking to buy companies that are run by painters. Most great artists have a hard time letting go of their paintings. That’s because the joy is not in the finished work, the joys is in the painting. They are constantly adding a dab of color here, a little more texture there. I’m looking for the boss who is always tweaking his company, constantly trying to make it better. No matter how successful he may have already been, what he still sees is a master-piece-in-progress.

- Warren Buffett

When completed the new facility will have the capacity to accommodate approximately 3,000 staff.

- John Chambers

To me, job titles don’t matter. Everyone is in sales. It’s the only way we stay in business.

- Harvey Mackay

If it’s not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that’s when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you.

- Joel Olsteen

From an operational perspective, this quarter was a home run.

- John Chambers

The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.

- Andrew Carnegie

Stopped they must be; on this all depends. Only a fully-trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his Emperor.

- Yoda

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

- Richard Branson

Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.

- Peter Thiel

No matter what’s happening, choose to be happy. Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Find something positive in your life. Thank God for the small things.

- Joel Olsteen

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

My personal opinion is that I’m in the media too much. I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman. I would like to be without any extra visibility.

- Viktor Vekselberg

I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I’m afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States.

- Stephen Wynn

The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems.

- Napoleon Hill

If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.

- Pierre Omidyar

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

- Viktor E. Frankl

Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.

- Zig Ziglar

You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.

- Zig Ziglar

I know Bo Xilai well. But our relationship was based on our work, we didn’t have a personal relationship.

- Wang Jianlin

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.

- Sara Blakely

They have destroyed your weapons,but these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.

- Winston Churchill

When I was in college, I really liked poetry. I don’t read much anymore.

- Steve Martin

He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.

- Andrew Carnegie

Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.

- Peter Thiel

What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself.

- Steve Wozniak

As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.

- Zig Ziglar

An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn’t have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

- Jack Welch

Take one cup of love, two cups of loyalty, three cups of forgiveness, four quarts of faith and one barrel of laughter. Take love and loyalty and mix them thoroughly with faith; blend with tenderness, kindness and understanding. Add friendship and hope. Sprinkle abundantly with laughter. Bake it with sunshine. Wrap it regularly with lots of hugs. Serve generous helpings daily.

- Zig Ziglar

Some of the biggest failures I’ve ever met, are people that have never failed.

- Robert Kiyosaki

I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.

- Steve Wozniak

California, in a sense, is almost Starbucks’ largest country, with almost 3,000 stores

- Howard Schultz

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

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

- Bill Gates

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

- Thomas Edison

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

- Zig Ziglar

It’s pretty chilly by southern California standards.

- Ed Clark

In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.

- Winston Churchill

My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.

- Peter Drucker

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

- Bill Gates

What did I do that was right—and in what way could I have improved my performance? What lessons can I learn from that experience?

- Dale Carnegie

Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society – and especially in the economy – as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is “creative destruction.

- Peter Drucker

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

- Richard Branson

You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people.

- Zig Ziglar

To be a champion, you have to learn to handle stress and pressure. But if you’ve prepared mentally and physically, you don’t have to worry.

- Harvey Mackay

I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.

- Walt Disney

When someone expresses some feeling, attitude or belief, our tendency is almost immediately to feel that’s right,” or that’s stupid,” that’s abnormal,” that’s unreasonable,” that’s incorrect,” that’s not nice.” Very rarely do we permit ourselves to understand precisely what the meaning of the statement is to the other person.

- Dale Carnegie

The maxim, “Nothing prevails but perfection,” may be spelled PARALYSIS.

- Winston Churchill

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