Notable Quotables

Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.

- Nelson Mandela

Napoleon was criticized for giving toys” to war-hardened veterans, and Napoleon replied, Men are ruled by toys.

- Dale Carnegie

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

Southwest consistently turns a profit because they have an employee ownership program that gives their employees a sense of ownership that is very real. When the company does well financially, the employees do well financially. When the company struggles, the employees struggle.

- Clay Clark

Passion isn’t project-specific. It’s people-specific.

- Seth Godin

Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

- Ben Horowitz

I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

- Steve Jobs

If your business is not a brand, it is just a commodity.

- Donald Trump

They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.

- Dale Carnegie

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

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.

- Henry Ford

And in urology, it could be drugs or devices for bladder and prostate problems.

- David Pyott

I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream – and by tuning into one another’s secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.

- Oprah Winfrey

Risk more than others think is safe. Dream more than others think is practical.

- Howard Schultz

More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.

- Peter Thiel

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

- Elon Musk

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

My commitment is to Los Angeles, so whatever helps this continue to be a great city, that’s what I would be focused to do, and the Dodgers are certainly iconic to Los Angeles.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.

- Michael Bloomberg

Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.

- Herb Kelleher

No one knows more about the way you think than you do.

- Seth Godin

Woody’s Allen’s great line about relationships. A relationship is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies. And that’s true about your company.

- Larry Ellison

Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.

- Tadashi Yanai

There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track… We and the consumer were one and the same.

- Phil Knight

If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.

- Dale Carnegie

If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth

- Ray Kroc

Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] … by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks … to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.

- Winston Churchill

Satan knows, if you are against YOURSELF you will never fulfill your destiny. :(

- Joel Olsteen

The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met are all good communicators. It’s perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.

- Timothy Ferriss

People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important.

- Timothy Ferriss

I believe in Judaism, I was raised a Jew, I’m happy to be one – or proud to be one.

- Michael Bloomberg

There are several styles of pitching, but all have two principles in common: they appeal personally to the individual being contacted, even if he or she is a stranger and they rely on logic to make a case.

- Michael Levine

But no parties could live under such labels as Petitioners and Abhorrers. Instead of naming themselves they named each other. The term “Whig” had described a sour, bigoted, canting, money-grubbing Scots Presbyterian. Irish Papist bandits ravaging estates and manor-houses had been called “Tories”.

- Winston Churchill

Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

- Warren Buffett

I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.

- Vagit Alekperov

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

- Bill Gates

We have two turbines in our company: One is engineering, and the other is operations. And so our business people are on equal footing with our engineering and technology culture. Cars are moving because of what we do, so there’s an imperative to go beyond just the technology.

- Travis Kalanick

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

- Joel Olsteen

60% of the bonus was based on financials and 40% on Six Sigma (quality) results.

- Jack Welch

I cut the feet off of a pair of panty hose and it allowed me to wear a pair of great strappy sandals. I didn’t see lines but the hose rolled up at my feet – and that’s how Spanx born.

- Sara Blakely

If you don’t have peace, it isn’t because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.

- John C. Maxwell

It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

- Winston Churchill

I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of – of American capitalism.

- Warren Buffett

Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.

- Dale Carnegie

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

- Peter Drucker

Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.

- Tony Hsieh

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.

- Robert Kiyosaki

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.

- Bill Gates

Globally, business and government leaders are beginning to dramatically transform their traditional business models into Internet economy business models, … Customers are increasingly seeking Cisco’s expertise to help them through this transformation.

- John Chambers

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

- Bill Gates

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

- Richard Branson

Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt.

- Zig Ziglar

If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.

- Bill Gates

Nevertheless, in the first years of Standard Oil, Rockefeller regularly toured his facilities and was extremely inquisitive and observant, soaking up information and assiduously quizzing plant superintendants. In his pocket, he carried a little red notebook in which he jotted suggestions or improvements and always followed up on them. He knew the terror inspired by the little red book. More than once I have gone to luncheon with a number of our heads of departments and have seen the sweat out of on the foreheads for some of them when that little red notebook was pulled out.

- Ron Chernow

If it’s set up in such a way that it breaks the conditionality required by the (International Monetary Fund), I think that would be a step backward.

- John Chambers

I have the favor of God. I can do all things through Christ. I am blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy.

- Joel Olsteen

Forty-five years ago, when I was 18, I came to San Francisco by boat and took two weeks to get here. I had a great impression. I think San Francisco is the welcoming gate for people from Asia.

- Tadashi Yanai

Like fire across the galaxy the Clone Wars spread. In league with the wicked Count Dooku, more and more planets slip. Against this threat, upon the Jedi Knights falls the duty to lead the newly formed army of the Republic. And as the heat of war grows, so, to, grows the prowess of one most gifted student of the Force.

- Yoda

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

- Jack Welch

A man may be poor; he may have nothing at all except his labour to sell; he may be a manual worker for a weekly wage, but in a free commonwealth he must enjoy as good a right as any lord, or prelate, or capitalist in the country to the integrity of his own political convictions.

- Winston Churchill

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.

- Zig Ziglar

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

- Joel Olsteen

You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.

- Joel Olsteen

When you have one million dollars, you’re a lucky person. When you have 10 million dollars, you’ve got trouble, a lot of headaches. When you have more than one billion dollars, or a hundred million dollars, that’s a responsibility you have – it’s the trust of people on you, because people believe you can spend money better than the others.

- Jack Ma

Branding is what people think about you before they even know you.

- Bryan Smith

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

- Richard Branson

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.

- Donald Trump

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

- Joel Olsteen

In the short term, the market is a popularity contest. In the long term, the market is a weighing machine.

- Warren Buffett

The first rule of organizational design is that all organizational designs are bad.

- Ben Horowitz

I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business, basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.

- Jack Welch

What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.

- Thomas Edison

The quality of research in the U.S. is absolutely the best.

- Bill Gates

A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.

- Elon Musk

When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: Try to bear lightly what needs must be. Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and resignation that touched the hem of divinity.

- Dale Carnegie

What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.

- Michael Bloomberg

FATHER FORGETS W. Livingston Larned 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.

- Dale Carnegie

Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.

- Ben Horowitz

For now, if the Hong Kong environment doesn’t change, then in the long term, investing in Hong Kong is best.

- Lee Shau Kee

Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.

- Rupert Murdoch

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

Use what you have to run toward your best – that’s how I now live my life.

- Oprah Winfrey

So you need two professions: the one you have studied all this time, and your other profession the profession of persuasion that allows you to make good use of all those years of education, practice and dues-paying.

- Jerry Vass

There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.

- Norman Vincent Peale

American Dream – and it says that you should graduate from high school, graduate from college, get married, find a job with good benefits, have sex with your spouse two times per week, buy a home with a mortgage, get a pet, go on vacation two times per year, have two kids, invest in mutual funds and IRAs, recycle when possible, and aim to retire early in your mid-fifties to early sixties, if you are lucky. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s kind of hard to be passionate about that American Dream.

- Clay Clark

I’m not speaking defeat into my future. I’m not speaking failure over my life. I will turn it around and speak favor into my future. I will declare, I’m blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy. This will be a great year.” When you do that, you are blessing your future.

- Joel Olsteen

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… The ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

- Steve Jobs

There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?

- John Chambers

Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

- P.T. Barnum

You know, there is always times where you feel discouraged and things coming against you, but I don’t know if I ever wanted to throw in the towel.

- Joel Olsteen

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