Notable Quotables

If you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.

- David Nilssen

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’re always going to get what you’ve always gotten.

- Zig Ziglar

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he’s got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

- Bill Gates

Many of America’s and New York’s sons and daughters are around the world fighting for the freedoms that the Statue of Liberty stands for.

- Michael Bloomberg

If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.

- Benjamin Hooks

I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.

- Walt Disney

Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate?

- Larry Page

Games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga.

- Mark Zuckerberg

It means the ability to go, go, go – to thrive on action and relish change. People with positive energy are generally extroverted and optimistic. They make conversation and friends easily. They start the day with enthusiasm and usually end it that way too, rarely seeming to tire in the middle. They don’t complain about working hard: they love to work. They also love to play. People with positive energy just love life.

- Jack Welch

We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it.

- Ray Kroc

You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it

- Peter Thiel

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

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

- Joel Olsteen

It is no achievement to walk a tightrope laid flat on the floor.

- Ray Kroc

We believe that it is better to give one a rod to fish rather than just dole out fish to them.

- Henry Sy

Mind you, I got this reduction without saying a word about what I wanted. I talked all the time about what the other person wanted and how he could get it.

- Dale Carnegie

To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.

- Aliko Dangote

Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust.

- Howard Schultz

Pick a movement. Pick something you believe in. Pick something you want to have an impact in and then question every single thing and be a founder, and be an entrepreneur inside those organizations and inside that movement.

- Jack Dorsey

Americans move more than 10 times over the course of a lifetime.

- Bill Gates

It is clothes. It is parts. Therefore, you combine the parts differently to create your own unique expression.

- Tadashi Yanai

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

- Henry Ford

AP pleaded guilty to criminal theft of our software. Let me be clear. I’m not accusing SAP of anything. What did SAP do? Did you engage in criminal behavior and steal lots of Oracle software? Yes. That’s SAP. Who was CEO when you were doing all this criminal stuff? Leo.

- Larry Ellison

There’s only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that’s already been written.

- Bill Gates

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

- Winston Churchill

I have taken six companies public, and three of those are Fortune 1000 companies, but the key to my success has been my ability to sell other people on my dreams.

- Wayne Huizenga

Exchanging practically all the British infantry and artillery in India for Territorial batteries and battalions, and the formation of the 27th, 28th and 29th Divisions of regular troops. The New Zealand contingent must be escorted to Australia and there, with 25,000 Australians, await convoys to Europe. Meanwhile the leading troops of the Canadian Army, about 25,000 strong, had to be brought across the Atlantic. All this was of course additional to the main situation in the North Sea and to the continued flow of drafts, reinforcements and supplies across the Channel. Meanwhile the enemy’s Fleet remained intact, waiting, as we might think, its moment to strike; and his cruisers continued to prey upon the seas. To strengthen our cruiser forces we had already armed and commissioned twenty-four liners as auxiliary cruisers, and had armed defensively fifty-four merchantmen. Another forty suitable vessels were in preparation. In order to lighten the strain in the Indian Ocean and to liberate our light cruisers for their proper work of hunting down the enemy, I proposed the employment of our old battleships (Canopus class) as escorts to convoys.

- Winston Churchill

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

- Elon Musk

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

We all prospect, and don’t even know we’re doing it. When you start the dating process, you are actually prospecting for the person you want to marry. When you’re interviewing employees, you are prospecting for someone who will best fit your needs.

- Zig Ziglar

I’ve been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I’m getting really tired of Disneyland.

- Elon Musk

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

We’ll see how that evolves. Obviously, it doesn’t mean we’ll just be willing to do anything that’s requested of us.

- Sergey Brin

Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World.

- Bill Gates

Dios ve el valor que usted tiene, y sabe en lo que le está convirtiendo. A veces nos miramos a nosotros mismos y pensamos: Tengo muchas imperfecciones. Tengo mal genio. Tengo un problema con mi boca. No soy tan disciplinado”. Vemos el barro, pero Dios ve la hermosa taza. La buena noticia es que usted no es un producto terminado. Dios sigue obrando, y si trabaja usted con Dios y le permite eliminar esas impurezas, Él hará más con su vida de lo que usted nunca soñó.

- Joel Olsteen

We need to and must protect privacy. But I think that people will be willing and even eager to share medical information about themselves for the greater good of mankind.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

- Russell Simmons

To create a big company, you need more partners, as it is hard to handle such a project alone. Such projects bring access to the expertise and management resources of the partners, and their connections above all.

- Vladimir Potanin

This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.

- John Chambers

There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant—is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a manager and a gentleman.

- Peter Drucker

I said one time that it shouldn’t matter who counts to 30 for filling up retail prescriptions, and I caught a lot of grief for that, and probably rightfully so. But that wasn’t the point. The point is that putting pills in a bottle doesn’t change health outcomes. It doesn’t matter whether you get your pills at Walgreen or CVS or Kroger. The reality is: What happens with that process? Who is taking care of that patient? It’s not counting pills and sticking them in bottles. That doesn’t add any value.

- George Paz

The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.

- Thomas Edison

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

- Warren Buffett

Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.

- Dale Carnegie

In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater their power to harm us.

- Voltaire

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

- Winston Churchill

Same problem as every Hollywood studio: how can you reliably produce a constant stream of popular entertainment for a fickle audience? (Nobody knows.)

- Peter Thiel

If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying.

- Joel Olsteen

On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you’re doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you’re mediocre. You’re free to contribute.

- Seth Godin

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill.Be a scrub in the valley-but beThe best little scrub by the side of the rill;Be a bush, if you can’t be a tree.If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of the grass.If you can’t be a muskie, then just be a bass-But the liveliest bass in the lake!We can’t all be captains, we’ve got to be crew.There’s something for all of us here.There’s big work to do and there’s lesser to doAnd the task we must do is the near.If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail,If you can’t be the sun, be a star;It isn’t by the size that you win or you fail-Be the best of whatever you are!

- Douglas Malloch

Once Microsoft lost its grip on developers, it became only a matter of time before it lost its monopoly on operating systems.

- Ben Horowitz

I… had no need for cheering dreams,” he wrote. Facts are better than dreams.

- James C. Collins

In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.

- Ben Horowitz

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.

- Oprah Winfrey

Most salespeople won’t stop talking long enough to let the Buyer make a decision.

- Jerry Vass

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’

- Peter Drucker

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

- P.T. Barnum

My biggest wish is for government, the private sector and all of us to work together to make the Philippines the best tourism destination in Southeast Asia.

- Henry Sy

A beautiful deleveraging balances the three options. In other words, there is a certain amount of austerity, there is a certain amount of debt restructuring, and there is a certain amount of printing of money. When done in the right mix, it isn’t dramatic.

- Ray Dalio

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

- Charles Darwin

Be frank. Reporters know when your story is all hype and no substance. Be honest with them.

- Michael Levine

I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.

- Timothy Ferriss

I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 18. I started a company with a bunch of buddies that got funded in my senior year, and that’s when I finished school. It was called Scour, a peer-to-peer service, file-sharing.

- Travis Kalanick

Hard disks have disappointed me more than most technologies.

- Steve Wozniak

Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.

- Oprah Winfrey

It is becoming increasingly clear that the global economy is improving, … As customers feel more confident to invest, we believe that we are well positioned to provide compelling value as a strategic business adviser and technology partner.

- John Chambers

There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.

- Steve Wozniak

Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.

- Larry Page

The slowdown in futures orders clearly signals that revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 1998 will be below our previous expectations. This is largely a result of the slowdown in the Asia Pacific market, where we now anticipate more moderate revenue growth in fiscal 1998 after increasing 84 percent on a constant dollar basis in fiscal 1997.

- Phil Knight

I’m born into the cycle of giving that we’re all born into, and I recognize it. So just because something is a good business, I’m not a business guy. I’m a creative guy.

- Russell Simmons

Steve Jobs had very strong feelings about what makes a company great, what makes products great. He more or less chose Tim Cook to be in that role, in that position.

- Steve Wozniak

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

- Bill Gates

As it happened, we did extraordinarily well with our Newport Wal-Mart, and it wasn’t too long before the old Ben Franklin store I had run on Front Street had to close its doors. You can’t say we ran that guy – the landlord’s son – out of business. His customers were the ones who shut him down. They voted with their feet. Quite a few smaller stores have gone out of business during the time of Wal-Mart’s growth. Some people have tried to turn it into this big controversy, sort of a Save the Small-Town Merchants deal, like they were whales or whooping cranes of something that has the right to be protected…If you become a large-scale success it’s Katie bar the door. Suddenly, you make a very convenient villian because everybody seems to love shooting at who’s on top.

- Sam Walton

Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good

- Ron Chernow

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

Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.

- Reed Hastings

I think the acquisition of consumers might be on the verge of being mapped. The battlefield is going to be retention and lifetime value.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I don’t know what causes a person to be ambitious, but it is a fact that I have been overblessed with drive and ambition from the time I hit the ground.

- Sam Walton

I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as ‘I’m cool, look at how many e-mails I get.’ That perception doesn’t scare me, because I know who I am.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Well, I am a Republican, and I would run as a Republican. And I have a lot of confidence in the Republican Party. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the president. I think what’s happening to this country is unbelievably bad. We’re no longer a respected country.

- Donald Trump

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

- Andrew Carnegie

It it impossible to comprehend Rockefeller’s breathtaking ascent without realizing that he always moved into battle backed by adundant cash. Whether riding out downturns or coasting on booms, he kept plentiful reserves and won many bidding contests simply because his war chest was deeper. Rockefeller vividly described the way he had hastily enlisted the aid of bankers to snap up one rifinery: It required many hundreds of thousands of dollars and in cash, securities would not answer. I received the message at about noon, and had to get off on the 3 o’clock train. I drove from bank to bank asking each president or cashier, whomever I could find first, to get ready for me all the funds he could possibly lay hands on. I told them I would be back to get the money later. I rounded up all of our banks in the city, and made a secondary journey to get the money, and kept going until I secured the necessary amount. With this I was off on the 3 o’clock train and closed the transaction.

- Ron Chernow

My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.

- Bill Gates

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.

- Joseph Campbell

I will everyday as just a blow from my blade against a mighty oak…strike until it falls quote.

- Og Mandino

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

- Bill Gates

China gets their oil from Libya. Why isn’t China involved? They’re going out spending billions of dollars a day on trying to take over the world economically. And we’re spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on policing the world. Why isn’t China involved with Libya? That – we don’t get oil from Libya, China does.

- Donald Trump

No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.

- Winston Churchill

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

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