The lesson for business is that we need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme; we need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
A bigger business is like a cruise ship: There are lots of amenities and you can go a lot further, but it’s harder to turn quickly.
- Tony Hsieh
That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
- Dale Carnegie
The microprocessor is a miracle.
- Bill Gates
If salespeople don’t probe well for background information, they don’t know how to launch the presentation.
- Jerry Vass
If you will focus on meeting other people’s needs, God will always make sure your needs are supplied. God will take care of your problems for you.
- Joel Olsteen
New research shows that you will be dead longer than you will be alive.
- Zig Ziglar
Policosanol: 20–25 mg Alpha-lipoic acid: 100–300 mg (I take 300 mg with each meal, but some people experience acid reflux symptoms with more than 100 mg) Green tea flavanols (decaffeinated with at least 325 mg EGCG): 325 mg Garlic extract: 200 mg
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s easy to get negative because you get beat down. You go through a few disappointments and it’s easy to stay in that negative frame of mind. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is a whole cliche, but your attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
- Joel Olsteen
“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.
- Sergey Brin
It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don’t feel like an oligarch.
- Vladimir Potanin
The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.
- John C. Maxwell
Ever since Justin Timberlake portrayed him in The Social Network, Sean has been perceived as one of the coolest people in America. JT is still more famous, but when he visits Silicon Valley, people ask if he’s Sean Parker.
- Peter Thiel
I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn’t love them.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The human being is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses, and mind, is engaged in the work.
- Peter Drucker
History recalls the remarkable resilience of the territory’s people.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Share your experiences, tell your stories, and inspire others along the way.
- Blake Mycoskie
There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.
- Phil Knight
Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy
- Jim Rohn
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
- Winston Churchill
Esta es la clave: las únicas promesas que se avivarán en su vida y terminarán convirtiéndose en realidad son las promesas en las que usted se levanta y dice: Sí, eso es para mí”. Tiene que entrar en acuerdo con Dios y permitir que eso eche raíz.
- Joel Olsteen
The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
- Jeff Bezos
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.
- Seth Godin
So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.
- Richard Branson
And I think the more money you put in people’s hands, the more they will spend. And if they don’t spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that.
- Michael Bloomberg
There is never a bad time to start a business – unless you want to start a mediocre one.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.
- Nolan Bushnell
Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.
- Winston Churchill
A word, a look, an accent, may affect the destiny not only of individuals, but of nations. He is a bold man who calls anything a trifle.
- Andrew Carnegie
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
- Dale Carnegie
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie
I am more of a creative person. I recognize that about myself, which is why I hired my weaknesses early on. I think if most founders don’t relinquish some control, then we hold back the development of our companies.
- Sara Blakely
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
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director – who were just fun.
- Steve Martin
For me, privacy and security are really important. We think about it in terms of both: You can’t have privacy without security.
- Larry Page
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
If David our CEO, devotes so much of his time to this, then all this stuff about teamwork and learning how to be a great leader must be pretty important.
- David Novak
Half of College Grads Are Working Jobs That Don’t Require A Degree, Forbes 2013 college graduates have are an average of $32,500 in debt.
- CNNMoney
In a climate of tight budgets, reduced workforces and stiff competition, internal training can be a great substitute for costly offsite workshops and conferences.
- Harvey Mackay
We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.
- Steve Ballmer
The courage take tough yes-or-no decisions. Look, the world is filled with gray. Anyone can look at an issue from every different angle. Some smart people can –and will-analyze those angles indefinitely. But effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.
- Jack Welch
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
- Winston Churchill
Surely, we all can look back and see things in our lives that we wish we would have done differently. But the Bible says, Make the most of each day.”4 Yesterday is gone; tomorrow may not come. You must live for today. Start right where you are. You can’t do anything about what’s gone, but you can do a great deal about what remains.
- Joel Olsteen
The Group has not been deterred by any negative sentiment and will as ever respond to the challenges and opportunities ahead of us with the same spirit of caution, flexibility, determination and dynamism, which have brought much success to us in the past.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.
- Bill Gates
According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.
- Bill Gates
All that hullabaloo about somebody’s net worth is just stupid, and it’s made my life a lot more complex and difficult.
- Sam Walton
People easily confuse skill with personality.
- Jerry Vass
Wal-Mart’s leaders had obviously made a point of educating and informing everyone at all levels about all aspects of the company, and that shows a real respect for their people.
- David Novak
If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something.
- Rupert Murdoch
My mother taught me something at a young age – she said ‘you are the company you keep’. To define yourself by some label or some level of resources – that’s pretty shallow.
- Howard Schultz
I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
- Reed Hastings
If you’re going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don’t work.
- Seth Godin
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
- Jeff Bezos
Cold steel and discipline and the slight capital surplus necessary to move and organise armies constituted the sole defences.
- Winston Churchill
Lanai at one time grew 98% of the world’s pineapples. But the world’s pineapples are now grown in two places, Costa Rica and Panama, because no one wants to spend $45 for a pineapple from the United States.
- Larry Ellison
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
- Winston Churchill
Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
- Dale Carnegie
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
- Henry Ford
For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.
- James C. Collins
The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’ … Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
- Timothy Ferriss
You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.
- John C. Maxwell
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
This is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com. Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets.
- Jeff Bezos
NO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OR EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK PROCESS Your company now employs twenty-five people and you know that you should formalize the performance management process, but you don’t want to pay the price. You worry that doing so will make it feel like a “big company.” Moreover, you do not want your employees to be offended by the feedback, because you can’t afford to lose anyone right now. And people are happy, so why rock the boat? Why not take on a little management debt? The first noticeable payments will be due when somebody performs below expectations: CEO: “He was good when we hired him; what happened?” Manager: “He’s not doing the things that we need him to do.” CEO: “Did we clearly tell him that?” Manager: “Maybe not clearly . . .” However, the larger payment will be a silent tax. Companies execute well when everybody is on the same page and everybody is constantly improving. In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally across either dimension. Directions with no corrections will seem fuzzy and obtuse. People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of. The ultimate price you will pay for not giving feedback: systematically crappy company performance.
- Ben Horowitz
I think the definition of a book is changing.
- Jeff Bezos
Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.
- Reed Hastings
Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.
- Thomas Edison
The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
- Albert Einstein
You give before you get.
- Napoleon Hill
Life’s too short” is repeated often enough to be a cliche, but this time it’s true. You don’t have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre. It’s not just pointless, it’s painful. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
- Seth Godin
Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn’t matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you’re going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.
- Harvey Mackay
Complaints are your best learning opportunity
- Bill Gates
A bunch of high-IQ people with the wrong kind of ambition won’t work.
- Ben Horowitz
Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.
- Peter Thiel
We’ll be watching as the storm approaches. If we see a service area is about to be hit by high winds, we will literally have crews loaded and sitting in trucks, ready to go.
- Ed Clark
As he brooded over how to raise the money, he was informed by his father that he had always intended to give each of his children $1,000.00 at age twenty-one, and he now offered to advance John the money. But, John, he added lest his son expect miracles, the rate is ten. Having just retrieved a thousand dollars from Hewitt, Bill might have been looking for a high return on these idle funds. John knew his father too well to plead for a gift and accepted the 10 percent loan, which was higher than the prevailing rate. So on April 1, 1858 backed up by this borrowed money, John D. Rockefeller left Isaac Hewitt and joined the partnership of Clark and Rockefeller at 32 River Street (in Cleveland). At eighteen, he was catapulted to a partner’s rank in a commission house. It was a great thing to be my own employer, said Rockefeller. Mentally I swelled with pride – a partner in a firm with $4,000 capital! The moment was fraught with meaning for him and after his first day at work, he went back to the Cheshire Street house, fell to his knees, and implored the Lord to bless his new enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
The great news is that God knows everything about you, both good and bad, and He still loves you and values you unconditionally. God does not always approve of our behavior. He is not pleased when we go against his will, and when we do, we always suffer the consequences and have to work with Him to correct our thoughts, words, actions, or attitudes. And while you should work to improve in the areas where you fall short, nothing you do will ever cause God to love you less…or more. His love is a constant you can depend on.
- Joel Olsteen
Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.
- George Soros
Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.
- Timothy Ferriss
I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.
- Elon Musk
When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.
- Zig Ziglar
The fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.
- Zig Ziglar
One of [Bill] Bowerman’s more legendary innovations is the Waffle outsole, which he discovered by pouring rubber into a waffle iron.
- Phil Knight
Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. The amount of time you spend on the PC in the browser is just going to grow continuously.
- Reed Hastings
Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.
- John C. Maxwell
The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.
- Peter Drucker
I can’t read a computer screen and never use a calculator. It’s all in my head and by hand.
- Simon Reuben
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be likened to the raindrop, which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed.
- Og Mandino
There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal weakness of LACK OF AMBITION!
- Napoleon Hill
[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold
- Phil Knight
Everybody understands the market in this area is consolidating.
- John Chambers
You have to be a crazy guy and a little eccentric to be very successful.
- Tadashi Yanai
As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.
- Elon Musk
