Notable Quotables

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

- Winston Churchill

We don’t have the luxury of time. We spend more because of how we live, but it’s important to be with our family and friends.

- Sara Blakely

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

- Timothy Ferriss

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.

- Warren Buffett

when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.

- Dale Carnegie

The Starbucks customer and the Teavana customer are two very different customers, two different need states that are highly complimentary.

- Howard Schultz

The final relationship that cannot be ignored is with disrupters: They are individuals who cause trouble for sport – inciting opposition to management for a variety of reasons, most of them petty. Usually these people have good performance – that’s their cover – and so they are endured or appeased. A company that manages people well takes disrupters head-on. First they give them very tough evaluations, naming their bad behaviour and demanding it change. Usually it won’t. Disrupters are a personality type. If that’s the case, get them out of the way of people trying to do their jobs. They’re poison.

- Jack Welch

We have a very high churn rate, but as soon as we turn on email marketing to our user base, people will come back.” Yes, of course. The reason that people leave our service and don’t come back is that we have not been sending them enough spam. That makes total sense to me, too.

- Ben Horowitz

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

It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.

- Paul Graham

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.

- Bill Gates

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals. Management.

- Peter Drucker

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

- Joel Olsteen

Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, what do I want to do everyday for the rest of my life…do that.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.

- Elon Musk

I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort.

- Sergey Brin

You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.

- Seth Godin

Remember you’re not entitled to anything. You have to earn your success every day, and you will make mistakes like everyone else.

- Harvey Mackay

Team Together / Team Apart means you respect the final decision even if you would do something diffently, and make it happen with positive energy.

- David Novak

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

- Bill Gates

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

- Michael Levine

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

Christopher Colombus’ big mistake was that he was looking for a trade route to China, and accidentally bumped into America, the richest, most powerful country in the world.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Do not look like you are playing the fiddle while Rome is burning….stay focussed – Paraphrased from

- David Novak

It’s easy to dream about it … Much harder to execute it ….Work!

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

- Ray Kroc

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

Your first projects aren’t the greatest things in the world, and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere, but that is how you learn – you put so much effort into making something right if it is for yourself.

- Steve Wozniak

I hope you will take good care of your health, this is religious duty, and you can accomplish so much for the world if you keep well and strong.

- John D. Rockefeller

Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God’s final word on where your lips end.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Many people who I respected were disappointed when I started ‘Wine Library TV.’ They thought I was dumbing down wine, but I always knew I was one of the biggest producers of new wine drinkers in the world, and people are realizing it now.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

A corporation’s primary goal is to make money. Government’s primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.

- Larry Ellison

Things get much easier if one jumps on the bandwagon of existing trends.

- Lei Jun

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

- Herb Kelleher

Most companies that go through layoffs are never the same. They don’t recover because trust is broken. And if you’re not honest at the point where you’re breaking trust anyway, you will never recover.

- Ben Horowitz

Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!

- Og Mandino

I was taken by the power that savoring a simple cup of coffee can have to connect people and create community.

- Howard Schultz

There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Experience has proven that the best educated people are often those who are known as self-made, or self-educated. It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists no so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and peristently applied. Men are paid nor merely for tha they know, but more particulary for what they do with that which they know.

- Napoleon Hill

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

- Winston Churchill

Juggling is about throwing, not catching That’s why it’s so difficult to learn how to juggle. We’re conditioned to make the catch, to hurdle whatever is in our way to save the day, to—no matter what—not drop the ball. If you spend your time and energy and focus on catching, it’s inevitable that your throws will suffer. You’ll get plenty of positive feedback for the catches you make, but you’ll always be behind, because the throws you manage to make will be ever less useful. Paradoxically, if you get better at throwing, the catches take care of themselves. The only way to get better at throwing, though, is to throw.

- Seth Godin

The man who is bound in the slavery of debt is just as helpless as the slave who is bound by ignorance, or by actual chains.

- Napoleon Hill

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

- Walt Disney

Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.

- Winston Churchill

Only 17 percent of us or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private highschool. But 55 percent of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools.

- Thomas J Stanley

[In 1998] The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.

- Phil Knight

Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.

- Ben Horowitz

Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.

- Timothy Ferriss

You must develop a verification system for anything in your business that you expect to happen.

- Clay Clark

The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it’s allowed is silos of interest.

- Seth Godin

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

- Thomas Edison

I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.

- Herb Kelleher

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

- Haruki Murakami

[On becoming in 1969 a full-time employee of his five year old company] There were nervous moments. Every time I brought a fresh letter of credit home and it said, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Knight guarantee liabilities to the tune of $300,000,’ Penny’d say, ‘We don’t have $300,000.’ I’d say, ‘I don’t care. Just sign the thing.’

- Phil Knight

you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.

- Timothy Ferriss

We intend to focus all our attentions in the coming years on three core growth forces. These are: 1. The massive expansion of our considerable software expertise. After all, in our eyes, software is the “new wheel” of mankind and our industry. Processes with regard to mobility are becoming increasingly complex and more strongly interconnected. These processes need to be controlled and managed reliably, requiring ever greater amounts of software. In the future, practically nothing will move without software. 2. In the fields of technology relevant for us, we want to be regarded as a pioneering and leading technology partner – especially by our customers. 3. Finally, and above all, with our pioneering corporate culture we want to be the preferred employer for people who want to fully develop and expand their skills and abilities with us and make rapid progress.” “Continental has had a good start into 2015, thus confirming our expectations for the entire year.

- Elmar Degenhart

I never called my work an ‘art’. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

- Walt Disney

You must practically educate yourself, regardless of your accessibility to formal education.

- Abraham Lincoln

My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.

- Timothy Ferriss

So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work – what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business?

- Ray Dalio

The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.

- Peter Drucker

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

Twitter has been my life’s work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now.

- Jack Dorsey

Nike is not about going to a ball game. It’s a business.

- Phil Knight

Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.

- Jack Ma

The other buzzword that epitomizes a bias toward substitution is “big data.” Today’s companies have an insatiable appetite for data, mistakenly believing that more data always creates more value. But big data is usually dumb data. Computers can find patterns that elude humans, but they don’t know how to compare patterns from different sources or how to interpret complex behaviors. Actionable insights can only come from a human analyst (or the kind of generalized artificial intelligence that exists only in science fiction).

- Peter Thiel

[On signing up Michael Jordan in 1984 when he was just 21 years old] We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.

- Phil Knight

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

I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.

- Steve Martin

Learn to slow down. Get lost intentionally. Observe how you judge both yourself and those around you.

- Timothy Ferriss

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

- Harry Truman

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books.

- Joel Olsteen

Many people who come to me with a business plan or to ask for money look like a mice that has been chewed by a cat. No matter how good their plan, their physical appearance is a limiting factor. In public speaking, it is said that body language accounts for approximately 55% of communication. Voice tone 35%, and words 10%. If you remember President Kennedy, JFK, he had 100% working for him and it physically attractive as he was, we can all do our best to dress and groom appropriately to make our points stronger.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends.

- Andrew Carnegie

What we maybe should’ve realized sooner was that we are running a political campaign and the candidate is Uber. And this political race is happening in every major city in the world. And because this isn’t about a democracy, this is about a product, you can’t win 51 to 49. You have to win 98 to 2.

- Travis Kalanick

The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.

- Andrew Carnegie

They have done great things within what you would call established American sports. Freddy has the potential to bring soccer almost for the first time into the public’s consciousness. Soccer in the United States isn’t really part of the culture. What it needs, I think, is a superhero, and he clearly could be it. Now, that’s putting a lot of pressure on him, but the kid’s got all the potential to do that.

- Phil Knight

Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.

- Ben Horowitz

Nobody is going to delegate a lot of power to a secretary that they can’t control.

- Michael Bloomberg

I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‘You’re going to do it my way.’ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‘You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.’

- Joel Olsteen

It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.

- Timothy Ferriss

If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.

- Dave Ramsey

When you start a company, it’s a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.

- Howard Schultz

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

- Winston Churchill

It’s easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.

- Seth Godin

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

- Henry Ford

I worked with many departments in China to organise a ‘One million farmer’ programme. The scheme trained them to learn professional skills.

- Lee Shau Kee

When I finally retire, I just want to go away so no one has to listen to me.

- Steve Martin

His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.

- Ron Chernow

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