Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.
- Jeff Bezos
Notable Quotables
A lot of people feel very good about Mitt Romney and I think he’s going to do a great job.
- Donald Trump
For the first time in a very long time, I believe the external factors are slowly starting to be more positive, … This is still a minority view, held by a minority of our customers, but we’ve seen early indications that the recovery could be gaining momentum.
- John Chambers
There is only one excuse for a speaker’s asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.
- Dale Carnegie
Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad.
- Donald Trump
Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.
- P.T. Barnum
[On Square in July 2011] We’re going to make it amazing.
- Jack Dorsey
Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Our goal is not to build a platform, it’s to be cross all of them.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I like the idea that one thing leads to another. You can tweet something completely innocuous, and then find yourself going off on a tangent that’s inspired by a response.
- Steve Martin
Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.
- Mark Zuckerberg
All the best people in life seem to like LINUX.
- Steve Wozniak
By faith you need to walk like a king, talk like a king, think like a king, dress like a king, smile like a king. Don’t go by what you see. Go by what you know. There is royalty in your DNA. You have the blood of a winner. You were created to reign in life.
- Joel Olsteen
Civilization is meant to be easy…
- Jack Dorsey
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- Warren Buffett
There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one.
- Winston Churchill
I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.
- Gina Rinehart
I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.
- Elon Musk
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
Long-term planning is often undervalued by our indefinite short-term world.
- Peter Thiel
How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
- Napoleon Hill
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
t’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
- Warren Buffett
You’ve got to take a big jump to make it. You’ve got to have great big balls.
- Forrest Ray
We don’t want disruption where we just move things around from point a to point b. We want a direction, we want a purpose.
- Jack Dorsey
I believe that success can be measured in the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have.
- Timothy Ferriss
Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.
- Brene Brown
Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
- Peter Drucker
One of my goals is to inspire everyone I meet to become a better person.
- George Foreman
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
- Dale Carnegie
Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.
- Warren G. Tracy
You cannot get into business for the fashion of it.
- Azim Premji
Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken.
- Donald Trump
Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum.
- Peter Thiel
Speed is of the essence in responding to a crisis situation, and our focus is squarely on mobilizing resources to help in the relief and rebuilding efforts, while also helping customers and employees recover.
- John Chambers
Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.
- Dale Carnegie
Motivation is the fuel, necessary to keep the human engine running.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t think you ever stop giving. I really don’t. I think it’s an on-going process. And it’s not just about being able to write a check. It’s being able to touch somebody’s life.
- Oprah Winfrey
I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know anything about the speaker so there’s nothing that makes me want to get up early and go to it. I might catch it on TV.
- John Chambers
Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m not going to run for president. No way, no how.
- Michael Bloomberg
If that was true of Emerson, isn’t it
- Dale Carnegie
With vision and foresight, thorough consideration, careful planning and steadfast commitment, the New World Group will continue to maintain its ambitious yet healthy investment strategy to grow together with the nation and strive for greater success in the future.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines wont make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa and its about getting a balance.
- Richard Branson
As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-time. Sometimes you’ll have to break this rule; it usually makes sense to hire outside lawyers and accountants, for example. However, anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned.
- Peter Thiel
[On American running shoes] They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters after five miles. Adidas was taking advantage. And at $30 a pair, Adidas was making a killing.
- Phil Knight
A waitress goes up to Winston Churchill and says, ‘Sir, your drunk.’ To which he replies, ‘I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
I won a Marshall scholarship to read philosophy at Oxford, and what I most wanted to do was strengthen public intellectual culture – I’d write books and essays to help us figure out who we wanted to be.
- Reid Hoffman
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
Only the paranoid survive.
- Andrew Grove
Economic cycles come and go…
- Cheng Yu-tung
I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.
- Bill Gates
Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.
- Bill Gates
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
- Henry Ford
I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it’s easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin’ man and the loner.
- Steve Martin
Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.
- Henry Ford
I’m from the country and I like it that way.
- Tracy Byrd
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.
- Steve Martin
The seed of a bamboo tree is planted, fertilized and watered. Nothing happens for the first year. There´s no sign of growth. Not even a hint. The same thing happens – or doesn´t happen – the second year. And then the third year. The tree is carefully watered and fertilized each year, but nothing shows. No growth. No anything. For eight years it can continue. Eight years! Then – after the eight years of fertilizing and watering have passed, with nothing to show for it – the bamboo tree suddently sprouts and grows thirty feet in three months!
- Zig Ziglar
Branding is what people think about you before they even know you.
- Bryan Smith
When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.
- John C. Maxwell
Fortune favors the bold.
- Virgil
During the epidemic period of SARS, the Group purchased large quantities of disinfectant materials for donation to the local communities.
- Lee Shau Kee
If a product’s future is unlikely to be remarkable – if you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product – it’s time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.
- Seth Godin
Hong Kong has remained a strong financial centre. It has a solid business environment and geographically, it is well located, being next to China. During this time, there is no city that can match it.
- Lee Shau Kee
Success is dependent upon the glands – sweat glands.
- Zig Ziglar
We are set in our ways, bound by our perspectives and stuck in our thinking.
- Joel Olsteen
Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.
- Elon Musk
I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.
- Elon Musk
The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition.
- Peter Thiel
In my opinion, education is the finest gift an individual can give a young person.
- Donald Bren
My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.
- Jack Ma
Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it.
- Henry Ford
1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.2. A bad plan is better than no plan.3. Competitive markets destroy profits.4. Sales matters just as much as product.
- Peter Thiel
People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.
- Jack Welch
Measure, coach and reward the right things. Measure the vitally important. Reward the doers.
- David Novak
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
- Jeff Bezos
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
Three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.
- Thomas J Stanley
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.
- Oprah Winfrey
Nowhere are the benefits of closer economic ties more pronounced than in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The two places have their own advantages. One has the manpower, natural resources and manufacturing might, while the other has the management skills and marketing know-how.
- Cheng Yu-tung
There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.
- Ben Horowitz
I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
- Bill Gates
P – Passion, you care about the team, passion and players
- Jack Welch
We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticising a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to the other person’s pride. Whereas a few minutes’ thought, a considerate word or two, a genuine understanding of the other person’s attitude, would go so far toward alleviating the sting!
- Dale Carnegie
Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.
- Richard Branson
To achieve stable growth, an enterprise must live up to its conviction.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Hip-hop is a voice for voiceless poor people.
- Russell Simmons
What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
- Steve Martin
The real benefit of having goals is what you become by reaching them.
- Zig Ziglar
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
In China anything less than 6% growth is a recession meaning that it also causes financial problems and it’s disruptive and it’s a problem.
- Ray Dalio
Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.
- Sam Walton
Learning to be a CEO through classroom training would be like learning to be an NFL quarterback through classroom training.
- Ben Horowitz
If you want a successful business, your people must feel that you are working for them—not that they are working for you.
- Sam Walton
The result of information overload is usually distraction, and it dilutes your focus and takes you off your game.
- Zig Ziglar
He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom.
- Winston Churchill
The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.
- Marc Benioff





