Notable Quotables

I want people to learn what democracy means.

- Jack Ma

[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.

- Jack Dorsey

Many people fail to make a favourable impression because they don’t listen attentively.

- Isaac F. Marcosson

In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can.

- Peter Thiel

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

- Winston Churchill

We want to be the most predictable, boring growth company.

- John Chambers

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

- Napoleon Hill

Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.

- Bill Gates

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

- Joel Olsteen

I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.

- Tony Robbins

The growth of an enterprise is no different from the self-improvement of human beings. It is a step-by-step procedure and an ever-lasting course of improvement, which requires staying in line with the era and taking up social responsibility.

- Cheng Yu-tung

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

- Sun Tzu

In the game of life, money is just how we keep score.

- Clay Clark

I try to make my life about service, and hope that one day we can all ‘see’ a little better because God is with everyone and everywhere.

- Russell Simmons

That was annoying but not entirely unexpected. It’s not a huge shock, given what’s going on down there.

- Ed Clark

You can’t fault government for seizing that opportunity. But it has an impact on Barbados’ current account deficit and it does bring with it attended risks. And, therefore, you have to ask whether or not the tourism business that is going to be generated from the publicity around the cricket matches will be sustained after the cricket matches are over.

- John Chambers

Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect.

- Ben Horowitz

I get calls from everybody asking if I know of any drivers, anybody they can hire.

- Jack Taylor

In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there’s such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.

- Bill Gates

The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

- Ralph Nader

With an export-driven economy, Hong Kong is unavoidably affected by any hiccup in the outside world.

- Cheng Yu-tung

We used to think that everything started in the lab. Now we realize that everything spins off the consumer.

- Phil Knight

Our underwear used to just be cotton, but we wanted to see if we could create something out of synthetics.

- Tadashi Yanai

A company has a monopoly on its own brand by definition, so creating a strong brand is a powerful way to claim a monopoly.

- Peter Thiel

Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.

- Peter Thiel

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.

- Bill Gates

Eliminate the fear of old age by reaching a decision to accept it, not as a handicap, but as a great blessing which carries with it wisdom, self-control, and understanding not known to youth. Whip the fear of poverty by reaching a decision to get along with whatever wealth you can accumulate without worry. Master the fear of loss of love by reaching decision to get along without love, if that is necessary. Kill that habit of worry in all its forms, by reaching a general, blanket decision that that nothing which life has to offer is worth the price of worry. With this decision comes poise, peace of mind, and calmness of thought which will bring happiness.

- Napoleon Hill

When you develop yourself to the point where your belief in yourself is so strong that you know that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to, your future will be unlimited.

- Brian Tracy

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

- John C. Maxwell

Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike”, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

- Peter Thiel

Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).

- Seth Godin

Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.

- Howard Schultz

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

- Bill Gates

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

- Winston Churchill

The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.

- Elon Musk

I’ve been blessed to find people who are smarter than I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have.

- Russell Simmons

[On Twitter] This company is bigger than any individual.

- Jack Dorsey

We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.

- Henry Ford

I never hid my thoughts or feelings. During a business meeting I could get so emotionally charged and involved that I’d stammer out what others might consider to be outrageous things like, My six year old could do better than that! Or Don’t Walter Cronkite me!

- Solutions

Ethical decisions ensure that everyone’s best interests are protected. When in doubt, don’t.

- Harvey Mackay

We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.

- Tadashi Yanai

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.

- Jack Welch

My wealth is reflected in the price of Severstal, and the number of shares I have in my possession doesn’t have any impact on the company.

- Alexei Mordashov

I’ve got to confess I’m a pragmatic optimist myself.

- Zig Ziglar

The techniques that worked so extraordinarily well when applied to sustaining technologies, however, clearly failed badly when applied to markets or applications that did not yet exist.

- Clayton M. Christensen

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

- General George S. Patton

Hong Kong is uniquely positioned as the best place to integrate with the fast-growing Pearl River Delta Region and to capitalize on the opening up of China’s economy and markets.

- Cheng Yu-tung

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.

- Steve Jobs

The key to high-quality communication is trust, and it’s hard to trust somebody that you don’t know.

- Ben Horowitz

No man ever achieved worthwhile success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

- Napoleon Hill

They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people have their say” so that they could buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.

- James C. Collins

Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.

- Peter Thiel

I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

- Richard Branson

If I had to single out one element in my life that has made difference for me, it would be a passion to compete.

- Sam Walton

Be ready for problems–you’ll have them every day. Keep open to new ideas–that’s where innovation begins.

- Donald Trump

You need to be around people who know more than you and have more talent than you. Don’t be intimidated by them, be inspired.

- Joel Olsteen

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

- James C. Collins

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I care about our employees more than anybody in my company. I care about my kids, too, but that doesn’t mean I give them everything that they want.

- Charles Ergen

Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there’s an education level that plays into the mix and so if it’s inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.

- Ray Dalio

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

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

Of course, the challenge of being the initiator is that you’ll be wrong. You’ll pick the wrong thing, you’ll waste time, you’ll be blamed. This is why being an initiator is valuable. Most people shy away from the challenge. They’ve been too abused, they’re too fearful, they hold back, they’re happy to let someone else take the heat. Initiative is scarce. Hence valuable. Ditch digging is not scarce. It’s not hard at all to find manual labor at minimum wage, which is precisely why manual labor gets paid minimum wage. It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence, because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.

- Seth Godin

You can start from where you are with what you’ve got and go to where it is you want to go.

- Zig Ziglar

I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.

- Elon Musk

If you wake up deciding what you want to give versus what you’re going to get, you become a more successful person. In other words, if you want to make money, you have to help someone else make money.

- Russell Simmons

Most governments are pragmatic, most people are logical. There are pockets of extremism in Israel, in the U.S. and in the Muslim world. But we have to fight them with reason, with logic and with compassion.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

The year I was born, 1955, the first big disease-eradication program in the world was declared for malaria. After about a decade of work, they realized that, at least in the tropical areas, they did not have the tools to get it done.

- Bill Gates

For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.

- Elon Musk

Great marketing is all about telling your story in such a way that it compels people to buy what you are selling.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Give your subconscious a chance to work by turning your brain off from time to time. Don’t focus on work or solving problems constantly.

- Harvey Mackay

Every morning when I wake up, I make up my mind to solve as many problems before returning home.

- Aliko Dangote

It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.

- Ben Horowitz

There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal weakness of LACK OF AMBITION!

- Napoleon Hill

I want get across to not just the church world. I want to get outside those walls to everyday people.

- Joel Olsteen

No, I’m not settling here. I’m going to keep pressing forward.

- Joel Olsteen

Share your experiences, tell your stories, and inspire others along the way.

- Blake Mycoskie

Profitability is a shallow goal if it doesn’t have a real purpose, and the purpose has to be share the profits with others.

- Howard Schultz

Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.

- George Soros

You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.

- Zig Ziglar

I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control.

- Timothy Ferriss

If you do not believe in your product or service enough to offer it to your own family and friends, then you should question the value of what you are selling.

- Zig Ziglar

Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don’t base your self-esteem on their opinions.

- Harvey Mackay

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

No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a Pleasing Personality.

- Napoleon Hill

Already know you that which you need.

- Yoda

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

- Zig Ziglar

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