I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.
- John D. Rockefeller
Notable Quotables
My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven, he got injured on a job. That was a very important point – because of the injury, he couldn’t walk, and the company he was working for did not pay him. There was no compensation. So there was no money and no food.
- Howard Schultz
Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‘Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.’
- Joel Olsteen
At 25, I was in the audience of my first professional speaker, Bob Bales. His presentation got my attention. I had never seen anyone having so much fun ‘at work’ and getting paid for it!
- Zig Ziglar
You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.
- Seth Godin
Visibility remains limited, and this should come as no surprise, given that our customers’ visibility is limited.
- John Chambers
To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.
- Bill Gates
While 9:00 to 5:00 and what happens in the job is important… what happens from 5:00 – 9:00 while you’re off the job is INFINITELY more important.
- Zig Ziglar
I think it’s fair to say that our distribution system today is the envy certainly of everyone in our industry, and in alot of others as well…We’ve spend almost $700 million builing up the current computer and satellite systems we have….You can’t generate sales unless you have the product there when the customer wants it.The math is pretty simple: if we both sell the same goods for the same price at retail, we’ll earn 2.5 percent more profit than they will right there.
- Sam Walton
Making it good at scale means admitting that it must be different and embracing the changes that you’ll need to make to keep things from falling apart.
- Ben Horowitz
I don’t generally read a lot of fiction.
- Bill Gates
Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.
- Bill Gates
It is no use saying, ‘We are doing our best.’ You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
- Winston Churchill
One out of every five page views in the United States is on Facebook!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.
- Steve Wozniak
My first professional job was to sell heavy-duty waterless cookware.
- Zig Ziglar
People have no confidence that Washington, both sides of aisle, are coming together to try and do what’s right for the economy.
- Michael Bloomberg
In the end, Mockler and the board were proved right, stunningly so. If a shareflipper had accepted the 44 percent price premium offered by Ronald Perelman on October 31, 1986, and then invested the full amount in the general market for ten years, through the end of 1996, he would have come out three times worse off than a shareholder who had stayed with Mockler and Gillette.20 Indeed, the company, its customers, and the shareholders would have been ill served had Mockler capitulated to the raiders, pocketed his millions, and retired to a life of leisure.
- James C. Collins
We beat our expectations in the run up to Christmas and this time last year we had particularly high stock levels leading to a bigger clearance.
- Simon Wolfson
Some things are much easier to see in others than in yourself
- Ben Horowitz
We’ve all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight. It’s a terrible sin. If you don’t make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn’t count.
- Jack Welch
I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.
- Warren Buffett
Whatever you accept your employees will expect.
- Clifton Taulbert
You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.
- Joel Olsteen
Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.
- Peter Thiel
I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….
- Thomas Edison
Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.
- Peter Thiel
Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.
- Zig Ziglar
I think Les Moonves is the most highly overrated person in television.
- Donald Trump
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter Drucker
I may be over the top on this, but I just don’t want to like my competitors. I want my people to believe that whenever he and our other competitors succeed, we will be less able to do all the things we want to do.
- Phil Knight
You cannot play with fire.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have it depends solely on what you think.
- Dale Carnegie
I went to Princeton specifically to study physics.
- Jeff Bezos
I have been very fortunate to be successful in business, and I believe that it is right that people who have this type of wealth should give something back into society.
- Alisher Usmanov
There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?
- John Chambers
If you run a company, you will experience overwhelming psychological pressure to be overly positive. Stand up to the pressure, face your fear, and tell it like it is.
- Ben Horowitz
Nothing I do is done by popular demand.
- Steve Martin
I would argue heavily that the time that has been allocated to social used to come from television, and people are benefitting from it. People who are saying, ‘Aw, you’re spending all your time on Facebook, or all your time on Twitter,’ I’d like to understand what the person used to do with that time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
What would have happened to me if I would not have believed I would see the goodness of God?
- Joel Olsteen
You read these management books that say, ‘These are the hard things about running a company.’ But those aren’t really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt.
- Ben Horowitz
If you try to make such projects, unseen by others, as perfect as any human could, you’ll develop skills that other professionals don’t have.
- Steve Wozniak
Transparency is terribly important in a situation like this, as a quick reaction time, because news today is not immediate. It travels globally on the Internet. In our YouTube culture, dramatic videos take on a life of their own, beyond anyone’s control. – (on crisis management)
- David Novak
Its easy to have principles when you’re rich. The important thing is to have principles when you’re poor.
- Ray Kroc
Step up to the front, select what you want, create your plan, put your plan into action, and follow through with Persistence. Capitalist America will not rest.
- Napoleon Hill
Where there is no vision, there is no hope.
- George Washington Carver
I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
- Steve Martin
I’m anti-tax, but I’m pro-carbon tax.
- Elon Musk
Don’t fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else’s expense.
- Harvey Mackay
We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these non-millionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?
- The Millionaire Next Door
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep form meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions.
- Principle of the Bushido
[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
Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves.
- Zig Ziglar
By the end of the war (the civil war) John D. Rockefeller had established the foundations of his personal and professional life and was set to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunities beckoning him in postwar America. From this point forward, there would be no zigzags, or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business.
- Ron Chernow
In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I’m a huge believer in clarity.
- Ben Horowitz
If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
You’re got to worry about what’s coming up to stay ahead of the curve…
- Phil Knight
I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
- Steve Martin
Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.
- Steve Ballmer
The thing about hip-hop is that it’s from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.
- Russell Simmons
The sad truth is, if you push hard enough, and if you’re so stubborn that you must have things your way, God will sometimes allow you to undertake a project without His blessing or at the wrong time. The problem with that, of course, is when you start something in your own strength and in your own timing, you’re going to have to finish it and maintain it in your own strength.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m not an actor who appears on the stage and gives people advice on how to live or what to do and entertains them. It is not my specialty.
- Vagit Alekperov
I believe social responsibility begins with a strong, competitive company. Only a healthy enterprise can improve and enrich the lives of people and their communities.
- Jack Welch
The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.
- Elon Musk
Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.
- Elon Musk
I do everything on my phone as a lot of people do.
- Mark Zuckerberg
A lot of preachers’ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.
- Joel Olsteen
[In January 2011] I think Twitter is so unique that we must stay independent.
- Jack Dorsey
I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.
- Steve Martin
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
You can be a control freak only when you have weak people around you.
- Ronald Perelman
If plan A” fails — remember you have 25 letters left.
- Chris Guillebeau
I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick – it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.
- Sara Blakely
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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
Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.
- Joel Olsteen
The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.
- Howard Schultz
TV is a great big megaphone,” and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find.
- Peter Thiel
Make youself necessary to someone.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.
- Mukesh Ambani
If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison
To my mind the old masters are not art, their value is in their scarcity.
- Thomas Edison
Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.
- Michael Dell
Plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure.
- Peter Drucker
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
The Group recorded totals sales of around 3,300 property units from which approximately HK$6,810 million was generated from sales revenues attributable to the Group.
- Lee Shau Kee
Video is emerging as the key strategic application in the service provider triple play bundle of consumer entertainment, communication and online services.
- John Chambers
E – Energize Others
- Jack Welch
Take one cup of love, two cups of loyalty, three cups of forgiveness, four quarts of faith and one barrel of laughter. Take love and loyalty and mix them thoroughly with faith; blend with tenderness, kindness and understanding. Add friendship and hope. Sprinkle abundantly with laughter. Bake it with sunshine. Wrap it regularly with lots of hugs. Serve generous helpings daily.
- Zig Ziglar
I’ve always leaned toward a feminine, funky style, even in business settings. I used to paint my nails blue in 1993, before it was mainstream.
- Sara Blakely
1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.
- Peter Thiel
One has to live with the fact that some corporate decisions are going to be wrong. As long as most of the decisions are right.
- Michael Otto
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
The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.
- Napoleon Hill
Luck Follows Persistence.
- Jim Collins
