Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory?Destruction of false theories will not decrease the sum of human happiness in future, any more than it has in the past… The days of miracles have passed. I do not believe, of course, that there was ever any day of actual miracles. I cannot understand that there were ever any miracles at all. My guide must be my reason, and at thought of miracles my reason is rebellious. Personally, I do not believe that Christ laid claim to doing miracles, or asserted that he had miraculous power…Our intelligence is the aggregate intelligence of the cells which make us up. There is no soul, distinct from mind, and what we speak of as the mind is just the aggregate intelligence of cells. It is fallacious to declare that we have souls apart from animal intelligence, apart from brains. It is the brain that keeps us going. There is nothing beyond that.Life goes on endlessly, but no more in human beings than in other animals, or, for that matter, than in vegetables. Life, collectively, must be immortal, human beings, individually, cannot be, as I see it, for they are not the individuals – they are mere aggregates of cells.There is no supernatural. We are continually learning new things. There are powers within us which have not yet been developed and they will develop. We shall learn things of ourselves, which will be full of wonders, but none of them will be beyond the natural.
- Thomas Edison
Notable Quotables
My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.
- Howard Schultz
Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.
- Zig Ziglar
The thing that I’m going to focus on today is essentially the cloud that has been over Nike’s head over the last couple years.
- Phil Knight
If you’re going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill
I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation…I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire.
- Oprah Winfrey
The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met are all good communicators. It’s perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.
- Timothy Ferriss
Do what you want to do. Do what you like to do.
- Lei Jun
No company has a culture, every company is a culture.
- Peter Thiel
The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.
- Peter Thiel
God doesn’t look at how much we do, but with how much love we do it.
- Mother Teresa
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Dale Carnegie
When York’s son, hitherto Earl of March, learned that his father’s cause had devolved upon him he did not shrink. He fell upon the Earl of Wiltshire and the Welsh Lancastrians, and on February 2, 1461, at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, near Hereford, he beat and broke.
- Winston Churchill
Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
- Timothy Ferriss
Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.
- John C. Maxwell
The only time to buy these is on a day with no ‘y’ in it.
- Warren Buffett
When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do you think was discovered to be the main reason wives ran away? It was lack of appreciation.
- Dale Carnegie
In line with the objective to diversify the business of your Group, Henderson Cyber was established to focus on businesses in the telecommunications and information technology fields.
- Lee Shau Kee
From a global CEO and government leader perspective, we remain in a `show- me’ economy.
- John Chambers
Assume employees are going across a lot of networks. So you have to build in security from the home to any number of networks.
- John Chambers
Passion is everything. In fact, you’ve got to be borderline fanatical about what you do.
- Chris Gardner
I think when you’re very dedicated to something and you’re engaged fully, you become a giver.
- Russell Simmons
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
In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don’t have that in the rocket business. There’s no Foxconn in the rocket business.
- Elon Musk
He climbs highest who helps another up.
- Zig Ziglar
If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising.
- Seth Godin
Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.
- Bill Gates
In the U.S. there are many people willing to work on $9 per hour, which is causing Tasmania to lose its famous apple industry and Australia to import more and more of its fruit and food from lower cost countries. In fact, all over Australia there are warning signs of us killing or restricting our own industries.
- Gina Rinehart
People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, ‘Soave,’ and say, ‘Oh, O.K., cool.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.
- Brian Tracy
People naturally follow those stronger than themselves.
- John Maxwell
Doing a mall is not only construction of the physical place, what’s important is the merchandising mix.
- Henry Sy
If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.
- John C. Maxwell
What I most identify with is effortless fashion, looking as if someone’s not put a lot of effort into their look.
- Sara Blakely
President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.
- Harold Hamm
One out of every five page views in the United States is on Facebook!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what’s going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn’t allow for that.
- Jack Dorsey
If you don’t agree with the core principles, which are the premise of that compromise, then you have to have what I call principled confrontation. And so that is the thing that we do that I think can rub some people the wrong way.
- Travis Kalanick
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
Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
- Henry Ford
Many a false step was made by standing still.
- Timothy Ferriss
Certainly, other people can pray for you, they can believe for you, they can quote the scripture to you, but you must exercise faith for yourself. If you are always depending on somebody else to keep you happy, somebody else to encourage you or to get you out of trouble, you will live in perpetual weakness and disappointment. You must make a decision that you are going to be a believer. Take charge of your life and decide, No matter what comes against me, I believe in God. I’m going to have a positive outlook for my life! Other people’s faith can indeed bolster yours. But your own faith will bring you a miracle much faster than anybody else’s. What you believe has a much greater impact on your life than what anybody else believes.
- Joel Olsteen
I DECLARE breakthroughs are coming in my life, sudden bursts of God’s goodness. Not a trickle. Not a stream. But a flood of God’s power. A flood of healing. A flood of wisdom. A flood of favor. I am a breakthrough person and I choose to live breakthrough minded. I am expecting God to overwhelm me with His goodness and amaze me with His favor. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Everybody was writing about computers and electronics, but all I really knew about was running. It’s what I’ve chosen to do with my life.
- Phil Knight
Humans, particularly those who build things, only listen to leading indicators of good news.
- Ben Horowitz
Lack of Persistence.
- Napoleon Hill
In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.
- Ben Horowitz
Life’s most soothing things are a child’s goodnight and sweet music….
- Thomas Edison
Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.
- John C. Maxwell
There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.
- Napoleon Hill
Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo’s sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey’s angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.
- John C. Maxwell
You’re got to worry about what’s coming up to stay ahead of the curve…
- Phil Knight
Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
- Walt Disney
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
- Brian Tracy
You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.
- Elon Musk
I would summarize the quarter as a solid quarter from a revenue and earnings per share perspective and a strong quarter from an orders perspective.
- John Chambers
Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.
- Richard Branson
Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.
- George Soros
When I have spare time, I catch up on things I’ve had to postpone due to lack of time.
- Steve Wozniak
Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.
- Howard Schultz
When I was a comic in the 1980s, I was on the road somewhere every day, and I’d get back to the hotel, and it was Carson and Letterman, and I looked forward to that all day.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.
- Yoda
Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.
- Bill Gates
The garden gleams with summer jewelry. We live vy simply—but with all the essentials of life well understood & well provided for—hot baths, cold champagne, new peas, & old brandy.
- Winston Churchill
Even though about 60% of our product is bought by people who don’t use it for the actual sport, everything we did was aimed at the top.
- Phil Knight
Often the best way to develop workers – when you are sure they have the character and think they have the ability – is to take them to a deep place, throw them in and make them sink or swim.
- John D. Rockefeller
WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.
- James C. Collins
Decisiveness is a characteristic of high performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.
- Brian Tracy
There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction that goes with knowing your time, talent and abilities are not being properly used.
- Zig Ziglar
If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.
- Bill Gates
When access to information was limited, we needed to load student sup with facts. Now, when we have no scarcity of facts or the access to them, we need to load them up with understanding.
- Seth Godin
It’s absolutely true we set out to expose Microsoft’s covert activities, I feel very good about what we did … Maybe our investigation organization may have done things unsavory, but it’s not illegal. We got the truth out.
- Larry Ellison
The lesson of the Ford story is that managers and management are the specific need of the business enterprise, its specific organ, and its basic structure. We can say dogmatically that enterprise cannot do without managers. One cannot argue that management does the owner’s job by delegation. Management is needed not only because the job is too big for any one man to do himself, but because managing an enterprise is something essentially different from managing one’s own property.
- Peter Drucker
When your head of sales interviews for her next job, she won’t want to say that despite the fact that she ran a global sales force with hundreds of employees, her title was “Dude.”
- Ben Horowitz
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.
- John C. Maxwell
You’ve got to be before you can do and do before you can have.
- Zig Ziglar
Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises that the listeners do not perceive.
- Thomas Edison
I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.
- Joel Olsteen
If we live in a world where information drives what we do, the information we get becomes the most important thing. The person who chooses that information has power.
- Seth Godin
I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Initiative and starting are about neither of these. They are about “let’s see” and “try.” If there’s no clear right answer, perhaps the thing you ought to do is something new. Something new is often the right path when the world is complicated.
- Seth Godin
If you have a lot of [visionaries], you’ll have a lot of great ideas, something awesome that people will love; but you never get it done. It doesn’t ship. Nothing happens. If you have too many [execution oriented] people on your team, you’re executing like mad, things are getting built, and you’re shipping like crazy – but you’re building something that nobody wants. If you have a good balance of both in your company, you’re more likely to stay on track. Those people compliment each other.
- Caterina Fake
Enjoyment is an incredible energizer to the human spirit.
- John C. Maxwell
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
- Winston Churchill
If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.
- Elon Musk
We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.
- John C. Maxwell
Confidence is a habit that can be developed by acting as if you already had the confidence you desire to have.
- Brian Tracy
I do think there is an important artistic component in what we do. As a technology company I’ve tried to really stress that.
- Larry Page
If you always think about your dreams or goals, work steadfastly towards them and continue to challenge yourself, you will definitely be able to realise those dreams or goals.
- Tadashi Yanai
Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
- Timothy Ferriss
On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
- Bill Gates
The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.
- Walt Disney
The Internet economy continues to create unprecedented growth opportunities for people, companies and countries on a global basis.
- John Chambers
I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.
- Timothy Ferriss
We knew that Lyft was going to raise a ton of money. And we are going [to their investors], Just so you know, we’re going to be fund-raising after this, so before you decide whether you want to invest in them, just make sure you know that we are going to be fund-raising immediately after.
- Travis Kalanick
I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.
- Thomas Edison
Being an Entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss of death
- Elon Musk
Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris.
- Peter Thiel
