One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
About HBO’s “Silicon Valley”: It’s a Good Show.
- Peter Thiel
People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.
- John C. Maxwell
In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.
- Joel Olsteen
When you go through enough dark places, you don’t complain about little things. You don’t lose your joy because you got stuck in traffic; you don’t get offended because a coworker was rude to you. You’ve been through too much to let that sour you.
- Joel Olsteen
There’s been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that’s already legal, you’ll never get it.
- Travis Kalanick
Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it.
- Henry Ford
Our history is based on extending the brand to categories within the guardrails of Starbucks.
- Howard Schultz
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.
- Dale Carnegie
People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.
- Bill Gates
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.
- Bill Gates
When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.
- Henry Ford
How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That’s a really, really, really large and complex set of skills. A lot of it is on-the-job training, combined with excellent mentorship.
- Ben Horowitz
Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.
- Joel Olsteen
Winners expect to win, they expect victory, and they expect success!
- Zig Ziglar
Time well spent results in more money to spend, more money to save, and more time to vacation.
- Zig Ziglar
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard
Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s amazing how people will give when you don’t ask. Many of them send money because they believe in the message.
- Joel Olsteen
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
I’m a positive person, so I don’t get bogged down with it. If you’re expecting that, if you wall in that, if you practice that, then you’ll attract what you fear.
- Denzel Washington
It’s the poorer people in tropical zones who will get really hit by climate change – as well as some ecosystems, which nobody wants to see disappear.
- Bill Gates
Almost everything is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.
- Azim Premji
You’ve got to listen to what God’s telling you and not to what other people may tell you. People will try to talk you out of the dream in your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Look at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. They have all entered many sectors, and actually, in many of those sectors, they weren’t as early as Tencent.
- Ma Huateng
It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.
- Dale Carnegie
Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.
- Steve Jobs
My father died during open-heart surgery on March 29 of my senior year in college. I was getting set to go to law school. I remember sitting in the waiting room when the doctor walked in. I said to myself, The worst possible thing just happened. What will you do?
- Stephen Wynn
This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines. If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace.
- Timothy Ferriss
With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.
- Seth Godin
History is more or less bunk.
- Henry Ford
Being first is more important to me [than earning money]. I have so much money. Whatever money is, it’s just a method of keeping score now. I mean, I certainly don’t need more money
- Larry Ellison
You measure your people and you take action on those that don’t measure up.
- Jack Welch
You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.
- Og Mandino
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Selling your company to the media is a necessary part of selling it to everyone else.
- Peter Thiel
The goal is to be able to live your life the way Michael Jordan played basketball, or Marvin Gaye sang a song. To be able to feel the way you feel when you laugh at a joke, but to feel that way all the time.
- Russell Simmons
The knowledge worker is not poverty-prone. He is in danger of alienation, to use the fashionable word for boredom, frustration, and silent despair.
- Peter Drucker
We want to be the most predictable, boring growth company.
- John Chambers
Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and time, usually hours.
- Timothy Ferriss
The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.
- Oprah Winfrey
It’s vital that you accept yourself and learn to be happy with who God made you to be. If you want to truly enjoy your life, you must be at peace with yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions, with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy and pride.
- Dale Carnegie
Most people have never thought through how they’re going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Instead of choosing to focus in the liability column, I chose to focus in the asset column.
- Robert Kiyosaki
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
Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.
- Donald Trump
London, a city where creativity and innovation have always flourished, provides a significant home for Starbucks and a significant gateway into Europe.
- Howard Schultz
I am a former sabre fencer and fenced as part of the Uzbek republic team.
- Alisher Usmanov
New research shows that you will be dead longer than you will be alive.
- Zig Ziglar
Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.
- Dale Carnegie
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
I always knew I wanted to run a business someday.
- Michael Dell
There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
- Timothy Ferriss
The saving of money is solely a matter of habit. It is literally true that man, through the Law of Habit, shapes his own personality. Through repetition, any act indulged in a few times becomes a habit, and the mind appears to be nothing more than a mass of motivating forces growing out of our daily habits. When once fixed in the mind a habit voluntarily impels one to action.
- Napoleon Hill
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
- Warren Buffett
One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‘We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.
- Bill Gates
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
- Henry Ford
Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
- Dale Carnegie
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.
- Winston Churchill
He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.
- David Novak
Zero to One is about how to build companies that create new things. It draws on everything I’ve learned directly as a co-founder of PayPal and Palantir and then an investor in hundreds of startups, including Facebook and SpaceX.
- Peter Thiel
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
- Robert J. Sawyer
My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.
- Howard Schultz
Much like us, our customers are rigorously working to improve their profitability and capacity for innovation. For us, this means doing everything possible when it comes to efficiency, effectiveness, and innovations – and all that on the basis of the highest quality. After all, quality creates trust – and trust creates orders. In short, we need to constantly become better and better at the high level we are already operating at.
- Elmar Degenhart
Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.
- Sam Walton
My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.
- Bill Gates
We want the brand to stand for the same thing all over the world
- Phil Knight
He was contradicting everything he’d taught us about not running sick and making it worse. I knew it was just to make me acknowledge that his word was law, no matter how arbitrary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take. I was so mad I ran a personal record.
- Phil Knight
Lack of Self-Discipline.
- Napoleon Hill
Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O.
- Ben Horowitz
From my experience, there are so many regulations for investing in the United States that they become an impediment, a barrier to investing.
- Michael Otto
As he brooded over how to raise the money, he was informed by his father that he had always intended to give each of his children $1,000.00 at age twenty-one, and he now offered to advance John the money. But, John, he added lest his son expect miracles, the rate is ten. Having just retrieved a thousand dollars from Hewitt, Bill might have been looking for a high return on these idle funds. John knew his father too well to plead for a gift and accepted the 10 percent loan, which was higher than the prevailing rate. So on April 1, 1858 backed up by this borrowed money, John D. Rockefeller left Isaac Hewitt and joined the partnership of Clark and Rockefeller at 32 River Street (in Cleveland). At eighteen, he was catapulted to a partner’s rank in a commission house. It was a great thing to be my own employer, said Rockefeller. Mentally I swelled with pride – a partner in a firm with $4,000 capital! The moment was fraught with meaning for him and after his first day at work, he went back to the Cheshire Street house, fell to his knees, and implored the Lord to bless his new enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that’s not much – unless you’ve been warned that if you’re even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.
- Zig Ziglar
While there were a number of highlights, it was probably the U.S. that topped the highlight list with strong order growth of approximately 20 percent year over year. This is better order growth than we’ve experienced in the last six quarters in the U.S..
- John Chambers
When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right. It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
- Steve Jobs
All great truths are simple in final analysis, and easily understood; if they are not, they are not great truths.
- Napoleon Hill
The price of success is much lower than the price of failure.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m not even sure what it’s getting at … personalities are very wrong although mine is closer … don’t forget that my purpose was inspired by the values of the Homebrew Computer Club along with ideas of the value of such machines and Steve J. wasn’t around and didn’t attend the club so he was the one learning about such social impact of the future.
- Steve Wozniak
An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting
- Thomas Jefferson
Insulation prevents you from making the change and finding the understanding you set out to achieve in the first place.
- Seth Godin
Don’t water your weeds.
- Harvey Mackay
All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.
- Napoleon Hill
Too few people in computer science are aware of some of the informational challenges in biology and their implications for the world. We can store an incredible amount of data very cheaply
- Sergey Brin
Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
- Jim Collins
Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.
- David Packard
Facing reality sounds simple, but it isn’t. I found it hard to get people to see a situation for what it is and not for what it was, or what they hoped it would be.
- Jack Welch
Contrary to popular belief, the price of real estate does go down on occasion.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go.
- Winston Churchill
We think that athletes are human beings and have foibles just like human beings do…
- Phil Knight
Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.
- John C. Maxwell
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
- Bill Gates
I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.
- Bill Gates
The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.
- Timothy Ferriss
Pessimism doesn’t grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
- Harvey Mackay
