God’s got you in the palm of His hand. You won’t leave one second before your time. If God wants you to be here, then you’re going to be here.
- Joel Olsteen
Notable Quotables
What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.
- Admiral Jim Stockdale
People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, ‘Soave,’ and say, ‘Oh, O.K., cool.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.
- Elon Musk
The future of the world’s film industry is in China because we have 1.3 billion people.
- Wang Jianlin
I think there’s a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they’re not sufficient because markets don’t look after social needs.
- George Soros
I’m not a businessman — I’m a business, man.
- Jay-Z
EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
- Peter Thiel
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
- Jeff Bezos
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Andrew Carnegie
What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
- Larry Page
The patterns of success and failure we see among firms faced with sustaining and disruptive technology change are a natural or systematic result of good managerial decisions. That is, in fact, why disruptive technologies confront innovators with such a dilemma. Working harder, being smarter, investing more aggressively, and listening more astutely to customers are all solutions to the problems posed by new sustaining technologies. But these paradigms of sound management are useless—even counterproductive, in many instances—when dealing with disruptive technology.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it.
- Seth Godin
Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.
- John C. Maxwell
If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.
- Ray Kroc
While a definitely optimistic future would need engineers to design underwater cities and settlements in space, an indefinitely optimistic future calls for more bankers and lawyers.
- Peter Thiel
See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.
- Joel Olsteen
America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.
- Elon Musk
The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Some people are so belligerent in their communication style that people just stop talking when they are in the room. If every time anyone brings up an issue with the marketing organization, the VP of marketing jumps down their throats, then guess what topic will never come up? This behavior can become so bad that nobody brings up any topic when the jerk is in the room. As a result, communication across the executive staff breaks down and the entire company slowly degenerates. Note that this only happens if the jerk in question is unquestionably brilliant. Otherwise, nobody will care when she attacks them. The bite only has impact if it comes from a big dog. If one of your big dogs destroys communication on your staff, you need to send her to the pound.
- Ben Horowitz
Anyone would fight for things that matter, true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter
- Peter Thiel
If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying.
- Joel Olsteen
I know I could be the host of ‘SportsCenter’ in two years if I changed my show today to sports.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.
- Bill Gates
When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.
- Larry Ellison
A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.
- Herb Kelleher
The six people who had the biggest impact on my life were all women. Had I been sexist, my life would have been far less fulfilling.
- Zig Ziglar
[Retail] seemed more interesting than what I was doing.
- Michael Balmuth
It doesn’t matter how many people you offend, as long as you’re getting your message to your consumers. I say to those people who do not want to offend anybody: You are going to have a very, very difficult time having meaningful advertising.
- Phil Knight
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
- Elon Musk
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
Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give him one of yours.
- Zig Ziglar
We would be interested in anything used by neurologists, such as treatments for epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and pain medication.
- David Pyott
I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.
- Winston Churchill
A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.
- Joel Olsteen
Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.
- Harvey Mackay
In business, just the opposite is often true; silence means dissent. Have you ever been in a meeting where you sense there is obvious disagreement, but the disagreement never really gets put on the table? This what I call the Slow No’s.
- David Novak
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world
- George Washington Carver
Do it now! can affect every phase of your life. It can help you do the things you should do but don’t feel like doing. It can keep you from procrastinating when an unpleasant duty faces you. But it can also help you do those things that you want to do. It helps you seize those precious moments that, if lost, may never be retrieved.
- Napoleon Hill
Extraordinary results are directlydetermined by how narrow you can make your focus.
- Gary Keller
Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.
- Peter Drucker
Those who do not know how to fight worry die young.
- Dale Carnegie
People are chasing cash, not happiness. When you chase money, you’re going to lose. You’re just going to. Even if you get the money, you’re not going to be happy.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.
- Jeff Bezos
A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.
- Seth Godin
Where I get my energy is: ‘How can I make it better?’
- Sara Blakely
When the economy does pick up, … so will … spending.
- John Chambers
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
- Albert Einstein
I believe that continued strong consumer acceptance of our products at retail and the strengthening of our organization will enable us to manage through the challenges in our U. S. footwear business and lay the foundation for another round of growth.
- Phil Knight
By combining broadband Internet, phone and video services over a single cable line, we are taking a major step towards implementing future integrated data, voice and video telecommunications on a mass market scale.
- John Chambers
Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?
- Rupert Murdoch
Ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman cohabited first.
- Winston Churchill
The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’ … Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time.
- Mark Zuckerberg
We have an average household net worth of $3.7 million. Of course, some of our cohorts have accumulated much more. Nearly 6 percent have a net worth of over $10 million. Again, these people skew our average upward. The typical (median, or 50th percentile) millionaire household has a net worth of $1.6 million.
- Thomas J Stanley
Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards–and living up to them–is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.
- Seth Godin
I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work.
- Jack Dorsey
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.
- Stephen R. Covey
We are interested in any sector with good growth potential.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Things get much easier if one jumps on the bandwagon of existing trends.
- Lei Jun
Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates’ colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.
- Peter Drucker
Winning isn’t everything but wanting to win is.
- Zig Ziglar
We, in short, propose to tax luxuries, monopolies, and superfluities, but we scrupulously avoid taxing the necessaries of life.
- Winston Churchill
Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.
- Jeff Bezos
If you give, you will be blessed.
- Joel Olsteen
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
- Jack Welch
The Pitch is your mechanism for persuasion. Persuasion is the goal. You’re trying to convince them of someone or something, and they might initially be resistant. This isn’t a nice casual conversation; it’s the Guerrilla P.R. version of a first strike.
- Michael Levine
Wal-Mart became Wal-Mart by ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things.
- Sam Walton
You may think you’re getting the short end of the stick, but when it’s all said and done, God will make sure that you don’t lose anything truly valuable. Moreover, He’ll make sure you get your just reward. Your responsibility is to remain calm and peaceable even when those around you are not.
- Joel Olsteen
The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.
- Bill Gates
The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more things you’ll have to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
You weren’t created to simply exist, to endure, or to go through the motions; you were created to be really alive.
- Joel Olsteen
You don’t build a business –you build people– and then people build the business.
- Zig Ziglar
So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work – what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business?
- Ray Dalio
Starbucks is committed to evolving and enhancing our customer experience with innovative and wholesome food offerings.
- Howard Schultz
I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
- Elon Musk
Personal initiative is the power that inspires the completion of that which one begins. It is the power that starts all action. No person is free until he learns to do his own thinking and gains the courage to act on his own.
- Napoleon Hill
If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.
- Sam Walton
If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.
- Zig Ziglar
Frankly speaking, I decided to become a businessman at the moment when I understood that it is possible, because I grew up in a country where it was not possible. There existed even a special article in the penal code of the Soviet Union which punished entrepreneurial activity.
- Vladimir Potanin
Rockefeller succeeded because he believed in the long –term prospects of the business and never treated it as a mirage that would soon fade.
- Ron Chernow
We have two turbines in our company: One is engineering, and the other is operations. And so our business people are on equal footing with our engineering and technology culture. Cars are moving because of what we do, so there’s an imperative to go beyond just the technology.
- Travis Kalanick
Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.
- Oprah Winfrey
Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.
- Jack Welch
Globalization replaced technology as the hope for the future. Since the ’90s migration “from bricks to clicks” didn’t work as hoped, investors went back to bricks (housing) and BRICs (globalization). The result was another bubble, this time in real estate.
- Peter Thiel
Let’s think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it’s okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea… well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.”
- Elon Musk
greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
- James C. Collins
It also makes clear that it is her meeting and will take as much or as little time as she needs. During the meeting, since it’s the employee’s meeting, the manager should do 10 percent of the talking and 90 percent of the listening. Note that this is the opposite of most one-on-ones.
- Ben Horowitz
I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons
- Russell Simmons
The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
- Dale Carnegie
As an immigrant, I chose to live in America because it is one of the freest and most vibrant nations in the world. And as an immigrant, I feel an obligation to speak up for immigration policies that will keep America the most economically robust, creative and freedom-loving nation in the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
I know something about how to build constituencies in an independent way.
- Michael Bloomberg
Save someone’s face once and your influence with him rises. Save his face every time you can, and there is practically nothing he won’t do for you.
- Dale Carnegie
Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around.
- Winston Churchill
Life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot “diversify” herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.
- Peter Thiel
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
- Henry Ford
The pancreas is by far the most complex organ in the body.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Change is the price of progress.
- Napoleon Hill
I’m Phil Knight, and I don’t believe in advertising.
- Phil Knight