That’s the hard thing about hard things—there is no formula for dealing with them.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
Developing a customer who loves the business so much that they become an unpaid and passionate marketer for the company.
- Clay Clark
Actresses are kind of a little crazy.
- Russell Simmons
God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner.
- Joel Olsteen
If standard of living is your #1 objective, then quality of life almost never improves. But, if quality of life is your #1 objective, then standard of living improves.
- Zig Ziglar
The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.
- Wang Jianlin
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
Never fear to negotiate, but never negotiate out of fear.
- Jack Nadel
I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.
- Joel Olsteen
You need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?
- Ben Horowitz
In the game of life, before you get anything out, you must put something in!
- Zig Ziglar
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Access to play should be a kid’s inalienable right.
- Phil Knight
People will come to the pharmacy because they want the advice.
- Stefano Pessina
Employees were invited to send complaints or suggestions directly to him and he always took an interest in their affairs. He was the best employer of his time, instituting hospitalization and retirement pensions. He was a fine boss if workers abided by the rules, but if they did something foolish, like show interest in a union, they promptly forfeited his sympathy. Rockefeller never acknowledged the legitamacy of organized labor, nor did he tolerate union organizers on his premises.
- Ron Chernow
A story is at its best when it’s not intrusive, when it brings value to a platform’s consumers, and when it fits in as a natural step along the customer’s path to making a purchase.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.
- W. Clement Stone
For years we thought of ourselves as a production-oriented company, meaning we put all our emphasis on designing and manufacturing the products. But now we understand the most important thing we do is market the product… Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool.
- Phil Knight
It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.
- Timothy Ferriss
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.
- Elon Musk
Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.
- Steve Martin
The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.
- Yoda
A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.
- Peter Drucker
People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
- Peter Thiel
I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.
- Elon Musk
I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.
- Elon Musk
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
The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.
- Winston Churchill
Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.
- Jack Dorsey
Life’s a journey. It’s a journey about discovering limits.
- Larry Ellison
Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.
- Bill Gates
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
Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above—that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager’s performance.
- Peter Drucker
You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
- John C. Maxwell
There is no sure path to success, but the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone.
- Timothy Ferriss
You can’t move people to action unless you first move them with emotion. The heart comes before the head…to lead yourself use your head, to lead others use your heart.
- John Maxwell
All marketers are storytellers. Only the losers are liars.
- Seth Godin
I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.
- Harry Truman
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
- Theodore Roosevelt
[As a child] I would just question things…
- Elon Musk
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Don’t lose youself on the way to the top.
- Jack Welch
We want to be the most predictable, boring growth company.
- John Chambers
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
- John C. Maxwell
Do you ever worry’ asked Dale Carnegie, I replied: ‘No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?’
- Henry Ford
At the start of any business, keeping the cash flowing in is the entrepreneur’s most IMPORTANT JOB.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The organizational architecture is really that a centipede walks on hundred legs and one or two don’t count. So if I lose one or two legs, the process will go on, the organization will go on, the growth will go on.
- Mukesh Ambani
Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.
- Napoleon Hill
The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios… The idea that you can actually predict what’s going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
- George Soros
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
- Peter Drucker
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.
- Timothy Ferriss
Starbucks has changed the rules of engagement for the music industry.
- Howard Schultz
I believe God’s keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, someway, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can’t give God something without God giving you more in return, whether it’s peace or joy or satisfaction.
- Joel Olsteen
Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.
- Seth Godin
From a global CEO and government leader perspective, we remain in a `show- me’ economy.
- John Chambers
The Field of Dreams conceit is especially popular in Silicon Valley, where engineers are biased toward building cool stuff rather than selling it. But customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.
- Peter Thiel
Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The industry growth is there, and it’s there probably for the next decade. So how well we execute will determine what role we play.
- John Chambers
I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.
- Mark Zuckerberg
When you have got a thing where you want, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.
- Winston Churchill
After my death, I want to be remembered as Africa’s greatest industrialist.
- Aliko Dangote
Success in dealing with people depends on a sympathetic grasp of the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
My revenue was $4 million my first year in business, off of one $20 item.
- Sara Blakely
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’
- Jeff Bezos
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
- Jeff Bezos
I think Bible principles are principles for life.
- Joel Olsteen
Uber is “way more” evil than Google, the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley.
- Peter Thiel
I’d work in the store all day, then take off around closing and drive that windy road over the Mississippi River, and then into Tennessee with an old homemade trailer I had hitched to my car. I’d stuff that car and trailer with whatever I could get good deals on – usually on soft lines, ladies panties and nylons, men’s shirts and I’d bring them back, price them low and just blow that stuff out of the store.
- Sam Walton
There’s a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There’s a lot of sex, you know, in art. There’s a lot of naked women and men, and there’s intrigue, there’s fakery. It’s a real microcosm of the larger world.
- Steve Martin
No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.
- Harvey Mackay
The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader.
- Albert Einstein
In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.
- Lee Shau Kee
Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t be impatient. It’s not over until God says it’s over.
- Joel Olsteen
Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.
- Peter Thiel
Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.
- Elon Musk
Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money, non-monopolists can’t.
- Peter Thiel
I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
- Timothy Ferriss
The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.
- Zig Ziglar
Boadicea then turned upon Verulamium (St Albans). Here was another trading centre, to which high civic rank had been accorded. A like total slaughter and obliteration was inflicted. “No less”, according to Tacitus, “than seventy thousand citizens and allies were slain” in these three cities. “For the barbarians would have no capturing, no selling, nor any kind of traffic usual in war; they would have nothing but killing, by sword, cross, gibbet, or fire.” These grim words show us an inexpiable war like that waged between Carthage and her revolted mercenaries two centuries before. Some high modern authorities think these numbers are exaggerated; but there is no reason why London should not have contained thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, and Colchester and St Albans between them about an equal number. If the butcheries in the countryside are added the estimate of Tacitus may well stand. This is probably the most horrible episode which our Island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.
- Winston Churchill
Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down
- Winston Churchill
There are a great many wetless” bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.
- Dale Carnegie
Government is dysfunctional.
- Michael Bloomberg
A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.
- Timothy Ferriss
Jim Cathcart is one of the brightest, dearest and most comprehensive speakers I know. In this powerful book he will help you discover and express your true self, accelerate your success and improve your quality of life.
- Jack Canfield
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
- Napoleon Hill
What we know about the destination resort business is clearly established. But it’s all about one thing, and one thing only. All of the razzmatazz and jazz we hear about facilities and everything else doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. It’s customer experience that determines the longevity and endurance of these enterprises.
- Stephen Wynn
There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It’s not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well.
- George Soros
In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you’re going to be 20 years from now is how well you’re doing in your education system.
- Bill Gates
The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.
- Michael Bloomberg
I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.
- Walt Disney
If you learn a profession well and work hard, your future is secure and you will inevitably rise to the top, drive a fast car, and find beautiful people of the opposite sex pursuing you relentlessly. Like so many romantic promises, this is an illusion. What your parents and professors don’t tell you is that the closer you get to the top, the better you must know how to sell because everyone at the top sells better. If you are going to the top of your profession you must sell well, too.
- Jerry Vass
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.
- Steve Martin
We gradually came to the realization that we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese people.
- Sergey Brin
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
- John C. Maxwell
I’d say my mother made more of a difference to me than anyone else did. I know that’s a conventional and perhaps mundane answer, but my family was blown apart at the start of World War II.
- Herb Kelleher
