Notable Quotables

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

- Winston Churchill

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

Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.

- Larry Page

We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.

- Walt Disney

There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.

- Henry Ford

How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.

- Winston Churchill

The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.

- Peter Thiel

We have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good – always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, ‘Don’t be evil’ seems the easiest way to summarize it.

- Sergey Brin

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

- Albert Einstein

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

[Medco] had a different culture with respect to spending money. I believe health care demands that we be as frugal as possible and pay money for things that matter. We’re pretty frugal. Everybody has the same size offices. Everybody has the same size cube. There are no perks.

- George Paz

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

- Napoleon Hill

Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died maintaining his right of way – He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.

- Dale Carnegie

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

- Winston Churchill

TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE Principle 1—Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Principle 2—Give honest and sincere appreciation. Principle 3—Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.

- James C. Collins

I know Bo Xilai well. But our relationship was based on our work, we didn’t have a personal relationship.

- Wang Jianlin

Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team.

- James C. Collins

Waiting isn’t easy, which is precisely why it is so effective when engaging with other people.

- Seth Godin

Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.

- Alexander Graham Bell

It turned out there was alot to learn about running a store. And, of course, what really drove Sam was that competition across the street – John Dunham over at the Sterling Store. Sam was always over there checking on John. Always. Looking at his prices, looking at his displays, looking at what was going on. He was always looking for a way to do a better job. I don’t remember the details, but I remember some kind of panty-price-war they got into. Later on, long after we left Newport, and John had retired, we would seem him and he would laugh about Sam always being in his store. But I’m sure it aggravate him quite a bit early on. John had never had good competition before Sam. Helen Walton (Sam’s Wife): That Newport store was really the beginning of where Walmart is today. We did everything. We would wash windows, sweep floors, trim windows. We did all the stockroom work checked the freight in. Everything it took to run a store. We had to keep expenses to a minimum. That is where it started, year ago. Our money was made by controlling expenses. That, and Sam always being ingeniious. He never stopped trying to do something different. One thing, though I never forgave him for making me clean out that damned ice cream machine…

- Bud Walton

Juggling is about throwing, not catching That’s why it’s so difficult to learn how to juggle. We’re conditioned to make the catch, to hurdle whatever is in our way to save the day, to—no matter what—not drop the ball. If you spend your time and energy and focus on catching, it’s inevitable that your throws will suffer. You’ll get plenty of positive feedback for the catches you make, but you’ll always be behind, because the throws you manage to make will be ever less useful. Paradoxically, if you get better at throwing, the catches take care of themselves. The only way to get better at throwing, though, is to throw.

- Seth Godin

Hitler is a monster of wickedness, insatiable in his lust for blood and plunder. Not content with having all Europe under his heel, or else terrorized into various forms of abject submission, he must now carry his work of butchery and desolation among the vast multitudes of Russia and of Asia. The terrible military machine, which we and the rest of the civilized world so foolishly, so supinely, so insensately allowed the Nazi gangsters to build up year by year from almost nothing, cannot stand idle lest it rust or fall to pieces. It must be in continual motion, grinding up human lives and trampling down the homes and the rights of hundreds of millions of men. Moreover it must be fed, not only with flesh but with oil.

- Winston Churchill

Motivation doesn’t last, neither does shower. That why we need it everyday.

- Zig Ziglar

Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that’s what a number of us are trying to do.

- Richard Branson

You can be committed to Church but not committed to Christ, but you cannot be committed to Christ and not committed to church.

- Joel Olsteen

If your business is not a brand, it is just a commodity.

- Donald Trump

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

- John C. Maxwell

Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you’re good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.

- Bill Gates

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

- John C. Maxwell

Follow the GOLDEN RULE. Do unto others as you would have them do onto you.

- David Robinson

God never promised that we wouldn’t have challenges. In fact, He said just the opposite. His word says, ‘Be truly glad!…these trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…’ so if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of His return.

- Joel Olsteen

If you’re going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.

- Seth Godin

The U.S. has done a great job improving productivity. We’re making a lot more steel in Dearborn with fewer people. The unions have accepted much better work rules.

- Alexei Mordashov

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.

- Jeff Bezos

Certainly, none of us enjoy going through struggles, but you have to understand that your struggle may be an opportunity for advancement and promotion. The very thing you are fighting against so tenaciously may be the springboard that catapults you to a new level of excellence. Your challenges may become your greatest assets.

- Joel Olsteen

So now, having learned from machines, organizations are applying the same logic to people. Letting people in the organization use their best judgment turns out to be faster and cheaper—but only if you hire the right people and reward them for having the right attitude.

- Seth Godin

How can I create something that critics will criticize?

- Seth Godin

The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.

- Seth Godin

On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you’re doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you’re mediocre. You’re free to contribute.

- Seth Godin

Luke: What’s in there? Yoda: Only what you take with you.

- Yoda

In philosophy, politics, and business, too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.

- Peter Thiel

Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it. This describes Europe since the early 1970s, when the continent succumbed to undirected bureaucratic drift. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow-motion crisis, and nobody is in charge. The European Central Bank doesn’t stand for anything but improvisation: the U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar; the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro. Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse.

- Peter Thiel

So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.

- Peter Drucker

You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.

- Jerry Seinfeld

The first thing to recognize is that no startup has time to do optional things.

- Ben Horowitz

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

- Winston Churchill

I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that’s the reason so many liked him and did business in his store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. (on role of managing partner)

- Inez Threet

You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.

- Bill Gates

Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.

- Caterina Fake

It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word ‘pessimist’ was not in our vocabulary at that time. It’s a modern ‘invention’ which I believe we should ‘dis-invent.’

- Zig Ziglar

There is plenty capital available, just a shortage of good ideas

- Napoleon Hill

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

- John C. Maxwell

I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.

- P.T. Barnum

This is not checkers; this is motherfuckin’ chess. Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves, the market moves, the people move. As a result, like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek, there is always a move. You think you have no moves? How about taking your company public with $2 million in trailing revenue and 340 employees, with a plan to do $75 million in revenue the next year? I made that move. I made it in 2001, widely regarded as the worst time ever for a technology company to go public. I made it with six weeks of cash left. There is always a move.

- Ben Horowitz

I read Google News and use NetNewsWire to keep up with general and tech news.

- Steve Wozniak

No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP.

- Peter Thiel

A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.

- Seth Godin

On scores of occassions, when I have faced emergencies, some of them so grave that my life was in jeopardy, I have been miraculously guided past these difficulties through the influence of my Invisible Counselors. My original purpose in conducting Council meetings with imaginary beings, was soley that of impressing my own subconscious mind, through the principle of auto-suggestion, with certain characteristcs which I desired to acquire. In more recent years, my experimentation has taken on a different trend. I now go to my imaginary counselors with every difficult problem which confronts me and my clients. The results are often astonishing, although I do not depend entirerely on this form of counsel.

- Napoleon Hill

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like – they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge?

- Winston Churchill

DAY FOURTEEN I DECLARE that I will use my words to bless people. I will speak favor and victory over my family, friends, and loved ones. I will help call out their seeds of greatness by telling them I’m proud of you, I love you, you are amazing, you are talented, you are beautiful, you will do great things in life.” This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

The world got enamored with smartphones and tablets, but what’s interesting is those devices don’t do everything that needs to be done. Three-D printing, virtual-reality computing, robotics are all controlled by PCs.

- Michael Dell

I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.

- Howard Schultz

If you don’t plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.

- Zig Ziglar

I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.

- Joel Olsteen

If your offering itself isn’t remarkable, then it’s invisible — no matter how much you spend on well-crafted advertising.

- Seth Godin

You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. It’s an awesome responsibility.

- Zig Ziglar

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

In order to become rich, you need to learn to build systems that can work without you. .

- Robert Kiyosaki

I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.

- Jerry Seinfeld

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

- Peter Drucker

Remember: There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.

- Timothy Ferriss

When you deal with change, you have a couple choices: you can lead it and make the rules, or you can be a fast follower, or you can be a slow follower.

- Charles Ergen

It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

- Mark Cuban

PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

- Napoleon Hill

In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.

- Ben Horowitz

If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.

- Sam Walton

Casino gambling is colorful and dramatic and theatrical.

- Stephen Wynn

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