Don’t equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don’t let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you’d like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.
- Harvey Mackay
Notable Quotables
My training of cold-calling and everyone under the sun telling me no, and my keeping going, was a huge part of the first two years of Spanx.
- Sara Blakely
How you look, talk, and market your business is what should be keeping everyone busy.
- Bryan Smith
Takings were down by 25 per cent as a result of the security scares following the London bombings.
- Michael Ward
Small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now).
- Peter Thiel
Exchanging practically all the British infantry and artillery in India for Territorial batteries and battalions, and the formation of the 27th, 28th and 29th Divisions of regular troops. The New Zealand contingent must be escorted to Australia and there, with 25,000 Australians, await convoys to Europe. Meanwhile the leading troops of the Canadian Army, about 25,000 strong, had to be brought across the Atlantic. All this was of course additional to the main situation in the North Sea and to the continued flow of drafts, reinforcements and supplies across the Channel. Meanwhile the enemy’s Fleet remained intact, waiting, as we might think, its moment to strike; and his cruisers continued to prey upon the seas. To strengthen our cruiser forces we had already armed and commissioned twenty-four liners as auxiliary cruisers, and had armed defensively fifty-four merchantmen. Another forty suitable vessels were in preparation. In order to lighten the strain in the Indian Ocean and to liberate our light cruisers for their proper work of hunting down the enemy, I proposed the employment of our old battleships (Canopus class) as escorts to convoys.
- Winston Churchill
As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot.
- Ray Kroc
Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.
- George Paz
Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.
- John C. Maxwell
There is slow growth, but it is positive slow growth. At the same time, ratios of debt-to-incomes go down. That’s a beautiful deleveraging.
- Ray Dalio
A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.
- Zig Ziglar
Competition and capitalism are opposites.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t know what causes a person to be ambitious, but it is a fact that I have been overblessed with drive and ambition from the time I hit the ground.
- Sam Walton
There is always room for those who can be relied upon to delivery the goods when they say they will.
- Napoleon Hill
If you think something hard is impossible, you’ll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth.
- Peter Thiel
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
If you have any more than three priorities, you have no priorities.
- Maggie Fox
With vision and foresight, thorough consideration, careful planning and steadfast commitment, the New World Group will continue to maintain its ambitious yet healthy investment strategy to grow together with the nation and strive for greater success in the future.
- Cheng Yu-tung
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
- Winston Churchill
Facing a market which awaited exploration and development, the Group decided to become a pioneer in its economic reform by taking up the responsibility to engage in the development of the Mainland.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible.
- Donald Trump
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- Warren Buffett
Success is not what you have, but who you are.
- Bo Bennett
Steve Jobs had very strong feelings about what makes a company great, what makes products great. He more or less chose Tim Cook to be in that role, in that position.
- Steve Wozniak
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.
- Zig Ziglar
When we think about online learning, it’s such ‘early days.’ Bill Gates is a wildly smart insightful guy. Yet, even a guy as smart and insightful as that, 30 years ago can say things like, ‘Who’s every going to need more than 640K of memory?’
- Reed Hastings
There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.
- Winston Churchill
When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmmm?
- Yoda
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and it’s hard to trust somebody that you don’t know.
- Ben Horowitz
Not only was the casual shoe effort a failure, but it was diluting our trademark and hurting us in running.
- Phil Knight
God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.
- Joel Olsteen
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Success is doing what you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want and as much as you want.
- Tony Robbins
To me, job titles don’t matter. Everyone is in sales. It’s the only way we stay in business.
- Harvey Mackay
Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools.
- Og Mandino
Direct your energy toward achieving a goal, and tackle the problems with an emphasis on edging closer to a successful result.
- Harvey Mackay
We are focusing on the increasing need for mobility and growing demand from our industrial customers. The production volume for vehicles weighing up to six tons is expected to rise to between 100 million and 105 million vehicles. Furthermore, installation of electronics and software will continue to grow substantially, driven by growing demands from end-users and increasingly strict legal requirements for safety and energy consumption. It is partly on this basis that we are aiming for profitable sales of over €50 billion in 2020.
- Elmar Degenhart
All salesmen are actors: their priority is persuasion, not sincerity. That’s why the word “salesman” can be a slur and the used car dealer is our archetype of shadiness. But we only react negatively to awkward, obvious salesmen—that is, the bad ones.
- Peter Thiel
AP pleaded guilty to criminal theft of our software. Let me be clear. I’m not accusing SAP of anything. What did SAP do? Did you engage in criminal behavior and steal lots of Oracle software? Yes. That’s SAP. Who was CEO when you were doing all this criminal stuff? Leo.
- Larry Ellison
Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials).
- Peter Thiel
There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.
- Richard Branson
I’m skeptical that the novel will be ‘re-invented.’
- Jeff Bezos
The little things in life frequently make the difference in success and failure.
- Zig Ziglar
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” This question sounds easy because it’s straightforward. Actually, it’s very hard to answer. It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon.
- Peter Thiel
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater their power to harm us.
- Voltaire
Bolsheviks create their own difficulties which they successfully overcame later.
- Winston Churchill
I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
- Oprah Winfrey
You know, there is always times where you feel discouraged and things coming against you, but I don’t know if I ever wanted to throw in the towel.
- Joel Olsteen
To win without risk is to triumph without glory.
- Confucius
The higher the level of leadership people want to reach, the greater the sacrifices they will have to make?
- John Maxwell
I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.
- Elon Musk
Stealing Coach Wooden’s sets of three, I have come up with a formula for success no matter what kind of business you happen to be in: 1) Make sure you have the right people around you; 2) Have fun and drive results by recognizing the achievements of others; and 3) Be a passionate learner, and pass on what you know to others. Not only will this make you a success in business, but it will make you a success in life.
- David Novak
2006, I started ‘WineLibrary TV.’ To build ‘WineLibrary TV,’ I started using Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter in 2008.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity.
- P.T. Barnum
Esta es la clave: las únicas promesas que se avivarán en su vida y terminarán convirtiéndose en realidad son las promesas en las que usted se levanta y dice: Sí, eso es para mí”. Tiene que entrar en acuerdo con Dios y permitir que eso eche raíz.
- Joel Olsteen
Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.
- James C. Collins
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
- Warren Buffett
Less than 3% of newly published authors make enough in royalties and advances to be happy to live on.
- Seth Godin
I am upset with the effect that both of these issues have had on the public,
- Michael Gerber
I am thinking about launching a wine website where there is a deal and the crowd can dictate how cheap it can get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.
- Ray Kroc
The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts.
- James C. Collins
The Chinese government still would like to see U.S. Internet companies explore the Chinese market, providing they are willing to abide by Chinese law. I think companies like Facebook should think about the Chinese market.
- Robin Li
Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, Napster’s then-teenage founders, credibly threatened to disrupt the powerful music recording industry in 1999. The next year, they made the cover of Time magazine. A year and a half after that, they ended up in bankruptcy court.
- Peter Thiel
The words Think and Thank are inscribed in many of the Cromwellian churches of England. These words ought to be inscribed in our hearts, too: Think and Thank. Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
- Dale Carnegie
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
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
Read the Bible, it is your roadmap through life.
- George Foreman
Abundance and scarcity In a society where value is created by the manufacture of goods or the allocation of limited resources, it’s not a surprise that organizations seek scarcity. We hesitate to share, because if I give you this, then I don’t have it any more. We erect barriers and create rules to make it difficult for some people to have access to these limited resources. While we don’t set out to become miserly, it’s an economic instinct, because what’s yours is no long mine. Even though we give lip service to sharing when kids show up for kindergarten classes, most of school is organized around the same ideas. We rank students, we cut players from the roster, we grade on a curve. Success, we teach, is scarce. Our new economy, though, is based on abundance, the abundance that comes from ideas and access. If I benefit when everyone knows my idea, then the more people I give the idea to, the better we all do. If I benefit when I earn a reputation leading, connecting and creating positive change, then I’ll benefit if I can offer these insights to anyone who can benefit from them. With an abundance mindset, we intentionally create goods that can be shared. It’s not based on our traditional factory-based economy, but it works now (in fact, it’s just about all that works)… engaging with the mesh, building communities that benefit from sharing resources instead of destroying them is a strategy that scales. With an abundance mindset, we create ideas and services that do better when people share.
- Seth Godin
Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there’s an education level that plays into the mix and so if it’s inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.
- Ray Dalio
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward
One of the main reasons people fail to reach their full potential is because they are unwilling to risk anything. They are fearful of losing, failing, or getting hurt and just want to do the things they believe will keep them safe.
- Zig Ziglar
Niklas Zennstroem has a thorough background as a successful entrepreneur with extensive expertise in areas such as IT and online.
- Stefan Persson
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
- Peter Drucker
Personally, I just hope they (the LA Lakers) suck forever.
- Mark Cuban
The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.
- Peter Thiel
Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.
- James C. Collins
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
- Mark Twain
Every sale has 5 basic obstacles: need, money, hurry, desire, trust.
- Zig Ziglar
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
I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.
- Winston Churchill
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
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
My home is in Moscow and I have no plans to change this.
- Alisher Usmanov
If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
- Henry Ford
We have to innovate for a specific reason, and that reason comes from the market. Otherwise, we’ll end up making museum pieces.
- Phil Knight
Fulfilling the vision of the Irvine Ranch master plan has been a lifetime dedication and lifetime passion, and I am hopeful the heritage of our Irvine stewardship will live on in many new ways.
- Donald Bren
I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.
- Winston Churchill
Will flash cards invade the disk drive makers’ core markets and supplant magnetic memory? If they do, what will happen to the disk drive makers? Will they stay atop their markets, catching this new technological wave? Or will they be driven out?
- Clayton M. Christensen
My role has been to pick good people and give them the maximum authority and responsibility.
- Sam Walton
God always wants us to be growing.
- Joel Olsteen
The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.
- Elon Musk
Like technical debt, management debt comes in too many different forms to elaborate entirely, but a few salient examples will help explain the concept. Here are three of the more popular types among startups: 1. Putting two in the box 2. Overcompensating a key employee, because she gets another job offer 3. No performance management or employee feedback process
- Ben Horowitz
My parents were ordinary people, we lived in a small apartment.
- Viktor Vekselberg
Pretty much everything will come to him who hustles while he waits. I believe that restlessness is discontent, and discontent is merely the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
- Thomas Edison
Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.
- Seth Godin
The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.
- Azim Premji
