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
Notable Quotables
Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.
- James C. Collins
The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?
- Dale Carnegie
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
Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
- Og Mandino
What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.
- Oprah Winfrey
The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.
- Sam Walton
My organization, my colleagues and I, are paid to run hotels in good times and fair times. We’re professionals. That’s what we do. I don’t give a damn about the short-term market implications.
- Stephen Wynn
Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that’s all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.The only correct answer to ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ is ‘Because it’s lizard brain told it to.’ Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It’s real, and it’s living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.
- Seth Godin
It is clothes. It is parts. Therefore, you combine the parts differently to create your own unique expression.
- Tadashi Yanai
Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.
- John Wooden
Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.
- Og Mandino
Top academic institutions are wonderful, but there are unrecognized benefits to not coming out of one. Grads from top schools are funneled into high-income 80-hour-per-week jobs, and 15–30 years of soul-crushing work has been accepted as the default path. How do I know? I’ve been there.
- Timothy Ferriss
To enjoy peace, a nation must win the confidence and support of its people.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
- Warren Buffett
A student of life considers the world a classroom.
- Harvey Mackay
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
- Winston Churchill
Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.
- Ben Horowitz
When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—“Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally”—she’s not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she’s reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.
- Seth Godin
People need to buy homes.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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
What material success does is provide you with the ability to concentrate on other things that really matter. And that is being able to make a difference, not only in your own life, but in other people’s lives.
- Oprah Winfrey
What’s got me excited about the education space is the growth of the Internet over the next 10, 20, 30 years.
- Reed Hastings
If you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
- James C. Collins
When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.
- Joel Olsteen
If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?
- Ben Horowitz
You have to BE before you can DO, and DO before you can HAVE.
- Zig Ziglar
With communication technology in general, there’s a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world’s entire population using one communication technology, that’s a big deal. It’s beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it’s a fad have probably not been paying that much attention.
- Ben Horowitz
I just wanted to be in show business. I didn’t care if I was going to be an actor or a magician or what. Comedy was a point of the least resistance, really. And on the simplest level, I loved comedy.
- Steve Martin
Using a two-dollar commission, they really sold.
- Phil Knight
My whole life had been designing computers I could never build.
- Steve Wozniak
Chance made us sisters. Hearts made us friends.
- Zig Ziglar
The future is sooner and stranger than you think.
- Reid Hoffman
The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.
- Winston Churchill
The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy.
- Michael Bloomberg
I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread
- Mitch Hedberg
When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.
- Larry Ellison
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein
My little girls are the most beautiful women in the world. I am a lucky, lucky man. I will spend every day making sure that they know this.
- Russell Simmons
My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t go and continue to use every advantage that I can to promote New York’s cause.
- Michael Bloomberg
Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
- Winston Churchill
Become meaningful in your interactions and the path to success in any endeavor is simpler and far more sustainable.
- Dale Carnegie
We’ve shown the world that New York can never be defeated, because of its dynamic and diverse population and because it embodies the spirit of enterprise and the love of liberty. And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.
- Michael Bloomberg
If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.
- Dave Ramsey
Don’t be intimidated as you design your pitch. The fact is that nobody will come to you at first. You must be the aggressor, or you will not be heard.
- Michael Levine
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet – how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
- Jeff Bezos
It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
All that hullabaloo about somebody’s net worth is just stupid, and it’s made my life a lot more complex and difficult.
- Sam Walton
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
- Bill Gates
People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be.
- Harvey Mackay
If they really don’t want to buy the flats, I’ll take their deposits.
- Lee Shau Kee
Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
Failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. This way, it is about answering to yourself.
- Sara Blakely
I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.
- Mark Zuckerberg
A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.
- 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
I want the entire smartphone, the entire Internet, on my wrist.
- Steve Wozniak
should go out each day expecting good things, anticipating God’s blessings and favor. God has planned all of your days for good, not evil.
- Joel Olsteen
Here’s how I work: It’s 2013, and most marketers are operating like it’s 2009. I’m always trying to market like it’s 2015, but not like it’s 2020. A lot of my contemporaries who understand where the world is going, go too far out, and aren’t practical. I have always prided myself on being visionary, with a heavy practicality.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We hate bureaucracy and all the nonsense that comes with it.
- Jack Welch
It’s ironic that no matter where I go, I meet people from Brooklyn. I’m proud of that heritage. It’s where I’m from, who I am.
- Howard Schultz
I was lucky enough to co-found a business in college that ended up with 400 employees, and I launched 20 different projects while I was there – a project a week.
- Seth Godin
Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.
- Tim Westergren
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
- Steve Jobs
Seeing is not always believing.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic of beginnings.
- Peter Thiel
Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
- Thomas Edison
I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the site, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the site.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.
- Seth Godin
Lost time is never found again.
- Benjamin Franklin
Where is the love that will overlook a person’s faults?
- Joel Olsteen
Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.
- Steve Ballmer
It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.
- Timothy Ferriss
In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.
- Bill Gates
The only career worth pursuing is the one that turns your crank.
- Jack Welch
We do lots of Stuff. The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.
- Sergey Brin
If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.
- Elon Musk
It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
- Warren Buffett
All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.
- Ray Kroc
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?
- Winston Churchill
He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.
- Thomas Edison
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.
- Winston Churchill
Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It’s the image, not what you sing.
- Rod Stewart
The point is that you can’t be too greedy.
- Donald Trump
In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.
- Bill Gates
Know when to stop.
- Jack Dorsey
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
It’s Never Over ’till it’s over! Never Give Up! Never.
- Winston Churchill
Small businesses don’t exist without the nucleus.
- Bryan Smith
Poor people ride the bus, because they value money more than time.
- Robert Kiyosaki
A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.
- Winston Churchill
In business, if you don’t kick and hug, you don’t love.
- Clay Clark
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald’s the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had, they didn’t want to be bothered with more risks and more demands.
- Ray Kroc
There is far more opportunity than there is ability.
- Thomas Edison
We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
- Peter Drucker
