I’ve come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside,”
- James C. Collins
Notable Quotables
Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting.
- Peter Thiel
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Don’t ally your personal interests with the development of the company.
- Wang Jianlin
If you aim at nothing you will hit every time.
- Zig Ziglar
People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.
- John C. Maxwell
When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.
- Winston Churchill
Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
- Oprah Winfrey
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
- Peter Drucker
10,000 years of fitful advance from primitive agriculture to medieval windmills and 16th-century astrolabes, the modern world suddenly experienced relentless technological progress from the advent of the steam engine in the 1760s all the way up to about 1970.
- Peter Thiel
It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.
- Winston Churchill
The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit… a reputation, character.
- John D. Rockefeller
At Tencent, we may be businessmen, but we are still chasing our IT, our science. We are still striving to create something really cool, trying to create things we couldn’t even imagine without our new technologies. I am still clinging to this enthusiasm.
- Ma Huateng
People always underestimate Africa. If you want to follow what’s on ground, you would not want to invest in Nigeria; when you look at it from the patriotism point of view, you will ask yourself: how did those great countries become great?
- Aliko Dangote
The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people – including my ex-wives.
- Ronald Perelman
The basis of persistence is the power of will. Men who accumulate, great fortunes are generally known as cold-blooded and sometimes ruthless. Often they are misunderstood. What they have is willpower, which they mix with persistence and place back of their desires to insure that attainment of their objectives. Henry Ford was generally misunderstood to be ruthless and cold-blooded. This misconception grew out of Ford’s habit of following through in all of his plans with PERSISTENCE…few carry on despite all opposition until they attain their goal. Those few are the Fords, Carnegies, Rockefellers and Edisons.
- Napoleon Hill
Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.
- Bill Gates
We are witnessing a seismic change in consumer behavior. That change is being brought about by technology and the access people have to information.
- Howard Schultz
Most books on management are written by management consultants, and they study successful companies after they’ve succeeded, so they only hear winning stories.
- Ben Horowitz
Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.
- Dale Carnegie
Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.
- Dale Carnegie
In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
- Winston Churchill
We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.
- Joel Olsteen
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
- Henry Ford
Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them.
- Jack Welch
Many people fail to make a favourable impression because they don’t listen attentively.
- Isaac F. Marcosson
Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
- Zig Ziglar
Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines wont make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa and its about getting a balance.
- Richard Branson
As knowledge is acquired it must be organized and put into use, for a definate purpose, through practical plans. Knowledge has no value except that which be gained from its application toward some worthy end.
- Napoleon Hill
The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.
- Oprah Winfrey
Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
- Peter Thiel
No one has any idea what’s next… the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it’s delaying the recovery.
- Stephen Wynn
Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.
- Steve Martin
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
For me, privacy and security are really important. We think about it in terms of both: You can’t have privacy without security.
- Larry Page
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
People think, ‘Jack, you do too much.’
- Jack Ma
In his rigidgly compartmentalized life, each hour was tightly budgeted, whether for business, religion, family or exercise. Perhaps those daily rituals helped him deal with the underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable, for although he tried to project to an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain the surface, was constantly on edge. In one of his few admissions of weakness he recalled, for years on end I never had a solid night’s sleep, worrying about how it was to come out…I tossed about in bed night after night worrying over the outcome…All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.
- Ron Chernow
I’m going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.
- Joel Olsteen
Most of the reason we don’t do things is because we’re afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not going to do things in my life because of fear.
- Sara Blakely
Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what’s coming.
- Steve Martin
Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.
- Michael Dell
Education is the key to unlock the Golden door of freedom.
- George Washington Carver
An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
- Steve Martin
I know something about how to build constituencies in an independent way.
- Michael Bloomberg
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean, if a few drops of ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
- Timothy Ferriss
You have to get lost in the woods of your own doing and discover a way out. You have to find the right path over the creek, under the rock-whatever mechanism is good for your body’s size and your stride and your cadence and your tolerance for wet or cold or humid weather. That kind of learning comes from having a tolerance for failure, and extracting lessons from your failures.
- Marc Ecko
One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.
- Richard Branson
But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.
- Muhammad Ali
You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.
- Steve Case
The UK desperately needs less government and freer markets.
- Rupert Murdoch
India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.
- Bill Gates
Always keep our eyes open for people with potential.
- John Maxwell
Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.
- Jerry Vass
If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it.
- Timothy Ferriss
We certainly employ a lot of immigrants at Fox… and we do not take any consistent anti-immigrant line.
- Rupert Murdoch
For a rich and reasonably successful guy, it is impossible not to enjoy your job; otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort doing it? I am a great fan of Norilsk, and I like this kind of challenge.
- Vladimir Potanin
No matter what happens, always be yourself.
- Dale Carnegie
True success has more components than one sentence or idea can contain.
- Zig Ziglar
I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
“Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.
- Ben Horowitz
Most men go to their graves with their dreams still inside them.
- Zig Ziglar
Don’t sling mud at others or soon you will find yourself in a deeper hole than when you started.
- Clay Clark
When your head of sales interviews for her next job, she won’t want to say that despite the fact that she ran a global sales force with hundreds of employees, her title was “Dude.”
- Ben Horowitz
The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
of preparing for defeat, prepare for victory. Prepare for increase. Prepare for God’s favor. You have to set the tone at the start of each day.
- Joel Olsteen
The guerrilla is obsessed with benefits. Whenever offering a product or service, she focuses on how it will benefit the consumer and builds everything—the product, the delivery, the marketing—around that benefit.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.
- Steve Ballmer
Same problem as every Hollywood studio: how can you reliably produce a constant stream of popular entertainment for a fickle audience? (Nobody knows.)
- Peter Thiel
Going the extra mile is the action of rendering more and better service than that for which you are presently paid. When you go the extra mile, the Law of Compensation comes into play.
- Napoleon Hill
Is it really necessary to work like a slave to live like a millionaire?
- Timothy Ferriss
So we really need jobs now. We have to take jobs away from other countries because other countries are taking our jobs. There is practically not a country that does business with the United States that isn’t making – let’s call it a very big profit. I mean China is going to make $300 billion on us at least this year.
- Donald Trump
We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.
- Phil Knight
If a man’s heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.
- Dale Carnegie
Happens to every guy sometimes this does.
- Yoda
It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m certainly well taken care of in terms of food and clothes.
- Bill Gates
Be fair. You have to be able to see their point of view.
- Michael Levine
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
- Napoleon Hill
Run your business in harmony with God’s laws.
- David Green
CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.
- Jack Welch
We’re on our way to Greece, in the hands of a confused, foolish government. It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.
- Stephen Wynn
The concept of serviced apartments makes economic sense for tenancies of short to medium term duration – a fact many leading Hong Kong and overseas corporations now appreciate.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward
Our business practices are no different than those of our competitors, but we are bigger, and thus more visible, so we get more flack.
- Phil Knight
All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.
- Ray Kroc
Always deliver more than expected.
- Larry Page
There are a few other things that I built when I was at Harvard that were kind of smaller versions of Facebook. One such program was this program called Match. People could enter the different courses that they were taking, and see what other courses would be correlated with the courses they are taking.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The Benefits are about the Buyer’s stuff – what your products or services do for Buyers. Do the Benefits make them feel better about life – give them power; make them sexier, prettier, richer, more comfortable or secure, smarter, more competitive? Do they save time, money, fear or hassle?
- Jerry Vass
We must not let our standards be determined by the gentlemen of the oposition.
- Winston Churchill
Art isn’t only a painting; it’s anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion.
- Seth Godin
I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.
- Elon Musk
Once the habit is ingrained and you become the starter, the center of the circle, you will find more and more things to notice, to instigate, and to initiate. Momentum builds and you get better at generating it. If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you’ll wake up with a list. And as you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised. What might be considered a board-level decision at one of your competitors’ companies gets done as a matter of course. What might be reserved for a manager’s intervention gets handled at the customer level, saving you time and money (and generating customer joy). This incredibly prosaic idea, the very simple act of initiating, is actually profoundly transformative. Forward motion is a defensible business asset.
- Seth Godin
You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
- Zig Ziglar
There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.
- Elon Musk
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.
- Seth Godin
My belief and goal is that every professional in the world should be on a service liked LinkedIn.
- Reid Hoffman
