Notable Quotables

He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.

- David Novak

Every man lives in two realms: the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals, and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms, and instrumentalities by means of which we live.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.

- Mario Andretti

If you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.

- David Nilssen

We can schedule for it. Thursday, April 3rd, 3:05…start something. We can train for it, plan for it, announce it, and even hire for it. If initiating is as essential to the modern organization as it appears, we better be doing all of that and more.

- Seth Godin

They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.

- Larry Ellison

Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don’t, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.

- Harvey Mackay

Video is emerging as the key strategic application in the service provider triple play bundle of consumer entertainment, communication and online services.

- John Chambers

I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.

- Joel Olsteen

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.

- Bill Gates

It’s not going out to people who aren’t going to go shopping. You’ve already got the people who are shopping.

- Jack Taylor

Passion is everything. In fact, you’ve got to be borderline fanatical about what you do.

- Chris Gardner

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

- Winston Churchill

Consider this: you are today what you believed about yourself yesterday. And you will be tomorrow what you believe about yourself right now.

- Joel Olsteen

You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.

- Gary Keller

When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.

- Warren Buffett

I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

- Steve Martin

At your next sales meeting with 20 people, three will take home the money of 17 others. Is it luck, hard work and a great attitude? Or it is persuasive skill – understanding the transactional dynamics of the sales process?

- Jerry Vass

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.

- Nolan Bushnell

Up until the time I was 14 years old, I was sure that I was going to be a big-league baseball player. But that dream came to a rude awakening when I got cut from my high school baseball team.

- Phil Knight

Game-playing is more fun when it’s virtual because you’re more successful. … in reality, only one person gets to be LeBron

- Larry Ellison

We’re living in what I like to call the ‘Thank You Economy,’ because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way – and do it authentically – are going to have a prayer of competing.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Cooperativeness in conversation is achieved when you show that you consider the other person’s ideas and feelings as important as your own.

- Dale Carnegie

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

- Richard Branson

Newport Center has become a Mediterranean town. The climate here is the same as the Mediterranean’s, and so is the architecture. This center exudes a radiance, an energy. It will become a special way of life for everyone.

- Donald Bren

You are responsible for your life. If you’re sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time. Only you have the power to move your life forward.

- Oprah Winfrey

It marks a big step in a man’s development when he comes to realize that other men can be called in to help him do a better job than he can do alone.

- Andrew Carnegie

Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.

- Peter Thiel

Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

- Peter Thiel

For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.

- James C. Collins

To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone.

- Sergey Brin

When the negative thoughts come – and they will, they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

- Joel Olsteen

I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.

- Winston Churchill

I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they’re going. Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.

- Michael Gerber

Back, you know, a few generations ago, people didn’t have a way to share information and express their opinions efficiently to a lot of people. But now they do. Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

- Mark Zuckerberg

When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.

- Thomas Edison

A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.

- Zig Ziglar

With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks.

- Howard Schultz

If you’ve found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

- Bill Gates

Use money to make money. Save your ‘first bucket of gold.’ or small fortune – but then use it for investments. Don’t just park money in the bank.

- Lee Shau Kee

A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.

- Harvey Mackay

This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.

- Seth Godin

Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don’t have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Plant a seed of greatness in your children. Speak a word of encourgement to someone who needs to hear it. Inspire someone to be a better person. One day you’ll reap a harvest, and your world will become a better place to live.

- George Foreman

Even leaders with the best of intentions can have dumb ideas sometimes, and if you have good people around you, then hopefully they’ll stop you before you’ve done too much damage.

- David Novak

You don’t build a business –you build people– and then people build the business.

- Zig Ziglar

One of the greatest failures to execute is the lack of follow-up. This seems so obvious, yet very few companies place as much emphasis on accountability as they do on figuring what they want to get done. Steve Reinemund, who was president of Pizza Hut when I was head of marketing there, is the best I’ve ever seen on this front. He always carried a three-by-five note card in his shirt pocket. When saw something that needed to be done, he’d pull out the card and write it down. Like everyone else who witnessed this, I quickly realized that I had better write down the same things because he’d surely be on me until they got done. Steve got results everywhere he went, whether it was as president of Pizzas Hut or Frito-Lay or chairman of PepsiCo, because he made a point of following up. People often lose track of what they’ve talked about in meetings of what they promised to do, but when you write it down, you won’t forget it.

- David Novak

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.

- Dave Barry

If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

- Jack Welch

I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own.

- Peter Thiel

I’ve viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic.

- Will Smith

China’s open-door policy, the favourable local exchange rates, the growing affluence and changing lifestyles in South Asian countries and burgeoning economic activities in the Asia-Pacific Rim are all conducive factors to the continuing tourism boom.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Its never too late…to start heading in the right direction.

- Seth Godin

But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.

- Peter Thiel

I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, ‘It’s all your fault.’ Your reaction is, ‘It’s not my fault.’ But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it.

- Ben Horowitz

You’ve got to eat while you dream. You’ve got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.

- Jack Welch

The conquest was not achieved without one frightful convulsion of revolt. “In this year A.D. 61”, according to Tacitus, “a severe disaster was sustained in Britain.” Suetonius, the new governor, had engaged himself deeply in the West. He transferred the operational base of the Roman army to Chester. Because it was the centre of Druid resistance he prepared to attack “the populous island of Mona [Anglesey], which had become a refuge for fugitives, and he built a fleet of flat-bottomed vessels suitable for those shallow and shifting seas. The infantry crossed in the boats, the cavalry went over by fords: where the water was too deep the men swam alongside of their horses. The enemy lined the shore, a dense host of armed men, interspersed with women clad in black like the Furies, with their hair hanging down and holding torches in their hands. Round this were Druids.

- Winston Churchill

We will as ever continue to pursue growth opportunities that will further enhance our ability to capitalize on the investment opportunities and to face the challenges ahead.

- Cheng Yu-tung

My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?

- Sara Blakely

With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.

- Richard Branson

I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.

- Rupert Murdoch

It’s your ATTITUDE not your APTITUDE that ultimately determines your ALTITUDE!

- Zig Ziglar

If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.

- Sara Blakely

My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we’re doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.

- Larry Page

People easily confuse skill with personality.

- Jerry Vass

No man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.

- P.T. Barnum

I was born in Africa. I came to California because it’s really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don’t see a viable competitor.

- Elon Musk

Dios ve el valor que usted tiene, y sabe en lo que le está convirtiendo. A veces nos miramos a nosotros mismos y pensamos: Tengo muchas imperfecciones. Tengo mal genio. Tengo un problema con mi boca. No soy tan disciplinado”. Vemos el barro, pero Dios ve la hermosa taza. La buena noticia es que usted no es un producto terminado. Dios sigue obrando, y si trabaja usted con Dios y le permite eliminar esas impurezas, Él hará más con su vida de lo que usted nunca soñó.

- Joel Olsteen

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

When companies fail, or fail to grow, it’s almost always because they don’t invest in the people, the systems, and the processes they need.

- Howard Schultz

Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

- Ben Horowitz

Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.

- Henry Ford

A false transaction using my own people to buy the flat? I’ll make a bet with you. For every $10,000 you put down, I’ll wager $1 million.

- Lee Shau Kee

The Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is.

- Michael Gerber

It’s easy to dream about it … Much harder to execute it ….Work!

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.

- Jack Ma

The indefiniteness of finance can be bizarre. Think about what happens when successful entrepreneurs sell their company. What do they do with the money? In a financialized world, it unfolds like this: • The founders don’t know what to do with it, so they give it to a large bank. • The bankers don’t know what to do with it.

- Peter Thiel

In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything.

- Peter Thiel

Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.

- Bill Gates

There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.

- Bill Gates

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

- Henry Ford

Wally Amos is the classic example of a man who gets up again and again.

- Zig Ziglar

If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.

- Peter Thiel

In some ways, running a successful business is a bit like coaching a football team. The fundamentals of football are blocking and tackling. The fundamentals of a business are it’s governing policies andprocesses. To carry out the metaphor, touchdowns are profits. The best business idea in the world cannot survive bad execution. So when you sit down to develop your workflow, internal policies, and business structure, be merciless, probe for weaknesses and assume that the worst will happen. – Jack Nadel (Author&Entrepreneur)

- Jack Nadel

I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.

- Bill Gates

Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.

- Howard Schultz

Japanese businesspeople and companies are lacking in individuality.

- Tadashi Yanai

We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.

- Peter Thiel

No matter what any of us has—and how grateful we are for what we have—no one has it all.

- Sheryl Sandberg

I have found from costly experience that it is much easier to analyze the facts after writing them down. In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problem clearly goes a long way toward helping us reach a sensible decision. As Charles Kettering puts it: A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

- Dale Carnegie

[In January 2011] We take a cut of every transaction. So we charge 2.75 percent and 15 cents on the transaction. Which we then pay the credit card companies out of. So the user only has to pay that 2.75 percent. They don’t pay any credit card fees. They don’t have to have a setup charged. They don’t have to pay for the hardware or even the software.

- Jack Dorsey

Los mitos y los sueños proceden del mismo lugar… Un mito es el sueño de una sociedad.

- Joseph Campbell

What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.

- Michael Bloomberg

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