They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. Rather they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.
- Peter Drucker
Notable Quotables
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world
- George Washington Carver
So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.
- Dale Carnegie
The Habit of Saving does not mean that you shall limit your earning capacity, it means just the opposite – that you shall apply this law so that it not only conserves that which you earn, in a systematic manner, but it also places you in the way of greater opportunity and gives you the vision, the self-confidence, the imagination, the enthusiasm, the initiative and leadership actually to increase your earning capacity.
- Napoleon Hill
A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination, between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals, between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition, between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity, between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard.
- Winston Churchill
When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would’ve had a chance. Because that’s where my real heart was.
- Steve Martin
God wants you to be a winner, not a whiner.
- Joel Olsteen
We were comfortable with first-quarter results.
- John Chambers
Why don’t we have enough teachers of math and science in the public schools? One answer is well, if they knew the subject well, they’d also know enough to work for Google or Goldman Sachs or God knows where.
- James Simons
Measure, coach and reward the right things. Measure the vitally important. Reward the doers.
- David Novak
It’s hard for me to imagine how a $50 million marketing campaign is ever appropriate for any business to launch an ideavirus. If you need to interrupt that many people, you’re doing something wrong.
- Seth Godin
The growth of the company and the license that Starbucks has is to participate in other food and beverage opportunities. We have a global business… and in many parts of the world, tea is much, much bigger than coffee, and we’re going to bring tea and bring our capability and our understanding of what we’ve done for coffee to tea.
- Howard Schultz
Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go.
- Winston Churchill
The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune, it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick.
- P.T. Barnum
Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amounts of virtual cash, 25-30 cents, for each hour of good behaviour. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun – whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise – come out of their own individual accounts. No balance, no goodies. This often requires more self-control on the part of the parents than the children.
- Timothy Ferriss
I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.
- Howard Schultz
I had already started the learning process by organizing a tour of some of the best companies out there to find out exactly what it was that made them great. I went back to the Partners’ Council and asked them to help me study the best practices of the best companies we could find. We would then use then findings to strengthen our company.
- David Novak
Profitability comes from loyalty, productivity, and having a character base from which to work.
- Zig Ziglar
We shall see how the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger, how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull’s-eye of disaster.
- Winston Churchill
Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
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
If you can dream it, you can do it. -Walt Disney
- Walt Disney
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.
- Dale Carnegie
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
- Warren Buffett
Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
Attitude, not Aptitude, determines Altitude.
- Zig Ziglar
Often, out of our greatest rejection comes our greatest direction.
- Joel Olsteen
Wal-Mart’s leaders had obviously made a point of educating and informing everyone at all levels about all aspects of the company, and that shows a real respect for their people.
- David Novak
One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.
- Donald Trump
In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
- Winston Churchill
All great truths are simple in final analysis, and easily understood; if they are not, they are not great truths.
- Napoleon Hill
If you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.
- David Nilssen
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
- George Soros
I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we feel, but no one follows me.
- Tadashi Yanai
There is a kind of intolerant spirit now abroad which arises out of the growing power of party and other machinery — a spirit which resents individual opinion, which clamours for uniformity and political Test Acts.
- Winston Churchill
I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.
- Og Mandino
Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more.
- Sam Walton
Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.
- Seth Godin
3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we’re getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we’ve ever had before.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft
- Bill Gates
Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production, using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.
- Timothy Ferriss
For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.
- Timothy Ferriss
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.
- Tadashi Yanai
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
- Aristotle
I have ways of making money that you know nothing about…(if you’re firm won’t sell) you will stand alone, Your firm can never make any more money in Cleveland. No use trying to do business in competition with Standard Oil Company. If you do (continue to fight) it will end in your being wiped out.
- John D. Rockefeller
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 physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.
- Bill Gates
the average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together.
- Dale Carnegie
Great leaders, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, also focused on the long term.
- Reed Hastings
Simplicity scales. Complexity does not.
- David Nilssen
Amateurs wait for inspiration. The real pros get up and go to work.
- Harvey Mackay
Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
- Zig Ziglar
Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
- Zig Ziglar
You do not pay the price of success, you enjoy the price of success.
- Zig Ziglar
The more you are grateful for what you have the more you will have to be grateful for.
- Zig Ziglar
President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.
- Harold Hamm
There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain – do something to make more money yourself.
- Gina Rinehart
If you want a successful business, your people must feel that you are working for them—not that they are working for you.
- Sam Walton
A plan is always successful if the plan is good.
- Zig Ziglar
The patterns of success and failure we see among firms faced with sustaining and disruptive technology change are a natural or systematic result of good managerial decisions. That is, in fact, why disruptive technologies confront innovators with such a dilemma. Working harder, being smarter, investing more aggressively, and listening more astutely to customers are all solutions to the problems posed by new sustaining technologies. But these paradigms of sound management are useless—even counterproductive, in many instances—when dealing with disruptive technology.
- Clayton M. Christensen
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
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
- Seth Godin
The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening carefully to customers; tracking competitors’ actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technological change.
- Clayton M. Christensen
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
- Jeff Bezos
Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s here in the United States.
- Sara Blakely
Treat your life like a game.
- Ray Dalio
For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.
- Peter Thiel
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
Typically, your corporate e-mail account is not, today, that spam-targeted. It’s more the free e-mail accounts that are spam-targeted.
- Bill Gates
Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
- Howard Schultz
Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.
- Herb Kelleher
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
- George Eliot
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
The market’s going to move with tremendous speed. If there is such a thing as a killer app, video is it.
- John Chambers
Play by the rules, but be ferocious.
- Phil Knight
Chance made us sisters. Hearts made us friends.
- Zig Ziglar
[Introducing himself to Sony co-founder Akio Morita] I have six of your TVs in my house.
- Phil Knight
Very important people have told me that they prefer good listeners to good talkers, but the ability to listen seems rarer than almost any other good trait.
- Dale Carnegie
Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.
- Bill Gates
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
- Dale Carnegie
The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.
- Peter Drucker
We are the masters of our fate.
- Winston Churchill
Giving away money to the right cause, with a leveraged effect and your own involvement in how it is spent, will ‘give you peace of mind.’
- Lee Shau Kee
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We hav before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I answer in one word: Victory…victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is not survival. Letter to Hitler
- Winston Churchill
You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.
- Dale Carnegie
Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.
- Seth Godin
It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.
- Bill Gates
Our favorite holding period is forever.
- Warren Buffett
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
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
- Warren Buffett
When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right. It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
- Steve Jobs
Each time they Tweet, it sparks interaction.
- Jack Dorsey
Winners Evaluate Themselves In A Positive Manner And Look For Their Strengths As They Work To Overcome Weaknesses.
- Zig Ziglar
On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It’s very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
- Jeff Bezos
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
- Dale Carnegie
Give your good bacteria an upgrade and get your microbiome in shape. Faster fat-loss and better mental health are just two of the benefits.
- Timothy Ferriss
[On the cost to found Nike] Six hundred dollars each. Twelve hundred dollars total investment.
- Phil Knight
