Notable Quotables

Cupcakes The first time you bake cupcakes, you will certainly follow the recipe with rigor. The third time, you might improvise and screw up. Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can. At this point, by the fifth time, some people actually learn to bake. They improvise successfully. They understand the science and the outcomes. They develop a kind of gracefulness in the kitchen. Others merely plod along. They’re cooks, not chefs. A cook follows a recipe. A chef invents one. We have too many cooks. The world is begging for chefs.

- Seth Godin

What is Oracle? It’s people. We rely on our HR department to build this organization, to help find those people, to help grow those people.

- Larry Ellison

Eventually I left City College in my senior year, just four or five credits short of a sociology degree. This really upset my father who thought that I was a fool. Over and over he lectured me that the only way for a black man to make it was to get a degree and a job. For a while there I felt like I was a failure in my father’s eyes, which hurt alot, but promoting felt right in my gut. I knew that to be a man I had to follow my heart. My mother was always more open to Danny, Joey and me pursuing a more non-traditional entrepreneurial way…Early in my promoting career I lost all the money I’d saved on a show in Harlem no one came to. I came out to Hollis and no one would help me. My father just wanted me to go back to school and told me so. What could I say? I had no money. Then my mother went back in the house and came with $2,000 in crisp $100 bills from her personal savings. It was that money that kept me afloat until Kurtis Blow broke and I entered the record business. That act of love and faith, which is what kept me in business at a key time, is my favorite memory of her.

- Russell Simmons

Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.

- Peter Drucker

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.

- Yoda

To do the most good requires saying no to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.

- Peter Drucker

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

- Steve Jobs

When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.

- Howard Schultz

Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of SURPRISE.

- Winston Churchill

Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur.

- Zig Ziglar

I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a ‘gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.’ Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

- Winston Churchill

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

- Winston Churchill

Be there for your kids. Later, when you need them, they’ll be there for you.

- Zig Ziglar

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.

- Winston Churchill

I’m a big fan of Mashable and TechCrunch and other outlets like that, but TechMeme obviously does an amazing job of aggregating.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness…..

- Thomas Edison

To all of us comes that moment in life when we are literally tapped on the shoulder to do a very special thing unique to ourselves and our talents. What a pity if that moment finds us unprepared.

- Winston Churchill

Encouragement is the fuel on which hope runs.

- Zig Ziglar

I demand pretty aggressive goal setting and a commitment to measured progress towards those goals because I don’t like surprises. I don’t even like good surprises.

- Abigail Johnson

SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.

- Elon Musk

Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy, profit from folly rather than participate in it.

- Warren Buffett

It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

- John Wooden

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

- Richard P. Feynman

I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.

- Bill Gates

We’ve got to lift our game tremendously. We’ll sell our business news and information in print, we’ll sell it to anyone who’s got a cable system, and we’ll sell it on the Web.

- Rupert Murdoch

You may be sitting around waiting for God to change your circumstances. Then you’re going to be happy, then your’re going to have a good attitude, then you’re going to give God praise. But God is waiting on you to get up on the inside. When you do your part, He’ll begin to change things and work supernaturally in your life.

- Joel Olsteen

I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.

- Joel Olsteen

With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.

- Steve Martin

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

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.

- Richard Branson

Seeing his education soley in utilitarian terms, he studied hard, but showed no intellectual playfulness.

- Ron Chernow

Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.

- Yoda

If you run a business, if you are responsible for a lot of people, you come to grips with the reality that you have to have discipline. You have to protect the enterprise in order to take care of the employees. So, therefore, you can’t be wasteful. You can’t squander things, or you jeopardize other people.

- Stephen Wynn

People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.

- Zig Ziglar

By spring of ’98, each company’s stock had more than quadrupled. Skeptics questioned earnings and revenue multiples higher than those for any non-internet company. It was easy to conclude that the market had gone crazy.

- Peter Thiel

Youths of today aspire to be like me but they want to achieve it overnight. It’s not going to work.

- Aliko Dangote

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

- Steve Jobs

If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?

- Timothy Ferriss

I am optimistic that we can achieve a better future. It’s not true that the Philippines is a hopeless case.

- Henry Sy

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

- Dale Carnegie

[In January 2011] There are so many features Twitter could build. There’s so many features that Square can build. But there is only one or two going to bring us to the next level.

- Jack Dorsey

When I have spare time, I catch up on things I’ve had to postpone due to lack of time.

- Steve Wozniak

And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.

- Reid Hoffman

I would counsel people to go to college, because it’s one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.

- Bill Gates

By becoming interested in the cause, we are less likely to dislike the effect.

- Dale Carnegie

The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.

- Peter Thiel

I am a tightwad. That’s one of the main reasons I completed a long questionnaire for a crispy $1 bill. Why else would I spend two or three hours being personally interviewed by these authors? They paid me $100, $200, or $250. Oh, they made me another offer–to donate in my name the money I earned for my interview to my favorite charity. But I told them, I am my favorite charity.

- Thomas J Stanley

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

- John C. Maxwell

This the real world, homie, school finished They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.

- Kanye West

Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.

- Ben Horowitz

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

- Mark Twain

I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple.

- Joel Olsteen

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

Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

- Dale Carnegie

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.

- Napoleon Hill

The depth of your spirit will determine the height of your success.

- Zig Ziglar

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.

- Bill Gates

What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.

- Cheng Yu-tung

In every age there comes a time when a leader must come forward to meet the needs of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have the opportunity to make a positive difference in society.

- Winston Churchill

Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.

- Peter Drucker

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

- Joel Olsteen

FATHER FORGETS W. Livingston Larned Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, ‘Goodbye, Daddy!’ and I frowned, and said in reply, ‘Hold your shoulders back!’ Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. ‘What is it you want?’ I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed! It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: ‘He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!’ I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much. Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. ‘To know all is to forgive.

- Dale Carnegie

The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits.

- Winston Churchill

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

- Colin Powell

Apart from banking facilities of a relatively small proportion which were raised in Renminbi, the majority of the Group’s funding facilities are obtained in Hong Kong Dollars and the Group’s exposure to foreign exchange fluctuation riks is therefore extremely small.

- Lee Shau Kee

He listened closely to what people said and filed away as much information as he could, repeating valuable information to himself until it was memorized. There was humility in this eagerness to learn. As he said, It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.

- Ron Chernow

I will study and prepare myself, and someday the opportunity will come.

- Abraham Lincoln

I don’t think that a same-sex marriage is the way God intended it to be.

- Joel Olsteen

Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.

- Howard Schultz

I wasn’t prepared for this big room with clattering typewriters and teletype printers. You could hardly hear yourself think.

- Ray Kroc

We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.

- Walt Disney

Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.

- Seth Godin

Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.

- Ben Horowitz

Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.

- Peter Thiel

you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.

- Dale Carnegie

Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.

- Ben Horowitz

At its zenith Sears accounted for more than 2 percent of all retail sales in the United States. It pioneered several innovations critical to the success of today’s most admired retailers: for example, supply chain management, store brands, catalogue retailing, and credit card sales. The esteem in which Sears’ management was held shows in this 1964 excerpt from Fortune: “How did Sears do it? In a way, the most arresting aspect of its story is that there was no gimmick. Sears opened no big bag of tricks, shot off no skyrockets. Instead, it looked as though everybody in its organization simply did the right thing, easily and naturally. And their cumulative effect was to create an extraordinary powerhouse of a company.

- Clayton M. Christensen

Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble

- Warren Buffett

Your legacy is being written by yourself. Make the right decisions.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.

- Yoda

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

- Russell Simmons

Getting over the war was biggest adversity I have ever faced.

- Jack Nadel

What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.

- Larry Ellison

I do have my ducks in line if I want to do it, but I’d love to see the Republicans pick somebody that was going to win and take over this country and frankly, to use the expression, ‘Make America great again.’

- Donald Trump

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It’s fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.

- Bill Gates

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription