I started NetSuite. NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, ‘We’re going to do ERP on the Internet, software-as-a-service.’ Six months later Marc Benioff, finding out what NetSuite was doing, and kind of copied it.
- Larry Ellison
Notable Quotables
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
- Winston Churchill
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.
- Timothy Ferriss
Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective – doing less – is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
- Timothy Ferriss
Don’t find fault, find a remedy.
- Henry Ford
If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.
- Seth Godin
The wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings.
- Winston Churchill
Your people give their days (and sometimes their nights) to you. They give their hands, brains, and hearts. Sure, the company pays them. It fills their wallets. But as a leader, you need to fill their souls. You can do that by getting in their skin, by giving the work meaning, by clearing obstacles, and by demonstrating the generosity gene. And you can do it, perhaps most powerfully, by creating an environment that’s exciting and enjoyable.
- Jack Welch
It’s better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product. If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.
- Peter Thiel
In every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear.
- Seth Godin
The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job.
- Zig Ziglar
Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.
- Winston Churchill
Who’s your Jedi master? WHO’S your Jedi Master?
- Yoda
The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.
- Winston Churchill
Do you know how many companies have wanted me to do an energy drink for them because I named my book ‘Crush It!’? It might be fun one day, but right now I think it would undermine the personal brand I’ve built.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A stubborn man can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
- Winston Churchill
Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.
- Howard Schultz
Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.
- Confucius
Levi Strauss headed for the gold fields of California to strike it rich in mining. However, he was not a good miner, so he instead began sewing pants out of canvas for the miners who were successful. Today I think most of the world has heard of Levi’s pants.
- Robert Kiyosaki
My God, these guys don’t even know what the return-on-investment will be on this thing.
- James C. Collins
I’m a constant learner. You need to be a constant student because things change and you have to change and grow. And I emphasize the word ‘grow.’
- Zig Ziglar
We survive the market volatility and political changes. We cater for the actual need of the people and keep pace with the country.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Take unorthodox ideas seriously today, and the mainstream sees that as a sign of progress. We can be glad that there are fewer crazy cults now, yet that gain has come at great cost: we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.
- Peter Thiel
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.
- Donald Trump
That’s why it is important to enjoy the journey not just the destination. In this world, we will never arrive at a place where everything is perfect and we have no more challenges. As admirable as setting goals and reaching them maybe, you can’t get so focused on accomplishing your goals that you make the mistake of not enjoying where you are right now.
- Joel Olsteen
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning.
- John C. Maxwell
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
- Peter Drucker
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.
- Seth Godin
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 stark differences between man and machine mean that gains from working with computers are much higher than gains from trade with other people. We don’t trade with computers any more than we trade with livestock or lamps. And that’s the point: computers are tools, not rivals.
- Peter Thiel
Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition all profits get competed away.
- Peter Thiel
If we are so contemptibly selfish that we can’t radiate a little happiness and pass on a bit of honest appreciation without trying to get something out of the other person in return – if our souls are no bigger than sour crab apples, we shall meet with the failure we so richly deserve.
- Dale Carnegie
You can’t win by being more average than average.
- Seth Godin
You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth. People who feel like they’re being listened to feel accepted and appreciated. They feel like they’re being taken seriously and what they say really matters.
- Harvey Mackay
My wealth is reflected in the price of Severstal, and the number of shares I have in my possession doesn’t have any impact on the company.
- Alexei Mordashov
The Chinese market is a very good expansion opportunity for us, and we will continue looking to buy stakes and make acquisitions.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
The good-to-great companies displayed two distinctive forms of disciplined thought. The first, and the topic of this chapter, is that they infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality. (The second, which we will discuss in the next chapter, is that they developed a simple, yet deeply insightful, frame of reference for all decisions.)
- James C. Collins
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.
- Seth Godin
Let me remind everyone in this room that we are not changing guidance.
- John Chambers
The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
- Andrew Carnegie
It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control.
- Oprah Winfrey
Rule No.1: Never lose money.Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
- Warren Buffett
The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
- Winston Churchill
No matter what you do, your job is to tell your story.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Are you committed to a life of continual counseling, growth, and education? Are you committed to a life of consistently receiving truth, of renewing your mind? From what sources do you receive your counseling? Are you reading books by authors who speak wisdom? Are you listening to music and watching movies that have redemptive and edifying themes? Are you involved in a small group or community of people that can offer you support, guidance, and encouragement, and in which you give back that which you have been given? Do you know of professional counselors you can see when needed? Are you asking God for wisdom about life on a regular basis? (He says if you will ask, He will provide [see James 1:5–8].)
- Zig Ziglar
At the very beginning I actually felt a bit nervous. I didn’t have much experience in gaming.
- Lui Che Woo
It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.
- Steve Jobs
I think we are not serious about attacking the long-term debt problem, and that’s one of the things that he’s going to have to find a way to get on the agenda.
- Michael Bloomberg
The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.
- Bill Gates
The only time to buy these is on a day with no ‘y’ in it.
- Warren Buffett
Networking is one of the most valuable uses of your time in terms of return—and not just in monetary terms.
- Business Insider.com
…The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.
- Seth Godin
If you learn to pray bold prayers… it allows God to do big things in your life.
- Joel Olsteen
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
The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
- Henry Ford
It’s paradoxical, but you want to identify the things that can kill you and engage them sooner. This is part of the metric behind fail fast. Of course, you’re not actually trying to fail; you want to succeed. But failing fast is much better than failing slowly, since it enables you to quickly to pivot, iterate, and redeploy capital. The one key mistake is that people tend to work first on the problems that they have the most confidence they can solve. In a good startup strategy you actually want to face death soonest because then you fail fast or get on a great path to success fast. Identify the hardest problems and try to solve those as soon as you can.
- Reid Hoffman
In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity, or you can pick yourself up and say, ‘Listen, I have to be responsible for myself.’
- Howard Schultz
Infrastructure web services had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
I would get records by Earl Scruggs… I would tune my banjo down and I’d pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking… And I kind of worked out my own style of playing.
- Steve Martin
Competition and capitalism are opposites.
- Peter Thiel
Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
- Thomas Edison
We’re not in the hamburger business. We’re in show business.
- Ray Kroc
Taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible.
- Larry Ellison
I predict at least one of the rookie drivers will win a race this year. With this strong of a group, two or three of them will likely win.
- Ed Clark
Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are commmon and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy – though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies. It is a checklist.
- Atul Gawande
Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you’ve got, you’re more likely to do it.And this is precisely why it’s difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.
- Seth Godin
And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.
- Winston Churchill
The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.
- Winston Churchill
When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.
- Bill Gates
[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.
- Jack Dorsey
Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.
- Bill Gates
[On Twitter] We believe that fundamentally we are building a utility.
- Jack Dorsey
I don’t use my brain about the creative thing. From a business standpoint, I instinctively do things: when I get something right, it’s never because I use my brain
- Russell Simmons
Man will occasionally stumble upon the truth but most times he will pick himself up and continue on.
- Winston Churchill
Whatever the trend in exchange rates or whatever the external factors, a manufacturing company is always faced with the mission of transforming itself into a company that can produce higher value-added to absorb the increase in the cost of living in the country it’s operating in.
- Fujio Mitarai
I worry about another leg down in the economies causing social disruption because deleveragings can be very painful – it depends on how they’re managed.
- Ray Dalio
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
- Steve Jobs
Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.
- Seth Godin
They (the competition) need to avoid coming at us head-on, and do their own thing better than we do ours. It doesn’t make any sense to try to underprice Wal-Mart (DJC) on something like toothpaste (DJ Prices). That’s not what the customer is looking to a small store for anyway. Most independents are best off, I think, doing what I prided myself on doing for many years as a storekeeper, getting out on the floor and meeting everyone of the customers. Let them know how much you appreciate them, and ring that cash register yourself. That little personal touch is so important for an independent merchant because no matter how hard Wal-Mart tries to duplicate – and we try awfully hard – we can’t really do it.
- Sam Walton
Be there for your kids. Later, when you need them, they’ll be there for you.
- Zig Ziglar
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill
In the years to come, that lure of partnership helped us attract a lot of good managers, but I don’t believe that we ever had one who bought more stock than Willard. And of course he feels pretty good about it today. – Sam Walton (on human resources, hiring, early history of Wal-Mart)
- Sam Walton
Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is–the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.
- Winston Churchill
The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it’s Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.
- Bill Gates
We have a number of difficulties facing our nation, but I believe fatherlessness is right at the top of the list.
- Tony Dungy
If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.
- John C. Maxwell
Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.
- Jack Welch
Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Here’s the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don’t you hate that? I love that there’s no map.
- Seth Godin
One of my lifelong practices is to pay my obligations on time, especially my suppliers. Even in my early years as retailer, I didn’t delay my payments to suppliers, because I tell my kids that we have to be considerate to suppliers and think of their own hinyong or how they have to protect their sense of trustworthiness with others.
- Henry Sy
Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that… you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.
- Elon Musk
You won’t get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it.
- John Lennon
God can do in a split second what might otherwise take you many years.
- Joel Olsteen
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
- Peter Drucker
You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.
- Dale Carnegie
We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.
- Bill Gates
Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs, Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain, Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves.
- Peter Thiel
