Notable Quotables

[In January 2011] I think the important thing for Twitter is that it works on any technology.

- Jack Dorsey

I know if I stopped hosting ‘Wine Library TV,’ we’d probably lose 75 percent of our audience, but the remaining 25 percent is still a big number.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

- Bill Gates

I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time America was run like a business.

- Donald Trump

Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.

- Steve Ballmer

If You Have A Lemon, Make A Lemonade That is what a great educator does. But the fool does the exact opposite. If he finds that life has handed him a lemon, he gives up and says: I’m beaten. It is fate. I haven’t got a chance. Then he proceeds to rail against the world and indulge in an orgy of selfpity. But when the wise man is handed a lemon, he says: What lesson can I learn from this misfortune? How can I improve my situation? How can I turn this lemon into a lemonade?

- Dale Carnegie

My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.

- Sara Blakely

When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t know why you should be proud of something. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. You are what you are.

- Michael Bloomberg

The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That’s why graceful is in such demand.

- Seth Godin

I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years.

- Howard Schultz

We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.

- Ray Kroc

Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.

- James C. Collins

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

- Winston Churchill

What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.

- Bill Gates

We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill… it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.

- Li Ka-shing

One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn’t elect those people. Isn’t it supposed to be different? Aren’t we supposed to like the people that we elected?

- Bill Gates

The skill sets it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, a successful marketer, or a relevant celebrity is a different skill set than you needed ten years ago, even though that was the skill set that mattered for decades.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

- John D. Rockefeller

I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.

- Elon Musk

Jobs and businesses are just vehicles to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

- Clay Clark

Don’t equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don’t let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you’d like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.

- Harvey Mackay

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.

- Winston Churchill

Who decides what’s in Windows? The customers who buy it.

- Bill Gates

Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.

- Peter Thiel

If you end your training now — if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did — you will become an agent of evil.

- Yoda

Some people are so belligerent in their communication style that people just stop talking when they are in the room. If every time anyone brings up an issue with the marketing organization, the VP of marketing jumps down their throats, then guess what topic will never come up? This behavior can become so bad that nobody brings up any topic when the jerk is in the room. As a result, communication across the executive staff breaks down and the entire company slowly degenerates. Note that this only happens if the jerk in question is unquestionably brilliant. Otherwise, nobody will care when she attacks them. The bite only has impact if it comes from a big dog. If one of your big dogs destroys communication on your staff, you need to send her to the pound.

- Ben Horowitz

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

- Thomas Edison

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

If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.

- Bill Gates

With sustained recovery of the local economy, marked improvement in consumer spending and increasing tourist arrivals from Mainland China, these led to the expansion of certain local retail trades including cosmetics, audio-visual products and jewellery which in turn boosted the demand for retail shop spaces.

- Lee Shau Kee

I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.

- Elon Musk

Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.

- Seth Godin

My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.

- Mark Zuckerberg

If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.

- Zig Ziglar

We all must recognize that homeland security funds should be allocated by threat and no other reason.

- Michael Bloomberg

We see no indications in the marketplace that the radical Internet business transformation in practices like customer service, supply-chain management, employee training, empowerment, and e-commerce that is taking place around the world today is slowing — in fact, we believe it is accelerating globally.

- John Chambers

For years we thought of ourselves as a production-oriented company, meaning we put all our emphasis on designing and manufacturing the products. But now we understand the most important thing we do is market the product… Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool.

- Phil Knight

God, I’m ready. I’m taking the limits off of You. I’m enlarging my vision. I may not see a way but I know You have a way. I declare I’m coming into a shift.

- Joel Olsteen

[On a small business class taught at university by Frank Shallenberger] Shallenberger started by defining the type of person who was an entrepreneur, and I realized he was talking to me.

- Phil Knight

Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.

- Dale Carnegie

I was not an easy student, and I had to apply myself diligently to prepare my lessons, said Rockefeller, who described himself accurately as reliable but not brilliant.

- John D. Rockefeller

Networking is one of the most valuable uses of your time in terms of return—and not just in monetary terms.

- Business Insider.com

My favorite writers are all Jews – David, Solomon, Matthew, Mark – well, you get the picture.

- Zig Ziglar

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

- Elon Musk

You embrace the top 20, deal with the middle 70, and you face into the bottom 10, and you do what’s right for them and for you.

- Jack Welch

I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee.

- Howard Schultz

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

- Andrew Carnegie

Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.

- Richard Branson

Bordeaux would be naive not to recognize that Robert Parker was driving the brand equity. If the next generation doesn’t care about Chateau Pichon-Lalande, then you have a problem.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there’s an education level that plays into the mix and so if it’s inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.

- Ray Dalio

About one in five of us is retired. About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed peoplemake up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires.

- Thomas J Stanley

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

Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.

- Napoleon Hill

It is not good to demonstrate your luxury and your wealth: to rub it in the faces of others is insulting. So you should be modest, try not to insult people by showing that you can do what they cannot.

- Vladimir Potanin

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

- Henry Ford

I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.

- Gina Rinehart

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.

- Ralph Lauren

There’s only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that’s already been written.

- Bill Gates

The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realise in some subtle way that you realise their importance, and recognise it sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

- John D. Rockefeller

When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.

- Rupert Murdoch

Your weapons, you will not need them.

- Yoda

The ‘morality of compromise’ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

- Andrew Carnegie

But as an entrepreneur you have to feel like you can jump out of an aeroplane because you’re confident that you’ll catch a bird flying by. It’s an act of stupidity, and most entrepreneurs go splat because the bird doesn’t come by, but a few times it does.

- Reed Hastings

In 2008, people who invested in hedge funds needed capital badly, but many of the funds would not return their money. However, I gave money back to any investor who requested it. It was the bottom of the market and a pretty tough time.

- Carl Icahn

They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people have their say” so that they could buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.

- James C. Collins

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

- Mark Twain

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.

- Winston Churchill

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

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

- Napoleon Hill

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

- Thomas Edison

I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, ‘That’s the company that honoured me, even though I don’t have an education’. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience.

- Howard Schultz

For those already successful, money can become a controlling factor in life and make you a slave to it. One way to avoid that – Philanthropy.

- Lee Shau Kee

The life of a startup is full of ups and downs, an emotional roller coaster ride that you can’t quite imagine if you’ve spent your whole career in a corporation.

- Harvey Mackay

I’ve changed my will to show my concern for animal rights.

- Stephen Wynn

I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident…. Almost none of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.

- Thomas Edison

The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.

- John C. Maxwell

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

- Bill Gates

I do think that religion has turned a lot of people off. Part of it is because it was all about the rules and was political. I think now people have a hunger for God, they want to have a relationship, but they don’t want to be called religious. I’m not trying to get them to join my religion, I’m just trying to plant a seed of hope in their heart.

- Joel Olsteen

Establish a core value that drives the business and helps promote it in perpetuity.

- Ben Horowitz

Today, Andy Quinn pitched a great game finally, and that’s what he’s capable of. He fell behind a few hitters, but he got stronger as he went on.

- Jack Taylor

The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.

- Andrew Carnegie

Hong Kong has gone through many ups and downs in the past. Unavoidably, one needs to go through the lowest point before reaching the peak again.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Although Hong Kong continued to be affected by the slowdown of the global economy in the past financial year, most of the retail shopping properties owned by the Group are located in new towns where continual growth of residents are maintained and consumer spending power are segregated, thereby providing a good support to stabilise rental of the retail shopping properties located in such new towns.

- Lee Shau Kee

The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such.

- Og Mandino

Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.

- Yoda

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