I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good, but on a practical level having dealt with being abandoned by your father, being raised by your alcoholic mom and having severe physical disabilities even today, How do you choose to have the right thoughts?
- Oprah Winfrey
Notable Quotables
We’re not in the fashion business, as the Wall Street Journal wrote the other day. We’re in the sports business, and there’s a big difference.
- Phil Knight
The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
- Peter Thiel
There is far more opportunity than there is ability.
- Thomas Edison
E – Executions, how to get things done
- Jack Welch
Hong Kong has remained a strong financial centre. It has a solid business environment and geographically, it is well located, being next to China. During this time, there is no city that can match it.
- Lee Shau Kee
I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in ‘American History X,’ yes. I remember coming home from school and asking my mum if I could get an eye transplant, and of course she declined.
- Timothy Ferriss
You cannot play with fire.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.
- Aliko Dangote
When I cut the feet out of my pantyhose that one time, I saw it as my sign. I had been visualizing being self employed prior to this happening. It was my mental preparation meeting the opportunity in that moment.
- Sara Blakely
In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.
- Bill Gates
Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‘Boy, those were great old days.’ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.
- Joel Olsteen
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.
- Thomas Edison
My big focus is China and OPEC and all of these countries that are just absolutely destroying the United States.
- Donald Trump
It’s obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.
- Elon Musk
I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.
- Joel Olsteen
Husbands and wives, first be faithful to each other. Second, keep the romance going all of your life by courting each other every day.
- Zig Ziglar
For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.
- Timothy Ferriss
Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence – more plow horse than show horse.
- James C. Collins
One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- Bruce Lee
The three Rs in educationare reading, writing and arithmetic. Without these basic skills, learning becomes almost impossible. In a similar way, business starts with a relationship. You are then judged by the results. Rewards spring from the results.
- Jack Nadel
I went to Princeton specifically to study physics.
- Jeff Bezos
There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.
- Zig Ziglar
When men are fighting for their lives they are not often disposed to be complimentary to those who are trying to kill them.
- Winston Churchill
What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.
- Oprah Winfrey
As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now.
- Joel Olsteen
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.
- Thomas Edison
Definiteness of purpose is the starting point from which one must begin. He recognized, too that definiteness of purpose of takes on animation, life, and power when backed by a burning desire to translate that purpose into its material equivalent. – Napoleon Hill (on leadership and vision)
- Napoleon Hill
Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
- Elon Musk
Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands
- David Novak
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
Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes – and most fools do – but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one’s mistakes.
- Dale Carnegie
I think that any wealth creates a sense of trusteeship… it is characteristic of the new generation which has created wealth to have some amount of responsibility for it.
- Azim Premji
You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.
- Henry Ford
Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.
- Henry Ford
Differentiate yourself! Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
Christopher Colombus’ big mistake was that he was looking for a trade route to China, and accidentally bumped into America, the richest, most powerful country in the world.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Let’s test the Shakespearean model in the real world. Imagine a production called Gates and Schmidt, based on Romeo and Juliet. Montague is Microsoft. Capulet is Google. Two great families, run by alpha nerds, sure to clash on account of their sameness.
- Peter Thiel
We made a disastrous move into casual shoes.
- Phil Knight
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
- Bill Gates
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
- Andrew Carnegie
I love cities, and I love city governments in particular. But in politics it would have taken me 8 years from implementing a policy before I would get to see the feedback. With programming I could model the same policies and see the impact immediately. Technology is a far more efficient way to test.
- Jack Dorsey
Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.
- Winston Churchill
You’re got to worry about what’s coming up to stay ahead of the curve…
- Phil Knight
In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.
- Peter Thiel
We decided that instead of avoiding our competitors, or waiting for them to come to us, we would meet them head-on. It was one of the smartest strategic decisions we ever made. In fact, if our story doesn’t prove anything else about the free market system, it erases any doubt that spirited competition is good for business – not just for customers, but the companies which have to compete with one another too. Our competitors have honed and sharpened us to an edge we wouldn’t have with out them. We wouldn’t be nearly as good as we are today without Kmart, and I think they would admit we’ve made them a better retailer. One reason Sears fell so far off the pace is that they wouldn’t admit for the longest time that Wal-Mart and Kmart were their real competition. They ignored both of us, and we both blew right by them.
- Sam Walton
I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.
- Bill Gates
K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.
- Bill Gates
All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current.
- Ben Horowitz
This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines. If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace.
- Timothy Ferriss
The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.
- Zig Ziglar
We’re seeing an explosion in new approaches, new models and new forms of interaction. This growth comes from change, insight and exploration, not obedience.
- Seth Godin
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
I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I’d have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.
- Sara Blakely
I DECLARE breakthroughs are coming in my life, sudden bursts of God’s goodness. Not a trickle. Not a stream. But a flood of God’s power. A flood of healing. A flood of wisdom. A flood of favor. I am a breakthrough person and I choose to live breakthrough minded. I am expecting God to overwhelm me with His goodness and amaze me with His favor. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.
- Ray Kroc
People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.
- Jack Welch
The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.
- Seth Godin
A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
- Peter Thiel
[In February 2011 on Square.] Starting a startup after twitter is so much easier than before.
- Jack Dorsey
And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America.
- Stephen Wynn
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
Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.
- Michael Dell
Being great at everything is not an actionable message.
- Floris Maljers
To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
The fastest and best way to build value for your business is to build your people
- Clay Clark
When the economy does pick up, … so will … spending.
- John Chambers
Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines wont make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa and its about getting a balance.
- Richard Branson
One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.
- Ben Horowitz
If you cannot persuade people to do things, you simply will not be a success because you are not an island unto yourself. Everything in life is about persuading people to do what you want them to do.
- David Robinson
Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.
- Richard Branson
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
He was probably America’s first capitalist.
- Travis Kalanick
If the merit of the idea is strong, it spreads really quickly no matter who you are or where you are from.
- Jack Dorsey
The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.
- Peter Thiel
To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.
- Michael Bloomberg
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
- Napoleon Hill
You measure your people and you take action on those that don’t measure up.
- Jack Welch
Imagination is more important that knowledge
- Albert Einstein
I had a feeling once about Mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me – the Byss and Abyss. I saw – as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.
- Winston Churchill
The outside of a horse is good for the inside of man.
- Winston Churchill
Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge.
- Clayton M. Christensen
You have no ability, if you’re a financial institution and you’re threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.
- Warren Buffett
Always go to the expert.
- Jack Nadel
Choose wise and Godly people to advise you.
- George Foreman
Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be.
- Sam Walton
People will come to the pharmacy because they want the advice.
- Stefano Pessina
Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.
- Seth Godin
Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it’s easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is.
- Peter Thiel
I notice a difference from the moment I meditate.
- Ray Dalio
Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
- Zig Ziglar
I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take.
- Sergey Brin
We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.
- Richard Branson
Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.
- Joel Olsteen
If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.
- Oprah Winfrey
In the 1960s, if you were a blue collar worker or uneducated, and you had an injury on the job, the company basically dismissed you.
- Howard Schultz
We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
