You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.
- Warren Buffett
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
- Vince Lombardi
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.
- Seth Godin
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
- Peter Drucker
One definition of hope is happy anticipation of something good.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Save someone’s face once and your influence with him rises. Save his face every time you can, and there is practically nothing he won’t do for you.
- Dale Carnegie
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
- Abraham Lincoln
Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
- Albert Einstein
Lack of Capital.
- Napoleon Hill
You can market your ass off, but if your product sucks, you’re dead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Don’t waste your time trying to win people over that can never be won over.
- Joel Olsteen
If it’s set up in such a way that it breaks the conditionality required by the (International Monetary Fund), I think that would be a step backward.
- John Chambers
Security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit; your machine can be taken over totally.
- Bill Gates
How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
- Winston Churchill
You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events.
- Joel Olsteen
For me, my father was, and still is, a symbol of qualified persons in the Ministry of Foreign Trade under Soviet conditions.
- Vladimir Potanin
The U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar, the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro.
- Peter Thiel
That Newport store was really the beginning of where Walmart is today. We did everything. We would wash windows, sweep floors, trim windows. We did all the stockroom work, checked the freight in. Everything it took to run a store. We had to keep expenses to a minimum. That is where it started, years ago. Our money was made by controlling expenses. That, and Sam always being so ingenius. He never stopped trying to do something different. One thing, though: I never forgave him for was making me clean out that damned ice cream machine.
- Bud Walton
Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.
- Seth Godin
The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission.
- Peter Drucker
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow.
- Evan Esar
Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP.
- Peter Thiel
The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.
- Debbi Fields
Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path.
- Seth Godin
Obviously I knew it was a great opportunity but I wasn’t expecting something as big as right now, what we see in Macau.
- Lui Che Woo
Getting every employee’s mind into the game is a huge part of what the CEO job is all about. Taking everyone’s best ideas and transferring them to others it the secret. Nothing is more important.
- Jack Welch
Read the Bible, it is your roadmap through life.
- George Foreman
If I designed a computer with 200 chips, I tried to design it with 150. And then I would try to design it with 100. I just tried to find every trick I could in life to design things real tiny.
- Steve Wozniak
Believe in your idea, trust your instincts, and don’t be afraid to fail. It took me two years from the time I had the idea for Spanx until the time I had a product in hand ready to sell into stores. I must have heard the word “no” a thousand times. If you believe in your idea 100%, don’t let anyone stop you! Not being afraid to fail is a key part of the success of Spanx.
- Sara Blakely
What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.
- Dave Thomas
If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
- Winston Churchill
You need to live every day like it could be your last.
- Joel Olsteen
Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember Life is too short to be little.
- Dale Carnegie
There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
- Simon Sinek
If we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes, we will never invest in things that are radical.
- Jeff Clavier
The uncertainty and importance of the present reduce the past and future to comparative insignificance, and clear the mind of minor worries. And when all is over, memories remain which few men do not hold precious.
- Winston Churchill
If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m a huge believer in clarity.
- Ben Horowitz
College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.
- Peter Thiel
Set your target and keep trying until you reach it.
- Napoleon Hill
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
Q1 was a solid quarter for Cisco, with balanced execution across most of our geographies, market segments and product categories, … We are especially pleased with the improving business momentum in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, the strength of our product families and the accelerated growth of the commercial marketplace, which has become our fastest growing customer segment.
- John Chambers
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
If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
- Jack Ma
The microprocessor is a miracle.
- Bill Gates
All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory’ was the motto of the King’s Guard in ancient Greece.
- Dale Carnegie
Frankly speaking, I decided to become a businessman at the moment when I understood that it is possible, because I grew up in a country where it was not possible. There existed even a special article in the penal code of the Soviet Union which punished entrepreneurial activity.
- Vladimir Potanin
Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.
- Bill Gates
In the most minimal sense, the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come.
- Peter Thiel
Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.
- Elon Musk
Whether you’re 9 or 90, stop trying to fix the things you’re bad at, and focus on the things you’re good at.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Apart from consolidating our position as a major property developer in Hong Kong, we have also been diversifying into other activities such as hotel businesses, construction and engineering, container terminal services and television industry…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Leadership must wake up every day with the mission of Finding a Better Way Every Day…There are no modest revolutions…GE was a place where the people got up everyday to searching for a better way.
- Jack Welch
The steel business is a local business. We do believe in the U.S. economy and would like to have a strong, balanced presence here.
- Alexei Mordashov
I think our main real estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and letting the population build out to us.
- Sam Walton
When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.
- Dale Carnegie
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
- Jeff Bezos
Foreplay, cuddling – a Jedi craves not these things.
- Yoda
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.
- Seth Godin
It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.
- Bill Gates
Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.
- Richard Branson
It’s not going to happen alone.
- Jack Dorsey
I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn’t depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.
- Timothy Ferriss
Great music and art are earthly wonders, but I think ‘cubist’ songs and paintings are hideous.
- Thomas Edison
I view my role more as trying to set up an environment where the personalitites, creativity and individuality of all the different employees come out and can shine.
- Tony Hsieh
I have never found a ship I wanted to go down with
- Jack Nadel
The first rule of the C.E.O. psychological meltdown is ‘Don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.’
- Ben Horowitz
The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”
- Ben Horowitz
Records are made to be broken. It is in man’s nature to continue to strive to do just that.
- Richard Branson
I don’t shop online, but my wife buys everything at home. We buy sea crabs, fresh crabs, all kinds of things.
- Jack Ma
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exup
Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.
- Ray Kroc
Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
- Og Mandino
You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
- Dale Carnegie
Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.
- Yoda
In many places where coffee is grown, deforestation is a major issue. With Starbucks’ position in the marketplace and the respect and relationships we have, we can – and have, in some cases – been able to educate and influence people.
- Howard Schultz
Our schools teach the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learns not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. 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
Sound managerial decisions are at the very root of their impending fall from industry leadership.
- Clayton M. Christensen
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.So the question is: Have you ever done that?
- Seth Godin
I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.
- Elon Musk
Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants, comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache and their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things.
- Winston Churchill
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.
- Dale Carnegie
Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Anger is a waste of energy. Steam which is used to blow off a safety valve would be better used to drive an engine.
- Winston Churchill
If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook. And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone. If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault. That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. ‘I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.’ What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.
- Seth Godin
A number of people in the United States, almost everyone, is using plastic cards to pay for things, but it’s extremely difficult to accept these cards. So let’s make it’s easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can.
- Jack Dorsey
We need to and must protect privacy. But I think that people will be willing and even eager to share medical information about themselves for the greater good of mankind.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
There is no more important economic policy issue today than helping our nation remain the global innovation leader. To do this, our leadership must focus on an aggressive agenda to support math and science education, patent litigation reform, healthcare information technology, and research and development. We thank President Bush for his leadership and urge all members of Congress to address these issues in a comprehensive fashion to get the job done.
- John Chambers
Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.
- John C. Maxwell
When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.
- Larry Ellison
Satisfied, loyal and repeat customers are at the heart of Walmart’s spectacular profit margins, and those customers are loyal to us because our associates treat them better than salespeople in other stores do. So, in the whole Wal-Mart scheme of things, the most important contact ever made is between the associated in the store and the customer. I didn’t catch on to that idea for quite a while. In fact, the biggest single regret in my whole business career is that we didn’t include our associates in the initial, managers-only profit-sharing plan when we took the company public in 1970. But there was nobody around preaching that philosophy in those days, and I guess I was just too worried about my own debt, and in too big a hurry to get somewhere fast. Today, some of our company’s critics would like everybody to believe we started our profit-sharing program and other benefits merely as away to stave off union organizing.
- Sam Walton
All you can do is every day, try to solve a problem and make your company better. You can’t worry about it, you can’t panic when you look at the stock market’s decline. You get frozen like a deer in the headlights. All you can do is all you can do.
- Larry Ellison
How will your new job differ from your current job?
- Ben Horowitz
Out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.
- Ben Horowitz
Tip #1 – Self-motivation is the key to success and will achieve powerful results.
- Jack Nadel
It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.
- Winston Churchill
