Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Notable Quotables
With tech companies, whoever’s the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, ‘Is this the end of them?’ And – there’s more – more times people think that’s the case than it really is the case.
- Bill Gates
Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.
- Oprah Winfrey
You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.
- Seth Godin
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
- Henry Ford
People everywhere love Windows.
- Bill Gates
After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.
- John D. Rockefeller
I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.
- Jeff Bezos
Hosting the Oscars is much like making love to a woman. It’s something I only get to do when Billy Crystal is out of town.
- Steve Martin
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
When you develop yourself to the point where your belief in yourself is so strong that you know that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to, your future will be unlimited.
- Brian Tracy
‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.
- Bill Gates
I will be liken to the rain drop which washes away the mountain; the ant that devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attemps, repeated will complete my undertaking.
- Og Mandino
Nobody enjoys the ‘little show about nothing’ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does.
- Napoleon Hill
If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?
- Ben Horowitz
Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else.
- Peter Thiel
Contenerse es casi como robar.
- Neil Young
Stay focused instead of getting offended or off track by others.
- John C. Maxwell
Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World.
- Bill Gates
The fight against AIDS in China is already well underway. The Chinese government and other funders are providing major support, and they’ll continue to bear primary responsibility for delivering prevention and treatment.
- Bill Gates
Even if you are predisposed to being overweight, you’re not predestined to be fat.
- Timothy Ferriss
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.
- Jack Dorsey
I want people to know their palate is a snowflake. We all like different things. Why should we all have the same taste in wines?
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.
- Jeff Bezos
I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.
- Sam Walton
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
- Napoleon Hill
The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping.
- Dale Carnegie
My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.
- Timothy Ferriss
For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.
- James C. Collins
I like sports, and I enjoy playing basketball and lifting weights.
- Joel Olsteen
Your faith will help you overcome your obstacles.
- Joel Olsteen
The global economy has experienced considerable slowdown in recent times. However there has been one notable exception: China.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?
- Elon Musk
When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.
- Winston Churchill
Control, control, you must learn control!
- Yoda
Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.
- Wang Jianlin
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
Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.
- Bill Gates
Be fair. You have to be able to see their point of view.
- Michael Levine
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Too often, sales reps simply regurgitate their presentations and expect to land the sale. It doesn’t work.
- Harvey Mackay
The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.
- Peter Drucker
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
Think about how Google talks about its business. It certainly doesn’t claim to be a monopoly.
- Peter Thiel
It’s not always easy to get over some of those bumps in the road, those disillusionments and disappointments. It’s going to take a strong will. Sometimes, it may take courage. Sometimes nothing but faith in God and say, I refuse to be trapped in the past. I’m not going to let the past destroy my future. I’m pressing on. I’m straining forward, knowing that God has great things in store for me.
- Joel Olsteen
Japan has only 100m people. Asia has 4bn. At least one-third, maybe nearly half, will become middle class, and this is a big opportunity for Japanese businessmen.
- Tadashi Yanai
My Golden Rule of Networking is simple: Don’t keep score.
- Harvey Mackay
1. Why is it foolish to launch a new business with millions of dollars in TV ads?2. Are the market leaders in every industry more vulnerable to sudden successes by the competition than ever before?3. Should book publishers issue the paperback edition of a book before the hardcover?4. What’s the single most important asset a company can create—and what is the simple thing that can kill it?5. Every ad needs to do one of two things to succeed…yet most ads do neither. What’s the right strategy?6. Does the Net create a dynamic that fundamentally changes the way everything is marketed?7. How can every business…big and small…use ideavirus marketing to succeed?
- Seth Godin
We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.
- Phil Knight
The bigger your list, the greater your options. That doesn’t mean you contact everyone on your list each time you send out a press release. You pick and choose who gets what, and block out long-term strategy as you go.
- Michael Levine
Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.
- Bill Gates
The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever met are all good communicators. It’s perhaps one of the very few unifying factors.
- Timothy Ferriss
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
- Jeff Bezos
It’s no secret that we were sticking just above every nickel we had on the chance that people would really be interested in something totally new and unique in the field of entertainment.
- Walt Disney
So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.
- Peter Drucker
the more ‘Yeses’ we can, at the very outset, induce, the more likely we are to succeed in capturing the attention for our ultimate proposal.
- Dale Carnegie
Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we’re afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.
- Seth Godin
Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.
- Zig Ziglar
and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand”
- Dale Carnegie
SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over.
- Timothy Ferriss
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.
- P.T. Barnum
Fortune favors the bold.
- Virgil
It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don’t feel like an oligarch.
- Vladimir Potanin
Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts.
- Winston Churchill
There is far more opportunity than there is ability.
- Thomas Edison
You were not created to just get by with an average, unrewarding, or unfulfilling life. God created you to leave your mark on this generation.
- Joel Olsteen
If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
- Bill Gates
Separate performance from people.
- David Robinson
Moving first is a tactic, not a goal.
- Peter Thiel
To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone
- Sergey Brin
Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
- Seth Godin
I believe that greatest things happen only when you give others the credit. That’s the law of EMPOWERMENT in action.
- Napoleon Hill
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.
- Bill Gates
I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
- Oprah Winfrey
Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.
- Henry Ford
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
- Winston Churchill
All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.
- Seth Godin
You will never change what you tolerate.
- Joel Olsteen
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
- Bill Gates
Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.
- Bill Gates
Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.
- Warren Buffett
In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.
- Lee Shau Kee
Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.
- Yoda
I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Every choice you make has an end result.
- Zig Ziglar
India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.
- Bill Gates
You have to think anyway, so why not think big?
- Donald Trump
If Wanda can control more than 20 per cent of the world’s three most important film markets – the United States, Europe and China – then it will have an empire with great voice in the industry.
- Wang Jianlin
Africa is on the rise.
- Bill Gates
We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Your business has to work when it’s small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.
- Seth Godin
My home is in Moscow and I have no plans to change this.
- Alisher Usmanov
The worst way of flying, I think, is standby. It never works. That’s why they call it standby. You end up standing there going, ‘Bye!’
- Jerry Seinfeld
Any time is a good time to start a company.
- Ron Conway
People are afraid of failure – they don’t like to work so hard and have people keep saying, ‘No.’ I think that’s what people fear most.
- Russell Simmons
We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.
- Richard Branson





