Notable Quotables

we can not prepare for defeat and expect to live a life in Victory.

- Joel Olsteen

The reason the social-networking phenomenon is something that I invested in early and massively – I led the Series A financing for Friendster; I founded a company called Socialnet in 1997; I founded LinkedIn; and I was part of the first round of financing in Facebook – it sounds trivial, but people matter.

- Reid Hoffman

Media companies focused on things like creating great stories whereas technology companies focused on creating a better way of doing things. We began to think about new ideas and about forming a new company.

- Ben Horowitz

There are two paths people can take. They can either play now and pay later, or pay now and play later. Regardless of the choice, one thing is certain. Life will demand a payment.

- John C. Maxwell

So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.

- Thomas Edison

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

- Bill Gates

China’s movie industry is growing a lot faster than that of the U.S.

- Wang Jianlin

Take time to be kind and to say ‘thank you.’

- Zig Ziglar

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win — essential to success.

- Napoleon Hill

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

- Warren Buffett

Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

- Steve Jobs

I think what we’re lacking in society, not only in the U.S. but also around the world, is to find heroes once again and to celebrate these kind of people.

- Howard Schultz

This is just going to be a great event and we have an outstanding speaker.

- Jack Taylor

Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.

- Gary Keller

Let go of yesterday. Let today be a new beginning and be the best that you can, and you’ll get to where God wants you to be.

- Joel Olsteen

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

If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte… ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual’s taste.

- Reed Hastings

My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.

- Dale Carnegie

If the broadcasters were to win on their claims, they’d outlaw the DVR.

- Charles Ergen

Become meaningful in your interactions and the path to success in any endeavor is simpler and far more sustainable.

- Dale Carnegie

I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.

- Elon Musk

I always saw myself wanting to do something deemed successful and good at the same time.

- Howard Schultz

When you supervise something, it is one thing. When you are in the middle of something, there is a different pace of life.

- Vladimir Potanin

Demand is best measured in terms of spending. You know, I think in traditional economics, it’s a mistake to measure it in terms of the quantity of goods.

- Ray Dalio

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.

- Steve Case

Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it’s getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.

- Donald Trump

Any great founders need to get out of the way of the company.

- Jack Dorsey

[On only having 4-6 hours for sleep in guiding two companies in June 2011.] Most people have major positions at companies and they’re also raising families. They have two year olds. I have it easy.

- Jack Dorsey

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

- Elon Musk

Apply the blacksmith’s homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.

- Dale Carnegie

Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.

- Walt Disney

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

- Steve Jobs

Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.

- Bill Gates

I’m not in business to make money for the other guy. I’m in the business to make money for myself.

- Sheldon Adelson

But there’s so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That’s where we are. We don’t get our hair caught in it, but that’s the level of primitiveness of where we are. We’re in 1908.

- Jeff Bezos

You can’t spend as much money as I have, even if you try. I’ve been trying.

- Larry Ellison

The Roman world, like an aged man, wished to dwell in peace and tranquillity and to enjoy in philosophic detachment the good gifts which life has to bestow upon the more fortunate classes. But new ideas disturbed the internal conservatism, and outside the carefully guarded frontiers vast masses of hungry, savage men surged and schemed. The essence of the Roman peace was toleration of all religions and the acceptance of a universal system of government. Every generation after the middle of the second century saw an increasing weakening of the system and a gathering movement towards a uniform religion. Christianity asked again all the questions which the Roman world deemed answered for ever, and some that it had never thought of.

- Winston Churchill

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

- John C. Maxwell

I do think there is an important artistic component in what we do. As a technology company I’ve tried to really stress that.

- Larry Page

Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.

- Peter Drucker

Worry is the most significant factor that relates to the root of negative thinking.

- Zig Ziglar

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

- Winston Churchill

I’m optimistic about the country. I’m optimistic about the American people.

- Howard Schultz

No, markets weren’t “efficient” at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion—often the wrong conclusion.

- Ben Horowitz

Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.

- Yoda

If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, let’s assume one week, someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self.

- Timothy Ferriss

I want to get involved in things that makes a difference in peoples lives and lifts them up. I don’t want to be a part of anything that’s not inspiring or helpful to the community that I’m serving.

- Russell Simmons

The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.

- Michael Gerber

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

- Warren Buffett

Names are the sweetest, most important sound in any language.

- Dale Carnegie

People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

- Timothy Ferriss

Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.

- Peter Thiel

To me, failure means not trying; failure isnt the outcome. If i have to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘I didnt try that because I was scared,’ that is failure.

- Sara Blakely

Much of our strategic shift is providing production advances over the next 60 days in the Gulf Coast. This effort sets the stage for Gulf Coast growth in 2006, along with production growth in our East, West and Canada regions.

- Dan Dinges

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 change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.

- Jack Welch

Had the people who started Facebook decided to stay at Harvard, they would not have been able to build the company, and by the time they graduated in 2006, that window probably would have come and gone.

- Peter Thiel

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

- Dale Carnegie

During the past financial year, development properties sold by the Group amounted to approximately HK$3,592 million in total attributable sales proceeds, representing around 1,700 units…

- Lee Shau Kee

The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits.

- Winston Churchill

I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.

- Henry Ford

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

It’s our obligation to use the law to the furthest possible means to protect our users’ privacy. It’s just a legal and ethical principle.

- Sergey Brin

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

We certainly employ a lot of immigrants at Fox… and we do not take any consistent anti-immigrant line.

- Rupert Murdoch

Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

In fact, when I look at it today, I realize that so much of what we did in the beginning was really poorly done. But we managed to sell our merchandise as low as we possibly could, and that kept us right-side-up for the first 10 years – that and consistently improving sales in these smaller markets by buildling up our relationship with the customers. The ideas was simple: when customers thought of Wal-Mart, they should think of low prices and satisfaction guaranteed.

- Sam Walton

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

I learned that people don’t buy anything from unknown stores.

- Tadashi Yanai

The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune, it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick.

- P.T. Barnum

Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitate to get in the way if you’re moving.

- Timothy Ferriss

Gain alignment every step of the way. Again, no involvement means no committment. Skip a layer and you will ultimately pay the price.

- David Novak

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.

- Seth Godin

It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.

- Steve Jobs

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

- Bill Gates

Every noteworthy achievement met with some sort of temporary setback before success came.

- Napoleon Hill

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

With an export-driven economy, Hong Kong is unavoidably affected by any hiccup in the outside world.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Who am I winning for? Am I winning for Oracle shareholders or is it simply a matter of personal vanity? I’ll admit to it. Mea culpa. An awful lot of it is personal vanity.

- Larry Ellison

It’s nice to be important, but more important to be nice. You don’t know who your top customers will be five years from now or where you will be in 10 years. You may have a fancy title, but you will always need help from the people around you.

- Harvey Mackay

I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it’s safe.

- Sara Blakely

Giving feels good, but it’s also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot ofcompanies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we’re doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won’t mention an advertisement; they’ll say a friend told them our story.

- Blake Mycoskie

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