Notable Quotables

The premium single-cup segment is the fastest-growing business within the global coffee industry.

- Howard Schultz

The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.

- Seth Godin

Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.

- Oprah Winfrey

Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don’t think so.

- Dale Carnegie

An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes—the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions. People are quite flexible, in that they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. An employee of IBM, for example, can quite readily change the way he or she works, in order to work successfully in a small start-up company. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Similarly, values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high-margin products, cannot simultaneously accord priority to low-margin products. The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context.

- Clayton M. Christensen

As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I got into this habit by attempting to contact celebrities and famous businesspeople for advice.

- Timothy Ferriss

And so I believe that God plays this enormous role in my life. And I believe that it’s my obligation to give back and to follow the rules that were set. And it also gives me an enormous sense of my own place and an enormous sense of stability.

- Ronald Perelman

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.

- Og Mandino

Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don’t have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.

- Zig Ziglar

Well, clearly Apple is a role model of the American innovation whereby it produced all these products – iPod, iPhone, iPad – that are really now dominating all the technology arena in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.

- John C. Maxwell

Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.

- Seth Godin

From my experience, there are so many regulations for investing in the United States that they become an impediment, a barrier to investing.

- Michael Otto

Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.

- Herb Kelleher

If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.

- Seth Godin

Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.

- Ben Horowitz

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.

- Seth Godin

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

- Winston Churchill

The level of analysis that is done when you see laws created, whether it’s the city or state or federal level – it’s much more horse-trading than analysis.

- Michael Bloomberg

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

- Howard Schultz

I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.

- Ray Dalio

1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.

- Peter Thiel

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Nobody walks this earth thinking he’s better than I think I am – I think I’m great. At the same time, it’s so obvious to me that I’m nobody.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.

- Zig Ziglar

Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it. This describes Europe since the early 1970s, when the continent succumbed to undirected bureaucratic drift. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow-motion crisis, and nobody is in charge. The European Central Bank doesn’t stand for anything but improvisation: 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. Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse.

- Peter Thiel

In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

- Napoleon Hill

Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new…If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low. These organizations have people who will try to patch problems over after the fact, instead of motivated people eager to delight on the spot.The alternative, it seems, is to organize for joy. These are the companies that give their people the freedom (and the expectation) that they will create, connect and surprise. These are the organizations that embrace someone who make a difference, as opposed to searching the employee handbook for a rule that was violated.

- Seth Godin

I know Bo Xilai well. But our relationship was based on our work, we didn’t have a personal relationship.

- Wang Jianlin

My wealth is reflected in the price of Severstal, and the number of shares I have in my possession doesn’t have any impact on the company.

- Alexei Mordashov

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting

- Thomas Jefferson

Wally Amos is the classic example of a man who gets up again and again.

- Zig Ziglar

Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.

- Caterina Fake

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

- Winston Churchill

I’m not looking for a legacy, and you’ll never shut up the critics. I’ve been around 50 years. When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.

- Rupert Murdoch

I cut the feet off of a pair of panty hose and it allowed me to wear a pair of great strappy sandals. I didn’t see lines but the hose rolled up at my feet – and that’s how Spanx born.

- Sara Blakely

You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.

- John C. Maxwell

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

For people to be fully committed, they should be properly compensated. Whenever an entrepreneur asks me to invest in his company, I ask him how much he intends to pay himself. A company does better the less it pays the CEO—that’s one of the single clearest patterns I’ve noticed from investing in hundreds of startups. In no case should a CEO of an early-stage, venture-backed startup receive more than $150,000 per year in salary.

- Peter Thiel

Say ‘Hello’ in tones that bespeak how pleased you are to have the person call.

- Dale Carnegie

If you say too much or mix in multiple pitches, you diffuse your goal. You must give the media a pitch they can hit.

- Michael Levine

The Lack of Candor is the biggest and deepest darkest secrets of business…People might not have agree with me on every issue, and I may not have been right all the time, but they always knew they were getting it straight and honest.

- Jack Welch

I feel like my message is to let people know that God is a good God, that He’s on their side, and no matter what happens, He has a great plan for them.

- Joel Olsteen

Ask yourself, what’s the one thing that I can do right now so I’m on track to achieve my someday goals?

- Gary Keller

I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education.

- Steve Jobs

The good-to-great companies displayed two distinctive forms of disciplined thought. The first, and the topic of this chapter, is that they infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality. (The second, which we will discuss in the next chapter, is that they developed a simple, yet deeply insightful, frame of reference for all decisions.)

- James C. Collins

Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.

- Jack Welch

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

- Bill Gates

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

- Winston Churchill

Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless.

- Warren Buffett

MAY 31 The Power of Your Words Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. PROVERBS 18:21 NASB OUR WORDS have tremendous power and are similar to seeds. By speaking them aloud, they are planted in our subconscious minds, take root, grow, and produce fruit of the same kind. Whether we speak positive or negative words, we will reap exactly what we sow. That’s why we need to be extremely careful what we think and say. The Bible compares the tongue to the small rudder of a huge ship, which controls the ship’s direction (see James 3:4). Similarly, your tongue will control the direction of your life. You create an environment for either good or evil with your words, and if you’re always murmuring, complaining, and talking about how bad life is treating you, you’re going to live in a pretty miserable world. Use your words to change your negative situations and fill them with life.

- Joel Olsteen

Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.

- Seth Godin

The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it’s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

- George Soros

The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little.

- Zig Ziglar

I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the site, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the site.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.

- Steve Ballmer

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

- Winston Churchill

It didn’t matter how bleak the situation or how stultifying their mediocrity, they all maintained unwavering faith that they would not just survive, but prevail as a great company. And yet, at the same time, they became relentlessly disciplined at confronting the most brutal facts of their current reality.

- James C. Collins

War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:

- Peter Thiel

Or heritage and ideals, our code and standards- the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

- Walt Disney

Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.

- Bill Gates

Thee may be some concern about rising inflation, shortage of labour and increased trade protectionism but the economy is generally in good shape.

- Cheng Yu-tung

If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.

- Peter Thiel

The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.

- Seth Godin

Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.

- Timothy Ferriss

It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.

- Zig Ziglar

Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

- Warren Buffett

Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

- Jeff Bezos

God will lead you from where you are right now to where He wants to you to be, if you’ll let Him.

- George Foreman

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Success is about being where we are supposed to be and doing what we need to be doing.

- David Robinson

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

Future public education will require involvement and collaboration among various local, civic, private and nonprofit entities, a concept I like to refer to as ‘community entrepreneurship.’

- Donald Bren

It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.

- Dale Carnegie

So, if you look at what’s common among some of the companies I have, including the Four Seasons, NewsCorp, George V, the Plaza, these are all irreplaceable brands in their own fields.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice.

- John C. Maxwell

One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a deep dive. It’s spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference…one that looks like it would be fun, and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it meddling….I followed up on all of them with a passion and a mania that often veered toward the lunatic fringe…To make the initiatives work, it took a passionate all-consuming commitment from the top. Beyond passion, there was alot of rigor…Making initiates successful is all about focus and passionate commitment. The drumbeat must be relentlessness. Every leadership action must demonstrate total committment to the initiative….I was an outrageous champion of everything that we did from our early need to face reality and change the culture to our major initiatives that reshaped the company. Whenever I had an idea or message that I wanted to drive into the organization, I could never say it enough. I repeated it over and over, at every meeting and review for years, until I could almost gag on the words.

- Jack Welch

In the end, the customer doesn’t know, or care, if you are small or large as an organization. She or he only focuses on the garmenthanging on the rail in the store.

- Giorgio Armani

One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.

- Seth Godin

We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries – discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .

- Thomas Edison

if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.

- Dale Carnegie

A plan is always successful if the plan is good.

- Zig Ziglar

The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.

- Ben Horowitz

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

- Napoleon Hill

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