You don’t have to choose between your business and your life. Rather, if you do it right, you get your business and your life. In fact, we strongly believe that the only way to build a truly scalable business is by radically reducing its reliance on you, the owner, and supporting that rapid growth through systems, team and internal business controls.
- Jeff Hoffman
Notable Quotables
My children – in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.
- Steve Ballmer
The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic.
- Bill Gates
When people get at each other’s throat, the rich and the poor and the Left and the Right and so on, and you have a basic breakdown, that becomes very threatening.
- Ray Dalio
To me, job titles don’t matter. Everyone is in sales. It’s the only way we stay in business.
- Harvey Mackay
Often people fail to start or complete a task because they don’t see any connection between what they’re doing and what they really want to accomplish in life.
- John C. Maxwell
For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.
- Winston Churchill
The time has come to act.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Wal-Mart became Wal-Mart by ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things.
- Sam Walton
Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will be doing things absolutely differently from everybody else.
- Sara Blakely
If my mother hadn’t been the most patient person in the world, I might never have gone to school.
- Ben Horowitz
Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t go in and tell somebody else how to run their business.
- Carl Icahn
A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.
- Bob Dylan
It’s not about toughness, it’s not about attitude. Companies don’t fail for lack of cash or attitude. Companies fail for lack of brains and effort.
- Mark Cuban
As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.
- Thomas Edison
All great truths are simple in final analysis, and easily understood; if they are not, they are not great truths.
- Napoleon Hill
But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.
- Dale Carnegie
Having a personality of caring about people is important. You cant be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.
- Richard Branson
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
- Maya Angelou
Use what you have to get what you want.
- Jack Nadel
Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.
- Ben Horowitz
Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.
- Winston Churchill
Put all excuses aside and remember this: YOU are capable.
- Zig Ziglar
We shape our dwellings and afterwards our dwellings shape us.
- Winston Churchill
Treat them (the employees) well, but see that they work.
- John D. Rockefeller
Frank Wells 1888 instruction to his agents: The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all – let them be men, women or children, rich or poor, white or black – it must not be forgotten, that the company is dependent on these people for its business.
- Frank Wells
Be there for your kids. Later, when you need them, they’ll be there for you.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t think that a same-sex marriage is the way God intended it to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Mrs. Carnegie and I had dinner at a friend’s house in Chicago. While carving the meat, he did something wrong. I didn’t notice it; and I wouldn’t have cared even if I had noticed it. But his wife saw it and jumped down his throat right in front of us. John,” she cried, watch what you are doing! Can’t you ever learn to serve properly!” Then she said to us: He is always making mistakes. He just doesn’t try.” Maybe he didn’t try to carve; but I certainly give him credit for trying to live with her for twenty years. Frankly, I would rather have eaten a couple of hot dogs with mustard—in an atmosphere of peace—than to have dined on Peking duck and shark fins while listening to her scolding.
- Dale Carnegie
A successful manager told me that stopped wearing a watch. She found that the work was so immersive, anchoring it to whatever hour it happened to be was pointless. The watch reminded her of the rigors of appointments and the status quo, while her goal was to be there, right here, right now, in the moment, and to do the work in front of her. The watch had no role in doing that right, so, for now, it’s gone.
- Seth Godin
A change is as good as a rest.
- Winston Churchill
The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
- Moliere
I love building technology, I love programming. I love building teams. And I also love building beautiful things.
- Jack Dorsey
Show a real interest in his problem and helping him solve it.
- Jack Nadel
I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.
- Elon Musk
What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.
- Admiral Jim Stockdale
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
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
My strength is programming. I also think my biggest strength is simplification. That’s what I love doing.
- Jack Dorsey
Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.
- Ben Horowitz
How has being realistic” or responsible” kept you from the life you want? How has doing what you should” resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else?
- Timothy Ferriss
Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.
- Jack Welch
The world got enamored with smartphones and tablets, but what’s interesting is those devices don’t do everything that needs to be done. Three-D printing, virtual-reality computing, robotics are all controlled by PCs.
- Michael Dell
Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.
- Ray Kroc
If you give people tools, [and they use] their natural abilities and their curiosity, they will develop things in ways that will surprise you very much beyond what you might have expected.
- Bill Gates
I spent a disproportionate amount of my time in a car in L.A. I’m 35 years old. If you add up the hours spent in cars, it would be years.
- Travis Kalanick
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
I have stated that a democracy is always two years behind the dictator.
- Winston Churchill
The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
- Dale Carnegie
To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.
- Joel Olsteen
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
To Admiral Cunningham it was against all tradition to abandon the Army in such a crisis. He declared, “It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.
- Winston Churchill
People really criticize professional athletes going into the Olympics. People don’t like change. A bunch of people don’t like the Olympics now because we’ve added skateboarding… We’re modernizing the sport.
- Larry Ellison
[In February 2011] We’ve not done a lot of marketing whatsoever. A lot of it has just been word of mouth.
- Jack Dorsey
The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.
- Dale Carnegie
One of my lifelong practices is to pay my obligations on time, especially my suppliers. Even in my early years as retailer, I didn’t delay my payments to suppliers, because I tell my kids that we have to be considerate to suppliers and think of their own hinyong or how they have to protect their sense of trustworthiness with others.
- Henry Sy
Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you.
- Seth Godin
Hay que evitar siempre el ángulo agudo.
- Dale Carnegie
People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest …But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.
- Thomas Edison
It is not the rich man’s son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.
- Andrew Carnegie
I do not follow conventional wisdom.
- Phil Knight
Allow yourself to get on the same side of the desk and solve the problems together.
- Jack Nadel
Pessimism doesn’t grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
- Harvey Mackay
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill
The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.
- Thomas Edison
Always remember that nothing kills great ideas more than people with small ideas and limited imaginations.
- Robert Kiyosaki
There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.
- Winston Churchill
The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that’s all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.The only correct answer to ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ is ‘Because it’s lizard brain told it to.’ Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It’s real, and it’s living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.
- Seth Godin
I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.
- Winston Churchill
When you have an understanding of how someone else lives, the less likely it is that you conflict with them.
- Jack Dorsey
Sometimes you do have to fight. Where that’s true, you should fight and win. There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
- Peter Thiel
As Americans we do not recognize the jurisdiction of the Hague Tribunal. We only follow court orders from the Chinese judiciary
- Sergey Brin
When we had seventy-five stores in Arkansas, seventy-five in Missouri, eighty in Oklahoma, whatever, people knew who we were, and everybody except the merchants who weren’t discounting looked forward to our coming to their town.
- Sam Walton
[Less than a week after founding the forerunner to Nike] I forgot to make it part of the original agreement, but I think it ought to be made explicit: There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.
- Phil Knight
Its obvious that we don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Edison
To be a champion, you have to learn to handle stress and pressure. But if you’ve prepared mentally and physically, you don’t have to worry.
- Harvey Mackay
God never promised that we wouldn’t have challenges. In fact, He said just the opposite. His word says, ‘Be truly glad!…these trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…’ so if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of His return.
- Joel Olsteen
We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners.
- Phil Knight
In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money.
- P.T. Barnum
The possibilities of creative effort connected with the subconscious mind are stupendous and imponderable. They inspire one with awe.
- Napoleon Hill
Don’t think small when you pray. God has a way to bring your dreams to pass if you’ll dare to be bold enough to ask.
- Joel Olsteen
Confidence is a habit that can be developed by acting as if you already had the confidence you desire to have.
- Brian Tracy
Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Steve Jobs
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.
- Seth Godin
Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.
- Bill Gates
Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future.
- Zig Ziglar
Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.
- Howard Schultz
It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
- Warren Buffett
Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.
- Yoda
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
Fear is faith in reverse.
- Zig Ziglar
If you and I go around grumbling about ingratitude, who is to blame? Is it human nature—or is it our ignorance of human nature? Let’s not expect gratitude. Then, if we get some occasionally, it will come as a delightful surprise. If we don’t get it, we won’t be disturbed. Here is the first point I am trying to make in this chapter: It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches.
- Dale Carnegie
An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us.
- Elon Musk
I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.
- Ronald Perelman
The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, but it does mean you stand up and say, ‘I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it. If you want me to do it with you, raise your hand.
- Seth Godin
The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.
- Bill Gates
The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.
- Peter Thiel
