Notable Quotables

The market is fast-moving, fast-growing. Things that are true today may not be true tomorrow.

- Robin Li

Even god doesn’t propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?

- Dale Carnegie

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.

- Steve Jobs

Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.

- Peter Thiel

We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.

- Larry Page

Why don’t we have enough teachers of math and science in the public schools? One answer is well, if they knew the subject well, they’d also know enough to work for Google or Goldman Sachs or God knows where.

- James Simons

One has to live with the fact that some corporate decisions are going to be wrong. As long as most of the decisions are right.

- Michael Otto

The third way is less common and certainly less of a layup—a culture of integrity, meaning a culture of honesty, transparency, fairness, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. In such cultures, there can be no head fakes or winks. People who break the rules do not leave the company for “personal reasons” or to “spend more time with their families.” They are hanged—publicly—and the reasons are made painfully clear to everyone.

- Jack Welch

God will always bring the right people into your life, but you have to let the wrong people walk away.

- Joel Olsteen

I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.

- Laurene Powell Jobs

People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.

- Peter Thiel

Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.

- Peter Thiel

I’m going to start these art museums that are basically converted homes, and I have one for modern art, and I have one for 19th century European art, and one for French impressionism. I’ve got Japanese.

- Larry Ellison

Last I looked – and I’m not a candidate – but last time I checked reading about the Constitution, the Electoral College has nothing to do with parties, has absolutely nothing to do with parties. It’s most states are winners take all.

- Michael Bloomberg

I’m getting better. I’m improving. My health is coming back,” those words began to create a new image on the inside. Before long, they started seeing themselves strong, healthy, and whole.

- Joel Olsteen

There are no rules here — we’re trying to accomplish something.

- Thomas Edison

The Internet revolution will determine which companies survive and which get left behind, … Increasingly, the Internet is recognized as the key driver in our global economy.

- John Chambers

Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken.

- Donald Trump

I don’t like to look back, and I’m always worried about the next thing rather than resting on the laurels or the degradations of the last thing.

- Steve Martin

The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.

- Sam Walton

You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.

- Dale Carnegie

Figure out what the impact areas are in your business.

- Chet Holmes

You can make an internet company with 10 people and it can have billions of users. It doesn’t take much capital and it makes a lot of money — a really, really lot of money — so it’s natural for everyone to focus on those kinds of things.

- Larry Page

Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.

- Jack Ma

When you start a company, it’s a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.

- Howard Schultz

The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.

- James Simons

The relationships we have with people are extremely important to success on and off the job.

- Zig Ziglar

Game-playing is more fun when it’s virtual because you’re more successful. … in reality, only one person gets to be LeBron

- Larry Ellison

When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.

- Rupert Murdoch

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

How you get up in the morning will play a big part in how high you go up in life.

- Zig Ziglar

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

- Elon Musk

Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.

- Ray Kroc

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

- John C. Maxwell

Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.

- Bill Gates

I’m not an actor who appears on the stage and gives people advice on how to live or what to do and entertains them. It is not my specialty.

- Vagit Alekperov

The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.

- Herb Kelleher

On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It’s very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.

- Jeff Bezos

I was about twenty and the Beatles were meditating and I heard about it and they had a center in New York and I came to the center and I learned about it.

- Ray Dalio

Here’s Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can’t even deal with him because he’s always saying something that people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe Kanye said that. I can’t believe he did that.’

- Ben Horowitz

Uber is “way more” evil than Google, the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley.

- Peter Thiel

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

- Napoleon Hill

It’s a libel to say that I use my newspapers to support my other business interests. The fact is, I haven’t got any other business interests.

- Rupert Murdoch

Flavor is, counterintuitively, less than 10% taste and more than 90% smell.

- Timothy Ferriss

Be courageous! Whatever setbacks America has encountered, it has always emerged as a stronger and more prosperous nation…. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward!

- Thomas Edison

It is exactly because we are a city that embraces freedom, that welcomes everyone and encourages their dreams, that New York remains on the front lines in the war on terror.

- Michael Bloomberg

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.

- Steve Martin

Effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible.

- Jack Welch

Social and digital media is a bullet train, and that bullet train is not coming home.

- Howard Schultz

No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy — unless you let him.

- Napoleon Hill

All companies of any size have to continue to push to make sure you get the right leaders, the right team, the right people to be fast acting, and fast moving in the marketplace. We’ve got great leaders, and we continue to attract and promote great new leaders.

- Steve Ballmer

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

When evaluating the results, we should not overlook the fact that there was, in some cases, very weak growth in Europe, Russia, and South America. There were also significant exchange rate fluctuations. In addition, the mild winter at the end of 2014 had a negative impact on the winter tire business in Europe. The driving force behind the sales development once again came from China and North America. In light of this, it is remarkable that profit after taxes of just under €2.4 billion or €11.88 per share could be achieved.

- Elmar Degenhart

Creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, and both of them require the posture of the artist.

- Seth Godin

I think it’s a problem that we don’t have more companies like Facebook. It shouldn’t be the only company that’s doing this well.

- Peter Thiel

Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.

- Confucius

I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.

- Bill Gates

Play like you’re ten points behind in the final quarter. I’ve always heard this defined as operational cadence – creating a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of doing business that drives the relentless pursuit of results. Whatever I’ve learned about creating a sense of urgency started when I worked for Howard Davis at Tracy Locke. He really knew how to push people. Everything had to be done yesterday. And I was one of the people who go pushed. Howard was a master of intimidation. Everyone knew if you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to find another way to get it, and if your weren’t part of the solution then you were part of the problem. The clients loved Howard because they knew he’d kill for them (and none of us wanted to be killed). It wasn’t always comfortable, but it taught me the value of constantly putting pressure on myself and the people who work for me. In corporate America, pressure is a way of life, so rather that resist it or merely accept it, you have to learn to use it as a personal motivator.

- David Novak

RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.

- Jack Welch

Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.

- Napoleon Hill

Satan knows, if you are against YOURSELF you will never fulfill your destiny. :(

- Joel Olsteen

Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.

- Howard Schultz

When access to information was limited, we needed to load student sup with facts. Now, when we have no scarcity of facts or the access to them, we need to load them up with understanding.

- Seth Godin

We will intensify our efforts to build out our infrastructure overseas and to develop products that are tailored to individual markets

- Sergey Brin

The [Henderson] Group adopted a conservative approach in replenishing its land bank and focused its resources to convert agricultural land holdings in hand into development land in the past year with a view to bringing down the cost of land replenishment and good progress has been made in this respect.

- Lee Shau Kee

There’s no mystery in business success. If you do each day’s task successfully and stay faithfully within these natural operations of commercial laws which I talk so much about and keep your head clear, you will come out all right.

- John D. Rockefeller

One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.

- Ben Horowitz

Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.

- Zig Ziglar

Twenty years ago, the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 either dug something out of the ground or turned a natural resource (iron ore or oil) into something you could hold. Today, fewer than half of the companies on the list do that. The rest make unseemly profits by trafficking in ideas.

- Seth Godin

All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current.

- Ben Horowitz

Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!

- Timothy Ferriss

God will not pour fresh, creative ideas and blessing into old attitudes.

- Joel Olsteen

Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.

- Bill Gates

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

- Napoleon Hill

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

- Winston Churchill

You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture—and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won’t learn.

- Michael Gerber/ Thomas J. Peters and Robert H

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

- John C. Maxwell

The purpose of process is communication. If there are five people in your company, you don’t need process, because you can just talk to each other.

- Ben Horowitz

The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.

- John C. Maxwell

I refused to do a lot on mobile Internet until around 2009. But because we didn’t start early, it took us some time to figure out what’s the important thing, what’s the most relevant thing for Baidu.

- Robin Li

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

- Warren Buffett

The three short years I spent at Harvard, where I lived with excellent people, taught me not only that I must know how to choose my partners but also that choosing excellent partners is a skill you can learn. Obviously, when you spend time with the best, you learn how to choose among them.

- Jorge Paulo Lemann

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

- John C. Maxwell

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

- Mark Zuckerberg

Google is a small fish in a big pond. We could be swallowed whole at any time. We are not the monopoly that the government is looking for.

- Peter Thiel

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