Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
- Elon Musk
Notable Quotables
Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.
- Winston Churchill
You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.
- Lee Iacocca
On behalf of the employees of Cisco, we send our deepest sympathy and condolences to all of those affected by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, … This has been a crushing blow to the residents of the Gulf Coast and we stand by them, ready to help.
- John Chambers
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Refuse to accept partial completeness.
- Timothy Ferriss
Look at all the billionaires. If I know 15 billionaires, I know 13 unhappy people.
- Russell Simmons
And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: … man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / … Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.
- Dale Carnegie
Personal initiative is the power that inspires the completion of that which one begins. It is the power that starts all action. No person is free until he learns to do his own thinking and gains the courage to act on his own.
- Napoleon Hill
I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that’s the reason so many liked him and did business in his store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. (on role of managing partner)
- Inez Threet
Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.
- Og Mandino
People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.
- Joel Olsteen
When an entrepreneur has an object in his line of vision, he should dismiss all other considerations from his mind, abandon all other activities, and charge directly at that object, continuing to charge until the object has been secured.
- Paul Johnson
I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.
- Bill Gates
The Law of the Garbage Truck,” was this: Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you’ll be happier.
- Joel Olsteen
The one essential character trait of any leader is personal integrity.
- David Novak
I never hid my thoughts or feelings. During a business meeting I could get so emotionally charged and involved that I’d stammer out what others might consider to be outrageous things like, My six year old could do better than that! Or Don’t Walter Cronkite me!
- Solutions
I saw them before you were born. I came here first in 1900. [Reporter: “Do they look the same?”] Well, the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over. 1943, NIAGARA FALLS.
- Winston Churchill
I’ve actually not read any books on time management.
- Elon Musk
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
- Proverbs 29:18
Sales is what you do in person, one on one. Marketing is sales done via a system. Most (Self-Employed) S quadrant businesspeople are very good at one-on-one sales. For them to make the transition to the B quadrant, they need to learn how to sell through a system which is called marketing.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Any colour – so long as it’s black.
- Henry Ford
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.
- Colin Powell
Fear is the Fatal killer of Desire.
- Zig Ziglar
If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.
- Bernard Shaw
A lie cannot live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.
- Sergey Brin
If people talk about you, being jealous, critical, and trying to make you look bad, don’t let that change you. You don’t need their approval when you have God’s approval.
- Joel Olsteen
Over the past 30 years, the nation has gradually opened up under such reform policies, which have presented enormous challenges and unlimited opportunities for the people and benefited the development of the nation all these years.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.
- Harvey Mackay
Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.
- Warren Buffett
We’re better than the rest of the country but we shouldn’t believe it too much.
- Peter Thiel
Without promotion, something terrible happens… nothing!
- P.T. Barnum
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
Happiness is not a tangible thing, it’s a byproduct – a byproduct of achievement.
- Ray Kroc
When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky – poor parents! – I would be home before it got dark.
- Larry Ellison
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill
The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.
- Napoleon Hill
Plan and execute your first failure so that you no longer have to fear it.
- John C. Maxwell
If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.
- Sara Blakely
The Chinese market is a very good expansion opportunity for us, and we will continue looking to buy stakes and make acquisitions.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
I can’t read a computer screen and never use a calculator. It’s all in my head and by hand.
- Simon Reuben
Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffett
You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
- Oprah Winfrey
Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing. But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love.
- 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
We’re talking about changing every aspect of our lives.
- John Chambers
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
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
It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculate a Web site’s importance.
- Larry Page
Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.
- Bill Gates
When you go through difficult times, make sure you pass the test. Don’t be stubborn and hardheaded. Recognize that God is refining you, knocking off some of your rough edges. Stand strong and fight the good fight of faith. God has called each of us to be champions; you are destined to win. If you will work with God and keep a good attitude, then no matter what comes against you, the bible says that all things – not just the good things in life, but all things – work together for your good.
- Joel Olsteen
You need to have extraordinary wisdom to be the forerunner.
- Ma Huateng
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
What the Commission is seeking cuts the heart out of the strategic rationale of our deal.
- Jack Welch
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
- John F. Kennedy
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
- Thomas Edison
I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.
- Bill Gates
My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.
- Mukesh Ambani
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked
- Warren Buffett
Once you go from 10 people to 100, you already don’t know who everyone is. So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale.
- Sergey Brin
With communication technology in general, there’s a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world’s entire population using one communication technology, that’s a big deal. It’s beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it’s a fad have probably not been paying that much attention.
- Ben Horowitz
If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.
- Elon Musk
There is a time to provide advice and offer an opinion, and there is a time not to. Don’t be too quick to offer unsolicited advice. It certainly will not endear you to people.
- Harvey Mackay
In my opinion, education is the finest gift an individual can give a young person.
- Donald Bren
Giving away money to the right cause, with a leveraged effect and your own involvement in how it is spent, will ‘give you peace of mind.’
- Lee Shau Kee
…Treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.
- Seth Godin
Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress—stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.
- Timothy Ferriss
The success of the Overseas Chinese is the result of bad times in China itself. The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on from father to son through each generation. Because we have no social security, the Overseas Chinese habit is to save a lot and make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.
- Jack Dorsey
Even though I’m a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I’m looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
This may sound a bit naive, but I got here by believing in big dreams.
- Howard Schultz
Laughter is America’s most important export.
- Walt Disney
See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.
- Joel Olsteen
I have asked thousands of business people to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to class and talk about the results.
- Dale Carnegie
If there’s a problem, we at Wine Library never tell ourselves that once we handle this issue, we’ll never have to deal with the person again. We talk to every single person as though we’re going to wind up sitting next to that person at his or her mother’s house that night for dinner.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”
- Ben Horowitz
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
Every leader’s potential is determined by the people closest to him. No matter what I did with that staff, they would never be able to take the organization to the place we needed to go.
- Napoleon Hill
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
The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.
- Peter Thiel
I always say that the real success of Wine Library wasn’t due to the videos I posted, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
You don’t make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you’re-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don’t know what’s going to happen.
- Michael Bloomberg
Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
- Walt Disney
A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.
- James C. Collins
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You’re always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it’ll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it’s always meant to be something. So, to me, there’s no practicing; there’s only editing and publishing or not publishing.
- Steve Martin
Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!
- Thomas Edison
The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results.
- Peter Drucker
The entrepreneur builds an enterprise, the technician builds a job.
- Michael Gerber
Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.
- Seth Godin
When we recognize the fraud for what it is, we feel incredibly stupid. Something more than our bank accounts is damaged—our egos are damaged. As a result, it’s almost impossible for the marketer to regain our trust.
- Seth Godin
We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners.
- Phil Knight
You must develop a verification system for anything in your business that you expect to happen.
- Clay Clark
The person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power.
- Dale Carnegie
You’ve been destined to live in victory, destined to overcome, destined to leave your mark on this generation.
- Joel Olsteen
If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.
- Elon Musk
Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.
- Seth Godin
Tell them to grab on to the career that engages their brain and heart and soul and gives them meaning. Tell them that eventually, the money will come, and if it doesn’t, in time, they will find themselves rich with something money can’t buy. And that, obviously, would be happiness.
- Jack Welch
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
- Warren Buffett
