The customer reaction to Dell going private has been a lot more positive than I would have ever imagined. Customers see it as – ‘You don’t have to be distracted. Now you can totally focus on your business.’ So they see it as a positive.
- Michael Dell
Notable Quotables
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
- Dale Carnegie
Walking in circles Dr. Jan Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, studied what happens to us when we have no map, no compass, no way to determine landmarks. I’m not talking about a metaphor—he researched what happens to people lost in the woods or stumbling around the Sahara, with no north star, no setting sun to guide them. It turns out we walk in circles. Try as we might to walk in a straight line, to get out of the forest or the desert, we end up back where we started. Our instincts aren’t enough. In the words of Dr. Souman, “Don’t trust your senses because even though you might think you are walking in a straight line when you’re not.” Human nature is to need a map. If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow.
- Seth Godin
When people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options.
- Peter Thiel
The cost of praising someone is nil – but every psychological study shows the payoff is huge.
- Harvey Mackay
I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.
- Bill Gates
Listening is just as important in one’s home life as in the world of business.
- Dale Carnegie
We are fastidious investors. On average, we investnearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year. Most of us invest at least 15 percent. Seventy-nine percent of us have at least one account with a brokerage company. But we make our own investment decisions.
- Thomas J Stanley
A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.
- Jack Ma
An employer has no business with a man’s personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance, and nothing else. Any attempt by an employer to go beyond this is usurpation. It is an immoral as well as illegal intrusion of privacy.
- Peter Drucker
Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down
- Winston Churchill
We all sort of do want incentives for creative people to still exist at a certain level. You know, maybe rock stars shouldn’t make as much; who knows? But you want as much creativity to take place in the future as took place in the past.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft
- Bill Gates
Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
- Lord Chesterfield
Being able to see an activity log of where a kid has been going on the Internet is a good thing.
- Bill Gates
Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.
- Zig Ziglar
If he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.
- Peter Thiel
Fulfilling the vision of the Irvine Ranch master plan has been a lifetime dedication and lifetime passion, and I am hopeful the heritage of our Irvine stewardship will live on in many new ways.
- Donald Bren
It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
- Henry Ward Beecher
The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.
- John D. Rockefeller
Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I believe that visualization is one of the most powerful means of achieving personal goals.
- Harvey Mackay
A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast. Good news travels slow.
- Ben Horowitz
Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.
- Bill Gates
The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.
- Jerry Seinfeld
It’s flattering to people who stop you and say that you’ve helped them and all. But, again, you know, you’ve got to stay humble because as quick as you came up, you can come down.
- Joel Olsteen
If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag.
- Zig Ziglar
Entrepreneurial skills and ability for sheer hard work will help Hong Kong re-orient its economy for future growth through a broad variety of strong and promising businesses.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Potential means that you haven’t done it yet.
- David Novak
Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.
- Peter Drucker
People don’t believe what you tell them.They rarely believe what you show them.They often believe what their friends tell them.They always believe what they tell themselves.
- Seth Godin
Some people do really find fault like there’s a reward for it.
- Zig Ziglar
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
- Seth Godin
The Cul-de-Sac ( French for “dead end” ) … is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes.
- Seth Godin
Developing a customer who loves the business so much that they become an unpaid and passionate marketer for the company.
- Clay Clark
God wouldn’t have given you the dream unless He already had a way to bring it to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they’re hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that my not always make sense, so that’s why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them.
- George Foreman
Look we gave this thing a good run. We both know it’s not working out. Let’s wrap this thing up.
- Jack Welch
When you write a program for Android, you use the Oracle Java tools for everything, and at the very end, you push a button and say, ‘Convert this to Android format.’
- Larry Ellison
Men want to make women happy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I have ways of making money that you know nothing about…(if you’re firm won’t sell) you will stand alone, Your firm can never make any more money in Cleveland. No use trying to do business in competition with Standard Oil Company. If you do (continue to fight) it will end in your being wiped out.
- John D. Rockefeller
Small businesses don’t exist without the nucleus.
- Bryan Smith
A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.
- Henry Ford
For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.
- Lee Shau Kee
What you need to keep most in the U.S. is the entrepreneurial spirit.
- Alexei Mordashov
Execution begins with a vision and your people saying, I understand it. I’m excited about it. I can help make it happen.
- David Novak
First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
- Napoleon Hill
Know when to stop.
- Jack Dorsey
The foundation of the Germanic system was blood and kin.
- Winston Churchill
I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.
- Henry Ford
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Peter Drucker
Faith is about trusting God when you have unanswered questions.
- Joel Olsteen
A leader once convinced a particular action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets rough.
- Ronald Reagan
The expensive act of planning on late When you’re late, there’s not a lot of room for choice or decision or initiative. When you’re late, the path is well lit, and the choices are clear. Run! Run down the path you’ve run down before. Late is a tool for people unable to find the guts to stand for their acts. Late gives us cover; it permits us to trample forward, without creativity or panache. “Can’t you see I’m late!” we shout, as we do what we have to do, without even pausing to think about what we could do instead. Late might be useful, except that late is incredibly expensive. This strategy, the one we choose so we can avoid the fear of choice, costs us in so many ways. It degrades quality, misses airplanes, charges overtime, and shuts down those around us. It’s also exhausting. The alternative to planning on late is to initiate before it’s required, to ship before deadline, to put the idea out there before the crisis hits. This act of bravery actually gives you influence, leverage, and control in a way that planning on late never can.
- Seth Godin
There’s a fascinating statistic: One out of every four people in America has visited New York since 9/11. It is astounding. Now, I don’t know how you count it; it’s some people coming multiple times.
- Michael Bloomberg
What the Commission is seeking cuts the heart out of the strategic rationale of our deal.
- Jack Welch
No man ever achieved worthwhile success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
- Napoleon Hill
Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.
- Jack Ma
You have to get all agreements in writing.
- Jack Nadel
Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring.
- Seth Godin
The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.
- Jeff Bezos
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
- Yoda
I predict at least one of the rookie drivers will win a race this year. With this strong of a group, two or three of them will likely win.
- Ed Clark
Cupcakes The first time you bake cupcakes, you will certainly follow the recipe with rigor. The third time, you might improvise and screw up. Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can. At this point, by the fifth time, some people actually learn to bake. They improvise successfully. They understand the science and the outcomes. They develop a kind of gracefulness in the kitchen. Others merely plod along. They’re cooks, not chefs. A cook follows a recipe. A chef invents one. We have too many cooks. The world is begging for chefs.
- Seth Godin
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
The difficult task is to marry relentless discipline with creativity, neither letting discipline inhibit creativity nor letting creativity erode discipline.
- James C. Collins
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
- Napoleon Hill
So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.
- Thomas Edison
I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‘You’re going to do it my way.’ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‘You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.’
- Joel Olsteen
I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.
- Jeff Bezos
Any great founders need to get out of the way of the company.
- Jack Dorsey
Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.
- Yoda
I really like using my Samsung (005930:KS) tablet. I previously used the Motorola Xoom for a while and liked that.
- Larry Page
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
- Napoleon Hill
If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.
- Dale Carnegie
Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
- Timothy Ferriss
One of the great things about Lanai is that the weather is always fabulous. Always 82 degrees and sunny. The problem is that, like California now, Lanai needs more water.
- Larry Ellison
If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.
- Joel Olsteen
Value is achieved primarily through frontline employees who are satisfied, loyal, and productive, in part because of the high degree of capability they possess to deliver results to customers
- Service Profit Chain
Litigation is the basic legal right which guarantees every corporation its decade in court.
- David Porter
This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us the latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I’m not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.
- Howard Schultz
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
- Elon Musk
We had been kicked out of one bank… The second, it was touch and go…
- Phil Knight
I’ve become an animal rights activist.
- Stephen Wynn
We are still masters of our fate.We are still captains of our souls.
- Winston Churchill
The economy in Hong Kong remained on a declining path. Occurrence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (‘SARS’) in March this year led to a sharp drop in consumer spending and an increasing unemployment rate. The decline in the economy resulted in downward adjustment in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
- Seth Godin
When we bought it, Spiegel was in a difficult situation; it made a loss at that time. We invested in it and then it turned around, and then we bought Eddie Bauer and Newport News.
- Michael Otto
Comprehensive after-sale property management service is as important as building quality.
- Lee Shau Kee
In all the difficult decisions that I made through the course of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I never once felt brave. In fact, I often felt scared to death. I never lost those feelings, but after much practice, I learned to ignore them. That learning process might also be called the courage development process.
- Ben Horowitz
Not only was the casual shoe effort a failure, but it was diluting our trademark and hurting us in running.
- Phil Knight
I wanted to be a sailor, I wanted to sail the world, to navigate it.
- Jack Dorsey
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Role play with yourself to answer questions to a cynic, optimist, and be able play devil’s advocate.
- Maurice Kanbar
From a systematic standpoint, I think that capitalism is the best system. I can spend a lot of time explaining why I like communism, but it is actually not a good solution. Nor is socialism. So, capitalism is the right model.
- Ben Horowitz
In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.
- Peter Thiel
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
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
