Notable Quotables

The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.

- Peter Thiel

If you run a corporation, your job is to maximize the return on investment for your investors. Good for you. But by the same token, we have to remember that corporations have no compassion. That’s why legislation and regulations are necessary.

- Russell Simmons

You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance.

- Peter Thiel

Ask yourself a question: Is my attitude worth catching?

- Zig Ziglar

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

- William Feather

I think my greatest moment in business was when the first Southwest airplane arrived after four years of litigation, and I walked up to it and I kissed that baby on the lips and I cried.

- Herb Kelleher

Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy.

- Seth Godin

Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.

- Brian Tracy

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

- Joel Olsteen

They need to avoid coming at us head-on, and do their own thing better than we do ours. It doesn’t make any sense to try to underprice Walmart on something like toothpaste. That’s not what they customer is looking to a small store for anyway. Most independents are best off, I think, doing what I prided myself on doing for many years as a storekeeper, getting out front on the door and meeting everyone of the customers. Let them know how much you appreciate them, and that register yourself. That little personal touch is so important for an independent merchant because no matter how hard Walmart tries to duplicate, ad we try awfully hard, we can’t really do it.

- Sam Walton

Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.

- Dale Carnegie

What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs. And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost. That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.

- Michael Gerber

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

- Winston Churchill

You must not ever think that anything is common sense.

- Clay Clark

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

- Timothy Ferriss

I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. But I’d love to, right?

- Jack Ma

Sometimes, your friend can influence you more than your mother.

- Lee Shau Kee

This has been a very positive test for Kawasaki.

- Yoda

I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

- Timothy Ferriss

You can’t explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don’t have to. It’s that simple.

- Phil Knight

Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad.

- Donald Trump

Most people believe that results matter. The idea that results matter is one that you have to keep letting go of. And most of the time, I believe it.

- Russell Simmons

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

- Winston Churchill

With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.

- Richard Branson

I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.

- Steve Martin

Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.

- Bill Gates

“What would you do if capital were free?” is a dangerous question to ask an entrepreneur. It’s kind of like asking a fat person, “What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”

- Ben Horowitz

The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.

- Timothy Ferriss

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.

- Dale Carnegie

When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power of a particular individual’s context as determined by chance. But they miss the even bigger social context for their own preferred explanations: a whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning. Gladwell at first appears to be making a contrarian critique of the myth of the self-made businessman, but actually his own account encapsulates the conventional view of a generation.

- Peter Thiel

The Group has not been deterred by any negative sentiment and will as ever respond to the challenges and opportunities ahead of us with the same spirit of caution, flexibility, determination and dynamism, which have brought much success to us in the past.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Experience has taught me,” says Sam Wood, that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren’t.

- Dale Carnegie

People of excellence go the extra mile to do what’s right.

- Joel Olsteen

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

- Jerry Seinfeld

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

- Napoleon Hill

If I were to retire, I would keep my family’s interest in the company the same and say, Don’t sell.

- Sheldon Adelson

Delegating doesn’t mean passing off work you don’t enjoy, but letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment.

- Harvey Mackay

You’re asking somebody who has a wife and is really happily married, ‘So, what’s your next wife going to be like?’ And I’m like, ‘What?

- Travis Kalanick

Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.

- Yoda

I think it’s fair to say that our distribution system today is the envy certainly of everyone in our industry, and in alot of others as well…We’ve spend almost $700 million builing up the current computer and satellite systems we have….You can’t generate sales unless you have the product there when the customer wants it.The math is pretty simple: if we both sell the same goods for the same price at retail, we’ll earn 2.5 percent more profit than they will right there.

- Sam Walton

The thing that I’m most passionate about, I’m writing a book called ‘Jab Jab Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,’ and it really focuses on how to story-tell in a noisy, ADD world.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved. The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.

- Ben Horowitz

Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what’s coming.

- Steve Martin

(Wright is) a visionary with a great strategic mind, and he’s a strong business leader with outstanding people skills, … He’s a terrific guy and will be a key force in guiding the company’s future growth.

- Jack Welch

We intend to focus all our attentions in the coming years on three core growth forces. These are: 1. The massive expansion of our considerable software expertise. After all, in our eyes, software is the “new wheel” of mankind and our industry. Processes with regard to mobility are becoming increasingly complex and more strongly interconnected. These processes need to be controlled and managed reliably, requiring ever greater amounts of software. In the future, practically nothing will move without software. 2. In the fields of technology relevant for us, we want to be regarded as a pioneering and leading technology partner – especially by our customers. 3. Finally, and above all, with our pioneering corporate culture we want to be the preferred employer for people who want to fully develop and expand their skills and abilities with us and make rapid progress.” “Continental has had a good start into 2015, thus confirming our expectations for the entire year.

- Elmar Degenhart

Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.

- Steve Martin

The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom.

- Peter Thiel

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.

- Michael Jordan

My dad is like a cactus – introverted and tough. I’m a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He’s my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

All men have fears, but the brave put down their fears and go forward, sometimes to death, but always to victory’ was the motto of the King’s Guard in ancient Greece.

- Dale Carnegie

Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.

- Peter Thiel

I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.

- Steve Wozniak

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.

- Winston Churchill

I DECLARE I will experience God’s faithfulness. I will not worry. I will not doubt. I will keep my trust in Him, knowing that He will not fail me. I will give birth to every promise God put in my heart and I will become everything God created me to be. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.

- Rupert Murdoch

Americans reading the paper, listening to the news every single day, and all you hear is things are getting worse and worse. And that has a psychological effect on consumer confidence. That’s what consumer confidence is.

- Howard Schultz

I felt that it’s best just to be as transparent as possible.

- Rupert Murdoch

Colleges are the equivalent of the subprime mortgage lenders who…

- Brian Tracy

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

- Steve Jobs

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

- Elon Musk

Beverages have to be created. And they’re created by looking at what trend is in, say, the fashion industry – what color’s hot right now.

- Howard Schultz

Keep in mind, hurting people often hurt other people as a result of their own pain. If somebody is rude and inconsiderate, you can almost be certain that they have some unresolved issues inside. They have some major problems, anger, resentment, or some heartache they are trying to cope with or overcome. The last thing they need is for you to make matters worse by responding angrily.

- Joel Olsteen

I think it’d be crazy not to have the plan encompass the entire reservoir. If we have (the smaller map), we’ve got a bunch of other folks telling us what they want to see happen in our community.

- Jack Taylor

In a start-up company where there are no processes in place to get things done, then everything that is done must be done by individual people–resources. In this circumstance, it would be risky to draft someone with no experience to do the job–because in the absence of processes that can guide people, experienced people need to lead. But in established companies where much of the guidance to employees is provided by processes, and is less dependent upon managers with detailed, hands-on experience, then it makes sense to hire or promote someone who needs to learn from experience.

- Clayton M. Christensen

There is no more important economic policy issue today than helping our nation remain the global innovation leader. To do this, our leadership must focus on an aggressive agenda to support math and science education, patent litigation reform, healthcare information technology, and research and development. We thank President Bush for his leadership and urge all members of Congress to address these issues in a comprehensive fashion to get the job done.

- John Chambers

Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It’s really that easy – and that’s what I do.

- Timothy Ferriss

I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.

- Joel Olsteen

In Hong Kong, the property business has always been very competitive, so we have to think of ways to get an edge over our competitors.

- Raymond Kwok

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

We got to know a lot of investors and know what they like and don’t like. Through many co-investments opportunities, we have built trust among these investors. So when it came to investing in Xiaomi, things were a lot easier.

- Lei Jun

If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that’s not much – unless you’ve been warned that if you’re even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.

- Zig Ziglar

The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.

- Elon Musk

Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.

- Joel Olsteen

Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.

- James C. Collins

Through the wisdom of its government leaders and the entrepreneurship of its private sector, India has rapidly risen to become a major force in the global economy, … Cisco believes that the Internet, and related technologies, will be a key enabler for India to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation.

- John Chambers

WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.

- James C. Collins

For 20-plus years I looked at thousands of storyboard for corporate and product ads, and I never allowed one advertisement on the air that I didn’t like.

- Jack Welch

I tell my employees that we’re in the service business, and it’s incidental that we fly airplanes.

- Herb Kelleher

Even leaders with the best of intentions can have dumb ideas sometimes, and if you have good people around you, then hopefully they’ll stop you before you’ve done too much damage.

- David Novak

A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

It’s pretty chilly by southern California standards.

- Ed Clark

Going the extra mile is the action of rendering more and better service than that for which you are presently paid. When you go the extra mile, the Law of Compensation comes into play.

- Napoleon Hill

One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that good ones slip through.

- Seth Godin

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

- Henry Ford

There’s a belief that you’re supposed to be poor, and suffering, and show your humility. I just don’t see the Bible that way. I see that God came and Jesus died so that we might live an abundant life and be a blessing to others.

- Joel Olsteen

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

It’s difficult for any single company to develop all the applications and services.

- Ma Huateng

In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you’re going to be 20 years from now is how well you’re doing in your education system.

- Bill Gates

Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.

- Bill Gates

Good leaders know that one secret to success is to staff their weaknesses.

- John Maxwell

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