And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
- Peter Drucker
Notable Quotables
Think about how Google talks about its business. It certainly doesn’t claim to be a monopoly.
- Peter Thiel
Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. The amount of time you spend on the PC in the browser is just going to grow continuously.
- Reed Hastings
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
- Bill Gates
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear.
- Timothy Ferriss
The first Apple was just a culmination of my whole life.
- Steve Wozniak
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
- Peter Drucker
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
- Dale Carnegie
Anybody can leverage celebrity for profit.
- Howard Schultz
The ultimate connection is when you are connected to the creator of the universe.
- Joel Olsteen
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you know you have to wait anyway, why not make a decision to enjoy your life while you’re waiting? Why not be happy while God is in the process of changing things? After all, there’s nothing we can really do to make it happen any faster. We might as well relax and enjoy our lives, knowing that at the appointed time God is going to bring his plan to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Winston Churchill
Over the course of your career, your Detroit will surely call you at one point or another. If you can go, that’s great. If you can’t, make peace with the reasons why.
- Jack Welch
Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man’s character.
- Thomas Edison
We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.
- George Soros
Quoting from Chapter 2 of the Sayings Of Confucius, ‘At 30, I stood firm; at 40, I had no more doubts.’ Time has its role to play in one’s behavior and how one conducts himself in society. With the passage of time, we master our lives better and become more refined and polished, step by step. At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.
- Zig Ziglar
In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.
- Seth Godin
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
- Seneca
If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.
- Dale Carnegie
A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
Too many companies think they want to do a video blog to sell merchandise, but if you turn your site into QVC, you lose. I have an audience that trusts me. It’s about building a global brand – not selling four more bottles of Pinot Grigio.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.
- Peter Drucker
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
Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
- Dale Carnegie
Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.
- Timothy Ferriss
People everywhere love Windows.
- Bill Gates
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don’t approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides.
- Bill Gates
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
It’s not as though we can keep burning coal in our power plants. Coal is a finite resource, too. We must find alternatives, and it’s a better idea to find alternatives sooner then wait until we run out of coal, and in the meantime, put God knows how many trillions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried underground into the atmosphere.
- Elon Musk
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
I never worry because I know who I am and I know Whose I am.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.
- Bill Gates
We’re still in a recession. We’re not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.
- Warren Buffett
Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.
- Seth Godin
Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I’d put myself in the latter category. But I’d never call myself a normal designer of anything.
- Steve Wozniak
We don’t want disruption where we just move things around from point a to point b. We want a direction, we want a purpose.
- Jack Dorsey
My grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It’s a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we’ve come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company.
- Larry Page
I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.
- Walt Disney
It’s our faith that activates the power of God.
- Joel Olsteen
The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin.
- Seth Godin
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
- Warren Buffett
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice.
- Seth Godin
My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.
- Sara Blakely
I am a man who has always needed heros.
- Phil Knight
The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
- Bill Gates
This may sound a bit naive, but I got here by believing in big dreams.
- Howard Schultz
It’s not one of the enduring mysteries of all time. A motivated employee treats the customer well. A customer is happy so they’ll keep coming back, which pleases the shareholder. It’s just the way it works.
- Herb Kelleher
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
- Dale Carnegie
Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.
- Guy Kawasaki
My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
- Michael Gerber
The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we’re not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.
- Elon Musk
Over the past ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
- Ben Horowitz
I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.
- Elon Musk
There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.
- Jerry Seinfeld
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
The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it’s hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you’ll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero.
- Peter Thiel
The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family – father, mother, children – is fundamental to our civilisation.
- Rupert Murdoch
It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others.
- Dale Carnegie
You’re only as good as the people you hire.
- Ray Kroc
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
I go to yoga every day. I meditate every morning.
- Russell Simmons
The first rule of the C.E.O. psychological meltdown is ‘Don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.’
- Ben Horowitz
We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn’t want to just sell shoes. I wasn’t even into shoes – but I was pasionate about customer service.
- Tony Hsieh
This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put
- Winston Churchill
Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.
- John C. Maxwell
You may never get to that perfect world that you’re waiting for where everything’s going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.
- Joel Olsteen
The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.
- Bill Gates
Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.
- Howard Schultz
Starbucks is committed to evolving and enhancing our customer experience with innovative and wholesome food offerings.
- Howard Schultz
Let’s test the Shakespearean model in the real world. Imagine a production called Gates and Schmidt, based on Romeo and Juliet. Montague is Microsoft. Capulet is Google. Two great families, run by alpha nerds, sure to clash on account of their sameness.
- Peter Thiel
Most of us don’t invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.
- Sam Walton
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.
- Walt Disney
There is a kind of intolerant spirit now abroad which arises out of the growing power of party and other machinery — a spirit which resents individual opinion, which clamours for uniformity and political Test Acts.
- Winston Churchill
Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.
- Winston Churchill
Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want.
- Timothy Ferriss
We want the brand to stand for the same thing all over the world
- Phil Knight
You need to live every day like it could be your last.
- Joel Olsteen
The Group sold an attributable HK$3,434.6 million worth of properties in Hong Kong as compared with HK$6,810.9 million for the year before. In light of the then cautious market sentiment, the Group decided to defer the launch of a few new developments…
- Lee Shau Kee
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 is well documented that I am a lifelong football fan. My love of the British game started with the 1966 World Cup.
- Alisher Usmanov
Whatever you accept your employees will expect.
- Clifton Taulbert
Creative leaders inherently know when rules need to be challenged, and they can see when a more flexible approach should be taken.
- John C. Maxwell
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
- Napoleon Hill
Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.
- Bill Gates
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.
- Winston Churchill
There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.
- Phil Knight
Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
- Jack Welch
The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.
- Winston Churchill
Darwin Smith stands as a classic example of what we came to call a Level 5 leader—an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will.
- James C. Collins
Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it’s a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline.
- Harvey Mackay
Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust.
- Howard Schultz
Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent benefit.
- Napoleon Hill
You know, the diversity that America has is so special. It’s starting to really become a cool thing for young people.
- Russell Simmons
In low-income countries, getting to a health post is hard. It’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
