Notable Quotables

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

- Warren Buffett

The one essential character trait of any leader is personal integrity.

- David Novak

The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn’t have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want.

- Steve Wozniak

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

- Steve Jobs

Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.

- Steve Ballmer

The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes.

- P.T. Barnum

Monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.

- Peter Thiel

People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t use my brain about the creative thing. From a business standpoint, I instinctively do things: when I get something right, it’s never because I use my brain

- Russell Simmons

The information about your project is objective, but your presentation is subjective. When your own subjectivity collides with that of the media, there’s plenty of room for confusion,misinterpretation and disinterest. That is why you must know precisely how to pitch before you make that first phone call or mail a press release.

- Michael Levine

The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.

- Michael Bloomberg

Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.

- Dale Carnegie

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

- Seneca

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

- Bill Gates

Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of his imagination

- Napoleon Hill

If GE’s strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century.

- Jack Welch

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That’s a really, really, really large and complex set of skills. A lot of it is on-the-job training, combined with excellent mentorship.

- Ben Horowitz

We believe the competitive and economic environment will remain very challenging in the year ahead. Whilst we think we have the opportunity to make improvements to some of our ranges, we are still budgeting on the basis of negative like-for-like retail sales for the year.

- Simon Wolfson

The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can’t bit a target that you can’t see. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.

- Zig Ziglar

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

- Winston Churchill

A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.

- Peter Thiel

The oil patch pays good. They’re decent jobs paying between 50 and 70 thousand a year. Fracking has a big impact on the oil consumption in the United States.

- Harold Hamm

Remember, when you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given a responsibility to bring out the best in others. For that, your people need to trust you. And they will, as long as you demonstrate candor, give credit, and stay real.

- Jack Welch

Lots of people will give you advice… and depending upon how well they know you, the advice might be valid or not so valid.

- Abigail Johnson

If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.

- Peter Thiel

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

I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.

- Joel Olsteen

Success in the United States is not an entitlement in China. You have to go there and earn it, and earn it the right way.

- Howard Schultz

You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy, and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because, unless we do all of these things, it just doesn’t work. And what’s good theater and what’s good politics isn’t necessarily good economic policy.

- Michael Bloomberg

To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.

- George Soros

After my death, I want to be remembered as Africa’s greatest industrialist.

- Aliko Dangote

I’ve learned that people will seldom let you down if they understand that your destiny is in their hands, and vice versa.

- Harvey Mackay

Did we not all grow up saying we had to have four glasses of whole milk a day for healthy bones? It’s ridiculous. It’s liquid cholesterol.

- Stephen Wynn

SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over.

- Timothy Ferriss

Abundance and scarcity In a society where value is created by the manufacture of goods or the allocation of limited resources, it’s not a surprise that organizations seek scarcity. We hesitate to share, because if I give you this, then I don’t have it any more. We erect barriers and create rules to make it difficult for some people to have access to these limited resources. While we don’t set out to become miserly, it’s an economic instinct, because what’s yours is no long mine. Even though we give lip service to sharing when kids show up for kindergarten classes, most of school is organized around the same ideas. We rank students, we cut players from the roster, we grade on a curve. Success, we teach, is scarce. Our new economy, though, is based on abundance, the abundance that comes from ideas and access. If I benefit when everyone knows my idea, then the more people I give the idea to, the better we all do. If I benefit when I earn a reputation leading, connecting and creating positive change, then I’ll benefit if I can offer these insights to anyone who can benefit from them. With an abundance mindset, we intentionally create goods that can be shared. It’s not based on our traditional factory-based economy, but it works now (in fact, it’s just about all that works)… engaging with the mesh, building communities that benefit from sharing resources instead of destroying them is a strategy that scales. With an abundance mindset, we create ideas and services that do better when people share.

- Seth Godin

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

We can never own property (because of property taxes) we can just control it (by renting it from the government by paying taxes).

- Robert Kiyosaki

I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn’t turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.

- Steve Martin

Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.

- Larry Page

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

In the 1960s, if you introduced a new product to America, 90% of the people who viewed it for the first time believed in the corporate promise. Then 40 years later if you performed the same exercise, less than 10% of the public believed it was true. The fracturing of trust is based on the fact that the consumer has been let down.

- Howard Schultz

We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.

- Ray Kroc

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

- Bill Gates

Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.

- Seth Godin

I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.

- Larry Ellison

What I’m trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there’s inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

- Ray Dalio

I learned that people don’t buy anything from unknown stores.

- Tadashi Yanai

Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He’s always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.

- Steve Wozniak

The secret of your success is found in your daily routine

- John Maxwell

The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.

- Seth Godin

I recall that Harry made a trip to San Bernardino about the time we were really starting to roll, and Dick McDonald asked him what he thought the future of McDonald’s would be. Harry told him that one day this company would be bigger than F. W. Woolworth. Dick really did a double take at that. He told me later, ‘I thought you had a genuine nut on your hands, Ray.’ But Harry knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he knew how to get there.

- Ray Kroc

Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.

- Napoleon Hill

When it comes to Starbucks, I take every threat very personally.

- Howard Schultz

It is not the rich man’s son that the young struggler for advancement has to fear in the race for life, nor his nephew, nor his cousin. Let him look out for the dark horse in the boy who begins by sweeping out the office.

- Andrew Carnegie

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.

- Winston Churchill

The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.

- Bill Gates

You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog.

- Carl Icahn

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.

- Peter Drucker

Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.

- Steve Martin

When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—“Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally”—she’s not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she’s reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.

- Seth Godin

Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).

- Seth Godin

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

- Jeff Bezos

In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally.

- Ben Horowitz

This isn’t stealing this is standing on the shoulders of giants.

- David Novak

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

- Seth Godin

I DECLARE it is not too late to accomplish everything God has placed in my heart. I have not missed my window of opportunity. God has moments of favor in my future. He is preparing me right now because He is about to release a special grace to help me accomplish that dream. This is my time. This is my moment. I receive it.

- Joel Olsteen

The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants.

- Michael Dell

A wartime C.E.O. may not delegate. They make every decision based on the next product release. They may use a lot of profanity.

- Ben Horowitz

Stop doing things that waste time. Don’t replace time with your family or things that you need to do. I needed to put together two fantasy teams this weekend because that’s something I enjoy, but I did stop playing Nintendo Wii for hours on end.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Everyone deserves at least a chance to make things better. And besides people can surprise you.

- David Novak

I think the advantage of democracy is that it makes us less dependent on a group of leaders.

- Azim Premji

Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

- Zig Ziglar

From an operational perspective, this quarter was a home run.

- John Chambers

I’m a positive person, so I don’t get bogged down with it. If you’re expecting that, if you wall in that, if you practice that, then you’ll attract what you fear.

- Denzel Washington

Our goal is not to build a platform, it’s to be cross all of them.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

- Mark Twain

Today, we’re very dependent on cheap energy. We just take it for granted – all the things you have in the house, the way industry works.

- Bill Gates

I’m not ashamed of any of my papers at all and I’m rather sick of snobs that tell us that they’re bad papers, snobs who only read papers that no one else wants. I doubt if they read many papers at all.

- Rupert Murdoch

[In February 2011 on Square.] Starting a startup after twitter is so much easier than before.

- Jack Dorsey

For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.

- Winston Churchill

If what others say doesn’t match what God has put in your heart, let it go in one ear and out the other.

- Joel Olsteen

HE RICH DON’T WORK FOR MONEY The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.

- Robert Kiyosaki

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors.

- Dale Carnegie

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared, but only men of character are trusted.

- Zig Ziglar

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

When you are the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you are basically saying, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong.’ That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilaration and the same time an invitation to be attacked.

- Larry Ellison

Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.

- Bill Gates

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