Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.
- Timothy Ferriss
It is equally important that diversification is an ongoing process.
- Cheng Yu-tung
To connect with people in a group, connect with them as individuals.
- John Maxwell
I move onward, the only direction Can’t be scared to fail in search of perfection.
- Jay-Z
Great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future.
- Peter Thiel
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
- Jeff Bezos
Stopped they must be; on this all depends. Only a fully-trained Jedi Knight, with the Force as his ally, will conquer Vader and his Emperor.
- Yoda
The Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own.
- Peter Thiel
Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team.
- James C. Collins
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.
- Sam Walton
There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.
- Winston Churchill
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
- Seneca
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
- Og Mandino
When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened
- Winston Churchill
I have a calendar life that is complicated, so I use BusyCal and Google Calendar. I keep two different browsers open to avoid some confusion.
- Steve Wozniak
I may be over the top on this, but I just don’t want to like my competitors. I want my people to believe that whenever he and our other competitors succeed, we will be less able to do all the things we want to do.
- Phil Knight
Heroes always come from young people.
- Cheng Yu-tung
This may sound a bit naive, but I got here by believing in big dreams.
- Howard Schultz
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
- Henry Ford
Acquiring Sunseeker deepens Wanda’s international influence and represents an important step forward for the development of the business.
- Wang Jianlin
If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.
- Bill Gates
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
- Mark Twain
One who knows God is going to bless them, despite the fact that they have no idea how to actually raise capital or solve a real problem that people have in exchange for monetary compensation. They love the idea of business ownership, yet fear working, as though doing any actual work or rendering any tangible service or product might ruin their lives on this planet and for eternity.
- Clay Clark
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
- W. Clement Stone
I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.
- Bill Gates
It is unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing what it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot . .
- Zig Ziglar
I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
- Winston Churchill
Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.
- Ray Kroc
Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.
- Peter Thiel
When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.
- Walt Disney
I believe the scripture says that being gay is a sin.
- Joel Olsteen
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
- General George S. Patton
Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.
- Seth Godin
To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
- Peter Drucker
The only definition by which America’s best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.
- Bill Gates
Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.
- Bill Gates
Around the survivors a perimeter create.
- Yoda
When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.
- John C. Maxwell
Do you have a real interest in people who work for you? Most good leaders have that – it’s hard to get someone to follow you if they feel like you hate ’em.
- Ben Horowitz
Sometimes you may have to trade places with someone who is hurting.
- Joel Olsteen
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The Internet moves very fast. In the old world, we could afford to sit and analyze forever. But in the new world, the first mover has the advantage.
- Raymond Kwok
People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
- Elon Musk
Marketing is the name we use to describe the promise a company makes, the story it tells, the authentic way it delivers on that promise.
- Seth Godin
My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.
- Dale Carnegie
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
- Steve Martin
Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt.
- Zig Ziglar
Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.
- Winston Churchill
Ethics to me is very important.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better.
- Seth Godin
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
- Dale Carnegie
We’ll see how that evolves. Obviously, it doesn’t mean we’ll just be willing to do anything that’s requested of us.
- Sergey Brin
Everything man creates or acquires begins in the form of desire, that desire is taken on the first lap of its journey, from the abstract to the concrete, into the workshop of the imagination, where plans for its transition are created and organized.
- Napoleon Hill
When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley.
- Sergey Brin
Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.
- Bill Gates
When we don’t forgive, we’re not hurting the other person. We’re not hurting the company that did us wrong. We’re not hurting God. We’re only hurting ourselves.
- Joel Olsteen
Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.
- Zig Ziglar
Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.
- Bill Gates
Momentum is a little fragile, and when people got excited before, they were disappointed, … But this is the most positive guidance we’ve given in eight quarters, going into a seasonally challenging quarter.
- John Chambers
Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do.
- Seth Godin
Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That’s the fundamental thing.
- Ben Horowitz
The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.
- Seth Godin
Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike”, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
You can’t have a mid-life crisis in the airline industry because every day is a crisis.
- Herb Kelleher
You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
- Oprah Winfrey
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
Luke: What’s in there? Yoda: Only what you take with you.
- Yoda
The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.
- Oprah Winfrey
Big companies have always needed and cooperated in areas where it made sense.
- Larry Page
My children – in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.
- Steve Ballmer
For me, my role is about unleashing what people already have inside them that is maybe suppressed in most work environments.
- Tony Hsieh
Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is–the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.
- Winston Churchill
The U.S. has done a great job improving productivity. We’re making a lot more steel in Dearborn with fewer people. The unions have accepted much better work rules.
- Alexei Mordashov
Once you’ve engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them. If you hide your spark, bury your ideas, keep your questions and notions from the team, you have hurt them as badly as if you had stolen a laptop and fenced it on eBay.
- Seth Godin
His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.
- Ron Chernow
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
- Dale Carnegie
Athletic skills are acquired over a long period of time and after countless hours of practice.
- Zig Ziglar
Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don’t have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
- Andrew Carnegie
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
- Steve Martin
The slowdown in futures orders clearly signals that revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 1998 will be below our previous expectations. This is largely a result of the slowdown in the Asia Pacific market, where we now anticipate more moderate revenue growth in fiscal 1998 after increasing 84 percent on a constant dollar basis in fiscal 1997.
- Phil Knight
You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
- Sam Walton
We drink the can, not the beverage
- Seth Godin
If you ask me whether the future is better than today, I would say yes; but the people must be ready to pay for services and pay their taxes.
- Aliko Dangote
The sooner you accept the fact that you will have both successes and failures, the easier it will be to get your business and personal life headed in the right direction.
- Harvey Mackay
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
It would be nice to design a real briefcase – you open it up and it’s your computer but it also stores your books.
- Steve Wozniak
To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
- P.T. Barnum
Satellite broadcasting makes it possible for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels.
- Rupert Murdoch
But this “spray and pray” approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.
- Peter Thiel
Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present, good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future.
- Peter Thiel
On many long journeys have I gone. And waited, too, for others to return from journeys of their own. Some return; some are broken; some come back so different only their names remain.
- Yoda
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
- James C. Collins
The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It’s in the blood.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Your first projects aren’t the greatest things in the world, and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere, but that is how you learn – you put so much effort into making something right if it is for yourself.
- Steve Wozniak
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
- Andrew Carnegie
