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
Notable Quotables
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
- Winston Churchill
We are in control of the one asset that we all give the most f#%ks about, and that is time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If God says I’m highly favored, then I will not talk myself out of it. I believe I’m highly favored. If God says the impossible can happen, then I believe the impossible will happen.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.
- Elon Musk
I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am an investor.
- Warren Buffett
Infrastructure web services had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- John C. Maxwell
What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.
- Thomas Edison
A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.
- Bob Dylan
How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
Leadership isn’t something that people hand to you. … [i]t’s a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that’s something we can teach.
- Seth Godin
Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.
- Vladimir Potanin
Your list is like a garden, tend it well.
- Michael Levine
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
- George Soros
Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.
- James C. Collins
Tip #17 – Perceived value is what sells. Real value is what repeats.
- Jack Nadel
Leadership is hard to train on.
- Ben Horowitz
First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund.
- Peter Thiel
If you are going to be successful, you must develop persistence. How do you do that? It is not easily condensed in one simple statement, but one thing you can be sure of is that your must define your purpose.
- Zig Ziglar
You can’t jump to vegan if you’re not. Some people are absolute. Some people are able to be gradual.
- Russell Simmons
This country provides opportunities. If you don’t take advantage of them, it’s your own fault.
- Sam Huff
The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.
- George Soros
People don’t want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology – all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why.
- Peter Thiel
None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone’s help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.
- Harvey Mackay
Foreplay, cuddling – a Jedi craves not these things.
- Yoda
The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure, but to build one that is worthy of enduring.
- Jim Collins
I’m a bit of a P. T. Barnum. I make stars out of everyone.
- Donald Trump
Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.”
- John C. Maxwell
We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.
- Bill Gates
This marks the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year top-line growth for Cisco.
- John Chambers
“Pick me, pick me” acknowledges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone else to initiate. Even better, “pick me, pick me” moves the blame from you to them. If you don’t get picked, it’s their fault, not yours. If you do get picked, well, they said you were good, right? Not your fault anymore. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work.
- Seth Godin
A pay increase of 5 percent is more than justified. It would compensate for losses we’ve had in the past and I’d like to be able to buy the everyday things I’ve put off for years, like a new TV.
- Michael Gerber
We’ve announced an Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, a bunch of low-cost commodity servers running Linux, integrated in our case, with InfiniBand – connected with InfiniBand vs. the traditional Ethernet.
- Larry Ellison
Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffett
But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.
- Warren Buffett
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Seneca
Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.
- Aristotle
Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!
- Thomas Edison
The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.
- Seth Godin
The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth.
- Stephen Wynn
There’s a way to do it better – find it.
- Thomas Edison
…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day… If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased… I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do… I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. …Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.
- Thomas Edison
The challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us.
- Seth Godin
I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort.
- Sergey Brin
I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.
- Bill Gates
If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.
- Peter Drucker
I never thought about success. I always thought about doing the job at hand. My goal was getting through the show that night.
- Steve Martin
One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.
- Jeff Bezos
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
- Winston Churchill
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
In the simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up and goes.
- John Erskine
Steve Jobs didn’t really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don’t deny that.
- Steve Wozniak
I am upset with the effect that both of these issues have had on the public,
- Michael Gerber
Q1 was a solid quarter for Cisco, with balanced execution across most of our geographies, market segments and product categories, … We are especially pleased with the improving business momentum in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, the strength of our product families and the accelerated growth of the commercial marketplace, which has become our fastest growing customer segment.
- John Chambers
Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society – and especially in the economy – as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is “creative destruction.
- Peter Drucker
On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
Reality is negotiable.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.
- Ben Horowitz
According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.
- Bill Gates
The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.
- Elon Musk
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would’ve had a chance. Because that’s where my real heart was.
- Steve Martin
Economic recovery in the United States has been taking place at a slow pace at a time of uncertainty in the Middle East. However, Mainland China was able to show steady sustained growth. Hong Kong, being right at the southern gateway of Mainland China, is able to benefit from its growth.
- Lee Shau Kee
If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.
- James C. Collins
I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
Age doesn’t matter, an open mind does.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculate a Web site’s importance.
- Larry Page
Gas consumption is growing everywhere.
- Vagit Alekperov
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
- Albert Einstein
Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.
- Napoleon Hill
Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that everything changes except the law of change. He said: You cannot step in the same river twice. The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?
- Dale Carnegie
Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets
- Steve Jobs
Do all you can to make your dreams come true.
- Joel Olsteen
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali
There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.
- Henry Ford
My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.
- Joel Olsteen
A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know—if anybody does. He said: About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life—and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centered desires.
- Dale Carnegie
There is never a bad time to start a business – unless you want to start a mediocre one.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I believe you should have a world where you’ve got to license something at a fair price. There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.
- Steve Wozniak
Do extremely difficult work.That seems obvious, right? If you do something that’s valued but scarce because it’s difficult, you’re more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do.The implication is stunning, though: When designing a project or developing a skill, seek out the most difficult parts to master and contribute. If it’s easy, it’s not for you.
- Seth Godin
We must use time creatively.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The time has come to act.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.
- Bill Gates
The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.
- Wang Jianlin
It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
- John Wooden
The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.
- Bill Gates
Don’t waste your energy trying to convince people to understand you. Your time is too valuable to try to prove yourself to people.
- Joel Olsteen
The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader.
- Albert Einstein
In the beginning, I was so chintzy I really didn’t pay my employees well.
- Sam Walton
m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.
- Elon Musk
You can start from where you are with what you’ve got and go to where it is you want to go.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.
- Walt Disney
Progress really is possible.
- Michael Bloomberg
Let’s find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. …When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book The Origin Of Species he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.
- Dale Carnegie
The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
- Jack Welch
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
- Winston Churchill
