The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves.
- Peter Drucker
Notable Quotables
People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they’re not all growing in their faith, they’re not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior.
- Joel Olsteen
That’s why it is important to enjoy the journey not just the destination. In this world, we will never arrive at a place where everything is perfect and we have no more challenges. As admirable as setting goals and reaching them maybe, you can’t get so focused on accomplishing your goals that you make the mistake of not enjoying where you are right now.
- Joel Olsteen
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.
- Ben Horowitz
An individual artist needs only a thousand true fans in her tribe. It’s enough.
- Seth Godin
When we had seventy-five stores in Arkansas, seventy-five in Missouri, eighty in Oklahoma, whatever, people knew who we were, and everybody except the merchants who weren’t discounting looked forward to our coming to their town.
- Sam Walton
Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.
- Timothy Ferriss
The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I’m wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.
- Ray Dalio
Your job should make you want to get out of bed
- Tony Hsieh
For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better.
- Seth Godin
The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.
- William Gibson
Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.
- P.T. Barnum
I do not follow conventional wisdom.
- Phil Knight
Twitter in 2000 was something that was fun to play with but something I put on the shelf to play with for another day. And that day was 2006.
- Jack Dorsey
Canada sets aside 36 percent of their visas for people with skills they think their country needs. We set aside six percent. We educate the doctors, and then don’t give ’em a green card.
- Michael Bloomberg
In the years to come, that lure of partnership helped us attract a lot of good managers, but I don’t believe that we ever had one who bought more stock than Willard. And of course he feels pretty good about it today. – Sam Walton (on human resources, hiring, early history of Wal-Mart)
- Sam Walton
If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.
- Jeff Bezos
The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo, the job is to invent the status quo.
- Seth Godin
Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. [This] improves the odds of success. If other people are putting in 40 hour work weeks and you’re putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing you know that… you will achieve in 4 months what it takes them a year to achieve.
- Elon Musk
One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.
- John C. Maxwell
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
confusion is the main cause of worry.
- Dale Carnegie
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
The entrepreneur builds an enterprise, the technician builds a job.
- Michael Gerber
I don’t shop online, but my wife buys everything at home. We buy sea crabs, fresh crabs, all kinds of things.
- Jack Ma
EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.
- Jack Ma
Before spending time on a stress-inducing question or problem, consider this: If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it.
- Timothy Ferriss
You’re only as good as the people you hire.
- Ray Kroc
Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.
- Seth Godin
If I could drink only one wine, it would be Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
China traditionally has been a tea-drinking country but we turned them into coffee drinkers.
- Howard Schultz
The best—perhaps even the only—way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter Drucker
Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.
- Yoda
A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.
- Joel Olsteen
You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don’t let that stop you from blooming. Realize that your environment does not prevent you from being happy. Some people spend all their time trying to pull up all the weeds. Meanwhile, they miss much of their lives. Don’t worry about things you can’t change. You can’t change the traffic in the morning. You can’t fix everybody at work. You can’t make all your family members serve God. But you shouldn’t let that keep you from being happy. Bloom anyway and focus on the things that you can change. You can change your own attitude. You can choose to be happy right where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
I predict at least one of the rookie drivers will win a race this year. With this strong of a group, two or three of them will likely win.
- Ed Clark
You will need to find ways to do less and less to make more and more.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.
- Joel Olsteen
Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give him one of yours.
- Zig Ziglar
Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.
- Ben Horowitz
The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.
- Zig Ziglar
China is likely to sustain its pace of economic growth for the next decade.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.
- Thomas Edison
Today is life – the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m not looking for a legacy, and you’ll never shut up the critics. I’ve been around 50 years. When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.
- Rupert Murdoch
Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.
- Timothy Ferriss
The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?
- John D. Rockefeller
We are more fascinated today by statistical predictions of what the country will be thinking in a few weeks’ time than by visionary predictions of what the country will look like 10 or 20 years from now.
- Peter Thiel
I’m certainly well taken care of in terms of food and clothes.
- Bill Gates
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
- Elon Musk
I see this as my humanitarian legacy. We’re prepared to pay billions.
- Sheldon Adelson
I haven’t failed,I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
- Zig Ziglar
Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn’t mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It’s about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.
- Steve Martin
Maintain ‘baseball cards’ and/or ‘believability matrixes’ for your people. Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. But I’d love to, right?
- Jack Ma
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
- Warren Buffett
We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.
- Winston Churchill
When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.
- Joel Olsteen
Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.
- Timothy Ferriss
The more you complain about your problems, the more problems you will have to complain about.
- Zig Ziglar
There’s never been a doctor who served many patients who, despite their best efforts, did not lose some of them to death. But they understood that was part of life itself.
- Zig Ziglar
Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want.
- Timothy Ferriss
Over 80% of America’s millionaires are self-made.
- Thomas J Stanley
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
- David Ogilvy
Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.
- Sam Walton
The response to the Starbucks brand has been phenomenal in our international markets.
- Howard Schultz
My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.
- Peter Thiel
Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are commmon and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy – though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies. It is a checklist.
- Atul Gawande
Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
- Peter Drucker
You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.
- Joel Olsteen
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
The doctors actually told my family there was a five percent chance of me living.
- Ed Clark
What is not started will never get finished
- Johann Wolf gang von Goethe
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
You want your customers to value your service.
- Jeff Bezos
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.
- Reed Hastings
We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.
- Richard Branson
Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.
- Winston Churchill
If you can’t communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you’re giving up your potential.
- Warren Buffett
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
- Dale Carnegie
The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.
- Napoleon Hill
First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.
- Dale Carnegie
It’s pretty chilly by southern California standards.
- Ed Clark
I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.
- Warren Buffett
Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.
- Bill Gates
We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.
- Howard Schultz
The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
- Andrew Carnegie
Globally, business and government leaders are beginning to dramatically transform their traditional business models into Internet economy business models, … Customers are increasingly seeking Cisco’s expertise to help them through this transformation.
- John Chambers
When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.
- Napoleon Hill
Flavor is, counterintuitively, less than 10% taste and more than 90% smell.
- Timothy Ferriss
When Ford sells a car, a dealer isn’t allowed to take out the engine and put a different one in. When a newsstand sells the Washington Post, no one can go to the newsstand and pay them to rip out the classified section and put their own classified section in – if they could, they would do so.
- Bill Gates
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
You spend so much time in the world of virtual that the actual – which nothing is more actual than stand-up – it’s a painful experience for the audience, and the comedian a lot of time – we miss that.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.
- Elon Musk
