Notable Quotables

In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It’s a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems. A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.

- Ben Horowitz

Let go of yesterday. Let today be a new beginning and be the best that you can, and you’ll get to where God wants you to be.

- Joel Olsteen

A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation, a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity, but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.

- Winston Churchill

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

- David Novak

When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal. And it has nothing to do with money. I mean, you buy clothes with money, and cars. But I really wanted to work with people I enjoyed working with, who I admired and liked.

- Larry Ellison

People might not think that, but the Republicans have all of the cards. And this is the time to get rid of Obamacare. This is the time to make the great deal.

- Donald Trump

I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.

- Ray Kroc

When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome.

- Winston Churchill

Sooner or later, you will see a China-based company that really has a global impact, and I think Baidu has a chance to become one of those companies. We should be able to compete on a global basis.

- Robin Li

The typical project design time for a large company like IBM – and they keep track of this – is a little over four years.

- Bill Gates

We are currently not planning on conquering the world.

- Sergey Brin

A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.

- Winston Churchill

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline–a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.

- James C. Collins

The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning, and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.

- Og Mandino

As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.

- Winston Churchill

Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.

- Zig Ziglar

The most “successful” companies seemed to embrace a sort of anti-business model where they lost money as they grew.

- Peter Thiel

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

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.

- John C. Maxwell

The legacy of Steve Jobs and the strength of Steve Jobs is that he established a company that’s clearly firing on all cylinders and clicking very well.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Americans move more than 10 times over the course of a lifetime.

- Bill Gates

God accepts you. God approves you. And He has something better in store.

- Joel Olsteen

The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.

- Napoleon Hill

Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalues people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented.

- Jack Welch

Technological advance seemed to accelerate automatically, so the Boomers grew up with great expectations but few specific plans for how to fulfill them.

- Peter Thiel

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- Ray Dalio

You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.

- Richard Branson

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

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

I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

- Walt Disney

This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.

- Clayton M. Christensen

He wants to do something amazing in your life. Get in agreement and say, God, this is for me today. I’m raising my expectations. I’m shaking off doubt, negativity, disappointments, self-pity, little dreams, and little goals, and God, I will make room for a flood of Your goodness.

- Joel Olsteen

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.

- Bill Gates

Every company must deal decisively with people who don’t perform satisfactorily….Great people, not great strategies are what made it all work (GE).

- Jack Welch

We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.

- Tadashi Yanai

I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I’m not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.

- Howard Schultz

Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question.

- Russell Simmons

There’s 20 companies that I have investments in – some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure.

- Bill Gates

The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.

- Peter Drucker

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

- Stephen R. Covey

Passion is everything. In fact, you’ve got to be borderline fanatical about what you do.

- Chris Gardner

Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.

- John C. Maxwell

Call it the emergence of a “world’s bank” – a system built by and for the people, delivering credit in America and across the globe in a radically decentralized, highly scalable, and crucially equitable way. The World Bank funds institutions.The world’s bank funds people.

- Reid Hoffman

I was hooked and I would make reward and recognition one of my primary focuses as a leader

- David Novak

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

- Peter Drucker

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

- Niels Bohr

Know what your brand stands for an exaggerate it in everything you do.

- David Novak

Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.

- Howard Schultz

You were created to give. You were created to make the lives of others better. Someone needs what you have. Someone needs your love. Someone needs your smile. Someone needs your encouragement and your gifts.

- Joel Olsteen

Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.

- Peter Drucker

I say, don’t try to fight your own battles because God will do it.

- Joel Olsteen

Today, and I’m very strongly against tax increases.

- Donald Trump

War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:

- Peter Thiel

Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you.

- Zig Ziglar

It’s lonely at the top, so you had better take someone with you…and it’s lonely at the top, so you had better know why you are there.

- Napoleon Hill

People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.

- Zig Ziglar

The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simply. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out, the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish, the other selfish. One is universally admired, the other universally condemned.

- Dale Carnegie

Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.

- Zig Ziglar

I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, ‘It’s all your fault.’ Your reaction is, ‘It’s not my fault.’ But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it.

- Ben Horowitz

A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.

- Steve Wozniak

Abe Lincoln once remarked that most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

- Dale Carnegie

We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.

- Joel Olsteen

Well we know that people in Austrailia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it’s fun to be able to deliver it.

- Richard Branson

I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.

- Oprah Winfrey

I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee.

- Howard Schultz

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. 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

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

- Elon Musk

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Nevertheless, in the first years of Standard Oil, Rockefeller regularly toured his facilities and was extremely inquisitive and observant, soaking up information and assiduously quizzing plant superintendants. In his pocket, he carried a little red notebook in which he jotted suggestions or improvements and always followed up on them. He knew the terror inspired by the little red book. More than once I have gone to luncheon with a number of our heads of departments and have seen the sweat out of on the foreheads for some of them when that little red notebook was pulled out.

- Ron Chernow

I think there is probably no better person to aspire to emulate than Steve Jobs and what he has done at Apple in terms of his leadership, his innovation, not settling for mediocrity.

- Howard Schultz

I focus on giving specific, real-time coaching so my teammates can benefit immediately. Larry Senn taught me a very effective tool that works in both individual and team settings. Start out by sharing, here’s what you appreciate about a person’s work. By showing appreciation, you are setting the stage for acceptance of constructive suggestions. Then offer suggestions by saying, and you can be even more effective if you do such and such. And is a much better word than but because it’s additive by buillyng on a positive versus the usually negative but everyone is expecting to hear.

- David Novak

Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.

- Walt Disney

Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.

- Peter Thiel

I really good at simplifying things. I think that’s my main strength. Taking something that’s fairly complex down to it’s essence. That’s what I love doing. That’s what I love thinking about.

- Jack Dorsey

My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?

- Sara Blakely

Hope is the engine of your attitude, and your attitude determines your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

Every leader’s potential is determined by the people closest to him. No matter what I did with that staff, they would never be able to take the organization to the place we needed to go.

- Napoleon Hill

If you want to understand what drives Cisco, look at our approach to customers. The manner in which we serve our customers defines our company values and demonstrates our priorities. Cisco is proud to be honored with this important certification that recognizes the foundation of our culture — the importance that we place on ensuring our customers are successful with Cisco technology.

- John Chambers

The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.

- Zig Ziglar

I’m afraid Japanese people tend to collective hysteria.

- Tadashi Yanai

We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.

- Phil Knight

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.

- Yoda

I’m in a different position than most CEO’s. I’m a founder. I’m not a hired CEO. Now, I can be fired by the board, but most CEO’s are hired by the board.

- Howard Schultz

You reinforce the behaviors that you reward, he explained. If you reward candor, you’ll get it.

- Jack Welch

Disruptive companies often pick fights they can’t win.

- Peter Thiel

A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn’t depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.

- Timothy Ferriss

Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.

- Bill Gates

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