Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.
- George Soros
Notable Quotables
If salespeople don’t probe well for background information, they don’t know how to launch the presentation.
- Jerry Vass
It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players. A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.
- Steve Jobs
The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
- Walter Lippmann
I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.
- Warren Buffett
It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Hay dos errores que podemos cometer en el camino hacia la verdad. No recorrer todo el camino, y no empezar.
- Siddhartha Gautama
I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.
- Mark Zuckerberg
That doesn’t mean the opposite ideas are automatically true: you can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
- Peter Thiel
The best teacher is very interactive.
- Bill Gates
We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.
- Winston Churchill
The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there’s no ball, there’s no game. Bullies hate that. So they’ll either behave so they can play with you or they’ll go bully someone else.
- Seth Godin
Everyone must have a shot at the American Dream.
- Howard Schultz
The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
If you’re going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don’t work.
- Seth Godin
With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.
- Seth Godin
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
- Steve Martin
Napoleon was criticized for giving toys” to war-hardened veterans, and Napoleon replied, Men are ruled by toys.
- Dale Carnegie
You were not created to just get by with an average, unrewarding, or unfulfilling life. God created you to leave your mark on this generation.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s insane to me to ask anybody to be what they’re not. Know what you know the best, love the most. That’s always going to be the answer to the thing that you have the best shot at winning at.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible.
- Donald Trump
The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what’s going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn’t allow for that.
- Jack Dorsey
That was annoying but not entirely unexpected. It’s not a huge shock, given what’s going on down there.
- Ed Clark
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be likened to the raindrop, which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed.
- Og Mandino
Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.
- Seth Godin
Change isn’t made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.
- Seth Godin
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
- Warren Buffett
People have no confidence that Washington, both sides of aisle, are coming together to try and do what’s right for the economy.
- Michael Bloomberg
I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.
- Bill Gates
I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
- Bill Gates
Control your own destiny or someone else will.
- Jack Welch
To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone.
- Sergey Brin
The purpose of process is communication. If there are five people in your company, you don’t need process, because you can just talk to each other.
- Ben Horowitz
Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.
- Elon Musk
I really believed that I said then, and I still do. But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop. The way I approached managing the business, I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision – usually flying around to take a look at our stores on a regular basis. But from the very beginning, even on my paper routes in college, I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage the stores. That’s been the case since back in Newport….We’re big now. We’re really big. That’s not something I like to focus on. I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not necessarily the biggest…(being big poses opportunities), but being big also poses big dangers. It has ruined many a fine company – including some giant retailers – who started out strong and got bloated or out of touch or were slow to react to the needs of their customers. Here’s the point: the biggest Wal-Mart gets, the more essential it is that we think small. Because that is exactly how we have become a big corporation.
- Sam Walton
Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.
- Jeff Bezos
Los líderes son vulnerables, no controladores, y nos llevan a un lugar nuevo, no a la seguridad barata, rápida y sumisa.
- Seth Godin
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
- Henry Ford
Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
- Dale Carnegie
For those already successful, money can become a controlling factor in life and make you a slave to it. One way to avoid that – Philanthropy.
- Lee Shau Kee
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
- Yoda
Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.
- Joel Olsteen
Companies are like countries in this way. Bad decisions made early on—if you choose the wrong partners or hire the wrong people, for example—are very hard to correct after they are made. It may take a crisis on the order of bankruptcy before anybody will even try to correct them. As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.
- Peter Thiel
Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking.It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every dayto deliver your message with authority.You should write one.
- Seth Godin
Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
- Ray Kroc
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar
Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.
- Zig Ziglar
But the three rules I always stuck with were 1) Be on time 2) No profanity and 3) Never criticize a teammate.
- David Novak
In creating an ideavirus, the advertiser creates an environment in which the idea can replicate and spread. It’s the virus that does the work, not the marketer.
- Seth Godin
You do not lead by hitting people over the head. That’s assault, not leadership.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
don’t talk about the way you are. Talk about the way you want to be.
- Joel Olsteen
If you believe in quality, you can’t just tell everybody We believe in quality! You’ve got to pay bonuses based on quality. You’ve got to let everyone in the organization know that they are being judged on quality.
- Jack Welch
There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
- Peter Thiel
true love is always backed up with actions.
- Joel Olsteen
This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It’s not politically viable; it’s not morally right; it’s just not going to happen.
- Michael Bloomberg
On the Internet you get continuous innovation, so every year the streams are a little better.
- Reed Hastings
You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.
- Joel Olsteen
I don’t like to look back, and I’m always worried about the next thing rather than resting on the laurels or the degradations of the last thing.
- Steve Martin
The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.
- Seth Godin
It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.
- John C. Maxwell
To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.
- Peter Thiel
To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.
- Bill Gates
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
Life’s too short” is repeated often enough to be a cliche, but this time it’s true. You don’t have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre. It’s not just pointless, it’s painful. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
- Seth Godin
We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun together.
- Walt Disney
Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship.
- Ben Horowitz
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins – not through strength, but through persistence.
- Buddha
We could definitely make a flying car – but that’s not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.
- Elon Musk
I am excited for the opportunity to pursue new interests, including my work with a few public company boards, several universities in the U.S. and the UK and ophthalmic charities whose goals are to improve eye health in emerging markets.
- David Pyott
God, I’m not going to look at what I don’t have. I’m looking unto you. I know in my weakness, you show up the strongest.
- Joel Olsteen
Where did your art go while you were tweeting?
- Seth Godin
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
I try to create businesses that I think are not hurtful.
- Russell Simmons
I wasn’t prepared for this big room with clattering typewriters and teletype printers. You could hardly hear yourself think.
- Ray Kroc
The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.
- Jeff Bezos
But no parties could live under such labels as Petitioners and Abhorrers. Instead of naming themselves they named each other. The term “Whig” had described a sour, bigoted, canting, money-grubbing Scots Presbyterian. Irish Papist bandits ravaging estates and manor-houses had been called “Tories”.
- Winston Churchill
People who couldn’t fit into this informal and entreprenual environment left or were asked to leave. I cut my losses quickly on bad hires that didn’t perform.
- Jack Welch
The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
- Timothy Ferriss
I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.
- Elon Musk
No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
- Peter Drucker
When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.
- Peter Thiel
Branding is what people think about you before they even know you.
- Bryan Smith
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
- Winston Churchill
People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.
- Walt Disney
I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….
- Thomas Edison
I don’t know what causes a person to be ambitious, but it is a fact that I have been overblessed with drive and ambition from the time I hit the ground.
- Sam Walton
There are no rules here — we’re trying to accomplish something.
- Thomas Edison
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill
For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.
- Winston Churchill
Make sure your ego lies in the performance of the company, not in the performance of the stock.
- Warren Buffett
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
No one has any idea what’s next… the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it’s delaying the recovery.
- Stephen Wynn
That which becomes acceptable becomes inevitable.
- Michael Levine
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
You don’t have to choose between your business and your life. Rather, if you do it right, you get your business and your life. In fact, we strongly believe that the only way to build a truly scalable business is by radically reducing its reliance on you, the owner, and supporting that rapid growth through systems, team and internal business controls.
- Jeff Hoffman
I’ve become an animal rights activist.
- Stephen Wynn
When state funding for Irvine public schools began to diminish some time ago, my Irvine Company colleagues helped me to provide private funding support for continuation of basic science, art and music programs that had been eliminated by lack of state funding.
- Donald Bren
I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
- Elon Musk
Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines, the one who actually talk to the customer, are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble within it, you must listen to what your associates are telling you.
- Sam Walton
My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.
- Mukesh Ambani
