If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong—yes, even that you know is wrong—isn’t it better to begin by saying: Well, now, look. I thought otherwise, but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong, I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.” There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.
- Dale Carnegie
Notable Quotables
I support Democrats and Republicans. And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.
- Stephen Wynn
We may get knocked down on the outside, but the key to living in victory is to learn how to get up on the inside.
- Joel Olsteen
The first thing I ever invested in was Twitter. Blaine Cook, former CTO, was leaving the company and asked me if I wanted to buy his stock.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.
- Winston Churchill
In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.
- Bill Gates
Choose wise and Godly people to advise you.
- George Foreman
Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Good talkers often choose to become sales professionals. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that selling well means listening well.
- Jerry Vass
I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, ‘You guys are doing too much stuff.’ He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.
- Larry Page
Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.
- Ben Horowitz
Perks are good, but they are not culture.
- Ben Horowitz
Remember, happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think. So start each day by thinking of all the things you have to be thankful for. Your future will depend very largely on the thoughts you think today. So think thoughts of hope and confidence and love and success.
- Dale Carnegie
The concept of serviced apartments makes economic sense for tenancies of short to medium term duration – a fact many leading Hong Kong and overseas corporations now appreciate.
- Cheng Yu-tung
My wheels are running. My investments are local, regional and international.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities, and don’t let the bastards get you down.
- Michael Bloomberg
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s undervalued and underinvested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board.
- Evan Williams
Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire.
- Dale Carnegie
On this basis, we intend to increase the dividend for the third time in a row. We are proposing a distribution of €3.25 per share, corresponding to a dividend payout ratio of 27.4 percent, which is again up slightly on the previous year’s level.
- Elmar Degenhart
The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities.
- Peter Thiel
I want to be able to speak with errors in my wording, errors in my grammar. When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know ‘No, he couldn’t have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.’
- Steve Wozniak
Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards–and living up to them–is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.
- Seth Godin
Your job is not to judge. Your job is not to figure out if someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, to restore the broken, and to heal the hurting.
- Joel Olsteen
We will go forward… we will never go back.
- Michael Bloomberg
Most men go to their graves with their dreams still inside them.
- Zig Ziglar
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things.
- Zig Ziglar
King Alfred’s Book of Laws, or Dooms, as set out in the existing laws of Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, attempted to blend the Mosaic code with Christian principles and old Germanic customs. He inverted the Golden Rule. Instead of “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you”, he adopted the less ambitious principle, “What ye will that other men should not do to you, that do ye not to other men”, with the comment, “By bearing this precept in mind a judge can do justice to all men; he needs no other law-books. Let him think of himself as the plaintiff, and consider what judgment would satisfy him.” The King, in his preamble, explained modestly that “I have not dared to presume to set down in writing many laws of my own, for I cannot tell what will meet with the approval of our successors.
- Winston Churchill
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
- Jack Welch
You can build a successful career, regardless of your field of endeavor, by the dozens of little things you do on and off the job.
- Zig Ziglar
Every day were saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy?’ How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.
- Bill Gates
I’m skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education…. People are on these tracks. They are getting these credentials and it’s very unclear how viable they are in many cases.
- Peter Thiel
I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.
- Oprah Winfrey
My father left me with a clear sense that the media was something different.
- Rupert Murdoch
Indeed, the real question is not, Why greatness?” but What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, Why should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough?” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work.
- James C. Collins
My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.
- Joel Olsteen
We have to innovate for a specific reason, and that reason comes from the market. Otherwise, we’ll end up making museum pieces.
- Phil Knight
Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best….”
- Thomas Edison
Whoever is first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover in the whole market.
- Peter Thiel
Video is emerging as the key strategic application in the service provider triple play bundle of consumer entertainment, communication and online services.
- John Chambers
When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don’t know what you are going to do.
- Larry Ellison
What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Surround yourself with the right people
- Tony Hsieh
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.
- Warren Buffett
Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.
- Elon Musk
We are pleased to report the 33rd consecutive quarter of revenue and earnings growth. We are especially pleased with the balanced growth rate across almost all countries in both Europe and the Americas.
- John Chambers
Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand.
- Ben Horowitz
We are making these changes at a time when we are beginning to see signs that our business is stabilizing.
- John Chambers
The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.
- Timothy Ferriss
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.
- Bill Gates
I wanted to be a sailor, I wanted to sail the world, to navigate it.
- Jack Dorsey
The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader.
- Albert Einstein
Americans reading the paper, listening to the news every single day, and all you hear is things are getting worse and worse. And that has a psychological effect on consumer confidence. That’s what consumer confidence is.
- Howard Schultz
There is always plenty of capital for those who can create practical plans for using it.
- Napoleon Hill
The response to the Starbucks brand has been phenomenal in our international markets.
- Howard Schultz
People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.
- Steve Wozniak
Your margin is my opportunity.
- Jeff Bezos
For Starbucks, there will be no shortage of the highest-quality arabica beans. I suspect that for some others there could potentially be a problem, not in the near term, but over time.
- Howard Schultz
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
- Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s easier to explain price once than to apologize for quality forever.
- Zig Ziglar
Twenty years ago, the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 either dug something out of the ground or turned a natural resource (iron ore or oil) into something you could hold. Today, fewer than half of the companies on the list do that. The rest make unseemly profits by trafficking in ideas.
- Seth Godin
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
- Warren Buffett
DAY FOURTEEN I DECLARE that I will use my words to bless people. I will speak favor and victory over my family, friends, and loved ones. I will help call out their seeds of greatness by telling them I’m proud of you, I love you, you are amazing, you are talented, you are beautiful, you will do great things in life.” This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
The mistake that’s so easy to make is to get greedy as you choose your hive, to say, “this product is for everyone” or “anyone can benefit from this idea.” Well, there are seven billion people on the planet, so it’s unlikely your comment is correct; even if it is, there’s little chance that a virus would spread across a hive that big.
- Seth Godin
Never, never, never give up.
- Winston Churchill
When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.
- Herb Kelleher
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
It’s not like I’m anti-China. I just think it’s ridiculous that we allow them to do what they’re doing to this country, with the manipulation of the currency, that you write about and understand, and all of the other things that they do.
- Donald Trump
And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
- Peter Drucker
It’s not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobiles one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.
- George Washington Carver
Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
My favorite writers are all Jews – David, Solomon, Matthew, Mark – well, you get the picture.
- Zig Ziglar
Change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
A CEO’s job is to supervise all systems and to indentify weaknesses before the weaknesses turn into system failures. This can happen in many different ways, but it is exceptionally disconcerting when you company is growing rapidly. Your sales are increasing, your product of service is getting attention from the media, and suddenly you can’t deliver. Why? Uusually, it’s because your systems imploded from the increased demand. You didn’t have enough phone lines, or operators answering the phones. You didn’t have enough production capacity or enough hours in the week to meet the demand; or you didn’t have the money to build the product or hire additional help. Whatever the reason, you missed the opportunity to move your business to the next level of success due to failure of one of your systems…At each new level of growth, the CEO must start planning the systems needed to support the next level of growth, from phone lines to lines of credit for production needs. Systems drive both cash flow management and communication. As your systems get better, you or your employees will have to exert less and less effort. Without well-designed and successful operating systems, your business will be labor intensive. Once you have well-designed and successful operating systems, you will have a saleable business asset.
- Robert Kiyosaki
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
- Winston Churchill
I do not believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process
- Oprah Winfrey
At our computer club, we talked about it being a revolution. Computers were going to belong to everyone, and give us power, and free us from the people who owned computers and all that stuff.
- Steve Wozniak
We do lots of Stuff. The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.
- Sergey Brin
The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.
- Bill Gates
Some conflicts are simply territorial. For instance, I’ve rarely met a marketing person who wanted to raise prices and I’ve rarely met a finance person who wanted to lower prices.
- David Novak
One incident preserved by General Ismay in an apocryphal and somewhat lively form may be allowed to lighten the narrative. His orderly, a Royal Marine, was shown the sights of Moscow by one of the Intourist guides. “This,” said the Russian, “is the Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel. Here is Churchill Street, formerly Hitler Street. Here is the Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station. Will you have a cigarette, comrade?” The Marine replied, “Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!” This tale, though jocular, illustrates none the less the strange atmosphere of these meetings.
- Winston Churchill
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.
He listened closely to what people said and filed away as much information as he could, repeating valuable information to himself until it was memorized. There was humility in this eagerness to learn. As he said, It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.
- Ron Chernow
A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere.
- Zig Ziglar
No vision is worth the paper it’s printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.
- Jack Welch
We are very happy to be reporting that our pro-forma earnings passed the $1 billion mark for the first time.
- John Chambers
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.
- Stephen R. Covey
Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.
- Brene Brown
A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.
- Yoda
Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.
- Zig Ziglar
If you say you want to automate cars and save people’s lives, the skills you need for that aren’t taught in any particular discipline. I know – I was interested in working on automating cars when I was a Ph.D. student in 1995.
- Larry Page
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
It’s hard for me to imagine how a $50 million marketing campaign is ever appropriate for any business to launch an ideavirus. If you need to interrupt that many people, you’re doing something wrong.
- Seth Godin
The bluegrass community… can be very strict. I didn’t know if I’d be welcomed into the bluegrass community or not, but I think they judge you very fairly… I felt really welcome.
- Steve Martin
At Tencent, we may be businessmen, but we are still chasing our IT, our science. We are still striving to create something really cool, trying to create things we couldn’t even imagine without our new technologies. I am still clinging to this enthusiasm.
- Ma Huateng
We need a great president.
- Donald Trump
In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.
- Bill Gates
Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.
- Timothy Ferriss
