Notable Quotables

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‘Well gee, let’s not mess this up.’ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

- Bill Gates

Well, clearly Apple is a role model of the American innovation whereby it produced all these products – iPod, iPhone, iPad – that are really now dominating all the technology arena in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible.

- Bill Gates

In the face of challenging economic and market conditions of the past 12 months, our diversified portfolio of multiple earnings streams has served us well.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I think it’d be crazy not to have the plan encompass the entire reservoir. If we have (the smaller map), we’ve got a bunch of other folks telling us what they want to see happen in our community.

- Jack Taylor

If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.

- Napoleon Hill

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 inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

- Winston Churchill

By becoming interested in the cause, we are less likely to dislike the effect.

- Dale Carnegie

Education isn’t a problem until it serves as a buffer rom the world and a refuge from the risk of failure.

- Seth Godin

Promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.

- Peter Thiel

Mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view. About building a business that works not because of you but without you.

- Michael Gerber

That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.

- Peter Thiel

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

- Winston Churchill

Thomas Edison had only three months of schooling during his entire life. He did not lack education, neither did he die poor. Henry Ford had less than a sixth grade schooling but he has managed to do pretty well for himself financially.

- Napoleon Hill

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

- Oprah Winfrey

Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

- Napoleon Hill

You will find only what you bring in.

- Yoda

I’ve come too far to stop now. I may be knocked down, but I’m not knocked out. I’m going to get back up again. I know I’m a victor, not a victim.

- Joel Olsteen

When those in power use shame to bully the weak into compliance, they are stealing from us. They tell us that they will expose our secrets (not good enough, not hardworking enough, not from the right family, made a huge mistake once) and will use the truth to exile us from our tribe. This shame, the shame that lives deep within each of us, is used as a threat. And when those in power use it, they take away part of our humanity.

- Seth Godin

Now that we had a name, we had to have a trademark for the side of the shoe. It was 1971, and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million, so I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State, and there was a woman there saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get enough money for the dress for this prom,’ And I said, ‘I have a job for you.’ I paid her $2 an hour, and she spent 17 and a half hours. So $35 and she came up with what is now the swoosh.

- Phil Knight

When the pressure is on, great leaders are at the their best.

- Napoleon Hill

True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

- Helen Keller

The real benefit of having goals is what you become by reaching them.

- Zig Ziglar

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.

- Dale Carnegie

Ally yourself with a group of as many people as you may need for the creation and carrying out of your plan or plans for the accumulation of money…Compliance with this instruction is absolutely essential. Do not neglect it.

- Napoleon Hill

Most men go to their graves with their dreams still inside them.

- Zig Ziglar

I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.

- Dale Carnegie

The Group will continue to press ahead steadily with an open mindset, a practical attitude, a broad vision and a unique insight, adhering to its ultimate objective of serving the nation and the wider community in the changing landscape.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

- Joel Olsteen

Differentiation (rating and evaluating people) Develops Great Organizations. Differentiation is hard, anybody who finds it easy doesn’t belong in the organization, and anyone who can’t do it falls in the same category…It is important for companies to continually remove the bottom 10 percent of their employees anually.

- Jack Welch

I’m often asked how I define success. It’s an overused term, but I fundamentally view this elusive beast as a combination of two things – achievement and appreciation. One isn’t enough: Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.

- Timothy Ferriss

I think the move by Mr. Greenspan was welcomed by everyone here.

- Jack Welch

People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things – to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today.

- Zig Ziglar

Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

- Viktor E. Frankl

When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.

- Josh James

As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.

- Elon Musk

The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as ‘What’s that?’ There’s something very compelling about it to certain people; that’s the way I was; that’s the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.

- Steve Martin

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

- Mark Zuckerberg

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

Be happy with who God made you to be, and quit wishing you were something different.

- Joel Olsteen

Whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh, students and researchers can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 — the historic first landing on the Moon.

- Sergey Brin

Winners Evaluate Themselves In A Positive Manner And Look For Their Strengths As They Work To Overcome Weaknesses.

- Zig Ziglar

As Indian companies strive to be globally competitive, they have realized the importance of investing in information technology and networking to adapt quickly to rapidly shifting market transitions.

- John Chambers

Given how few young people actually read the newspaper, it’s a good thing they’ll be reading a newspaper on a screen.

- Bill Gates

It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

- Mark Cuban

If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.

- Donald Trump

Apply the blacksmith’s homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.

- Dale Carnegie

…People have lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first and then build you actions on the backs of their lessons.

- Gary Keller

Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

- Zig Ziglar

Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.

- Steve Jobs

Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.

- Steve Ballmer

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

- Aristotle

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

- Andrew Carnegie

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

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

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.

- Bill Gates

If they really don’t want to buy the flats, I’ll take their deposits.

- Lee Shau Kee

Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.

- Jim Collins

Go as far as you can see. When you get there, you’ll be able to see farther.

- Zig Ziglar

Many people who want to be great aren’t willing to do the work to make it possible!

- Zig Ziglar

One of the greatest failures to execute is the lack of follow-up. This seems so obvious, yet very few companies place as much emphasis on accountability as they do on figuring what they want to get done. Steve Reinemund, who was president of Pizza Hut when I was head of marketing there, is the best I’ve ever seen on this front. He always carried a three-by-five note card in his shirt pocket. When saw something that needed to be done, he’d pull out the card and write it down. Like everyone else who witnessed this, I quickly realized that I had better write down the same things because he’d surely be on me until they got done. Steve got results everywhere he went, whether it was as president of Pizzas Hut or Frito-Lay or chairman of PepsiCo, because he made a point of following up. People often lose track of what they’ve talked about in meetings of what they promised to do, but when you write it down, you won’t forget it.

- David Novak

The person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power.

- Dale Carnegie

Once you go from 10 people to 100, you already don’t know who everyone is. So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale.

- Sergey Brin

Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community.

- Sam Walton

The torch relay is an excellent embodiment of all that the Olympic Games have come to symbolise – a celebration of the human spirit. Personally to me, it represents striving to be the best in whatever we do, never giving up despite the odds, and a commitment to health and fitness.

- Lakshmi Mittal

Practice, practice, PRACTICE in speaking before an audience will tend to remove all fear of audiences, just as practice in swimming will lead to confidence and facility in the water. You must learn to speak by speaking.

- Dale Carnegie

What’s your vision for the future of your follicles?

- Clay Clark

Well, real estate is always good, as far as I’m concerned.

- Donald Trump

We remain confident about the market opportunity ahead of us over the next three to five years.

- John Chambers

Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.

- Seth Godin

I would hope that , where possible, the newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is some news that does more harm than good. The risk is that it threatens the commercial or industrial interests of our country.

- Serge Dassault

Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it.

- Elon Musk

Despite incessant dissappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o’ clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds of appointed firms. This grimly determined trek went on each day, six days per week for six consecutive weeks, until late in the afternoon. The streets were so hot and hard that he grew footsore from pacing them. His perseverance surely owed something to his desire to end his reliance upon his fickle father. At one point, Bill (his father) suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made a cold chill run down his spine, Rockefeller later said. Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down discouragement. I was working every day at my business –the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this everyday. He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking. With almost thirty thousand inhabitants, Cleveland was a boom town that would have thrilled any young man avid for business experience. It had drawn many transplants from New England who had brought along the Puritan mores and Yankee trading culture of their old hometowns. While the streets were largely unpaved and the town lacked a sewage system, Cleveland was expanding rapidly, with immigrants pouring in from Germany and England as well as the Eastern seaboard. The plenty if the Midwest passed through the commercial crossroads of the Western Reserve: coal from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, iron ore from around Lake Superior, salt from Michigan, grain and corn from the plains states. As a port on Lake Erie and the Ohio Canal, Clevelend was a natural hub for transportation networks. When the Cleveland Colombus and Cincinatti Railroad arrived in 1951, it created excellent opportunities for transport by both water and rail, and nobody would more brilliantly exploit these options than John D. Rockefeller. For all the thriving waterfront commerce, the job prospects were momentarily bleak. No one wanted a boy, and very few showed any overwhelming anxiety to talk with me on the subject, said Rockefeller. When he exhausted his list he simply started over from the top and visited several firms two or three times. Another boy might have been crestfallen, but Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection.Then, on the morning of September 26th 1855, he walked into the offices of Hewitt & Tuttle, commission merchants and produce shippers on Mervin Street. He was interviewed by Henry B. Tuttle, the junior partner, who needed help with his books and asked him to return after lunch. Ecstatic, Rockefeller walked with restraint from the office, but when he got downstairs and rounded the corner he skipped down the street in pure joy. Even as an elderly man, he a saw the moment as endowed with high drama: All my future seemed to hinge on that day: and I often tremble when I ask myself the question: What if I had not got the job?In a fever of anxiety, Rockefeller awaited until the noonday meal was over, then returned to the office, where he was interviewed by senior partner Iasacc L. Newton. Owner of a good deal of Cleveland real estate and a mighty capitalist indeed. After scutinizing the boy’s penmanship, he clared we’ll give you a chance. They were evidently in urgent need of an assistant bookkeeper, since they told Rockefeller to hang up his coat and go straight to work without any mention of wages. In those days, it wasn’t unusual for an adolescent to serve an unpaid apprenticeship, and it was three months before John received his first humble retroactive pay. For the rest of his life he would honor September 26th as JOB DAY and celebrate it with more genuine brio than his birthday. One is tempted to say that his real life began on that day, that he was born again in business as he would be in the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church. All the latent dynamism that had been dormant during his country youth would now quicken into robust, startling life in the business world. He was finally liberated from Big Bill (his father), the endless flight from town to town, the whole crazy upside-down world of his boyhood.

- Ron Chernow

Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.

- Seth Godin

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

- Oprah Winfrey

Your people give their days (and sometimes their nights) to you. They give their hands, brains, and hearts. Sure, the company pays them. It fills their wallets. But as a leader, you need to fill their souls. You can do that by getting in their skin, by giving the work meaning, by clearing obstacles, and by demonstrating the generosity gene. And you can do it, perhaps most powerfully, by creating an environment that’s exciting and enjoyable.

- Jack Welch

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

- Peter Thiel

Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don’t believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you’re likely to have issues.

- Larry Page

If you run a company, you will experience overwhelming psychological pressure to be overly positive. Stand up to the pressure, face your fear, and tell it like it is.

- Ben Horowitz

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

- John D. Rockefeller

The Internet revolution will determine which companies survive and which get left behind, … Increasingly, the Internet is recognized as the key driver in our global economy.

- John Chambers

Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.

- Zig Ziglar

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

- Napoleon Hill

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