The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‘We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.
- Bill Gates
Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that’s where charisma comes from, from the leading.
- Seth Godin
The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.
- Seth Godin
The record results for the third quarter once again demonstrate the ability of GE’s diverse mix of leading global businesses to deliver top-line growth, increased margins and strong cash generation.
- Jack Welch
The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.
- Andrew Carnegie
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
- Mark Twain
Being called a huckster and a charlatan started several years ago, so that’s something I’m accustomed to. In most cases, it doesn’t bother me.
- Timothy Ferriss
In those days he was wiser than he is now, he used to frequently take my advice.
- Winston Churchill
The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.
- Seth Godin
You may think there is a lot wrong with you, but there is also a lot right with you.
- Joel Olsteen
Some things are much easier to see in others than in yourself
- Ben Horowitz
I love being a dad. I just love it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The foundation of the Germanic system was blood and kin.
- Winston Churchill
The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.
- Sam Walton
God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.
- Joel Olsteen
When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.
- Dale Carnegie
People who are using it to sell things on Craigslist to holding garage sales – campaigns – the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign both used Square to raise funds.
- Jack Dorsey
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
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
- Winston Churchill
I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.
- Michael Bloomberg
I am what I am and, you know, I’m a very lucky guy.
- Michael Bloomberg
A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.
- Steve Wozniak
Go from me to we. This is the job of every leader.
- Magic Johnson and David Novak
I get calls from everybody asking if I know of any drivers, anybody they can hire.
- Jack Taylor
The librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.
- Seth Godin
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
The guerrilla is obsessed with benefits. Whenever offering a product or service, she focuses on how it will benefit the consumer and builds everything—the product, the delivery, the marketing—around that benefit.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.
- Bill Gates
The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there. Ironically, it’s those who seek out discomfort that are able to make a difference and find their footing.
- Seth Godin
The Arab League tells us to go in and take out Qaddafi. We’ve spent billions of dollars already with respect to the Arab League. Billions of dollars, because they told us to do it. Why aren’t they paying for it? They don’t like Qaddafi, Qaddafi’s been a terrible thorn in their side.
- Donald Trump
Did you know that nearly one in three children live apart from their biological dads? Those kids are two to three times more likely to grow up in poverty, to suffer in school, and to have health and behavioral problems.
- Tony Dungy
The things you’re not doing are the things you should actually be focused on.
- Ben Horowitz
In bad times and good, I have never lost my sense zest for life
- Walt Disney
I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.
- Oprah Winfrey
If they really don’t want to buy the flats, I’ll take their deposits.
- Lee Shau Kee
Taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible.
- Larry Ellison
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
Stay focused instead of getting offended or off track by others.
- John C. Maxwell
Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.
- Elon Musk
We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.
- Joel Olsteen
What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.
- Zig Ziglar
You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years
- Sara Blakely
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
- Peter Drucker
Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it’s getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.
- Donald Trump
God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you’ve experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God’s word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen.
- Joel Olsteen
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can’t – you can’t put a wall up around here. We tried that in the ’30s. It didn’t work.
- Jack Welch
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffett
Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.
- Michael Gerber
Great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future.
- Peter Thiel
The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.
- Elon Musk
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is.
- Ma Huateng
I believe that when you think of the negative, and you get up discouraged – ‘There’s nothing good in my future’ – I really believe it almost ties the hands of God. God works where there’s an attitude of faith. I believe faith is all about hope.
- Joel Olsteen
It is crucial that rappers have the chance to express the truth that is in their heart.
- Russell Simmons
Learn to say No to the good so that you can say Yes to your best.
- John Maxwell
I think George Will is somebody that said recently that the Republicans will not lose, as a Republican, that the Republicans will not win the election. I think it was a terrible statement.
- Donald Trump
I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it’s safe.
- Sara Blakely
Communications and the exchange of value – they’re both foundational, essential things to our civilization. When you simplify those, when you get down to the essence, you fix so many things.
- Jack Dorsey
Customers have different need states and life experiences.
- Howard Schultz
Being great at everything is not an actionable message.
- Floris Maljers
I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.
- Bill Gates
If you spend money on what you want, you’ll beg for what you need.
- T.D Jakes
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
- Steve Martin
With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks.
- Howard Schultz
Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
- Thomas Edison
God, I’m ready. I’m taking the limits off of You. I’m enlarging my vision. I may not see a way but I know You have a way. I declare I’m coming into a shift.
- Joel Olsteen
We are not in the business of iron ore. Whatever captive iron ore sources we have, we use it to make steel.
- Lakshmi Mittal
EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
Why does a 67-year-old guy who got his start running an athletic shoe company think he can enter a field famous for gobbling up fortunes.
- Phil Knight
Clearly, as a CEO, you have other functions that are managed by other people.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it’s allowed is silos of interest.
- Seth Godin
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.
- Seth Godin
The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.
- Bill Gates
If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth.
- Peter Thiel
The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.
- Peter Thiel
One has to live with the fact that some corporate decisions are going to be wrong. As long as most of the decisions are right.
- Michael Otto
People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.
- Bill Gates
Did we not all grow up saying we had to have four glasses of whole milk a day for healthy bones? It’s ridiculous. It’s liquid cholesterol.
- Stephen Wynn
Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
- Ben Horowitz
We’re talking about changing every aspect of our lives.
- John Chambers
Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ‘naturals’, the ones who somehow know how to teach.
- Peter Drucker
Does it make sense to go to college, or should I instead be a plumber?
- Michael Bloomberg
The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.
- Bill Gates
When you simplify… When you get down to the essence, you fix so many things.
- Jack Dorsey
God wants to use you in spite of your weaknesses. Of God chose to use perfect people only, He’d have no one to use.
- Joel Olsteen
I remember one time I didn’t want to spend any money on motels so we all slept in sleeping bags on the floor of one of our guys’ houses. His furniture hadn’t gotten there yet.
- Sam Walton
Although office rental in Hong Kong recorded a general downward adjustment and the slowdown in the economy in the past financial year brought along its negative impacts on the local retailing and food sectors, the major retail shopping properties owned by the Group were able to maintain an overall occupancy rate of 93% whilst rental levels generally remained steady.
- Lee Shau Kee
Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions. It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
- Dale Carnegie
Americans believe cotton is best, but we’ve invented new fabrics that will change your lifestyle.
- Tadashi Yanai
I think Tim being in the Guard is great. I hope all of my kids join the military. It teaches them discipline and respect.
- Michael Ward
For 24 years of my adult life, by choice I weighed well over 200 pounds. I say ‘by choice’ because I have never ‘accidentally’ eaten anything, so when I choose to eat too much, I have chosen to weigh too much.
- Zig Ziglar
If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.
- Elon Musk
