Notable Quotables

MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future.

- Peter Thiel

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

- Joel Olsteen

There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.

- Steve Wozniak

You have to be a crazy guy and a little eccentric to be very successful.

- Tadashi Yanai

Always remember that your present situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.

- Zig Ziglar

Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.

- Ray Kroc

I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t won that AOL deal

- Sergey Brin

Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember Life is too short to be little.

- Dale Carnegie

It was always a challenge for me to prove that a Russian financial investor can be as successful in the West as back at home in Russia.

- Alisher Usmanov

President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.

- George Soros

And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.

- Winston Churchill

Networking is one of the most valuable uses of your time in terms of return—and not just in monetary terms.

- Business Insider.com

We’re taking these steps because of the continuing slowdown in the U.S. economy and initial signs of a slowdown expanding to other parts of the world.

- John Chambers

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

I can be stressed, or tired, and I can go into a meditation and it all just flows off of me. I’ll come out of it refreshed and centered and that’s how I’ll feel and it’ll carry through the day.

- Ray Dalio

You embrace the top 20, deal with the middle 70, and you face into the bottom 10, and you do what’s right for them and for you.

- Jack Welch

If you’re going to have to swallow a frog, you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!

- Zig Ziglar

We also now believe that this slowdown in capital spending could extend beyond two quarters.

- John Chambers

Jesus was saying that you can’t have a larger life with restricted attitudes.

- Joel Olsteen

The ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

- Jack Welch

To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.

- Yoda

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

- Mark Zuckerberg

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

- Bill Gates

Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.

- Zig Ziglar

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

- Walt Disney

It’s not about size, it’s about your ability to make a difference. At that small size, collaboration is all the more important.

- John Chambers

95% financing arrangement offered by Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited in a period of sustained low interest have added impetus to secondary trading activities in the property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone.

- Sergey Brin

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

- Bill Gates

Don’t marry too early in life. It’s better to work hard when young and establish a career first.

- Lee Shau Kee

I like football, but I think this is a very personal matter. I don’t see any negatives for some Russian rich man to buy a football club.

- Viktor Vekselberg

[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.

- Yoda

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

- Bill Gates

Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

- Peter Thiel

We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun together.

- Walt Disney

It is important that all of us, however old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us. A mindset that is characterized by creativity and initiative, harnessed by focus and discipline. In our company, this mindset is requisite and indelible.

- Cheng Yu-tung

In the U.S. there are many people willing to work on $9 per hour, which is causing Tasmania to lose its famous apple industry and Australia to import more and more of its fruit and food from lower cost countries. In fact, all over Australia there are warning signs of us killing or restricting our own industries.

- Gina Rinehart

[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.

- Jack Dorsey

Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).

- Seth Godin

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

- Jerry Seinfeld

I try to keep in touch with the details… I also look at the product daily. That doesn’t mean you interfere, but it’s important occasionally to show the ability to be involved. It shows you understand what’s happening.

- Rupert Murdoch

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

- Joel Olsteen

You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy, and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because, unless we do all of these things, it just doesn’t work. And what’s good theater and what’s good politics isn’t necessarily good economic policy.

- Michael Bloomberg

I believe that continued strong consumer acceptance of our products at retail and the strengthening of our organization will enable us to manage through the challenges in our U. S. footwear business and lay the foundation for another round of growth.

- Phil Knight

Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.

- John C. Maxwell

When you expect your employees to act like adults, they generally do. If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.

- Ben Horowitz

Consensus decisions about executives almost always sway the process away from strength and toward lack of weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

I’ve always believed that businesses should be good citizens…

- Phil Knight

We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries – discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .

- Thomas Edison

Creating a sense of urgency around change initiatives is especially hard to do. Human nature seems to be hardwired to adhor change, and people will do everything in their power to resist it. I once heard this explained to another Pepsi consultant. His philosophy was that in order to drive change, you need to create what he called, the burning platform. This burning-platform image was an oil rig in the North Sea that has caught fire and the only way to save yourself is to jump into the frigid water and swim to the lifeboat. You know the jump might kill you, but you jump anyway, not because you think it might be a good idea, but because you had no choice. That’s creating a sense of urgency.

- David Novak

when praise is specific, it comes across as sincere—not something the other person may be saying just to make one feel good.

- Dale Carnegie

That’s why it is important to enjoy the journey not just the destination. In this world, we will never arrive at a place where everything is perfect and we have no more challenges. As admirable as setting goals and reaching them maybe, you can’t get so focused on accomplishing your goals that you make the mistake of not enjoying where you are right now.

- Joel Olsteen

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

- John D. Rockefeller

No, markets weren’t “efficient” at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion—often the wrong conclusion.

- Ben Horowitz

I was uncomfortable with the timing, … We were getting millions less from the federal government for Medicaid and having to search for funds to restore some of those cuts and I just did not think it was right to put a pay raise on the board that would cost tens of millions of dollars.

- Michael Gerber

You’d believe that a patient with hypertension, if you know you have hypertension or diabetes, you would take your drug every day. The compliance rate is more like 30% or 40%. Which means that 60% of patients don’t take their drugs, and they actually go into these crises, end up in the hospital.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Although we can’t predict the future, our orders for the first weeks of this quarter are in line with the expectations we discussed in our fourth quarter earnings call.

- John Chambers

When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.

- Larry Ellison

Arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.

- Dale Carnegie

Take time to be kind and to say ‘thank you.’

- Zig Ziglar

With no clear picture of how you wish your life to be, how on earth are you going to live it? What is your Primary Aim? Where is the script to make your dreams come true? what is the first step to take and how do you measure your progress? How far have you gone and how close are you to getting to your goals?

- Michael Gerber

So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work – what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business?

- Ray Dalio

The Internet is the easiest thing to get into. To be an Internet retailer, you just get that URL.

- Bill Gates

The Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is.

- Michael Gerber

On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.

- Ron Chernow

Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.

- Seth Godin

[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.

- Phil Knight

Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.

- Harvey Mackay

Sound managerial decisions are at the very root of their impending fall from industry leadership.

- Clayton M. Christensen

When an entrepreneur has an object in his line of vision, he should dismiss all other considerations from his mind, abandon all other activities, and charge directly at that object, continuing to charge until the object has been secured.

- Paul Johnson

I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.

- Jeff Bezos

There is no shame in taking pride in achievements or position. But nobody gets to the top alone.

- Harvey Mackay

It almost goes without saying that the team needs diversity of skills. Can you imagine a hockey team of goalies? Or a football team of quarterbacks? It doesn’t make sense. In the same way, organizations require diverse talents to succeed, each player taking his part.

- John Maxwell

Science is the pursuit of pure truth, and the systematizing of it.

- P.T. Barnum

Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production, using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

- Timothy Ferriss

The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

- Bill Gates

Most of a tech company’s value will come at least 10 to 15 years in the future.

- Peter Thiel

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

- David Ogilvy

The book ‘Do You!’ is about your inner voice. And when you connect to that voice then you – then the freedom comes. And we’re only here to be happy. So happy makes money. Money doesn’t make happy.

- Russell Simmons

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.

- Robert Frost

Riches does not mean money. You can never have enough money. By following the principles of God he will provide you with what you need materially and internal committment.

- Ben Meinhardt

It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.

- Dale Carnegie

Artists, actors, people like that, they live in a very strange bubble of their own. They’re mollycoddled; they’re highly privileged.

- Stephen Wynn

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