By getting your customers to agree with you in small steps along the way, you have a better chance of reaching agreement when it’s time to do business.
- Harvey Mackay
Notable Quotables
We drink the can, not the beverage
- Seth Godin
If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.
- Bill Gates
I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
- Peter Drucker
Not if anything to say about it I have.
- Yoda
Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ is my go-to song to pump myself up if I’m having a tough time or if I get really nervous right before a speech.
- Sara Blakely
Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
- Elon Musk
The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.
- Michael Bloomberg
People of excellence go the extra mile to do what’s right.
- Joel Olsteen
To have a great idea, have a lot of them.
- Thomas Edison
When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.
- Seth Godin
I know Bo Xilai well. But our relationship was based on our work, we didn’t have a personal relationship.
- Wang Jianlin
Think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass…if we do not take [tasks] one at a time and let them pass…slowly and evenly, then we are bound to break our own…structure.
- Dale Carnegie
When York’s son, hitherto Earl of March, learned that his father’s cause had devolved upon him he did not shrink. He fell upon the Earl of Wiltshire and the Welsh Lancastrians, and on February 2, 1461, at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, near Hereford, he beat and broke.
- Winston Churchill
Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.
- Steve Jobs
Bordeaux would be naive not to recognize that Robert Parker was driving the brand equity. If the next generation doesn’t care about Chateau Pichon-Lalande, then you have a problem.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Steve Jobs
I think that God gives you your own will and choices. I don’t believe that we’re supposed to drag ourselves through life defeated and not see God’s blessings. But you have to make the right choices and follow that still, small voice within you. Because I think that’s how God leads us.
- Joel Olsteen
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
- Timothy Ferriss
A lot of preachers’ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.
- Winston Churchill
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.
- Thomas Edison
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
When you go through enough dark places, you don’t complain about little things. You don’t lose your joy because you got stuck in traffic; you don’t get offended because a coworker was rude to you. You’ve been through too much to let that sour you.
- Joel Olsteen
The doctors actually told my family there was a five percent chance of me living.
- Ed Clark
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
- Henry Ford
Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.
- Howard Schultz
You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.
- Bill Gates
If you are going to run a successful business you are going to have to be committed to your customers 100% of the time. If customers consistently tell you that they don’t like a certain product or service you offer or an employee that you have working for you, you must be willing to act based upon their feedback if you find it to be factual.
- Clay Clark
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.
- Napoleon Hill
What you get by achieving your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
- Zig Ziglar
A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.
- Herb Kelleher
We’re living in what I like to call the ‘Thank You Economy,’ because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way – and do it authentically – are going to have a prayer of competing.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.
- Jeff Bezos
Occasionally a man stumbles over the truth. Most dust themselves off and continue walking as though nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.
- Joel Olsteen
When you give up yourself, that’s when you will feel the true spirit of Christmas. And that’s giving that’s serving others and that’s when you feel fulfilled.
- Joel Olsteen
This book, then, is a product of the last fifteen years, as well as a product of the fifteen years that preceded them. It was almost exactly eight years before The E-Myth was published that I founded our company, E-Myth Worldwide, which has provided the fuel and experience for the point of view I have shared with those of you who have read The E-Myth, and with those.
- Michael Gerber
Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur.
- Zig Ziglar
Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
- Richard Branson
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
- Henry Ford
Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.
- Jerry Seinfeld
David Novak CEO of YUM Brands (on crisis management)
- David Novak
A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.
- Winston Churchill
When you have a dream that you can’t let go of, trust your instincts and pursue it. But remember: Real dreams take work, They take patience, and sometimes they require you to dig down very deep. Be sure you’re willing to do that.
- Harvey Mackay
Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people’s progress.
- Jeff Bezos
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
- Albert Einstein
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
- Winston Churchill
I have never met a geologist or leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change.
- Gina Rinehart
We’re not in the fashion business, as the Wall Street Journal wrote the other day. We’re in the sports business, and there’s a big difference.
- Phil Knight
Be factual. Lying is really, really a bad idea, mostly because they’ll find you out. And then you’ll never get another item in that outlet for as long as they remember you, which will be forever.
- Michael Levine
Every choice you make has an end result.
- Zig Ziglar
Many people say the privatisation was unfair: that is true – it was unfair. That is a fact: some people became rich and others did not. Unfair does not mean illegal, but it was inevitably unfair.
- Vladimir Potanin
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If you complain you will remain, if you praise you will be raised.
- Joel Olsteen
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
- Peter Drucker
Fibre optic is becoming like electricity. If you look at how electricity spread around the globe 100 years ago, that’s what’s happening now.
- Reed Hastings
You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.
- Dale Carnegie
I don’t think that ambition should not be in the dictionary of entrepreneurs. But our ambition should be realistic. You have to realise that you can’t do everything.
- Mukesh Ambani
We’ve seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realizing the power of this medium to organize people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we’re seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world.
- Sergey Brin
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
- Peter Drucker
Twitter is about simplicity.
- Jack Dorsey
A lot of people feel very good about Mitt Romney and I think he’s going to do a great job.
- Donald Trump
This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
- Bill Gates
Set your target and keep trying until you reach it.
- Napoleon Hill
There is no such thing as a good tax.
- Winston Churchill
Catering to a mass audience usually backfires. Instead the key thing is to stay in your lane, and if you are good enough and interesting enough, people move to you…If you never compromise, your core audience will come with you as you grow. Then you build on their loyalty and bring in other people.
- Russell Simmons
Customers have different need states and life experiences.
- Howard Schultz
Hi-tech is best managed by younger people.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.
- Seth Godin
If you have the character to hang in there when its tough, you will develop or acquire every other characteristic necessary to WIN in the game of life.
- Zig Ziglar
CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It’s not what they say. It’s what they highlight.
- Rupert Murdoch
Not an hour is lost that is spent in the saddle.
- Winston Churchill
I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.
- Richard Branson
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
- Jack Nadel
When you are a leader, your job is to have all the questions. You have to be incredibly comfortable looking like the dumbest person in the room. Every conversation you have about a decision, a proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you saying, “What if?” and “Why not?” and “How come?
- Jack Welch
Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike”, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
If you say too much or mix in multiple pitches, you diffuse your goal. You must give the media a pitch they can hit.
- Michael Levine
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. That would be you.
- Seth Godin
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard
We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity.
- George Soros
I was about twenty and the Beatles were meditating and I heard about it and they had a center in New York and I came to the center and I learned about it.
- Ray Dalio
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
- Yoda
The only meat I eat is from animals I’ve killed myself.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Hong Kong has gone through countless difficult moments in the past. Our belief in our abilities and our determination to work for a better future have helped us overcome all obstacles.
- Cheng Yu-tung
My ultimate dream is for the Irvine Ranch to be known and celebrated as much for the outstanding communities we’ve planned and built as it is for what is not developed. The beneficiary being the 50,000 acres of undeveloped land that is now permanently preserved and conserved as Open Space and parklands.
- Donald Bren
There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‘I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.’
- Jerry Seinfeld
The typical factory-centric organization places a premium on not-wrong, and spends no time at all weeding out those who don’t start. In the networked economy, the innovation-focused organization has no choice but to obsess about those who don’t start. 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
Faith activates God – Fear activates the Enemy.
- Joel Olsteen
Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down
- Winston Churchill
Possession of Power That Was Not Acquired Through Self Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I’m wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.
- Ray Dalio
If your thinking is limited, then your life is going to be limited.
- Joel Olsteen
I just think that it’s strong and it’s important that we recognize what the Christmas season is about; it’s about the birth of our Savior, and there’s a lot of pressure today to be politically correct, but people are realizing, too, that you have to be open to express your faith what you want believe.
- Joel Olsteen
In the early days, anybody with a glue pot and a pair of scissors could get into the shoe business…
- Phil Knight
That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove his or her worth, to excel, to win. That is what makes foot-races, and hog-calling, and pie-eating contests. The desire to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance.
- Dale Carnegie





