My first company, Pure Software, was exciting and innovative in the first few years and bureaucratic and painful in the last few before it got acquired. The problem was we tried to systemize everything and set up perfect procedures.
- Reed Hastings
Notable Quotables
It is not good to demonstrate your luxury and your wealth: to rub it in the faces of others is insulting. So you should be modest, try not to insult people by showing that you can do what they cannot.
- Vladimir Potanin
All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current.
- Ben Horowitz
Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.
- Bill Gates
I encourage active skepticism – when people are being skeptical because they’re trying to identify the best course of action. They’re trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
- Zig Ziglar
Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it.
- Rick Warren
How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.
- Winston Churchill
I like to get people fired up, fill them with zeal for McDonald’s, and watch the results in their work.
- Ray Kroc
It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.
- Elon Musk
A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.
- Zig Ziglar
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.
- Warren Buffett
I’m not a businessman — I’m a business, man.
- Jay-Z
What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.
- Napoleon Hill
Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.
- Bill Gates
[In January 2011] There are so many features Twitter could build. There’s so many features that Square can build. But there is only one or two going to bring us to the next level.
- Jack Dorsey
My parents really wanted me to get out of New York, be exposed to other people, other ways of life.
- Howard Schultz
All marketers are storytellers. Only the losers are liars.
- Seth Godin
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
is his or hers. PRINCIPLE 8 Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. PRINCIPLE 9 Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. PRINCIPLE 10 Appeal to the nobler motives. PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas. PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.
- Dale Carnegie
China is the new horizon.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Getting every employee’s mind into the game is a huge part of what the CEO job is all about. Taking everyone’s best ideas and transferring them to others it the secret. Nothing is more important.
- Jack Welch
When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience, we’re stamping out the artist that lives within.
- Seth Godin
When I hire someone, I try to get beneath the surface and go deep. The first question I ask is, Has this person demonstrated any leadership potential? I ask for specifics and probe carefully to find out exactly what that person contributed. After all, success has many fathers.’ I also look for enthusiasm, people who lean forward in their chairs, who get up on their haunches a little but when they talk about what they’ve done. I like to see the passion and the excitement because that’s what will allow someone to inspire others. The next thing I look for is an avid learners, someone who is curious, who has an ability to make connections, to pick up on trends, and to apply what’s going on in the rest of the world to his or her business career. You obviously need smart people with a proven track record, but the real stars are passionate about what they do and are avid learners. Those two things make people continually raise the bar on performance.
- David Novak
Find a need and fill it.
- Jack Nadel
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
Measuring and establishing facts at every step of the process. Without facts, assumptions and misperceptions will defeat whatever reason and good judgment can be brought to effort
- Service Profit Chain
Nearly every person who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.
- Thomas Edison
God, I’m not going to look at what I don’t have. I’m looking unto you. I know in my weakness, you show up the strongest.
- Joel Olsteen
The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed.
- Ben Horowitz
Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.
- Elon Musk
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
- Jeff Bezos
That’s why encouragement is a much more effective teaching device than punishment.
- Dale Carnegie
God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.
- Joel Olsteen
Work hard and persevere.
- Lee Shau Kee
Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.
- Bill Gates
I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.
- Joel Olsteen
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Zig Ziglar
If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you’re going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to ‘be different’.
- Larry Ellison
The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them.
- Zig Ziglar
If you can dream it, you can do it. -Walt Disney
- Walt Disney
Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
- John F. Kennedy
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.
- Winston Churchill
Less than 3% of newly published authors make enough in royalties and advances to be happy to live on.
- Seth Godin
The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes.
- P.T. Barnum
A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.
- Zig Ziglar
Your list is like a garden, tend it well.
- Michael Levine
A leader is a dealer in hope.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
- Peter Drucker
We have a very wide range of content, but the brand-newest movies, what’s happening with those is a $30 pay-per-view option – not from Netflix but from DirecTV and others – of movies that are in the theater.
- Reed Hastings
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
- Winston Churchill
Your network is your net worth.
- Porter Gale
I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, You deserve to be in the pit.” The Catholic said, You need to suffer while you’re in the pit.” The Baptist said, If you’d been saved, you wouldn’t have fallen into the pit.” The charismatic said, Just confess I’m not in the pit.” The mathematician said, Let me calculate how you fell into the pit.” The IRS agent said, Have you paid taxes on that pit?” The optimist said, Things could be worse.” The pessimist said, Things will get worse.
- Joel Olsteen
Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.
- John C. Maxwell
When eagles are silent, parrots begin to chatter.
- Winston Churchill
Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally had to blunder through this old world for a third of a century before it even began to dawn upon me that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticise themselves for anything no matter how wrong it may be.
- Dale Carnegie
No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy — unless you let him.
- Napoleon Hill
Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
- Ben Horowitz
Social and digital media is a bullet train, and that bullet train is not coming home.
- Howard Schultz
No man ever achieved worthwhile success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
- Napoleon Hill
In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles.
- Dale Carnegie
The slower growth in revenues and continued pressure on margins will result in negative earnings comparison for at least the next two quarters, with fiscal 1998 earnings per share likely to be in the 2 to 2.15 range.
- Phil Knight
If you are going to be successful, you must develop persistence. How do you do that? It is not easily condensed in one simple statement, but one thing you can be sure of is that your must define your purpose.
- Zig Ziglar
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
- Winston Churchill
[In February 2011] We’ve not done a lot of marketing whatsoever. A lot of it has just been word of mouth.
- Jack Dorsey
We base our investment strategies on quality, trust, synergy and initiative.
- Cheng Yu-tung
One thing I resent is the slur that I just support political candidates because of the business.
- Rupert Murdoch
The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.
- Bill Gates
Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.
- Elon Musk
Life is a classroom — only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.
- Zig Ziglar
In order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going. America can’t have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations – can’t have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It’s got to have a vision.
- Jack Welch
How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.
- Seth Godin
But each country has to advance and move at its own speed.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
- Lawrence Bossidy
I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.
- Joel Olsteen
Really, truly, try to figure out what your palate is all about. If you’ve determined that you don’t like dirty old stinky wine – old-world flavors – you probably like new-world fruit bombs. Stick to Shirazes and California Cabernets or Zinfandels.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‘us versus them,’ it’s an ‘us and them’ type scenario.
- Bill Gates
Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
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
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
- Steve Martin
The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, but it does mean you stand up and say, ‘I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it. If you want me to do it with you, raise your hand.
- Seth Godin
When I hear a man say that his childhood was the happiest time of his life, I think (puff) my friend, you have had a pretty poor life.
- Winston Churchill
Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.
- Seth Godin
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
- Bill Gates
Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.
- Bill Gates
Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
- Richard Branson
I never worry because I know who I am and I know Whose I am.
- Zig Ziglar
If you cannot save money, then the seeds of greatness are not in you.
- Brian Tracy
We’ve got to give people room to have a bad day.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m going to start these art museums that are basically converted homes, and I have one for modern art, and I have one for 19th century European art, and one for French impressionism. I’ve got Japanese.
- Larry Ellison
I have the courage to surround myself with people who are smarter than me.
- Andrew Carnegie
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
Residential properties that were sold by the Group summed up to around 5,800 units and amounted to approximately HK$12.8 billion.
- Lee Shau Kee
The success of the Overseas Chinese is the result of bad times in China itself. The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on from father to son through each generation. Because we have no social security, the Overseas Chinese habit is to save a lot and make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
The life of a startup is full of ups and downs, an emotional roller coaster ride that you can’t quite imagine if you’ve spent your whole career in a corporation.
- Harvey Mackay
You are victors, not victims!
- Joel Olsteen
