Notable Quotables

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

- Henry Ford

Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.

- Yoda

Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.

- Zig Ziglar

It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.

- Timothy Ferriss

Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously. The shadow of greed, that is.

- Yoda

Whenever a company proudly announces the establishment of its beautiful, new, modern corporate headquarters, you can be sure it’s heading downhill. Why? Because instead of focusing on their business, the company’s managers are focusing on themselves. Messy desks, cramped quarters and unlovely surroundings are the physical manifestations of people too busy getting the work done to care much about their own creature comforts. The greatest danger to a business is not risk. It’s a lack of risk: complacency.

- Harvey Mackay

Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you.

- Seth Godin

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.

- Jerry Seinfeld

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

Now when I consider investing in a startup, I study the founding teams. Technical abilities and complementary skill sets matter, but how well the founders know each other and how well they work together matter just as much. Founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together—otherwise they’re just rolling dice.

- Peter Thiel

Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.

- Napoleon Hill

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

- Winston Churchill

We had gotten people’s attention. So a lot of American shoe distributors were going to Japan and telling Onitsuka, ‘Well, if this two-bit outfit up in the woods in Oregon can do this kind of business, wait till you get somebody that’s really in the business.

- Phil Knight

I’ve actually not read any books on time management.

- Elon Musk

I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn’t turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.

- Steve Martin

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

- Napoleon Hill

So long as I can stay mentally alert – inquiring, curious – I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don’t want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I’m just not ready to stop, to die.

- Rupert Murdoch

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

Nevertheless, in the first years of Standard Oil, Rockefeller regularly toured his facilities and was extremely inquisitive and observant, soaking up information and assiduously quizzing plant superintendants. In his pocket, he carried a little red notebook in which he jotted suggestions or improvements and always followed up on them. He knew the terror inspired by the little red book. More than once I have gone to luncheon with a number of our heads of departments and have seen the sweat out of on the foreheads for some of them when that little red notebook was pulled out.

- Ron Chernow

We will be one of the most productive residential developers in China in the next few years.

- Lee Shau Kee

Believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

- Seth Godin

Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.

- Peter Thiel

There’s 20 companies that I have investments in – some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure.

- Bill Gates

The word ‘Spanx’ was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.

- Sara Blakely

Positive thinking is more than just a tagline. It changes the way we behave. And I firmly believe that when I am positive, it not only makes me better, but it also makes those around me better.

- Harvey Mackay

EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.

- Jack Ma

Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.

- George Soros

You must go through the process before you get the product.

- Paul Pressey

Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.

- Dale Carnegie

There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.

- Winston Churchill

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

- Winston Churchill

There are some people that can get things done, and it seems there are others who just can’t. That’s why we move heaven and earth to retain our stars and the main reason we manage out our lowest performers – the bottom 10% at least – each year.

- David Novak

It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.

- Napoleon Hill

The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

My new favorite word is ‘awkward.’…The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

- Seth Godin

I’d be happy to provide advice if anybody asked me no matter who the President is.

- Michael Bloomberg

[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell — a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great — was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing — namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.

- Winston Churchill

The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.

- George Soros

Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life.

- Dale Carnegie

Baseball is like cricket, and I grew up in a country where they had cricket. So I understand cricket, soccer and basketball. I played basketball at the club level and a little bit in college, so that’s why I’m a basketball fanatic.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.

- Thomas Edison

Owners don’t fire all the players. They fire the leader and bring in someone they hope the players will buy into.

- Napoleon Hill

I’m healthy as can be – not an ache or a pain. A lot of my prayer is thanking the Lord that I am healthy. I pray for long life and good health.

- Joel Olsteen

Document in writing every agreement or important conversation with suppliers and customers.

- Jack Nadel

A certificate of live birth is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination as a birth certificate.

- Donald Trump

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

- Colin Powell

I’m a lad of the ‘60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

- Richard Branson

More people will yell and wave at you to tell you that you forgot to close the gas cap than the amount of people who will stop to tell you that you are going the wrong direction with your life.

- Clay Clark

This is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com. Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets.

- Jeff Bezos

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

- John C. Maxwell

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

- Jack Canfield

Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.

- Timothy Ferriss

Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

- Winston Churchill

Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting.

- Peter Thiel

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Psychological despotism, whether enlightened or not, is gross misuse of psychology. The main purpose of psychology is to acquire insight into, and mastery of, oneself. Not for nothing were what we now call the behavioral sciences originally called the moral sciences and “Know thyself” their main precept. To use psychology to control, dominate, and manipulate others is self-destructive abuse of knowledge. It is also a particularly repugnant form of tyranny.

- Peter Drucker

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.

- Dale Carnegie

The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom.

- Peter Thiel

“Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.

- Ben Horowitz

It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence, because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.

- Seth Godin

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.

- Oscar Wilde

It’s not about toughness, it’s not about attitude. Companies don’t fail for lack of cash or attitude. Companies fail for lack of brains and effort.

- Mark Cuban

One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest.

- Winston Churchill

If people talk about you, being jealous, critical, and trying to make you look bad, don’t let that change you. You don’t need their approval when you have God’s approval.

- Joel Olsteen

Today, and I’m very strongly against tax increases.

- Donald Trump

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

What is school for? If you’re not asking that, you’re wasting time and money.

- Seth Godin

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

- Mark Twain

I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.

- Henry Ford

If salespeople don’t probe well for background information, they don’t know how to launch the presentation.

- Jerry Vass

If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.

- Elon Musk

Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individuals and businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators.

- Peter Thiel

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

This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.

- John Chambers

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

In my weekly staff meeting, I inserted an agenda item titled “What Are We Not Doing?

- Ben Horowitz

You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.

- Sergey Brin

If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.

- Jack Welch

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

- Joel Olsteen

I fell in love with flora of all types, especially ferns. Loved the sparse structure and repetition of shape – almost fractal.

- Jack Dorsey

To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.

- Henry Ford

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

- Henry Ford

In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.

- Bill Gates

With the intensity of the first three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, fans have been treated to exciting finishes each race. Fans can expect nothing less than the same for the John Deere 200.

- Ed Clark

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.

- Jack Ma

I’m born into the cycle of giving that we’re all born into, and I recognize it. So just because something is a good business, I’m not a business guy. I’m a creative guy.

- Russell Simmons

Hong Kong is a good fashion city. The interest is enormous. There’s good potential in the Asian market.

- Stefan Persson

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