Notable Quotables

I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.

- Wang Jianlin

People have been indoctrinated so completely by their jobs that they don’t want to know how something works, they’re willing to accept that perhaps the laws of nature don’t work as they expect, and by the way, can I have the remote?

- Seth Godin

Once we finished Christmas Rappin’ we began shopping it around town. There was interest, but no one was biting. The industry’s attitude was that Rapper’s Delight despite its U.S. sales and international appeal was an unrepeatable fluke. We identified Polygram which had a great roster of funk and R&B acts (Kool and the Gang, the Gap Band, Parliament) as the best place for Kurtis, so we made up a gang of test pressings and took them to clubs all over the city. Response in the street from DJs and club goers was great. So to hype up PolyGram we placed fake orders for the record into their system by telling retailers and wholesalers to order the 12 inch through PolyGram. PolyGram didn’t own it yet, but we created an appetite for Christmas Rappin that led them to buy it…So in the fall of 1979 Kurtis Blow signed with Mercury Records a division of Polygram Records, making him the first rapper on a major label…Christmas eve 1979 was the first time that I heard Christmas Rappin’ on the radio; I was upstairs at my family’s house. Frankie Crocker the biggest radio DJ in New York played it on WBLS.

- Russell Simmons

Don’t let any opportunity lead you away from serving God. That’s a price that’s too high to pay.

- George Foreman

Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.

- Phil Knight

Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution. It just needs clarity.

- Ben Horowitz

Performance of the local property leasing market showed gradual improvement, particularly with demand rising substantially for the leasing of grade A as well as grad B office properties, and part of these properties registered an increase of over 50% as compared to the level as at the end of last year.

- Lee Shau Kee

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

- John C. Maxwell

The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.

- Thomas Edison

I love the presentation from the more flamboyant guy, who excitedly presents his plans.

- Jack Welch

The choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.

- Oprah Winfrey

The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.

- Phil Knight

Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise.

- Dale Carnegie

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

- Seth Godin

People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

- Timothy Ferriss

There’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.

- Ben Horowitz

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.

- Winston Churchill

Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking.It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every dayto deliver your message with authority.You should write one.

- Seth Godin

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

- Winston Churchill

You can’t win by being more average than average.

- Seth Godin

One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn’t elect those people. Isn’t it supposed to be different? Aren’t we supposed to like the people that we elected?

- Bill Gates

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

- Joel Olsteen

You will never become a category of one if you run with the pack.

- Seth Godin

With vision and foresight, thorough consideration, careful planning and steadfast commitment, the New World Group will continue to maintain its ambitious yet healthy investment strategy to grow together with the nation and strive for greater success in the future.

- Cheng Yu-tung

It took 23 years from Abraxane being conceived to us showing now with conclusiveness that it works in pancreatic cancer. We cannot afford as a society to wait another 23 years to make sure that the patients get the right care, at the right time, at the right place.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

The millionaires and billionaires who chose to invest in Australia are actually those who most help the poor and our young. This secret needs to be spread widely.

- Gina Rinehart

The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we’re not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.

- Elon Musk

We can say with certainty – or 90% probability – that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.

- Peter Drucker

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

- Timothy Ferriss

I just think that trusting God means we’re going to have unanswered questions, and God is so much bigger than us, we’re never going to understand them all.

- Joel Olsteen

A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.

- Harvey Mackay

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

- Seth Godin

If you concentrate on what you have, you will always end up having more. If you focus on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.

- Oprah Winfrey

I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Certainly there are times in all of our lives when bad things happen, or things don’t turn out as we had hoped. But that’s when we we must a decision that we’re going to be happy inspite of our circumstances.

- Joel Olsteen

Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good

- Ron Chernow

When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right. It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

- Steve Jobs

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors.

- Dale Carnegie

Every sale has 5 basic obstacles: need, money, hurry, desire, trust.

- Zig Ziglar

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

- Winston Churchill

In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity, or you can pick yourself up and say, ‘Listen, I have to be responsible for myself.’

- Howard Schultz

The problems forced us to take a hard look at what we were doing, what was going wrong, what we were good at, and where we wanted to go.

- Phil Knight

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

- Bob Dylan

This presents more of a challenge, given our current size and market leadership.

- John Chambers

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.

- Bill Gates

Management always bears in mind to ‘lend a hand’ to Hong Kong and Mainland China while we are working hard for shareholders’ benefits.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Paper money will suffer. I’d be in mortar, not paper (money). We are in a time when paper investments are riskier than in the past. There is also a great amount of sovereign risk.

- Lee Shau Kee

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

- Bill Gates

Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.

- Peter Thiel

Poor people ride the bus, because they value money more than time.

- Robert Kiyosaki

This is like the Six Sigma approach to quality. Six Sigma refers to the quest for continuous improvement, ultimately leading to 3.4 defects per million units. The problem is that once you’re heading down this road, there’s no room left for amazing improvements and remarkable innovations. Either you rolled ten strikes or you didn’t. Organizations that earn dramatic success always do it in markets where asymptotes don’t exist, or where they can be shattered. If you could figure out how to bowl 320, that would be amazing. Until that happens, pick a different sport if you want to be a linchpin.

- Seth Godin

You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.

- John C. Maxwell

As CEO, you should have an opinion on absolutely everything. You should have an opinion on every forecast, every product plan, every presentation, and even every comment. Let people know what you think. If you like someone’s comment, give her the feedback. If you disagree, give her the feedback. Say what you think. Express yourself.

- Ben Horowitz

I want to get involved in things that makes a difference in peoples lives and lifts them up. I don’t want to be a part of anything that’s not inspiring or helpful to the community that I’m serving.

- Russell Simmons

At Uniqlo, we’re thinking ahead. We’re thinking about how to create new, innovative products… and sell that to everyone.

- Tadashi Yanai

Before you can be sure of your ability to transmute DESIRE into its equivalent, you will require SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE of the service, merchandise or profession which you intend to offer in return for fortune.

- Napoleon Hill

Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.

- Herb Kelleher

A word, a look, an accent, may affect the destiny not only of individuals, but of nations. He is a bold man who calls anything a trifle.

- Andrew Carnegie

No vision is worth the paper it’s printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.

- Jack Welch

Gain alignment every step of the way. Again, no involvement means no committment. Skip a layer and you will ultimately pay the price.

- David Novak

I have over 2 million followers now on Google Plus.

- Larry Page

Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected. I try to live by that on a daily basis.

- Jack Dorsey

Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.

- Zig Ziglar

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

- Jerry Seinfeld

We’ve only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?

- Jack Welch

There’s an entire universe in every single tweet, and it all really depends on the content as far as how it’s going to spread.

- Jack Dorsey

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

- Elon Musk

Our leaders in business, politics, research, and the arts are all great salespeople or they have great sales people on their payroll.

- Jerry Vass

One reason I encourage people to blog is that the act of doing it stretches your available vocabulary and hones a new voice.

- Seth Godin

Real change rarely comes from the front of the line. It happens from the middle or even the back. Real change happens when someone who cares steps up and takes what feels like a risk. People follow because they want to, not because you can order them to.

- Seth Godin

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

- Mark Twain

I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up as dictators. What I now ask of you is military success and I will risk the dictatorship.

- Dale Carnegie

It was much easier to reach a few thousand people who really needed our product than to try to compete for the attention of millions of scattered individuals.

- Peter Thiel

The Chinese people have always been determined to forge ahead.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Thinking back to old-time computer programming in the days before programming languages supported internationalization, we used to have to “internationalize” our code. We called this internationalization process “I18N” for short (localization was L10N), which meant I followed by eighteen letters followed by N.

- Ben Horowitz

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

- Napoleon Hill

At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.

- Cheng Yu-tung

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

- Jeff Bezos

Keep in mind, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that one does not exist. You simply haven’t discovered it yet.

- Joel Olsteen

To my mind the old masters are not art, their value is in their scarcity.

- Thomas Edison

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

- Napoleon Hill

If you cannot read all your books…fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.

- Winston Churchill

Options – the ability to choose – is real power. This book is all about how to see and create those options with the least effort and cost. It just so happens, paradoxically, that you can make more money – a lot more money – by doing half of what you are doing now.

- Timothy Ferriss

Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn’t matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you’re going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.

- Harvey Mackay

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