Notable Quotables

What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.

- Steve Martin

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

- Joel Olsteen

A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.

- Seth Godin

I’ve learned that people will seldom let you down if they understand that your destiny is in their hands, and vice versa.

- Harvey Mackay

A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.

- Seth Godin

You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.

- Andrew Carnegie

Great investments may look crazy but really may not be.

- Peter Thiel

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. HEBREWS 11:1.

- Joel Olsteen

Leadership is the ability to get someone to follow you even if only out of curiosity.

- Ben Horowitz

Whatever your critics say about you has no bearing on your worth. You are a child of the Most High God. The Creator of the universe breathed life into you. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. You’ve been crowned with favor. God has already equipped and empowered you with everything you need. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to play up to people, trying to win over all your critics, or trying to prove to someone that you’re important.

- Joel Olsteen

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

- Winston Churchill

If something is expensive to develop, and somebody’s not going to get paid, it won’t get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?

- Bill Gates

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

- Bill Gates

(In reference to one of his first advertising sales mentors Howard Davis)… He was 6 foot 4 with silver hair…the quintessential advertising guy. He had a glass topped desk in his office because, as he put it, he like to be able to look down and see his Guccis while he worked. Howard taught me to get things done. He was very smart but he was also an animal. He exuded power and he could be very intimidating, and he knew how to use his power to get results while still managing to be a good guy. Howard’s personal style was very different from my own, but what he did teach me was how to create a sense of urgency, how to motivate performance by getting everyone’s heart pounding.

- David Novak

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

- Jack Ma

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

- Elon Musk

After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I love great music and art, but I think ‘cubist’ songs and paintings are hideous.

- Thomas Edison

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

- Harvey Mackay

If you go out looking for friends, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.

- Zig Ziglar

We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.

- Bill Gates

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

- Jerry Seinfeld

While there were a number of highlights, it was probably the U.S. that topped the highlight list with strong order growth of approximately 20 percent year over year. This is better order growth than we’ve experienced in the last six quarters in the U.S..

- John Chambers

Money won’t make you have, but it will pay for the search.

- Prince

America’s leaders need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.

- Howard Schultz

My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.

- Jack Ma

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

- Paul Pressey

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

- Bill Gates

I’m an HBO subscriber, and I watch a bunch of great shows on HBO.

- Reed Hastings

I worry about losing a real talent. I hate losing a great leader more than anything. I also hate it when I have to manager out a good person for poor performance or for simply doing something that is not in sync with our values. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life and I’ve had to do it more than once, is fire a friend.

- David Novak

My commitment is to Los Angeles, so whatever helps this continue to be a great city, that’s what I would be focused to do, and the Dodgers are certainly iconic to Los Angeles.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Most of the fans have ideas about their perfect phone. But many of them can’t do it because building a phone is tough. So they would give us feedback about the features that they think should be included in our next model. And if we incorporated that in our new phone, they will share the good news with their friends.

- Lei Jun

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

- Peter Drucker

Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.

- Seth Godin

There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.

- Henry Ford

Being a stand-up is my mission in life; it’s my passion. My ongoing goal is to simply be funny, on my own, in front of a roomful of strangers.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.

- Seth Godin

Tell them to grab on to the career that engages their brain and heart and soul and gives them meaning. Tell them that eventually, the money will come, and if it doesn’t, in time, they will find themselves rich with something money can’t buy. And that, obviously, would be happiness.

- Jack Welch

The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications, teamwork, self-development, and development of others.

- Peter Drucker

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.

- Winston Churchill

Inflation is taking up the poverty line, and poverty is not just economic but defined by way of health and education.

- Azim Premji

Globalization has changed us into a company that searches the world, not just to sell or to source, but to find intellectual capital – the world’s best talents and greatest ideas.

- Jack Welch

I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.

- Howard Schultz

FATHER FORGETS W. Livingston Larned Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, ‘Goodbye, Daddy!’ and I frowned, and said in reply, ‘Hold your shoulders back!’ Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. ‘What is it you want?’ I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed! It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: ‘He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!’ I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much. Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. ‘To know all is to forgive.

- Dale Carnegie

My training of cold-calling and everyone under the sun telling me no, and my keeping going, was a huge part of the first two years of Spanx.

- Sara Blakely

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

- Winston Churchill

God would not have put a dream in your heart if He had not already given you everything you need to fulfill it.

- Joel Olsteen

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.

- Steve Ballmer

John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there’s something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.

- Ben Horowitz

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

- Winston Churchill

Maybe you’ve invested a lot of time, effort, money, emotion, and energy in a relationship; you did your best to make it work out. But for some reason, things got off course. And now you feel as though you have been robbed. When we focus on or disappointments, we stop God from ringing fresh new blessing into our lives.

- Joel Olsteen

The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can’t bit a target that you can’t see. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.

- Zig Ziglar

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

- Seth Godin

The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

When I was growing up my dad would encourage my brother and me to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, so what did you guys fail at this week? If we didn’t have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he’d high-five me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn’t the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, I didn’t try that because I was scared, that is failure.

- Sara Blakely

A lot of preachers’ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.

- Joel Olsteen

I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.

- Steve Martin

There are certain things I will automate, but when it comes to quality control, I want to keep a very close eye.

- Timothy Ferriss

Save your first bucket of gold… then use it for investments.

- Lee Shau Kee

And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that’s there.

- Steve Ballmer

I like to live in the past. I don’t think people are going to get much fun in the future.

- Winston Churchill

Cisco will be well placed to continue building our presence in India as a critical part of our research and development efforts and as domestic market for networking products and solutions continues to expand.

- John Chambers

The Minden prospect originated this past summer through a large acreage acquisition from a major oil company and Cabot now controls 3,500 acres over the area. We are pleased with our initial results and will remain active in this area throughout 2006. On forty-acre spacing, the prospect has the potential for 80 plus locations.

- Dan Dinges

Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.

- Napoleon Hill

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 right quote can inspire people to change their ways.

- Zig Ziglar

I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.

- Celine Dion

It’s unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Of course, the challenge of being the initiator is that you’ll be wrong. You’ll pick the wrong thing, you’ll waste time, you’ll be blamed. This is why being an initiator is valuable. Most people shy away from the challenge. They’ve been too abused, they’re too fearful, they hold back, they’re happy to let someone else take the heat. Initiative is scarce. Hence valuable. Ditch digging is not scarce. It’s not hard at all to find manual labor at minimum wage, which is precisely why manual labor gets paid minimum wage. 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

I think the definition of a book is changing.

- Jeff Bezos

Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.

- Steve Martin

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed, A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden of weeds.

- John D. Rockefeller

The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.

- Peter Thiel

I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it’s something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn’t compute with our existing educational system.

- Peter Thiel

I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.

- Laurene Powell Jobs

The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.

- Napoleon Hill

You have to manage money. Particularly with market economies. You may have a great product, but if your bottom line goes bust, then that’s it.

- Mukesh Ambani

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.

- Oprah Winfrey

To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.

- P.T. Barnum

Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!

- Winston Churchill

The market … demands a signal from you that you’re serious, powerful, accepted, and safe.

- Seth Godin

We woke up one day, and all the sudden Starbucks was in the middle of this political crossfire between the people who want to bring a gun into Starbucks and the people who want to prevent it. It is a very difficult, fragile situation.

- Howard Schultz

What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question, and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at the very least handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open as they will. Read on from the first sentence that turns the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

- Winston Churchill

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

- Steve Jobs

The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong questionl

- Peter Drucker

Bottom line: God will not allow any person to keep you from your destiny. They may be bigger, stronger, or more powerful, but God knows how to shift things around and get you to where you’re supposed to be.

- Joel Olsteen

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