Notable Quotables

It is no achievement to walk a tightrope laid flat on the floor.

- Ray Kroc

In the journey of entrepreneurship, tenacity of purpose is supreme.

- Aliko Dangote

Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).

- Seth Godin

In fact, when I look at it today, I realize that so much of what we did in the beginning was really poorly done. But we managed to sell our merchandise as low as we possibly could, and that kept us right-side-up for the first 10 years – that and consistently improving sales in these smaller markets by buildling up our relationship with the customers. The ideas was simple: when customers thought of Wal-Mart, they should think of low prices and satisfaction guaranteed.

- Sam Walton

Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible.

- Bill Gates

Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.

- Thomas J Stanley

Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I’d do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.

- Steve Martin

Clear your mind must be, if you are to find the villains behind this plot.

- Yoda

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

- Henry Ford

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

SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over.

- Timothy Ferriss

Dell will participate in tablets and all sorts of client devices. Our main business is helping our customers secure, protect their data and access it from any device they want to.

- Michael Dell

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

- Walt Disney

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

- Timothy Ferriss

Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!

- Timothy Ferriss

Don’t fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else’s expense.

- Harvey Mackay

MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS Some things that you want to encourage will be quantifiable, and some will not. If you report on the quantitative goals and ignore the qualitative ones, you won’t get the qualitative goals, which may be the most important ones. Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers—it’s strictly for amateurs. At HP, the company wanted high earnings now and in the future. By focusing entirely on the numbers, HP got them now by sacrificing the future. Note that there were many numbers as well as more qualitative goals that would have helped: Was our competitive win rate increasing or declining? Was customer satisfaction rising or falling? What did our own engineers think of the products? By managing the organization as though it were a black box, some divisions at HP optimized the present at the expense of their downstream competitiveness. The company rewarded managers for achieving short-term objectives in a manner that was bad for the company. It would have been better to take into account the white box. The white box goes beyond the numbers and gets into how the organization produced the numbers. It penalizes managers who sacrifice the future for the short term and rewards those who invest in the future even if that investment cannot be easily measured. CLOSING THOUGHT It is easy to see that there are many ways for leaders to be misinterpreted. To get things right, you must recognize that anything you measure automatically creates a set of employee behaviors. Once you determine the result you want, you need to test the description of the result against the employee behaviors that the description will likely create. Otherwise, the side-effect behaviors may be worse than the situation you were trying to fix.

- Ben Horowitz

Tip 49 – The trip to success should be as much fun as arriving at the destination.

- Jack Nadel

You hit what you aim at, and if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.

- Zig Ziglar

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

- Winston Churchill

Don’t be impatient. It’s not over until God says it’s over.

- Joel Olsteen

Eventually I left City College in my senior year, just four or five credits short of a sociology degree. This really upset my father who thought that I was a fool. Over and over he lectured me that the only way for a black man to make it was to get a degree and a job. For a while there I felt like I was a failure in my father’s eyes, which hurt alot, but promoting felt right in my gut. I knew that to be a man I had to follow my heart. My mother was always more open to Danny, Joey and me pursuing a more non-traditional entrepreneurial way…Early in my promoting career I lost all the money I’d saved on a show in Harlem no one came to. I came out to Hollis and no one would help me. My father just wanted me to go back to school and told me so. What could I say? I had no money. Then my mother went back in the house and came with $2,000 in crisp $100 bills from her personal savings. It was that money that kept me afloat until Kurtis Blow broke and I entered the record business. That act of love and faith, which is what kept me in business at a key time, is my favorite memory of her.

- Russell Simmons

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

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

You can take pride in yourself without comparing yourself to anybody else. If you run your race and be the best that you can be, then you can feel good about yourself.

- Joel Olsteen

Things get much easier if one jumps on the bandwagon of existing trends.

- Lei Jun

From the economic slowdown after the financial crisis in 1997 through the economic boom in 2007, the motherland has been supporting Hong Kong in recovering from adversity; on the other hand, Hong Kong has been actively cooperating with the motherland in going international.

- Cheng Yu-tung

You are safer here tonight than you would be on the streets of any other city in the world.

- Michael Bloomberg

I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.

- Bill Gates

Americans move more than 10 times over the course of a lifetime.

- Bill Gates

Wally Amos is the classic example of a man who gets up again and again.

- Zig Ziglar

Anything you’re interested in the world – whether it be Charlie Rose or JetBlue or a public figure or your local coffee shop – they’re on Twitter and broadcasting what is interesting to them.

- Jack Dorsey

Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.

- James C. Collins

No matter how dark and gloomy it looks in your life right now, if you’ll release the weight of those burdens, you will see the sun break forth.

- Joel Olsteen

When you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.

- Zig Ziglar

The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.

- Bill Gates

We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn’t want to just sell shoes. I wasn’t even into shoes – but I was pasionate about customer service.

- Tony Hsieh

The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what’s going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn’t allow for that.

- Jack Dorsey

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.

- Winston Churchill

Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.

- Mark Zuckerberg

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

Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it’s easier, it scales and it’s profitable. But people don’t like it – we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.

- Seth Godin

Talent is God-given, be humble. Fame is man-given, be thankful. Conceit is self-given, be careful.

- Harvey Mackay

hombre que conozco es superior a mí en algún sentido. En ese sentido, aprendo de él.

- Dale Carnegie

I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn’t get off the ground.

- Herb Kelleher

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

- Napoleon Hill

Today’s stock price is X, tommorrow’s is up to you.

- Sam Walton

Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.

- Jeff Bezos

IN A NUTSHELL SIX WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU PRINCIPLE 1 Become genuinely interested in other people. PRINCIPLE 2 Smile. PRINCIPLE 3 Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. PRINCIPLE 4 Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. PRINCIPLE 5 Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. PRINCIPLE 6 Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

- Bill Gates

Risk, to some, is a bad thing, because risk brings with it the possibility of failure. It might be only a temporary failure, but that doesn’t matter so much if the very thought of it shuts you down. So, for some, risk comes to equal failure (take enough risks and sooner or later, you will fail). Risk is avoided because we’ve been trained to avoid failure.

- Seth Godin

All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.

- Donald Trump

I wish HP nothing but the best. I think HP is an icon. Those of us who had their careers in the Valley think of Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett as role models. We would love to be half as good as they were.

- Larry Ellison

Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.

- Michael Dell

Some people are so belligerent in their communication style that people just stop talking when they are in the room. If every time anyone brings up an issue with the marketing organization, the VP of marketing jumps down their throats, then guess what topic will never come up? This behavior can become so bad that nobody brings up any topic when the jerk is in the room. As a result, communication across the executive staff breaks down and the entire company slowly degenerates. Note that this only happens if the jerk in question is unquestionably brilliant. Otherwise, nobody will care when she attacks them. The bite only has impact if it comes from a big dog. If one of your big dogs destroys communication on your staff, you need to send her to the pound.

- Ben Horowitz

Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

- Confucius

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

- Thomas Edison

I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.

- Bill Gates

Hedgehog Concept—disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

- James C. Collins

Look, I’m a passionate entrepreneur. I’m like fire and brimstone sometimes. And so there are times when I’ll go—I’ll get too into the weeds and too into the debate, because I’m so passionate about it.

- Travis Kalanick

PRINCIPLE 1 The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. PRINCIPLE 2 Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, You’re wrong.” PRINCIPLE 3 If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. PRINCIPLE 4 Begin in a friendly way. PRINCIPLE 5 Get the other person saying yes, yes” immediately. PRINCIPLE 6 Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. PRINCIPLE 7 Let the other person feel that the idea.

- Dale Carnegie

I’m not afraid to call a wine that tastes like Skittles or green peppers mixed with orange marmalade. I’ll say, ‘It tastes like chicken.’ I mean, that’s not what people think of when they think of wine, but that’s what it tastes like to me and it hits home.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

- Sir Isaac Newton

Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.

- Seth Godin

The Group will continue to press ahead steadily with an open mindset, a practical attitude, a broad vision and a unique insight, adhering to its ultimate objective of serving the nation and the wider community in the changing landscape.

- Cheng Yu-tung

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

- Jeff Bezos

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

Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

- Thomas Edison

When you view marketing from the vantage point of the guerrilla, you realize that it’s your opportunity to help your prospects and customers succeed. They want to succeed at earning more money, building their company, losing weight, attracting a mate, becoming more fit, or quitting smoking. You can help them. You can show them how to achieve their goal. Marketing is not about you. It’s about them. I hope you never forget that.

- Jay Conrad Levinson

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

- Ben Horowitz

That’s the true spirit of Christmas, people being helped by people other than me.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Surely, we all can look back and see things in our lives that we wish we would have done differently. But the Bible says, Make the most of each day.”4 Yesterday is gone; tomorrow may not come. You must live for today. Start right where you are. You can’t do anything about what’s gone, but you can do a great deal about what remains.

- Joel Olsteen

I didn’t like the way it looked in white trousers, and I couldn’t find anything to work underneath them.

- Sara Blakely

For every sale you miss because you were too enthusiastic, you’ll miss a hundred because you weren’t enthusiastic enough.

- Zig Ziglar

We can consider 140 characters to be the full story, but it’s not. It’s just a caption. A headline for something broader.

- Jack Dorsey

When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate.

- Seth Godin

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.

- Vince Lombardi

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

- Walt Disney

Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.

- Jack Welch

Job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living.

- Sam Walton

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.

- Bill Gates

I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.

- Sara Blakely

[On exporting sports shoes from Japan to the US]The best hope for exports lay with Onitsuka Company. So I made a cold call on them.

- Phil Knight

I’m skeptical that the novel will be ‘re-invented.’

- Jeff Bezos

A great accomplishment shouldn’t be the end of the road, just the starting point for the next leap forward.

- Harvey Mackay

Like fire across the galaxy the Clone Wars spread. In league with the wicked Count Dooku, more and more planets slip. Against this threat, upon the Jedi Knights falls the duty to lead the newly formed army of the Republic. And as the heat of war grows, so, to, grows the prowess of one most gifted student of the Force.

- Yoda

What we’ve gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question ‘Can we trust Microsoft?’

- Steve Ballmer

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription