Notable Quotables

A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.

- Jeff Bezos

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

- Sam Walton

For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.

- Timothy Ferriss

Get ready, get ready, get ready, to get ready.

- T.D Jakes

Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present, good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future.

- Peter Thiel

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

- Warren Buffett

Students of public speaking continually ask, How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience? Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer’s wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by? How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines? Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be half scared to death. There are a great many wetless bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.

- Dale Carnegie

Giving away money to the right cause, with a leveraged effect and your own involvement in how it is spent, will ‘give you peace of mind.’

- Lee Shau Kee

Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

- Napoleon Hill

Building companies involves creating great wealth. If that means I am an oligarch, OK, it’s fine. But if being an oligarch is about buying football clubs, it is not for me.

- Alexei Mordashov

One challenge is the Peter Principle. Coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book of that name, the Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain being unable to earn further promotions.

- Ben Horowitz

The knowledge worker is not poverty-prone. He is in danger of alienation, to use the fashionable word for boredom, frustration, and silent despair.

- Peter Drucker

What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The great thing about fact-based decisions is that they overrule the hierarchy.

- Jeff Bezos

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.

- Peter Drucker

Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.

- Seth Godin

Basically, our goal is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful.

- Larry Page

And in urology, it could be drugs or devices for bladder and prostate problems.

- David Pyott

I support health care for people. I want people well taken care of. But I also want health care that we can afford as a country. I have people and friends closing down their businesses because of Obamacare.

- Donald Trump

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

If you pay that price daily by planning and preparing and working to become the right kind of person, then you can legitimately expect to have all that life has to offer.

- Zig Ziglar

Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs.

- P.T. Barnum

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

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

- Seth Godin

When you found a company, you have the original vision, you make all the original decisions, you know every employee, you kind of know every aspect of the product architecture and its limitations.

- Ben Horowitz

Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.

- John C. Maxwell

You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.

- Reid Hoffman

Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands

- David Novak

Life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot “diversify” herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.

- Peter Thiel

Little phrases such as ‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ ‘Would you be so kind as to –?’ ‘Won’t you please?’ ‘Would you mind?’ ‘Thank you’ – little courtesies like these oil the cogs of the monotonous grind of everyday life – and incidentally, they are the hallmark of good breeding.

- Dale Carnegie

I think the advantage of democracy is that it makes us less dependent on a group of leaders.

- Azim Premji

The success we are now taking in is the natural outcome of our adhesion to our principles to start with: an enterprise shall take care of the people’s livelihood, through thick and thin; an enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Now that we had a name, we had to have a trademark for the side of the shoe. It was 1971, and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million, so I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State, and there was a woman there saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get enough money for the dress for this prom,’ And I said, ‘I have a job for you.’ I paid her $2 an hour, and she spent 17 and a half hours. So $35 and she came up with what is now the swoosh.

- Phil Knight

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

- Warren Buffett

That Newport store was really the beginning of where Walmart is today. We did everything. We would wash windows, sweep floors, trim windows. We did all the stockroom work, checked the freight in. Everything it took to run a store. We had to keep expenses to a minimum. That is where it started, years ago. Our money was made by controlling expenses. That, and Sam always being so ingenius. He never stopped trying to do something different. One thing, though: I never forgave him for was making me clean out that damned ice cream machine.

- Bud Walton

If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.

- Sara Blakely

All of us profit from being corrected – if we’re corrected in a positive way.

- Sam Walton

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

- Socrates

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Projections are just bullshit. They’re just guesses.

- Jason Fried

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

- Jeff Bezos

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

- John D. Rockefeller

It’s the next opportunity that keeps us motivated.

- Zig Ziglar

Having a personality of caring about people is important. You cant be a good leader unless you generally like people. That is how you bring out the best in them.

- Richard Branson

People suck at following advice. Even the most effective people in the world are terrible at it. There are two reasons: 1. Most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a nice-to-have, not a must-have. There has been no Harajuku Moment. 2. There are no reminders. No consistent tracking = no awareness = no behavioral change. Consistent tracking, even if you have no knowledge of fat-loss or exercise, will often beat advice from world-class trainers.

- Timothy Ferriss

It’s really complex to make something simple…

- Jack Dorsey

If you do not see yourself as a winner, you cannot perform as a winner.

- Zig Ziglar

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

- Theodore Roosevelt

You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people.

- Zig Ziglar

Creating content that allows us to share our experiences, thoughts, and ideas in real time is becoming an intrinsic part of life in the twenty-first century.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

You’ve been destined to live in victory, destined to overcome, destined to leave your mark on this generation.

- Joel Olsteen

All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.

- Ray Kroc

I believe that those who stay in faith are highly favored. You need to prepare for an exceeding, abundant, above-and-beyond life; a life where people go out of their way for no reason to be good to you; a life where you get promoted even though you weren’t the most qualified; a life where you find yourself in the right place at the right time.

- Joel Olsteen

Whether it’s eight o’clock in the morning or eight o’clock at night, I always try to greet others before they have a chance to speak to me.

- Zig Ziglar

Insulation prevents you from making the change and finding the understanding you set out to achieve in the first place.

- Seth Godin

In a literal sense, even a private company, of course, cannot do everything that it wants without some discussion with government. As a good corporate citizen, Severstal discussed the idea of a merger with Arcelor with the Russian government.

- Alexei Mordashov

You can’t be in neutral and hope to reach your full potential.

- Joel Olsteen

It doesn’t hurt to ask Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.

- Seth Godin

America, for me, is the country where, if you have something great to offer, you’ll be valued highly.

- Tadashi Yanai

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals. Management.

- Peter Drucker

The most obvious clue was sartorial: cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans. So we instituted a blanket rule: pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings.

- Peter Thiel

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

With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks.

- Howard Schultz

Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

- Mark Zuckerberg

[In June 2011] I mean, what is Twitter? Ask 100 people, ‘what is the world?’ and you’ll get a thousand different answers. The same is true for Twitter. It’s different things to different people. Twitter is the world.

- Jack Dorsey

Ranking among the greatest Christmas movie classics, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ tells a beautiful story about the priceless value of relationships.

- John C. Maxwell

Simply changing one three-letter word can often spell the difference between failure and success in changing people without giving offense or arousing resentment. Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise followed by the word but” and ending with a critical statement. For example, in trying to change a child’s careless attitude toward studies, we might say, We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term. But if you had worked harder on your algebra, the results would have been better.” In this case, Johnnie might feel encouraged until he heard the word but.” He might then question the sincerity of the original praise. To him, the praise seemed only to be a contrived lead-in to a critical inference of failure. Credibility would be strained, and we probably would not achieve our objectives of changing Johnnie’s attitude toward his studies. This could be easily overcome by changing the word but” to and.” We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term, and by continuing the same conscientious efforts next term, your algebra grade can be up with all the others.

- Dale Carnegie

Quoting from Chapter 2 of the Sayings Of Confucius, ‘At 30, I stood firm; at 40, I had no more doubts.’ Time has its role to play in one’s behavior and how one conducts himself in society. With the passage of time, we master our lives better and become more refined and polished, step by step. 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

I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention…. Its their ‘ideas’ that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as ‘more of a sponge than an inventor….’

- Thomas Edison

With the right pitch, you’ll get no argument. This is where the salesmanship comes in…It requires of you a substantial degree of self-confidence to pull it off, but your belief in your own project will help you muster that.

- Michael Levine

Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done.

- Ben Horowitz

Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don’t, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.

- Harvey Mackay

The challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us.

- Seth Godin

Even if we are right and the other person is definitely wrong, we only destroy ego by causing someone to lose face. The legendary French aviation pioneer and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote: I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.

- Dale Carnegie

To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.

- Peter Thiel

All human beings are the same. In the United States, people come from all over the world, all races, all backgrounds. And they’re all doing what they want, many scoring huge successes. When I saw that, I became more open. It freed my soul.

- Masayoshi Son

Expect to make some mistakes when you try new and different approaches. Sometimes colossal failures lead to spectacular successes.

- Harvey Mackay

I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.

- Steve Martin

I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don’t laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that’s not real laughter.

- Steve Martin

In philosophy, politics, and business, too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.

- Peter Thiel

We have to get control of our borders. You can only do that if you make companies obey the law and not hire undocumented or illegals. They can only do that is if they have a Social Security Card that has biometrics so they know whether the person is legal or not.

- Michael Bloomberg

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

- Napoleon Hill

A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.

- Steve Wozniak

Possession of Power That Was Not Acquired Through Self Effort.

- Napoleon Hill

Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.

- Peter Drucker

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

- Dale Carnegie

The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.

- Timothy Ferriss

El séptimo imperativo • El primer imperativo es estar al tanto; al tanto del mercado, de las oportunidades y de quién eres. • El segundo imperativo es estar preparados, para entender lo que sucede a tu alrededor. • El tercer imperativo es estar conectado, para que confíen en ti. • El cuarto imperativo es ser coherente, para que el sistema sepa qué esperar de ti. • El quinto imperativo es crear un valor, para tener algo que vender. • El sexto imperativo es ser productivo, para ofrecer un buen precio. No obstante, es posible que hagas todas estas cosas y aun así fracases. Un empleo no es suficiente, ni una fábrica, ni una industria. Solían serlo, pero ya no lo son. El mundo está cambiando muy rápido, y sin la chispa de la iniciativa te limitas a reaccionar ante lo que te rodea. Asimismo, sin la capacidad de incitar y experimentar estás estancado, a la deriva, esperando el empujón…

- Seth Godin

I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.

- Timothy Ferriss

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