If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.
- Sam Walton
Notable Quotables
If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.
- Pierre Omidyar
Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof when your own doorstep is unclean.
- Confucius
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
I’ve operated and launched newspapers all over the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
I don’t want people in China to have deep pockets but shallow minds.
- Jack Ma
I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.
- Winston Churchill
Cooperativeness in conversation is achieved when you show that you consider the other person’s ideas and feelings as important as your own.
- Dale Carnegie
There’s no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.
- Bill Gates
No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.
- Winston Churchill
Hong Kong has gone through countless difficult moments in the past. Our belief in our abilities and our determination to work for a better future have helped us overcome all obstacles.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It’s almost unfathomable how much I still have to learn. Learning never ends…I always have another mountain to climb is what keeps you going.
- David Novak
Find a job that you will be happy with and work hard at.
- Lee Shau Kee
Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
- Ray Kroc
May all of your creations have just the right flavor.
- Timothy Ferriss
Save them [Luke and Leia], we must. They are our last hope.
- Yoda
For Starbucks, there will be no shortage of the highest-quality arabica beans. I suspect that for some others there could potentially be a problem, not in the near term, but over time.
- Howard Schultz
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
Group projects are the exception in school, but they should be the norm.
- 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
When you stop planning and preparing . . . you stop winning.
- Zig Ziglar
Who’s your Jedi master? WHO’S your Jedi Master?
- Yoda
During their lifetimes, every man and woman will stumble across a great opportunity. Sadly, most of them will simply pick themselves up, dust themselves down and carry on as if nothing ever happened.
- Winston Churchill
Start believing today that things are going to change for the better. Your best days are still out in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence?
- Timothy Ferriss
Every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.
- Peter Thiel
Never forget that people are your greatest asset.
- John Maxwell
A lot of churches have not moved with the times.
- Joel Olsteen
you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.
- Dale Carnegie
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
- Bill Gates
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
- Thomas Edison
The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.
- Seth Godin
We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
- Bill Gates
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
There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.
- General George S. Patton
If you do not believe in your product or service enough to offer it to your own family and friends, then you should question the value of what you are selling.
- Zig Ziglar
Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work.
- Bill Gates
Separate performance from people.
- David Robinson
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
- Peter Drucker
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
- Napoleon Hill
We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
- Winston Churchill
I was uncomfortable with the timing, … We were getting millions less from the federal government for Medicaid and having to search for funds to restore some of those cuts and I just did not think it was right to put a pay raise on the board that would cost tens of millions of dollars.
- Michael Gerber
You don’t inherit cancer, you actually get it.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Leaders never outgrow the need to change.
- John C. Maxwell
It’s obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.
- Elon Musk
In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.
- Joel Olsteen
You cannot expect victory and plan for defeat.
- Joel Olsteen
Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice.
- John C. Maxwell
Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.
- Ben Horowitz
Relative income uses two variables: the dollar and time, usually hours.
- Timothy Ferriss
Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures
- Sam Walton
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.
- Ray Dalio
No effort has been spared in ensuring the best designs for all our projects.
- Lee Shau Kee
And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world.
- Seth Godin
When people are around us, they should leave better off than they were previously. Rather than feeling discouraged or defeated, people should feel challenged and inspired after spending any time with you and me.
- Joel Olsteen
The Group sold an attributable HK$3,434.6 million worth of properties in Hong Kong as compared with HK$6,810.9 million for the year before. In light of the then cautious market sentiment, the Group decided to defer the launch of a few new developments…
- Lee Shau Kee
The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.
- Seth Godin
There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.
- Larry Page
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
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.’ That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So, naturally, we are glad to see them.
- Dale Carnegie
The first is the result of a decision to act—to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold. The second is the result of a decision of sloth—to not do something—wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences.
- Timothy Ferriss
When men are fighting for their lives they are not often disposed to be complimentary to those who are trying to kill them.
- Winston Churchill
I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
My supply of Scotch caution never has been small; but I was apparently something of a daredevil now and then to the manufacturing fathers of Pittsburgh. They were old and I was young, which made all the difference.
- Andrew Carnegie
No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime.
- John C. Maxwell
A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.
- John C. Maxwell
What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
- Steve Jobs
The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.
- Timothy Ferriss
Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.
- Seth Godin
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
- Dale Carnegie
The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.
- Bill Gates
In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
- Donald Trump
Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.
- Jack Welch
True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.
- P.T. Barnum
It’s your ATTITUDE not your APTITUDE that ultimately determines your ALTITUDE!
- Zig Ziglar
In the beginning, I thought mobile search was not much different from Web search. It’s just a smaller screen, a slower speed; it’s all the bad things. When I thought about mobile Internet, it’s all the disadvantages.
- Robin Li
When advice is freely given, the receiver is free to use it as he or she sees fit.
- Harvey Mackay
If you know you have to wait anyway, why not make a decision to enjoy your life while you’re waiting? Why not be happy while God is in the process of changing things? After all, there’s nothing we can really do to make it happen any faster. We might as well relax and enjoy our lives, knowing that at the appointed time God is going to bring his plan to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Failing forward” is the ability to get back up after you’ve been knocked down, learn from your mistake, and move forward in a better direction.
- John C. Maxwell
Does it make sense to go to college, or should I instead be a plumber?
- Michael Bloomberg
Delay taking a salary until your business is generating cash flow from sales…by delaying taking a salary, you can reinvest sales to help grow your business.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.
- Bill Gates
But at the Lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgments under a searching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.
- Winston Churchill
Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.
- Michael Levine
The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I’m constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don’t train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.
- Zig Ziglar
You are safer here tonight than you would be on the streets of any other city in the world.
- Michael Bloomberg
People who enjoy what they are doing invariably do it well.
- Joe Gibbs
Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.
- Bill Gates
Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!
- Og Mandino
Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.
- Seth Godin
If Wanda can control more than 20 per cent of the world’s three most important film markets – the United States, Europe and China – then it will have an empire with great voice in the industry.
- Wang Jianlin
I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.
- Mark Zuckerberg
People who couldn’t fit into this informal and entreprenual environment left or were asked to leave. I cut my losses quickly on bad hires that didn’t perform.
- Jack Welch
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
