Notable Quotables

Take the first step in faith, you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Everything we do is about getting people to be more open, more creative, more courageous.

- Jack Dorsey

How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That’s a really, really, really large and complex set of skills. A lot of it is on-the-job training, combined with excellent mentorship.

- Ben Horowitz

Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.

- Steve Ballmer

No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.

- Winston Churchill

The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers

- Sam Walton

I have never met a geologist or leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change.

- Gina Rinehart

I’m a catalyst for change. You can’t be an outsider and be successful over 30 years without leaving a certain amount of scar tissue around the place.

- Rupert Murdoch

Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.

- Oprah Winfrey

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.

- Jack Welch

I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.

- Richard Branson

Chance can allow you to accomplish a goal every once in a while, but consistent achievement happens only if you love what you are doing.

- Bart Conner

There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Sure, ideas that spread, win, but ideas that don’t get spoken always fail.

- Seth Godin

Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.

- Peter Thiel

Just as ships are built to sail the seas and planes to fly the heavens, so is man created for a purpose.

- Zig Ziglar

Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.

- P.T. Barnum

The Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own.

- Peter Thiel

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

- Bill Gates

I’ve been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I’m getting really tired of Disneyland.

- Elon Musk

There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.

- Winston Churchill

Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble

- Warren Buffett

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.

- Seth Godin

I prefer the old theaters because the audience is… trapped.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

- Oscar Wilde

The reason I was able to grow my business was that every day, after producing 30 minutes of wine television, I spent 15 hours a day replying to every single person’s e-mail and every single person’s Twitter @ reply.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Getting knocked down in life is a given. Getting up and moving forward is a choice.

- 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 you expect your employees to act like adults, they generally do. If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.

- Ben Horowitz

In this early period, Rockefeller was a chronic worrier who labored under a great deal of self-imposed stress. Though not versed in the scientific side of refining, he often excercised a direct managerial role in the plant. With fluctuating market conditions, he sometimes needed shipments to New York with great dispatch and personally rushed down to the railroad tracks to motivate the freight handlers. I shall never forget how hungry I was in those days. I stayed out of doors day and night; I ran up and down the tops of freight cars, when necessary; I hurried up the boys.

- Ron Chernow

The hazards of imitative competition may partially explain why individuals with an Asperger’s-like social ineptitude seem to be at an advantage in Silicon Valley today.

- Peter Thiel

The Group has not been deterred by any negative sentiment and will as ever respond to the challenges and opportunities ahead of us with the same spirit of caution, flexibility, determination and dynamism, which have brought much success to us in the past.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a ‘gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.’ Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

- Winston Churchill

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be;

- Winston Churchill

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You have enough people against you… be for yourself.

- Joel Olsteen

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

I was not strong enough to defeat him. Like his master before him, be destroyed, he must.

- Yoda

I would hope that , where possible, the newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is some news that does more harm than good. The risk is that it threatens the commercial or industrial interests of our country.

- Serge Dassault

Founding Fathers of U.S. set up processes, checks and balances designed to insure that their values lived on long after their passing.

- Jim Collins

I would love to do a deal with Walgreen. If they’re willing to come to the table, and offer rates in line with everybody else, then I’m happy to entertain those conversations.

- George Paz

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.

- Yoda

Since most people have not been taught how to make mistakes and learn from them, they either avoid making mistakes altogether, which is a bigger mistake, or they make a mistake but fail to find the lesson from the mistakes.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Success in the United States is not an entitlement in China. You have to go there and earn it, and earn it the right way.

- Howard Schultz

I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.

- Larry Ellison

Beverages have to be created. And they’re created by looking at what trend is in, say, the fashion industry – what color’s hot right now.

- Howard Schultz

This office is smaller than the last one I had. I’m not trying to impress people. I want to be close to them.

- Stephen Wynn

Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above—that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager’s performance.

- Peter Drucker

We often hear military experts inculcate the doctrine of giving priority to the decisive theatre. There is a lot in this. But in war this principle, like all others, is governed by facts and circumstances; otherwise strategy would be too easy. It would become a drill-book and not an art; it would depend upon rules and not on an instructed and fortunate judgment of the proportions of an ever-changing scene.

- Winston Churchill

I like the book. Do you have a problem with that? … I just think it’s a great story of somebody who stood up for what they believe in.

- Travis Kalanick

The secret of your success is found in your daily routine

- John Maxwell

Everybody was writing about computers and electronics, but all I really knew about was running. It’s what I’ve chosen to do with my life.

- Phil Knight

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software.” We had dreams about the impact it could have.

- Bill Gates

Most GE business leaders now have digital cockpits on their computer screens that update in real time all the important data to help them manager their businesses.

- Jack Welch

One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.

- Ben Horowitz

[On a company founder.] A founder is not a job, it’s a role, it’s an attitude. And it’s something that can happen again, and again, and again. In fact it has to happen, again and again and again. Otherwise we would not move forward.

- Jack Dorsey

American running shoes were still made by offshoots of the tire companies, cheap and terrible. They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters…

- Phil Knight

If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: ‘Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?’ From what I’ve seen, it’s not likely.

- Timothy Ferriss

The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.

- Peter Thiel

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

- Dale Carnegie

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

- Joel Olsteen

if you want to achieve consistent performance, you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound, a hurdle that you jump over and a ceiling that you will not rise above, the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back.

- James C. Collins

[On the first twitter tweet] The first tweet that was actually written by a human was by me and it was inviting co-workers.

- Jack Dorsey

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

I’m a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

- Carl Icahn

Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me – they’re going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, ‘This guy is obnoxious.’ I spend enormous time with them – every negative review of ‘Crush It!’ on Amazon has a response from me – and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

- Bill Gates

The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by.

- Seth Godin

[In February 2011 on Square.] Starting a startup after twitter is so much easier than before.

- Jack Dorsey

When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.

- Joel Olsteen

You will either look back in life and say, I wish I had, or, I’m glad I did.

- Zig Ziglar

There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late.

- Og Mandino

If you have any more than three priorities, you have no priorities.

- Maggie Fox

The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.

- Jack Welch

When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.

- Howard Schultz

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

- Winston Churchill

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.

- Warren Buffett

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

- Winston Churchill

Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it’s taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, ‘Let’s get out the camera and get that shot.’ You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

- Bill Gates

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.

- Sara Blakely

Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.

- Zig Ziglar

The timing of your decision is just as important as the decision you make.

- John C. Maxwell

This can only be accomplished by people who live, breathe, eat and sleep what they are doing…. [I am] associated with a large group of knowledgeable, dedicated [people] who eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics…. Man’s objective should be opportunity for greater accomplishment and greater service. The greatest pleasure life has to offer is the satisfaction that flows from… participating in a difficult and constructive undertaking.

- James C. Collins

We wouldn’t survive if people didn’t trust us.

- Sergey Brin

Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

- Peter Thiel

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