How much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes?
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to gain mighty triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither gain much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory or defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt
I’ve never been one to dwell on reverses.
- Sam Walton
God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you’ve experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God’s word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen.
- Joel Olsteen
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
The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.
- Elon Musk
So sure, start with a slogan. But don’t bother wasting any time on it if you’re merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.
- Seth Godin
The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?
- Dale Carnegie
A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too.
- Peter Thiel
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, ‘Soave,’ and say, ‘Oh, O.K., cool.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I am convinced that in order for you, as a patient, to be protected, it has to be transparent, evidence-based, objective information. Not self-serving information. Not pharma-driven information. Not ad-driven information. It is transparent, objective, evidence-based information.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.
- Seth Godin
I don’t want people in China to have deep pockets but shallow minds.
- Jack Ma
We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.
- Seth Godin
Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.
- Winston Churchill
This book, then, is a product of the last fifteen years, as well as a product of the fifteen years that preceded them. It was almost exactly eight years before The E-Myth was published that I founded our company, E-Myth Worldwide, which has provided the fuel and experience for the point of view I have shared with those of you who have read The E-Myth, and with those.
- Michael Gerber
One of the most important management lessons for a founder/CEO is totally unintuitive. My single biggest personal improvement as CEO occurred on the day when I stopped being too positive.
- Ben Horowitz
Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike”, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
The definition of commerce is the activity between buyers and sellers.
- Jack Dorsey
We sold ‘Seinfeld’ all over the world but it was a very specific kind of show. In some countries it went down really well, in others they hated it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I deal with more practical issues of the Bible.
- Joel Olsteen
The world is changing… I don’t, as a consumer, want advertising that’s not relevant. If we’re going to take a side, let’s take the side of the consumer.
- Charles Ergen
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
- Winston Churchill
Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you’ve got, you’re more likely to do it.And this is precisely why it’s difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.
- Seth Godin
The team with the best players wins.
- Jack Welch
To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.
- Aliko Dangote
The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.
- Bill Gates
Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.
- Winston Churchill
The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.
- Seth Godin
Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.
- Bill Gates
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
It says in Romans 5:17, We are to reign in life as kings.” When God looks at us He doesn’t see us defeated, barely getting by, or just taking the leftover positions. Not at all. God sees you as a king. He sees you as a queen. You have His royal blood flowing through your veins. You and I are supposed to reign in life. Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power. You don’t have a two-year term like a mayor, a four-year term like a president. Your term is to reign every single day, to be victorious, to rise to new levels, to accomplish great things.
- Joel Olsteen
To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.
- Ben Horowitz
Great companies are built on great products.
- Elon Musk
As we go forward, I hope we’re going to continue to use technology to make really big differences in how people live and work.
- Sergey Brin
I’m an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.
- Bill Gates
I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say what is and what is definitely not possible.
- Henry Ford
The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness…..
- Thomas Edison
We also now believe that this slowdown in capital spending could extend beyond two quarters.
- John Chambers
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
My first transistor radio was the heart of my gadget love today. It fit in my hand and brought me a world of music 24 / 7.
- Steve Wozniak
Google’s search algorithms, for example, return results better than anyone else’s. Proprietary technologies for extremely short page load times and highly accurate query autocompletion add to the core search product’s robustness and defensibility.
- Peter Thiel
It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
- Winston Churchill
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
- Dale Carnegie
When I was 7, I came up with the idea of ‘charm socks.’ My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.
- Sara Blakely
Certainly there are times in all of our lives when bad things happen, or things don’t turn out as we had hoped. But that’s when we we must a decision that we’re going to be happy inspite of our circumstances.
- Joel Olsteen
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
- Dale Carnegie
Obviously I knew it was a great opportunity but I wasn’t expecting something as big as right now, what we see in Macau.
- Lui Che Woo
In Riyadh, there’s going to be a huge project that will house at least 12,000 units with inhabitants of approximately 150,000 people. It’s like a city within a city.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
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
They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.
- Thomas Edison
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
Adversity can strengthen you if you have the will to grind it out.
- Ray Kroc
A difficult time can be more readily endured if we retain the conviction that our existence holds a purpose, a cause to pursue, a person to love, a goal to achieve.
- John C. Maxwell
Wanamaker learned this lesson early, but I personally had to blunder through this old world for a third of a century before it even began to dawn upon me that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t criticise themselves for anything no matter how wrong it may be.
- Dale Carnegie
Before you take on the media, you have to know something about The Pitch.
- Michael Levine
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
- Winston Churchill
You must not ever think that anything is common sense.
- Clay Clark
It’s really complex to make something simple…
- Jack Dorsey
The thing about the banjo is, when you first hear it, it strikes many people as ‘What’s that?’ There’s something very compelling about it to certain people; that’s the way I was; that’s the way a lot of banjo players and people who love the banjo are.
- Steve Martin
I’m skeptical that the novel will be ‘re-invented.’
- Jeff Bezos
Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used them….
- Thomas Edison
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
The special prosecutor basically supported what we had told the Board of Elections all along.
- Michael Ward
Although office rental in Hong Kong recorded a general downward adjustment and the slowdown in the economy in the past financial year brought along its negative impacts on the local retailing and food sectors, the major retail shopping properties owned by the Group were able to maintain an overall occupancy rate of 93% whilst rental levels generally remained steady.
- Lee Shau Kee
To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.
- Henry Ford
It is better to act too quickly than it is to wait too long.
- Jack Welch
I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.
- Elon Musk
Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.
- Bill Gates
We are not makers of history. We are made by history.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
He who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species.
- P.T. Barnum
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.
- Donald Trump
Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
- Og Mandino
There’s a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There’s a lot of sex, you know, in art. There’s a lot of naked women and men, and there’s intrigue, there’s fakery. It’s a real microcosm of the larger world.
- Steve Martin
You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.
- Warren Buffett
Already know you that which you need.
- Yoda
Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.
- Zig Ziglar
When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.
- Winston Churchill
What is the 20% of my belongings that I use 80% of the time? Eliminate the other 80% in clothing, magazines, books, and all else. Be ruthless – you can always repurchase things you can’t live without.
- Timothy Ferriss
There may be times when you just have to love people from a distance.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect.
- Ben Horowitz
The Internet is the Viagra of big business.
- Jack Welch
If you think your people are negative, then you had better check your attitude. Who you are is who you attract. This is the LAW of Magnetism.
- John Maxwell
Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.
- Seth Godin
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow.
- Evan Esar
The typical factory-centric organization places a premium on not-wrong, and spends no time at all weeding out those who don’t start. In the networked economy, the innovation-focused organization has no choice but to obsess about those who don’t start. Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.
- Seth Godin
The market is fast-moving, fast-growing. Things that are true today may not be true tomorrow.
- Robin Li
Seeing his education soley in utilitarian terms, he studied hard, but showed no intellectual playfulness.
- Ron Chernow
Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.
- P.T. Barnum
Put everything you’ve got into what you’re doing. Be totally focused–nothing should be haphazard.
- Donald Trump
Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that’s associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.
- Bill Gates
I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t go and continue to use every advantage that I can to promote New York’s cause.
- Michael Bloomberg
The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.
- Bill Gates
