Notable Quotables

Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.

- Wang Jianlin

It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.

- Bill Gates

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.

- Colin Powell

One of the main reasons that we lose our enthusiasm in life is because we become ungrateful..we let what was once a miracle become common to us. We get so accustomed to his goodness it becomes a routine..

- Joel Olsteen

It is important that all of us, however old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us. A mindset that is characterized by creativity and initiative, harnessed by focus and discipline. In our company, this mindset is requisite and indelible.

- Cheng Yu-tung

My favorite museums are things like the Frick Museum in New York and the Huntington Hartford in Pasadena where it’s someone’s home that you walk through.

- Larry Ellison

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win — essential to success.

- Napoleon Hill

There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.

- Elon Musk

When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.

- Carlos Slim Helu

Where you start is not as important as where you finish.

- Zig Ziglar

A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.

- Peter Thiel

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.

- Warren Buffett

But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1.

- Peter Thiel

My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others…. Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

- Thomas Edison

I had been trained by him. I knew him. I loved him. I simply never took it personally. If I had anything to say about it, he was not going to leave.

- Phil Knight

I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.

- Larry Page

The optimist sees opportunity in every danger, the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.

- Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

- Winston Churchill

Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.

- Bill Gates

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

- Peter Drucker

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

- Jerry Seinfeld

I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.

- Gina Rinehart

The possibilities of creative effort connected with the subconscious mind are stupendous and imponderable. They inspire one with awe.

- Napoleon Hill

I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.

- Oprah Winfrey

The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

- Henry Ford

What really motivates people at Facebook is building stuff that they’re proud of.

- Mark Zuckerberg

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

- Peter Drucker

Don’t do the natural thing, the impulsive thing. That is usually wrong.

- Dale Carnegie

The question you should be asking isn’t, What do I want? or What are my goals? but What would excite me?

- Timothy Ferriss

The lower and individual’s ability to lead, the lower the lid on his potential.

- John Maxwell

The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.

- Peter Thiel

He had realized something while arcing in slow circles toward the earth—risks weren’t that scary once you took them. His.

- Timothy Ferriss

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

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

Much like us, our customers are rigorously working to improve their profitability and capacity for innovation. For us, this means doing everything possible when it comes to efficiency, effectiveness, and innovations – and all that on the basis of the highest quality. After all, quality creates trust – and trust creates orders. In short, we need to constantly become better and better at the high level we are already operating at.

- Elmar Degenhart

So, the judgment that you have to make is (a) is this market really much bigger (more than an order of magnitude) than has been exploited to date? and (b) are we going to be number one? If the answer to either (a) or (b) is no, then you should consider selling.

- Ben Horowitz

If people talk about you, being jealous, critical, and trying to make you look bad, don’t let that change you. You don’t need their approval when you have God’s approval.

- Joel Olsteen

For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better.

- Seth Godin

The big value of the founder running the company is really two things: the knowledge and the commitment.

- Ben Horowitz

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

- Winston Churchill

The purpose of process is communication. If there are five people in your company, you don’t need process, because you can just talk to each other.

- Ben Horowitz

Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.

- Larry Page

It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

- Ronald Reagan

If you talk about Cabernet and Merlot-based value between $10 and $25, I will tell you that Bordeaux is the best value in the world.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.

- Thomas J Watson

My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more.

- Peter Thiel

New research shows that you will be dead longer than you will be alive.

- Zig Ziglar

In business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.

- Peter Thiel

[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold

- Phil Knight

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

The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.

- Steve Martin

We’re talking about changing every aspect of our lives.

- John Chambers

People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

- Bill Gates

Happiness is not a tangible thing, it’s a byproduct – a byproduct of achievement.

- Ray Kroc

That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity. —BERYL MARKHAM, West with the Night1

- James C. Collins

I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who’ve never made any money in business.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.

- Jack Taylor

I think our main real estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and letting the population build out to us.

- Sam Walton

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

- Winston Churchill

Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.

- Ray Dalio

The indefiniteness of finance can be bizarre. Think about what happens when successful entrepreneurs sell their company. What do they do with the money? In a financialized world, it unfolds like this: • The founders don’t know what to do with it, so they give it to a large bank. • The bankers don’t know what to do with it.

- Peter Thiel

The Internet offers opportunities that are more unique than ever before. With TV, I know I’m making 22 minutes; I know there’s a commercial in the middle. With the Internet, no one knows anything. No rules.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Be factual. Lying is really, really a bad idea, mostly because they’ll find you out. And then you’ll never get another item in that outlet for as long as they remember you, which will be forever.

- Michael Levine

Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ is my go-to song to pump myself up if I’m having a tough time or if I get really nervous right before a speech.

- Sara Blakely

As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-time. Sometimes you’ll have to break this rule; it usually makes sense to hire outside lawyers and accountants, for example. However, anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned.

- Peter Thiel

As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies. At my companies, our position is that we hire someone in spite of an MBA, not because of one.

- Elon Musk

I’m less interested in how people are following each other and more interested in how they are following topics and tweets themselves. People are following more key words and concepts and more ideas and acting on those rather than individuals or organizations.

- Jack Dorsey

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

- Helen Keller

Google is a small fish in a big pond. We could be swallowed whole at any time. We are not the monopoly that the government is looking for.

- Peter Thiel

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

- Sir Isaac Newton

I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.

- Ray Dalio

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

- Yoda

I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a might oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.

- Og Mandino

Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson.

- Winston Churchill

Husbands and wives, first be faithful to each other. Second, keep the romance going all of your life by courting each other every day.

- Zig Ziglar

A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too.

- Peter Thiel

Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.

- Gary Keller

Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.

- Dale Carnegie

The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness…..

- Thomas Edison

My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go.

- Bill Gates

Extolling the virtues of conservation of energy, Churchill advised, “Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down.

- Winston Churchill

The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor.

- Seth Godin

I was hooked and I would make reward and recognition one of my primary focuses as a leader

- David Novak

P – Passion, you care about the team, passion and players

- Jack Welch

Remember, happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely upon what you think. So start each day by thinking of all the things you have to be thankful for. Your future will depend very largely on the thoughts you think today. So think thoughts of hope and confidence and love and success.

- Dale Carnegie

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: —There spread a cloud of dust along a plainAnd underneath the cloud, or in it, ragedA furious battle, and men yelled, and swordsShocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s bannerWavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.A craven hung along the battle’s edge,And thought, Had I a sword of keener steel —That blue blade that the king’s son bears, — but thisBlunt thing! — he snapt and flung it from his hand,And lowering crept away and left the field.Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead,And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shoutLifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down,And saved a great cause that heroic day.

- Edward Rowland Sill

We got to know a lot of investors and know what they like and don’t like. Through many co-investments opportunities, we have built trust among these investors. So when it came to investing in Xiaomi, things were a lot easier.

- Lei Jun

I… had no need for cheering dreams,” he wrote. Facts are better than dreams.

- James C. Collins

If you are a prospective entrepreneur with the desire to start and build a visionary company but have not yet taken the plunge because you don’t have a great idea,” we encourage you to lift from your shoulders the burden of the great-idea myth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it might be better to not obsess on finding a great idea before launching a company. Why? Because the great-idea approach shifts your attention away from seeing the company as your ultimate creation.

- James C. Collins

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

- Bill Gates

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

- Aristotle

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

- George Soros

Remember that other people may be totally wrong. But they don’t think so.

- Dale Carnegie

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