Being a great leader means sometimes pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
Notable Quotables
The only definition by which America’s best days are behind it is on a purely relative basis.
- Bill Gates
If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.
- Seth Godin
Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.
- Napoleon Hill
Success is one thing you can’t pay for. You buy it on the installment plan and make payments every day.
- Zig Ziglar
Don’t let any opportunity lead you away from serving God. That’s a price that’s too high to pay.
- George Foreman
What kind of business world are we living in?
- Jack Ma
We’re all working together, that’s the secret.
- Sam Walton
You embrace the top 20, deal with the middle 70, and you face into the bottom 10, and you do what’s right for them and for you.
- Jack Welch
I do think that religion has turned a lot of people off. Part of it is because it was all about the rules and was political. I think now people have a hunger for God, they want to have a relationship, but they don’t want to be called religious. I’m not trying to get them to join my religion, I’m just trying to plant a seed of hope in their heart.
- Joel Olsteen
We’re really going after truly creating sustainability of a disease-free state, creating a complete system for managing cancer patients for life, so that you can manage from onset of disease all the way through.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Life’s most soothing things are a child’s goodnight and sweet music….
- Thomas Edison
Those who do not know how to fight worry die young.
- Dale Carnegie
You walk into a retail store, whatever it is, and if there’s a sense of entertainment and excitement and electricity, you wanna be there.
- Howard Schultz
Anyone that makes me a quarter of a billion dollars, I like.
- Carl Icahn
We decided that instead of avoiding our competitors, or waiting for them to come to us, we would meet them head-on. It was one of the smartest strategic decisions we ever made. In fact, if our story doesn’t prove anything else about the free market system, it erases any doubt that spirited competition is good for business – not just for customers, but the companies which have to compete with one another too. Our competitors have honed and sharpened us to an edge we wouldn’t have with out them. We wouldn’t be nearly as good as we are today without Kmart, and I think they would admit we’ve made them a better retailer. One reason Sears fell so far off the pace is that they wouldn’t admit for the longest time that Wal-Mart and Kmart were their real competition. They ignored both of us, and we both blew right by them.
- Sam Walton
Gas consumption is growing everywhere.
- Vagit Alekperov
If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, let’s assume one week, someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self.
- Timothy Ferriss
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.
- Zig Ziglar
Ten or twelve men, especially between brothers and between fathers and sons; but the offspring of these unions are counted as the children of the man with whom a particular woman cohabited first.
- Winston Churchill
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
Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.
- Peter Thiel
We can’t wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious.
- Howard Schultz
We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
- Bill Gates
Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will be doing things absolutely differently from everybody else.
- Sara Blakely
All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.
- Winston Churchill
To me, we’re marketing hope.
- Joel Olsteen
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 three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness…..
- Thomas Edison
I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.
- Bill Gates
The student who elects to risk it all—which is nothing—to establish an online video rental service that delivers $5,000 per month in income from a small niche of Blu-ray aficionados, a two-hour-per-week side project that allows him to work full-time as an animal rights lobbyist.
- Timothy Ferriss
They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.
- Winston Churchill
I always say, ‘To have a big dream requires the same effort as having a small dream. Dream big!’
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
You’ve got to be before you can do and do before you can have.
- Zig Ziglar
Entrepreneurs are always biased to understate the scale of competition, but that is the biggest mistake a startup can make.
- Peter Thiel
There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.
- Ray Dalio
Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love.
- Buddha
I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.
- Elon Musk
Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice – fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.
- Sergey Brin
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
I have stated that a democracy is always two years behind the dictator.
- Winston Churchill
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t.
- Ben Horowitz
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
- Warren Buffett
Over the course of your career, your Detroit will surely call you at one point or another. If you can go, that’s great. If you can’t, make peace with the reasons why.
- Jack Welch
For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.
- Winston Churchill
9 out of ten new businesses fail in the first five years.
- Robert Kiyosaki
It’s so easy to tweet from wherever you are.
- Jack Dorsey
How many companies have you encountered that articulate a clear ideology at the start of the company, yet cannot articulate a clear idea of what products to make?
- James C. Collins
Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are. Think of them as people who really want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into friends.
- Dale Carnegie
President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.
- Harold Hamm
I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.
- Dale Carnegie
G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.
- Laszlo Bock
I produced Run DMC. I produced some early records, lots of records early on.
- Russell Simmons
Failures are life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.
- Sara Blakely
When you reach out to hurting people, that’s when God is going to make sure your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”
- Joel Olsteen
I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Tell them to grab on to the career that engages their brain and heart and soul and gives them meaning. Tell them that eventually, the money will come, and if it doesn’t, in time, they will find themselves rich with something money can’t buy. And that, obviously, would be happiness.
- Jack Welch
In our day Capital, Business Ability, and Manual Labor are the legs of a three-legged stool. While the three legs stand sound and firm, the stool stands; but let any one of the three weaken and break, let it be pulled out or struck out, down goes the stool to the ground. And the stool is of no use until the third leg is restored.
- Andrew Carnegie
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
- Henry Ford
We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
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.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Well, it’s very clear that the Arab population is rising because they’d like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Improvement is to invent something completely new.
- Peter Thiel
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed, A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden of weeds.
- John D. Rockefeller
If you pay people peanuts, you will get monkeys.
- Andy Pearson
You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war. – To Neville Chamberlain
- Winston Churchill
We are not in the business of iron ore. Whatever captive iron ore sources we have, we use it to make steel.
- Lakshmi Mittal
In the game of life, money is just how we keep score.
- Clay Clark
EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
Fulfilling the vision of the Irvine Ranch master plan has been a lifetime dedication and lifetime passion, and I am hopeful the heritage of our Irvine stewardship will live on in many new ways.
- Donald Bren
Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.
- Larry Ellison
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
- John Buchan
Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amounts of virtual cash, 25-30 cents, for each hour of good behaviour. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun – whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise – come out of their own individual accounts. No balance, no goodies. This often requires more self-control on the part of the parents than the children.
- Timothy Ferriss
Cuando usted se enfrente a obstáculos de tamaño gigante en su propia vida—desengaños, reveses, cosas que no funcionan—, no se desaliente, pues esa adversidad podría ser precisamente lo que Dios utilizará para ascenderle. Eso podría ser donde usted vea a Dios acelerar el tiempo, y logrará algo que debería haberle tomado toda la vida. Al.
- Joel Olsteen
War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:
- Peter Thiel
Some questions that I’ve found to be very effective in one-on-ones: If we could improve in any way, how would we do it? What’s the number-one problem with our organization? Why? What’s not fun about working here? Who is really kicking ass in the company? Whom do you admire? If you were me, what changes would you make? What don’t you like about the product? What’s the biggest opportunity that we’re missing out on? What are we not doing that we should be doing? Are you happy working here?
- Ben Horowitz
The very important thing you should have is patience.
- Jack Ma
Vision is perhaps our greatest strength… it has kept us alive to the power and continuity of thought through the centuries, it makes us peer into the future and lends shape to the unknown.
- Li Ka-shing
Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you.
- Seth Godin
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.
- Jack Welch
The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.
- Bill Gates
The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.
- Bill Gates
Who decides what’s in Windows? The customers who buy it.
- Bill Gates
If it’s set up in such a way that it breaks the conditionality required by the (International Monetary Fund), I think that would be a step backward.
- John Chambers
If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.
- Bill Gates
Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
- Peter Thiel
Every dream I’ve ever had in life has come true ten times over.
- Steve Wozniak
Certainly, other people can pray for you, they can believe for you, they can quote the scripture to you, but you must exercise faith for yourself. If you are always depending on somebody else to keep you happy, somebody else to encourage you or to get you out of trouble, you will live in perpetual weakness and disappointment. You must make a decision that you are going to be a believer. Take charge of your life and decide, No matter what comes against me, I believe in God. I’m going to have a positive outlook for my life! Other people’s faith can indeed bolster yours. But your own faith will bring you a miracle much faster than anybody else’s. What you believe has a much greater impact on your life than what anybody else believes.
- Joel Olsteen
People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Indecision is the seedling of fear.
- Napoleon Hill
Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.
- Dale Carnegie
You can’t win by being more average than average.
- Seth Godin
There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.
- Winston Churchill
If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.
- 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
