If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.
- Seth Godin
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
- Napoleon Hill
My priorities are; Family, Church, Business.
- Terry Fischer
The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.
- Zig Ziglar
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy, so (he keeps) coming back, which pleases the shareholder.
- Herb Kelleher
The story about GE that hasn’t been told is the value of an informal place. I think it’s a big thought. I don’t think people have ever figured out that being informal is a big deal.
- Jack Welch
When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.
- Bill Gates
Hong Kong has gone through many ups and downs in the past. Unavoidably, one needs to go through the lowest point before reaching the peak again.
- Cheng Yu-tung
THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR – One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
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
We need to think of chronic disease, hypertension, cancer, like H1N1. In fact, there’s an epidemic of chronic disease.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
- Michael Bloomberg
We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
- Bill Gates
It also makes clear that it is her meeting and will take as much or as little time as she needs. During the meeting, since it’s the employee’s meeting, the manager should do 10 percent of the talking and 90 percent of the listening. Note that this is the opposite of most one-on-ones.
- Ben Horowitz
Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.
- Yoda
His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.
- Ron Chernow
The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.
- Joel Olsteen
There is no more important economic policy issue today than helping our nation remain the global innovation leader. To do this, our leadership must focus on an aggressive agenda to support math and science education, patent litigation reform, healthcare information technology, and research and development. We thank President Bush for his leadership and urge all members of Congress to address these issues in a comprehensive fashion to get the job done.
- John Chambers
Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.
- Seth Godin
As it happened, we did extraordinarily well with our Newport Wal-Mart, and it wasn’t too long before the old Ben Franklin store I had run on Front Street had to close its doors. You can’t say we ran that guy – the landlord’s son – out of business. His customers were the ones who shut him down. They voted with their feet. Quite a few smaller stores have gone out of business during the time of Wal-Mart’s growth. Some people have tried to turn it into this big controversy, sort of a Save the Small-Town Merchants deal, like they were whales or whooping cranes of something that has the right to be protected…If you become a large-scale success it’s Katie bar the door. Suddenly, you make a very convenient villian because everybody seems to love shooting at who’s on top.
- Sam Walton
I think when I was young, let’s call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That’s really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.
- Steve Martin
When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant, it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you, that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.
- Michael Bloomberg
Share your experiences, tell your stories, and inspire others along the way.
- Blake Mycoskie
At Uniqlo, we’re thinking ahead. We’re thinking about how to create new, innovative products… and sell that to everyone.
- Tadashi Yanai
In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It’d be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.
- Steve Martin
What we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Brian Tracy
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
- Henry Ford
A definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
Step up to the front, select what you want, create your plan, put your plan into action, and follow through with Persistence. Capitalist America will not rest.
- Napoleon Hill
Be ready for problems–you’ll have them every day. Keep open to new ideas–that’s where innovation begins.
- Donald Trump
History is written by the victors.
- Winston Churchill
Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.
- Winston Churchill
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
- Bill Gates
The idea of Twitter started with me working in dispatch since I was 15 years old, where taxi cabs or firetrucks would broadcast where they were and what they were doing.
- Jack Dorsey
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
- John Naisbitt
Twitter is about simplicity.
- Jack Dorsey
when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.
- Dale Carnegie
Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas.
- Seth Godin
The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it.
- Moliere
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.
- Bill Gates
You can’t build any kind of organization if you’re not going to surround yourself with people who have experience and skill base beyond your own.
- Howard Schultz
Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands
- David Novak
One of the main reasons people fail to reach their full potential is because they are unwilling to risk anything. They are fearful of losing, failing, or getting hurt and just want to do the things they believe will keep them safe.
- Zig Ziglar
I never hid my thoughts or feelings. During a business meeting I could get so emotionally charged and involved that I’d stammer out what others might consider to be outrageous things like, My six year old could do better than that! Or Don’t Walter Cronkite me!
- Solutions
Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.
- Winston Churchill
The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.
- Timothy Ferriss
Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.
- Peter Thiel
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
- Dale Carnegie
[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.
- Jack Dorsey
The doctors actually told my family there was a five percent chance of me living.
- Ed Clark
I think I may not be able to retire.
- Tadashi Yanai
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
- Winston Churchill
Put all excuses aside and remember this: YOU are capable.
- Zig Ziglar
A riot is the language of the unheard.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t yell at people, I don’t mistreat people. I don’t talk down to people, so no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it.
- Oprah Winfrey
Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.
- Oprah Winfrey
Experience has proven that the best educated people are often those who are known as self-made, or self-educated. It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists no so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and peristently applied. Men are paid nor merely for tha they know, but more particulary for what they do with that which they know.
- Napoleon Hill
In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.
- Peter Thiel
I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.
- Sara Blakely
In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.
- Ben Horowitz
I do not believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process
- Oprah Winfrey
We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
- Dale Carnegie
es it’s thinner, but I wanted storage. I don’t have broadband at home, and you can’t get great broadband connection in hotels, so I carry all my personal media in the iPad. So I was hoping Apple has a 256GB iPad. I was hoping for more storage so I could put every episode of Big Bang Theory on my iPad. So I emailed my wife and said ‘nope, I don’t want one of those.
- Steve Wozniak
Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, one step at a time, picking your feet up and putting them down. At the end of the day, twenty miles later, you stop at a hotel. And what happens the next morning? Either you quit the project or you start again, walking to Cleveland. In fact, every step is a new beginning. Sure, you’re closer than you were yesterday or last week, but you’re still…
- Seth Godin
If you pay that price daily by planning and preparing and working to become the right kind of person, then you can legitimately expect to have all that life has to offer.
- Zig Ziglar
When you throw dirt at people, you’re not doing a thing but losing ground.
- Zig Ziglar
Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
- Peter Drucker
Our job as founders as entrepreneurs is to distribute the future that’s already here.
- Jack Dorsey
What kind of business world are we living in?
- Jack Ma
Where there is no vision, there is no hope.
- George Washington Carver
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
When your hobbies get in the way of your work – that’s OK, but when your hobbies get in the way of themselves… well.
- Steve Martin
To connect with people in a group, connect with them as individuals.
- John Maxwell
Athletic skills are acquired over a long period of time and after countless hours of practice.
- Zig Ziglar
The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.
- Bill Gates
I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
- Andrew Carnegie
You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.
- Joel Olsteen
I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.
- Howard Schultz
I loved couriers. You had this transfer of physical information happening throughout the city and the world. Someone picking up the package, putting it in a bag, going somewhere, taking it out of the bag, giving it to someone else. I thought that was so cool. I wanted to map it, to see that flow on a big screen.
- Jack Dorsey
When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.
- John C. Maxwell
You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.
- Bill Gates
When you look at a company that’s already succeeded or is at the very top of its game, it isn’t necessarily when it’s executing well. It tends to be peacetime – you’ve defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple.
- Ben Horowitz
If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook. And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone. If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault. That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. ‘I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.’ What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.
- Seth Godin
In business, if you don’t kick and hug, you don’t love.
- Clay Clark
The commercial segment produced the best results.
- John Chambers
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
- Peter Drucker
Let’s think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it’s okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea… well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.”
- Elon Musk
The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities.
- Peter Thiel
Dad never had the kind of ambition or confidence to build much of a business on his own, and he didn’t believe in taking on debt. Sam Walton on the traits that make a great leader. It never occurred to me that I might lose; to me, it was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Sam Walton
The six people who had the biggest impact on my life were all women. Had I been sexist, my life would have been far less fulfilling.
- Zig Ziglar
Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.
- P.T. Barnum
The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
- Warren Buffett
The courage take tough yes-or-no decisions. Look, the world is filled with gray. Anyone can look at an issue from every different angle. Some smart people can –and will-analyze those angles indefinitely. But effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.
- Jack Welch
If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.
- Seth Godin
