Notable Quotables

You may never get to that perfect world that you’re waiting for where everything’s going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.

- Joel Olsteen

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.

- Elon Musk

No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.

- Peter Drucker

That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity.

- Beryl Markham

So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.

- Winston Churchill

My belief and goal is that every professional in the world should be on a service liked LinkedIn.

- Reid Hoffman

As a businessperson, I don’t have the power to change the government. That is in the hands of the political leaders. However, as a taxpayer, we have the right to be critical of the government and demand change.

- Tadashi Yanai

Good policies without the right people will achieve nothing.

- Aliko Dangote

Revolution has values, revolution has purpose. Revolution has direction. Revolution has leaders. Revolution looks at the intersection ahead and pushes people to do the right thing. And it doesn’t always have to be loud. It doesn’t always have to be violent. It’s just as powerful in it’s stillness.

- Jack Dorsey

Many companies today are reducing hours of full-time people to get under the minimum so they don’t have to pay health care costs. I just shake my head because that’s not going to build long-term value and trust with your people.

- Howard Schultz

The ultimate goal for a business owner is to build a company that he or she can one day sell, continue to scale, or even own passively. Most business owners reach for growth by working harder and personally trying to produce more. This is a flawed model that at best will lead to only moderate growth. At worst this strategy can literally put your entire company at risk.

- Jeff Hoffman

I am so disturbed by kids who spend all day playing videogames.

- Larry Ellison

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

Since Henry Ford. It is changing the way every idea is handled, every product is created, every person interacts. It’s not going to be willing to make a detour around your gig, it’s not going to be interested in giving you a permanent sinecure. No, the revolution doesn’t care.

- Seth Godin

The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.

- Napoleon Hill

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.

- Ben Horowitz

Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.

- Seth Godin

Obama has no solutions. Obama has failed the country and its great citizens, and they don’t like it when somebody such as myself speaks the truth about this – it hurts too much.

- Donald Trump

On every occasion, we were able to rely on our unique qualities – resourcefulness, perseverance, diligence and passion for excellence – to rise above our difficulties.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.

- Jeff Bezos

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The sooner you accept the fact that you will have both successes and failures, the easier it will be to get your business and personal life headed in the right direction.

- Harvey Mackay

Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.

- Bill Gates

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.

- Bill Gates

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

Giving feels good, but it’s also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot ofcompanies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we’re doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won’t mention an advertisement; they’ll say a friend told them our story.

- Blake Mycoskie

and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand”

- Dale Carnegie

TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE Principle 1—Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Principle 2—Give honest and sincere appreciation. Principle 3—Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

The Value of a Smile at Christmas It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.

- Dale Carnegie

If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward.

- Thomas Edison

There are several styles of pitching, but all have two principles in common: they appeal personally to the individual being contacted, even if he or she is a stranger and they rely on logic to make a case.

- Michael Levine

In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.

- Lee Iacocca

God is faithful to His word. All of His promises are Yes” and Amen.” That means if you will do your part and believe even though it looks impossible, and not let your mind, your emotions, or other people talk you out of it, then God promises in due season and at the right time He will bring it to pass. It may not happen the way you expect it or on your timetable, but God is a faithful God. It will happen.

- Joel Olsteen

Being productive gives people a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that loafing never can.

- Zig Ziglar

If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.

- Ray Kroc

Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.

- Caterina Fake

I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.

- Oprah Winfrey

I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city’s worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city’s Students Federation.

- Jack Ma

Whether it’s eight o’clock in the morning or eight o’clock at night, I always try to greet others before they have a chance to speak to me.

- Zig Ziglar

I believe that when you think of the negative, and you get up discouraged – ‘There’s nothing good in my future’ – I really believe it almost ties the hands of God. God works where there’s an attitude of faith. I believe faith is all about hope.

- Joel Olsteen

I worked with many departments in China to organise a ‘One million farmer’ programme. The scheme trained them to learn professional skills.

- Lee Shau Kee

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

- Jerry Seinfeld

What’s happening is that the two groups assume that the nature of the debate is really a matter of disagreement about their own sides’ core issues. Each side is assuming that people in the other group oppose what they hold most dear to themselves – what’s most important to their side – but in fact their adversaries really don’t oppose them.

- John Chambers

Southwest Airlines have been such a people-first model for me for so long that it was inspiring just to be physically in a place I already knew so much about. Yet I didn’t fully understand just how far they are willing to go to get the right people in the right seats until well after our best practices tour when someone I know applied for an entry level position with the company.

- David Novak

I’ve always been amazed by Da Vinci, because he worked out science on his own. He would work by drawing things and writing down his ideas. Of course, he designed all sorts of flying machines way before you could actually build something like that.

- Bill Gates

Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.

- Reed Hastings

Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.

- Jerry Seinfeld

It is easy to think that the things that bother you will upset your people more. That’s not true. The opposite is true. Nobody takes the losses harder than the person most responsible. Nobody feels it more than you.

- Ben Horowitz

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.

- Elon Musk

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

- Sam Walton

Uber is efficiency with elegance on top. That’s why I buy an iPhone instead of an average cell phone, why I go to a nice restaurant and pay a little bit more. It’s for the experience.

- Travis Kalanick

You build trust with others each time you choose integrity over image, truth over convenience, or honor over personal gain.

- John C. Maxwell

If you cannot read all your books…fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.

- Winston Churchill

Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional. We understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right. When this process works, it means our failures are relatively small in size (most experiments can start small), and when we hit on something that is really working for customers, we double-down on it with hopes to turn it into an even bigger success.

- Jeff Bezos

Psychological despotism, whether enlightened or not, is gross misuse of psychology. The main purpose of psychology is to acquire insight into, and mastery of, oneself. Not for nothing were what we now call the behavioral sciences originally called the moral sciences and “Know thyself” their main precept. To use psychology to control, dominate, and manipulate others is self-destructive abuse of knowledge. It is also a particularly repugnant form of tyranny.

- Peter Drucker

As an entrepreneur, remove obstacles for your team. If there is anything that is holding the team back, get it out of the way.

- David Nilssen

The Cult of Done Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog: 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more.

- Seth Godin

It takes a leader to create momentum. Followers catch it. And managers are able to continue it once it has begun. But creating it requires someone who can motivate others, not who needs to be motivated. Harry Truman once said, If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But for leaders, that statement should be changed to, If you can’t make some heat, get out of the kitchen.

- John Maxwell

Money isn’t everything… but it ranks right up there with oxygen.

- Zig Ziglar

if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.

- Dale Carnegie

In those days he was wiser than he is now, he used to frequently take my advice.

- Winston Churchill

If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.

- Seth Godin

But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.

- Dale Carnegie

This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.

- Bill Gates

On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’

- Michael Bloomberg

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

- Joel Olsteen

Your people give their days (and sometimes their nights) to you. They give their hands, brains, and hearts. Sure, the company pays them. It fills their wallets. But as a leader, you need to fill their souls. You can do that by getting in their skin, by giving the work meaning, by clearing obstacles, and by demonstrating the generosity gene. And you can do it, perhaps most powerfully, by creating an environment that’s exciting and enjoyable.

- Jack Welch

The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.

- Ben Horowitz

What would have happened to me if I would not have believed I would see the goodness of God?

- Joel Olsteen

Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

- Bill Gates

China’s movie industry is growing a lot faster than that of the U.S.

- Wang Jianlin

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.

- Elon Musk

I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.

- Michael Bloomberg

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

- Mark Zuckerberg

is his or hers. PRINCIPLE 8 Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. PRINCIPLE 9 Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. PRINCIPLE 10 Appeal to the nobler motives. PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas. PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.

- Dale Carnegie

You can be a control freak only when you have weak people around you.

- Ronald Perelman

When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

- Dale Carnegie

I can’t stress enough the essential nature of really hearing what someone has to say even if it is totally contradictory to your own beliefs, and I wish this was a lesson I only had to learn once.

- David Novak

Artists, actors, people like that, they live in a very strange bubble of their own. They’re mollycoddled; they’re highly privileged.

- Stephen Wynn

All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

- Peter Thiel

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

- Andrew Carnegie

I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.

- Dale Carnegie

I’ve always believed that businesses should be good citizens…

- Phil Knight

I don’t feel under-taxed in any way at all.

- Jack Welch

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

- Seth Godin

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