Notable Quotables

Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life’s blessings.

- Oprah Winfrey

There’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.

- Ben Horowitz

Southwest consistently turns a profit because they have an employee ownership program that gives their employees a sense of ownership that is very real. When the company does well financially, the employees do well financially. When the company struggles, the employees struggle.

- Clay Clark

The great football coach John Madden was once asked whether he would tolerate a player like Terrell Owens on his team. Owens was both one of the most talented players in the game and one of the biggest jerks. Madden answered, “If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you’ll be so late you’ll miss the game, so you can’t do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you’ll have a player that’s so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.

- Ben Horowitz

Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.

- Confucius

A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest… Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.

- Jack Welch

My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?

- Sara Blakely

We saw – we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.

- Larry Ellison

Everyone is going to binge on a diet, for instance, so plan for it, schedule it, and contain the damage.

- Timothy Ferriss

Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.

- Peter Drucker

As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot.

- Ray Kroc

Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.” Everyone around the table nodded assent. “Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.

- Peter Drucker

I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver.

- Sara Blakely

I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet.

- Russell Simmons

You may be sitting around waiting for God to change your circumstances. Then you’re going to be happy, then your’re going to have a good attitude, then you’re going to give God praise. But God is waiting on you to get up on the inside. When you do your part, He’ll begin to change things and work supernaturally in your life.

- Joel Olsteen

The U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar, the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro.

- Peter Thiel

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

- Elon Musk

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.

- Bill Gates

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

- Winston Churchill

In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.

- Peter Thiel

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

- Joel Olsteen

I am a former sabre fencer and fenced as part of the Uzbek republic team.

- Alisher Usmanov

At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

- Bill Gates

Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.

- Dale Carnegie

Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.

- Zig Ziglar

My first professional job was to sell heavy-duty waterless cookware.

- Zig Ziglar

Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.

- Jack Welch

Remember that this is what separates the women from the girls. If you want to be great, this is the challenge. If you don’t want to be great, then you never should have started a company.

- Ben Horowitz

It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.

- Winston Churchill

If you don’t have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don’t take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It’s crazy.

- Jack Welch

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.

- Bill Gates

Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.

- Steve Jobs

That’s the true spirit of Christmas, people being helped by people other than me.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

- Joel Olsteen

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

- Napoleon Hill

Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we’ve had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you’re really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.

- Steve Ballmer

Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.

- Elon Musk

The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning, and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.

- Og Mandino

Through the wisdom of its government leaders and the entrepreneurship of its private sector, India has rapidly risen to become a major force in the global economy, … Cisco believes that the Internet, and related technologies, will be a key enabler for India to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation.

- John Chambers

The choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.

- Zig Ziglar

Those people blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.

- Mary Kay Ash

Any area of achievement in your life required you to stick with the basics until you became great…it’s not about learning 4,000 moves but about doing just a handful of moves 4,000 times.

- Chet Holmes

For 20-plus years I looked at thousands of storyboard for corporate and product ads, and I never allowed one advertisement on the air that I didn’t like.

- Jack Welch

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

- Mark Twain

Our history is based on extending the brand to categories within the guardrails of Starbucks.

- Howard Schultz

They need to avoid coming at us head-on, and do their own thing better than we do ours. It doesn’t make any sense to try to underprice Walmart on something like toothpaste. That’s not what they customer is looking to a small store for anyway. Most independents are best off, I think, doing what I prided myself on doing for many years as a storekeeper, getting out front on the door and meeting everyone of the customers. Let them know how much you appreciate them, and that register yourself. That little personal touch is so important for an independent merchant because no matter how hard Walmart tries to duplicate, ad we try awfully hard, we can’t really do it.

- Sam Walton

Thank you is probably the most important thing that a leader can say.

- David Novak

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have it depends solely on what you think.

- Dale Carnegie

Velocity and drive comes from your desire to achieve.

- Jim Cathcart

When you do more than you’re paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do.

- Zig Ziglar

In a world where wealth is growing, you can get away with printing money. Doubling the debt over the next 20 years is not a problem.

- Peter Thiel

I’ve already figured out when I’m going to be No. 2 and No. 1.

- Sheldon Adelson

If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.

- Timothy Ferriss

Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs, Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain, Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves.

- Peter Thiel

It’s hard to improve public education – that’s clear.

- Bill Gates

Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others…He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds – or on persons devoted to them – have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a ‘dirty little atheist’ he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If Paine had ceased his writings with ‘The Rights of Man’ he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But ‘The Age of Reason’ cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen – a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine.I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty.Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of everything bad.The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty – who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause – can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.

- Thomas Edison

We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there. The garage didn’t serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home. We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money.

- Steve Wozniak

Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.

- Zig Ziglar

I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.

- Joel Olsteen

People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.

- Joseph Campbell

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.

- Thomas Edison

Berkshire’s record would have been terrible if Warren didn’t keep learning.

- Charlie Munger

In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

- Ben Horowitz

Thee may be some concern about rising inflation, shortage of labour and increased trade protectionism but the economy is generally in good shape.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

- Peter Thiel

I shall pass this way but once. Therefore any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show-let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

- Dale Carnegie

Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.

- Peter Thiel

We want Facebook to be one of the best places people can go to learn how to build stuff. If you want to build a company, nothing better than jumping in and trying to build one. But Facebook is also great for entrepreneurs/hackers. If people want to come for a few years and move on and build something great, that’s something we’re proud of.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic of beginnings.

- Peter Thiel

In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

- Bill Gates

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

- Thomas Carlyle

I put forward a pretty general theory that financial markets are intrinsically unstable. That we really have a false picture when we think about markets tending towards equilibrium.

- George Soros

In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming found that a mysterious antibacterial fungus had grown on a petri dish he’d forgotten to cover in his laboratory: he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since. Modern drug discovery aims to amplify Fleming’s serendipitous circumstances a millionfold: pharmaceutical companies search through combinations of molecular compounds at random, hoping to find a hit.

- Peter Thiel

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

- Winston Churchill

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.

- John Wayne

When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.

- Josh James

You can’t explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don’t have to. It’s that simple.

- Phil Knight

You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.

- Richard Branson

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

- John C. Maxwell

In any new business, someone has to have a vision. You are as good as the people around you. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Identify your core community and go from there. Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. In my experience it often takes as long as five years to make a business work. Partners can fail you. Staff may not execute properly. You could be too far ahead of the market. SO you have to be willing to hand in there and make it happen. From the founding of Phat Farm in 1992 until 1997, I lost money. By my account, I experienced $10 million in losses. But today Phat Farm is visible, it is imitated and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars. It took time, but good ideas often do need time to take off. Being an entrepreneur requires instinct, fortitude and the ability to accept that the world does not run on your schedule. Sometimes you just have to believe.

- Russell Simmons

By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Online I see people committing ‘social media suicide’ all the time by one of two ways. Firstly by responding to all criticism, meaning you’re never going to find time to complete important milestones of your own, and by responding to things that don’t warrant a response.

- Tim Ferris

Look, the whole world wants to modernize, and when you look to what they mean by modernizing, they mean Americanize. Would a modern Greek prefer to live in Orange County than Piraeus? Yes. Absolutely.

- Rupert Murdoch

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’

- Warren Buffett

If the employees fundamentally trust the C.E.O., then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust.

- Ben Horowitz

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