These are all commodity-focused issues. The old conceit of a retailer was that if you offered the right products at a fair price in a convenient location, you’d do fine if you watched your expenses. Today, the issues are totally different.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
[On Twitter and Japan] We’ve had massive success in Japan… In Japan, it’s not 140 characters, it’s 140 words. So you could write a little mini-novel. This is a whole story in the universe.
- Jack Dorsey
Sooner or later, you will see a China-based company that really has a global impact, and I think Baidu has a chance to become one of those companies. We should be able to compete on a global basis.
- Robin Li
As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there’s always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.
- Richard Branson
Sustaining faith is what sets you through those dark nights of the soul when you don’t know where to go or what to do, and it seems that you can’t last another day…but because of your faith in God, you do.
- Joel Olsteen
As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.
- Seth Godin
The thing that’s confusing for investors is that founders don’t know how to be CEO. I didn’t know how to do the job when I was a CEO. Founder CEOs don’t know how to be CEOs, but it doesn’t mean they can’t learn. The question is… can the founder learn that job and can they tolerate all mistakes they will make doing it?
- Ben Horowitz
American Dream – and it says that you should graduate from high school, graduate from college, get married, find a job with good benefits, have sex with your spouse two times per week, buy a home with a mortgage, get a pet, go on vacation two times per year, have two kids, invest in mutual funds and IRAs, recycle when possible, and aim to retire early in your mid-fifties to early sixties, if you are lucky. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s kind of hard to be passionate about that American Dream.
- Clay Clark
We will be one of the most productive residential developers in China in the next few years.
- Lee Shau Kee
When I was 7, I came up with the idea of ‘charm socks.’ My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.
- Sara Blakely
If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you’ll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job.
- Seth Godin
Laughter is America’s most important export.
- Walt Disney
Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.
- Seth Godin
I say, don’t try to fight your own battles because God will do it.
- Joel Olsteen
I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.
- Herb Kelleher
1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.
- Peter Thiel
Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m a big fan of Mashable and TechCrunch and other outlets like that, but TechMeme obviously does an amazing job of aggregating.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you pay people peanuts, you will get monkeys.
- Andy Pearson
There is slow growth, but it is positive slow growth. At the same time, ratios of debt-to-incomes go down. That’s a beautiful deleveraging.
- Ray Dalio
Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.
- Bill Gates
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
- Stephen R. Covey
Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.
- Howard Schultz
An enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
- Thomas Edison
Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.
- Ben Horowitz
With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.
- Elon Musk
In terms of doing work and in terms of learning and evolving as a person, you just grow more when you get more people’s perspectives… I really try and live the mission of the company and… keep everything else in my life extremely simple.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
- Mahatma Gandhi
If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
- Jack Ma
Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.
- Seth Godin
People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.
- Joel Olsteen
Residential properties that were sold by the Group summed up to around 5,800 units and amounted to approximately HK$12.8 billion.
- Lee Shau Kee
John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there’s something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.
- Ben Horowitz
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
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it’s easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin’ man and the loner.
- Steve Martin
My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.
- Dale Carnegie
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.
- Bill Gates
There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Foreign politicians don’t have resources – or limited resources. It’s useless dealing with them.
- Wang Jianlin
Perhaps your challenge isn’t finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.
- Seth Godin
Peter Drucker once observed that the drive for mergers and acquisitions comes less from sound reasoning and more from the fact that doing deals is a much more exciting way to spend your day than doing actual work.
- James C. Collins
Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).
- Seth Godin
India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.
- Bill Gates
As an immigrant, I chose to live in America because it is one of the freest and most vibrant nations in the world. And as an immigrant, I feel an obligation to speak up for immigration policies that will keep America the most economically robust, creative and freedom-loving nation in the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
Too often, sales reps simply regurgitate their presentations and expect to land the sale. It doesn’t work.
- Harvey Mackay
If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.
- Muhammad Ali
Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
- Zig Ziglar
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.
- Dale Carnegie
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
- John Buchan
Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.
- Bill Gates
The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.
- Jack Welch
ZERO TO ONE 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
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
Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
- Winston Churchill
The Dip creates scarcity, scarcity creates value.
- Seth Godin
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials).
- Peter Thiel
Woody’s Allen’s great line about relationships. A relationship is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies. And that’s true about your company.
- Larry Ellison
I just think that – when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that – that – when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.
- Warren Buffett
Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around.
- Winston Churchill
The librarian isn’t a clerk who happens to work in a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.
- Seth Godin
Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I’d do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.
- Steve Martin
Apply the blacksmith’s homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.
- Dale Carnegie
A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.
- Mark Zuckerberg
If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.
- Bill Gates
Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used them….
- Thomas Edison
Your network is your net worth.
- Porter Gale
I think growth covers up mistakes.
- Howard Schultz
I don’t think we like the precedent of it, and so we’re fighting it. I think we’re right.
- Sergey Brin
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
- Henry Ford
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill
When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would’ve had a chance. Because that’s where my real heart was.
- Steve Martin
Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
- Zig Ziglar
The growth of the company and the license that Starbucks has is to participate in other food and beverage opportunities. We have a global business… and in many parts of the world, tea is much, much bigger than coffee, and we’re going to bring tea and bring our capability and our understanding of what we’ve done for coffee to tea.
- Howard Schultz
What you are will show in what you do.
- Thomas Edison
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
- Peter Drucker
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
- Jeff Bezos
The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.
- Seth Godin
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.
- Winston Churchill
So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.
- Peter Drucker
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
- Sergey Brin
A lot of churches have not moved with the times.
- Joel Olsteen
I’d always try to remind managers at every level that they had to share my passion for developing people.
- Jack Welch
I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‘Didn’t you make that movie already?’ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.
- John C. Maxwell
If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.
- Joel Olsteen
There’s this great quote…which says ‘The future has already arrived. It’s just not evenly distributed yet.’
- Jack Dorsey
When you go through enough dark places, you don’t complain about little things. You don’t lose your joy because you got stuck in traffic; you don’t get offended because a coworker was rude to you. You’ve been through too much to let that sour you.
- Joel Olsteen
Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligent and honest purpose as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
- Thomas Edison
What we know about the destination resort business is clearly established. But it’s all about one thing, and one thing only. All of the razzmatazz and jazz we hear about facilities and everything else doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. It’s customer experience that determines the longevity and endurance of these enterprises.
- Stephen Wynn
I do know this… I seem to reach a lot of previously unchurched people. So many people have told me they never went to church until they heard our message of hope that God is a good God who desires to bless those who are faithful and obedient to Him through Jesus Christ.
- Joel Olsteen
Think and grow rich.
- Napoleon Hill
