Notable Quotables

Leadership must wake up every day with the mission of Finding a Better Way Every Day…There are no modest revolutions…GE was a place where the people got up everyday to searching for a better way.

- Jack Welch

You have a real chance to make an impact, but you have to do it in the first 90 days. Otherwise they’ll think it’s going to be business as usual.

- David Novak

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

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.

- John Buchan

Keep everybody guessing as to what your next trick is going to be.

- Sam Walton

Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes and the rest of us have to be other people.

- Zig Ziglar

The Internet offers opportunities that are more unique than ever before. With TV, I know I’m making 22 minutes; I know there’s a commercial in the middle. With the Internet, no one knows anything. No rules.

- Jerry Seinfeld

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.

- Bill Gates

It’s true that every great entrepreneur is first and foremost a designer.

- Peter Thiel

Every leader’s potential is determined by the people closest to him. No matter what I did with that staff, they would never be able to take the organization to the place we needed to go.

- Napoleon Hill

The key to a good one-on-one meeting is the understanding that it is the employee’s meeting rather than the manager’s meeting. This is the free-form meeting for all the pressing issues, brilliant ideas, and chronic frustrations that do not fit neatly into status reports, email, and other less personal and intimate mechanisms.

- Ben Horowitz

I was fascinated with jeans, because you can impress your life upon the jeans you wear. The way you sit imprints on the jeans.

- Jack Dorsey

WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.

- James C. Collins

People who enjoy what they are doing invariably do it well.

- Joe Gibbs

Be more splendid, more extraordinary. Use every moment to fill yourself up.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.

- Dale Carnegie

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

- Dale Carnegie

Losing an A is a sin. Love ‘em, hug ‘em, kiss ‘em, don’t lose them! We conduct postmortems on every A we lose and hold management accountable for losses.

- Jack Welch

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.

- Thomas J Watson

I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It’s seeing what other people don’t see And pursuing that vision.

- Howard Schultz

I updated my grilling app, iGrill, today and it now has Facebook integration that lets you see what other people are grilling right now around the world. Awesome.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic. The best way to approach a potential break is simple: Confide in them honestly but tactfully and explain your concerns. If they bite back, your conclusions have been confirmed. Drop them like any other bad habit. If they promise to change, first spend at least two weeks apart to develop other positive influences in your life and diminish psychological dependency. The next trial period should have a set duration and consist of pass-or-fail criteria. If this approach is too confrontational for you, just politely refuse to interact with them. Be in the middle of something when the call comes, and have a prior commitment when the invitation to hang out comes. Once you see the benefits of decreased time with these people, it will be easier to stop communication altogether.

- Timothy Ferriss

One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest.

- Winston Churchill

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

- Jeff Bezos

There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain – do something to make more money yourself.

- Gina Rinehart

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle and a victory.

- Mahatma Gandhi

We’re all working together, that’s the secret.

- Sam Walton

It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.

- Joel Olsteen

I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen.

- Russell Simmons

I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.

- Seth Godin

I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.

- Seth Godin

Perhaps the most important thing that I learned as an entrepreneur was to focus on what I needed to get right and stop worrying about all the things that I did wrong or might do wrong.

- Ben Horowitz

The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy.

- Michael Bloomberg

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.

- Thich Nhat Hanh

There’s no reason why the future should happen only at Stanford, or in college, or in Silicon Valley.

- Peter Thiel

Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.

- Bill Gates

I actually do think you’re seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that’s a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what’s going on with them.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The greatest business people I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.

- Michael Gerber

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.

- Donald Trump

I do have my ducks in line if I want to do it, but I’d love to see the Republicans pick somebody that was going to win and take over this country and frankly, to use the expression, ‘Make America great again.’

- Donald Trump

When you have a dream that you can’t let go of, trust your instincts and pursue it. But remember: Real dreams take work, They take patience, and sometimes they require you to dig down very deep. Be sure you’re willing to do that.

- Harvey Mackay

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

- Napoleon Hill

I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s easier to explain price once than to apologize for quality forever.

- Zig Ziglar

The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.

- Peter Thiel

It’s no surprise that these fields all attract disproportionate numbers of high-achieving Ivy League optionality chasers; what could be a more appropriate reward for two decades of résumé-building than a seemingly elite, process-oriented career that promises to “keep options open”?

- Peter Thiel

Learning to be a CEO through classroom training would be like learning to be an NFL quarterback through classroom training.

- Ben Horowitz

I believe you should have a world where you’ve got to license something at a fair price. There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.

- Steve Wozniak

One who buys things to write them off for their business whether they need them or not and who borrows massive sums of money to buy frozen yogurt and cupcake franchises that cannot possibly generate enough money to produce a livable wage, much less anything approaching prosperity.

- Clay Clark

If you aim at nothing you will hit every time.

- Zig Ziglar

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 Group sold an attributable HK$3,434.6 million worth of properties in Hong Kong as compared with HK$6,810.9 million for the year before. In light of the then cautious market sentiment, the Group decided to defer the launch of a few new developments…

- Lee Shau Kee

My organization, my colleagues and I, are paid to run hotels in good times and fair times. We’re professionals. That’s what we do. I don’t give a damn about the short-term market implications.

- Stephen Wynn

I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.

- Og Mandino

The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realise in some subtle way that you realise their importance, and recognise it sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

We’re working toward the ability for all Cisco devices to work together and communicate with each other to stop attacks. The idea is that one device can warn another device of a threat.

- John Chambers

Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people”, that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

- Peter Drucker

Execution begins with a vision and your people saying, I understand it. I’m excited about it. I can help make it happen.

- David Novak

I think part of the reason we’re successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.

- Larry Page

An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes—the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions. People are quite flexible, in that they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. An employee of IBM, for example, can quite readily change the way he or she works, in order to work successfully in a small start-up company. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Similarly, values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high-margin products, cannot simultaneously accord priority to low-margin products. The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context.

- Clayton M. Christensen

For some reason I get this key position of being one of two people that started the company that started the revolution.

- Steve Wozniak

I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.

- Steve Wozniak

There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

- Oprah Winfrey

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

- Peter Drucker

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

- Joel Olsteen

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

- Winston Churchill

1. What is our mission?2. Who is our customer?3. What does the customer value?4. What are our results?5. What is our plan?

- Peter Drucker

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.

- Bruce Lee

My grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It’s a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we’ve come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company.

- Larry Page

You may think you’re getting the short end of the stick, but when it’s all said and done, God will make sure that you don’t lose anything truly valuable. Moreover, He’ll make sure you get your just reward. Your responsibility is to remain calm and peaceable even when those around you are not.

- Joel Olsteen

I wish I could do a lot of things different. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I’d go, ‘Okay, I’ll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.’ Really. But I’ve made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?

- Steve Martin

Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.

- Jack Welch

The record results for the third quarter once again demonstrate the ability of GE’s diverse mix of leading global businesses to deliver top-line growth, increased margins and strong cash generation.

- Jack Welch

I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.

- Rupert Murdoch

The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.

- Seth Godin

In order to be happy, every individual needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done.

- Peter Thiel

We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

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

- Timothy Ferriss

I enjoy myself a lot but I derive my joy from working. I believe in hard work and one of my business success secret is hard work.

- Aliko Dangote

It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.

- Zig Ziglar

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

- Winston Churchill

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

- Sheldon Adelson

I wouldn’t ever say if you’re having tough times then there must be something wrong with you or your attitude. Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith. I encourage people to stay up, stay hopeful, stay faith-filled.

- Joel Olsteen

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

A politician needs 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

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

- Winston Churchill

There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant—is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a manager and a gentleman.

- Peter Drucker

Don’t have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.

- Steve Martin

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