Notable Quotables

If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.

- John C. Maxwell

To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.

- P.T. Barnum

Small businesses don’t exist without the nucleus.

- Bryan Smith

Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.

- Ben Horowitz

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

- Timothy Ferriss

If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve.

- Anthony Robbins

just like most nightmares, it’s not that big a deal and is reversible.

- Timothy Ferriss

A much better idea would have been to give the problem to the people who could not only fix it, but who would also be personally excited and motivated to do so.

- Ben Horowitz

Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.

- Joel Olsteen

If a job doesn’t excite you on some level—just because of the stuff of it—don’t settle.

- Jack Welch

Hedgehog Concept—disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

- James C. Collins

I know a lot of people are upset by our decision but it is something we have deliberated for a number of years.

- Sergey Brin

There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.

- Winston Churchill

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

- Zig Ziglar

Frequently I’ll be interviewing with somebody or talking and in about 15 minutes they’ll interrupt me mid-stream and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re nothing like I’d thought you’d be.’

- Larry Ellison

Become meaningful in your interactions and the path to success in any endeavor is simpler and far more sustainable.

- Dale Carnegie

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

- Socrates

It’s disappointing, but it’s still a really good book. I’m glad Kenny did it, and I’m glad it’s going to get out. … I still endorse the book. I think everybody should buy it. I think he did a great job on a very complicated topic.

- Phil Knight

It is no achievement to walk a tightrope laid flat on the floor.

- Ray Kroc

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labour ofthinking-if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts thatbolster up what we already think-and ignore all the others! We want only the facts thatjustify our acts-the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justifyour preconceived prejudices!As Andre Maurois put it: Everything that is in agreement with our personal desiresseems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage.Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems?Wouldn’t we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, ifwe went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot ofpeople in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that twoplus two equals five-or maybe five hundred!

- Thomas Edison

General and undifferentiated pitches don’t say anything about why a recruit should join your company instead of many others.

- Peter Thiel

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.

- Dale Carnegie

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

- Jerry Seinfeld

U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.

- Bill Gates

Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.

- Zig Ziglar

Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.

- Napoleon Hill

At the same time, we invested more than €4 billion, in property, plant and equipment, software, and research and development. The capital expenditure ratio is again expected to be around 6 percent in the current fiscal year.

- Elmar Degenhart

I fell in love with flora of all types, especially ferns. Loved the sparse structure and repetition of shape – almost fractal.

- Jack Dorsey

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software.” We had dreams about the impact it could have.

- Bill Gates

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

- Henry Ford

Salvation and Christ’s love is a gift. You don’t earn it. You’ve got to receive that gift.

- Joel Olsteen

The world’s major metropolitan cities are more or less the same.

- Tadashi Yanai

It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Strive to make every person feel special. After all, every person you meet is made in the image of God.

- Joel Olsteen

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

- Rupert Murdoch

I don’t consider myself enigmatic, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.

- Phil Knight

The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive. When I was managing thousands of people at Hewlett-Packard after the sale of Opsware, there was an incredible number of incoming demands on my time. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Little companies wanted to partner with me or sell themselves to me, people in my organization needed approvals, other business units needed my help, customers wanted my attention, and so forth. As a result, I spent most of my time optimizing and tuning the existing business. Most of the work that I did was “incoming.” In fact, most skilled big company executives will tell you that if you have more than three new initiatives in a quarter, you are trying to do too much. As a result, big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup executive, nothing happens unless you make it happen. In the early days of a company, you have to take eight to ten new initiatives a day or the company will stand still. There is no inertia that’s putting the company in motion. Without massive input from you, the company will stay at rest.

- Ben Horowitz

A business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.

- Peter Thiel

My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.

- Sara Blakely

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit

- Napoleon Hill

1. Make incremental advances Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward.2. Stay lean and flexible All companies must be “lean,” which is code for “unplanned.” You should not know what your business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out, “iterate,” and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation.3. Improve on the competition Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.4. Focus on product, not sales If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.

- Peter Thiel

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

- Joel Olsteen

The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.

- Debbi Fields

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.

- Oprah Winfrey

Unemployment in America today is too high. And part of the reason, unfortunately, is that many companies cannot fill the high-skilled jobs increasingly at risk of going overseas.

- Michael Bloomberg

The slowdown in futures orders clearly signals that revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 1998 will be below our previous expectations. This is largely a result of the slowdown in the Asia Pacific market, where we now anticipate more moderate revenue growth in fiscal 1998 after increasing 84 percent on a constant dollar basis in fiscal 1997.

- Phil Knight

Law of Credibility – Don’t say anything you can’t prove. Be able to prove anything you say.

- Jerry Vass

The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of poverty.

- Napoleon Hill

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

- Winston Churchill

Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.

- Peter Drucker

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

- Napoleon Hill

We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.

- Richard Branson

Unhappy Barnes & Noble filed a lawsuit three days before Amazon’s IPO, claiming that Amazon was unfairly calling itself a “bookstore” when really it was a “book broker”.

- Peter Thiel

We, too, need to be patient, especially when it comes to reaching new goals.

- George Foreman

I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.

- Bill Gates

We have a go-to-hell fund. In other words, we have accumulated enough wealth to live without working for ten or more years. Thus, those of us with a net worth of $1.6 million could live comfortably for more than twelve years. Actually, we could live longer than that, since we save at least 15 percent of our earned income.

- Thomas J Stanley

I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as ‘I’m cool, look at how many e-mails I get.’ That perception doesn’t scare me, because I know who I am.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The craftsman and the artist say, “Here, I made this.” The workingman is asked to follow instructions.

- Seth Godin

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.

- Joel Olsteen

We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.

- Bill Gates

What’s got me excited about the education space is the growth of the Internet over the next 10, 20, 30 years.

- Reed Hastings

Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.

- Bill Gates

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’

- Jerry Seinfeld

God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you’ve experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God’s word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen.

- Joel Olsteen

Much to learn you still have…my old padawan… This is just the beginning!

- Yoda

Daca ceea ce doriti sa faceti este corect si credeti in el, porniti spre implinire! Puneti visele inainte, si nu conteaza ce spune gura lumii daca va confruntati cu infrangerea temporara, caci poate ca lumea nu stie ca orice esec aduce cu el germenele unui eventual succes.

- Dale Carnegie

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

- Elon Musk

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

- Phil Knight

The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

- Sam Walton

In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.

- Jorge Paulo Lemann

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic … It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood … it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine’s writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, ‘What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!’ My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.

- Thomas Edison

Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends, the best paths are new and untried.

- Peter Thiel

Every great business is built on friendship.

- JC Penney

I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.

- Jack Ma

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.

- Steve Ballmer

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn’t even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

- Sara Blakely

Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.

- Jeff Bezos

I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.

- Elon Musk

Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don’t think over time that’s a good way to go. I’m a huge believe in digital currency… but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I’m not involved in Bitcoin.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft

- Bill Gates

A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.

- Peter Thiel

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

- Henry Ford

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.

- Bill Gates

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

- Henry Ford

Form the habit of systematic saving by putting aside a definite percentage of your income. Money in the bank gives one a very safe foundation of courage…

- Napoleon Hill

We have to get control of our borders. You can only do that if you make companies obey the law and not hire undocumented or illegals. They can only do that is if they have a Social Security Card that has biometrics so they know whether the person is legal or not.

- Michael Bloomberg

Once the habit is ingrained and you become the starter, the center of the circle, you will find more and more things to notice, to instigate, and to initiate. Momentum builds and you get better at generating it. If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you’ll wake up with a list. And as you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised. What might be considered a board-level decision at one of your competitors’ companies gets done as a matter of course. What might be reserved for a manager’s intervention gets handled at the customer level, saving you time and money (and generating customer joy). This incredibly prosaic idea, the very simple act of initiating, is actually profoundly transformative. Forward motion is a defensible business asset.

- Seth Godin

Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.

- Walt Disney

The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

- Peter Thiel

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