Notable Quotables

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

- John C. Maxwell

I’m born into the cycle of giving that we’re all born into, and I recognize it. So just because something is a good business, I’m not a business guy. I’m a creative guy.

- Russell Simmons

He will give you strength for every battle, wisdom for every decision, peace that passes understanding. God will vindicate you for the wrongs that have been done. He will pay you back for unfair situations. He promised He will not only bring your dreams to pass but He will give you even the secret desires of your heart. Dare to trust Him. Come back to that place of peace. Quit being worried, stressed out, wondering if it will happen. God has you in the palm of His hand. He has never once failed before, and the good news is He is not about to start now.

- Joel Olsteen

The economy of Hong Kong was considerably stable in 2000. However, as the global economy experienced a slowdown since the beginning of 2001, the confidence of local home purchasers remained low notwithstanding that Hong Kong followed the footsteps of the United States of America in announcing consecutive reductions of interest rates as well as a series of measures implemented by the Government to stabilise local property prices.

- Lee Shau Kee

I’ve taken those pharmacists and asked them to reach out to doctors. Doctors still misprescribe very often. They leave gaps with care. People with asthma, they don’t take their inhalers, they wait until they’re sick, and by then, it’s too late. Now we’re already running up the bills and going to emergency rooms. We’re using our pharmacist to do the things they were educated to do, not to count pills. That’s not where the value is.

- George Paz

If you are nervous about making the jump or simply putting it off out of fear of the unknown, here is your antidote. Write down your answers to these questions, and keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain vomiting on the page. Write and do not edit – aim for volume. Spend a few minutes on each answer.1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probably scenarios?4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?5. What are you putting off out of fear?6. What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – to postpone action?7. What are you waiting for?

- Timothy Ferriss

Most GE business leaders now have digital cockpits on their computer screens that update in real time all the important data to help them manager their businesses.

- Jack Welch

[On working at Nike for 48 years] In those 48 years, I have never had a promotion. but it had its other benefits.

- Phil Knight

Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.

- Winston Churchill

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

- Bill Gates

The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.

- Peter Drucker

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

- Bill Gates

I believe God’s keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, someway, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can’t give God something without God giving you more in return, whether it’s peace or joy or satisfaction.

- Joel Olsteen

I am a huge bull on this country. We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.

- Warren Buffett

Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.

- Bill Gates

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

In the ’30s, the Keynesian stuff worked at least in the sense that you could print money without inflation because there was all this productivity growth happening. That’s not going to work today.

- Peter Thiel

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

- Elon Musk

If your access to health care involves your leaving work and driving somewhere and parking and waiting for a long time, that’s not going to promote healthiness.

- Larry Page

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

- Andrew Carnegie

You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.

- Joel Olsteen

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.

- Bill Gates

I hate how many people think “glass half-empty” when their glass is really four-fifths full. I’m grateful when I have one drop in the glass because I know exactly what to do with it.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.

- Napoleon Hill

Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.

- Bill Gates

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

- Viktor E. Frankl

The Loire Valley is grossly underestimated. The prices are fair, and the wines are real.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.

- Dale Carnegie

If you want to spend time saying this is cool, you’re going to get your ass kicked.

- Phil Knight

My revenue was $4 million my first year in business, off of one $20 item.

- Sara Blakely

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

- Henry Ford

Share your experiences, tell your stories, and inspire others along the way.

- Blake Mycoskie

It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?

- James C. Collins

True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

- Helen Keller

Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyon has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by opinions when you reach decisions you will not succeed in any undertaking, much less in that of transmuting YOUR OWN DESIRE into money…Close friends and relatives, while not meaning to do so, often handicap one through opinions and sometimes through ridicule, which is meant to be humorous. Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life, because some well-meaning, but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through opinions or ridicule.

- Napoleon Hill

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Rockefeller succeeded because he believed in the long –term prospects of the business and never treated it as a mirage that would soon fade.

- Ron Chernow

We are consolidating our position as one of the leading technology companies in the automotive industry. Research and development expenditure of another 6 percent of our sales or around €2.1 billion is fueling our capacity for innovation. There are very few companies in the industry that are able to operate in these dimensions.

- Elmar Degenhart

In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.

- Reed Hastings

We have a very high churn rate, but as soon as we turn on email marketing to our user base, people will come back.” Yes, of course. The reason that people leave our service and don’t come back is that we have not been sending them enough spam. That makes total sense to me, too.

- Ben Horowitz

Computers already have enough power to outperform people in activities we used to think of as distinctively human. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Jeopardy!’s best-ever contestant, Ken Jennings, succumbed to IBM’s Watson in 2011. And Google’s self-driving cars are already on California roads today. Dale Earnhardt Jr. needn’t feel threatened by them, but the Guardian worries (on behalf of the millions of chauffeurs and cabbies in the world) that self-driving cars “could drive the next wave of unemployment.

- Peter Thiel

Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.

- Timothy Ferriss

You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to those situations.

- Zig Ziglar

Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

- Ben Horowitz

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

- Winston Churchill

Entrepreneurial skills and ability for sheer hard work will help Hong Kong re-orient its economy for future growth through a broad variety of strong and promising businesses.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie until you can find a rock.

- Will Rogers

You should evaluate your organizational design on a regular basis and gather the information that you need to decide without tipping people off to what you plan to do. Once you decide, you should immediately execute the reorg: Don’t leave time for leaks and lobbying.

- Ben Horowitz

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

- James C. Collins

I want people to know their palate is a snowflake. We all like different things. Why should we all have the same taste in wines?

- Gary Vaynerchuk

In the short term, the market is a popularity contest. In the long term, the market is a weighing machine.

- Warren Buffett

Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.

- Winston Churchill

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

Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.

- Peter Thiel

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

- Peter Drucker

It’s not time,” “Take it easy,” “Wait and see,” “It’s someone else’s turn” – none of these stalls are appropriate for a leader in search of change. There’s a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late. The longer you wait to launch an innovation, the less your effort is worth.

- Seth Godin

In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything.

- Peter Thiel

If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong—yes, even that you know is wrong—isn’t it better to begin by saying: Well, now, look. I thought otherwise, but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong, I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.” There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.

- Dale Carnegie

The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.

- Yoda

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

- Dale Carnegie

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If you don’t cut off negative information it will depress you. Step out of the natural and say, This may be impossible with men, but I know with God all things are possible.

- Joel Olsteen

So long as I can stay mentally alert – inquiring, curious – I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don’t want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I’m just not ready to stop, to die.

- Rupert Murdoch

For me, it’s a purity thing about the joke itself. It’s a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that’s a legitimate item you have there. For me, it’s nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It’s just not what I’m in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.

- Jerry Seinfeld

If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, let’s assume one week, someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self.

- Timothy Ferriss

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.

- Jack Welch

Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken.

- Donald Trump

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

- Joel Olsteen

You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.

- Sam Rayburn

Well, it’s the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?

- Russell Simmons

Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you’ll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it’s twice the efficiency of a Prius.

- Elon Musk

Too many companies think they want to do a video blog to sell merchandise, but if you turn your site into QVC, you lose. I have an audience that trusts me. It’s about building a global brand – not selling four more bottles of Pinot Grigio.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them…let them be your friends.

- Winston Churchill

Canada sets aside 36 percent of their visas for people with skills they think their country needs. We set aside six percent. We educate the doctors, and then don’t give ’em a green card.

- Michael Bloomberg

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

- Jerry Seinfeld

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.

- Steve Jobs

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

We are making these changes at a time when we are beginning to see signs that our business is stabilizing.

- John Chambers

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.

- Thomas Edison

For all of the most important things, the timing always sucks. Waiting for a good time to quit your job? The stars will never align and the traffic lights of life will never all be green at the same time. The universe doesn’t conspire against you, but it doesn’t go out of its way to line up the pins either. Conditions are never perfect. ‘Someday’ is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it ‘eventually’, just do it and correct course along the way.

- Timothy Ferriss

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

- Seth Godin

I will everyday as just a blow from my blade against a mighty oak…strike until it falls quote.

- Og Mandino

Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.

- Peter Thiel

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

Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.

- Seth Godin

Once Microsoft lost its grip on developers, it became only a matter of time before it lost its monopoly on operating systems.

- Ben Horowitz

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

- Jeff Bezos

Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.

- Howard Schultz

One of the things that I’m really proud of is that I have really good timing. It’s very easy for me to see what’s coming up and it’s no coincidence that I went headfirst into wine and then headfirst into new media – none at all.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.

- David Novak

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