Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we’re just trying to accomplish something.
- Thomas Edison
Notable Quotables
Humor is always a risky business.
- Phil Knight
I’ve run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over. I’ve had that happen to me, and I’ve seen it happen to other people. I find it fascinating.
- Steve Martin
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I would always be studying a map.
- Jack Dorsey
If you really believe that you’re making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets, why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools, bring down crime, build affordable housing, clean the streets – not to have a fair fight.
- Michael Bloomberg
If your temper is aroused and you tell ’em a thing or two, you will have a fine time unloading your feelings. But what about the other fellow? Will he share your pleasure? Will your belligerent tones, your hostile attitude, make it easy for him to agree with you? If you come at me with your fists doubled, said Wood row Wilson, I think I can promise you that mine will double as fast as yours; but if you come to me and say, ‘Let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if we differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ from one another, just what the points at issue are,’ we will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only have the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together.
- Dale Carnegie
Most of the reason we don’t do things is because we’re afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not going to do things in my life because of fear.
- Sara Blakely
Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.
- Sam Walton
When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years.
- Howard Schultz
You can be a control freak only when you have weak people around you.
- Ronald Perelman
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
We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, … We have just completed a very successful management transition and I’ve never been more confident about the company’s future.
- Jack Welch
You can be passionate about anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care … We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end … Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.
- Winston Churchill
The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure.
- Winston Churchill
Money is like manure, its only good if you spread it around.
- Winston Churchill
They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. Rather they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.
- Peter Drucker
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.
- Siddhartha Gautama
The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion – others pray in church. It’s a banality, but you don’t possess art, it possesses you. It’s like falling in love.
- Francois Pinault
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter Drucker
I feel that people I trusted – I don’t know who, on what level – have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.
- Rupert Murdoch
It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.
- Winston Churchill
If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.
- Richard Branson
Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash. How’s that for incentive to be effective and efficient?
- Timothy Ferriss
Darwin Smith stands as a classic example of what we came to call a Level 5 leader—an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will.
- James C. Collins
Everybody says they want to be free. Take the train off the tracks and it’s free-but it can’t go anywhere.
- Zig Ziglar
No company has a culture, every company is a culture.
- Peter Thiel
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.’ That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So, naturally, we are glad to see them.
- Dale Carnegie
Innovation comes from long-term thinking and iterative execution.
- Reid Hoffman
Most people have never thought through how they’re going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I’d work in the store all day, then take off around closing and drive that windy road over the Mississippi River, and then into Tennessee with an old homemade trailer I had hitched to my car. I’d stuff that car and trailer with whatever I could get good deals on – usually on soft lines, ladies panties and nylons, men’s shirts and I’d bring them back, price them low and just blow that stuff out of the store.
- Sam Walton
This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!
- Winston Churchill
Policosanol: 20–25 mg Alpha-lipoic acid: 100–300 mg (I take 300 mg with each meal, but some people experience acid reflux symptoms with more than 100 mg) Green tea flavanols (decaffeinated with at least 325 mg EGCG): 325 mg Garlic extract: 200 mg
- Timothy Ferriss
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
- Steve Jobs
I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple. Jesus didn’t go around condemning people.
- Joel Olsteen
The pent-up demand for the good life in China is extraordinary.
- Stephen Wynn
A broad trend I’m completely obsessed with is mobile commerce. Like completely. I’m completely convinced that everybody’s going to be buying from their mobile devices. Whoever can claim that space or be in that space, I’m very interested in.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We all prospect, and don’t even know we’re doing it. When you start the dating process, you are actually prospecting for the person you want to marry. When you’re interviewing employees, you are prospecting for someone who will best fit your needs.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Just as ships are built to sail the seas and planes to fly the heavens, so is man created for a purpose.
- Zig Ziglar
Even if we are right and the other person is definitely wrong, we only destroy ego by causing someone to lose face. The legendary French aviation pioneer and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote: I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.
- Dale Carnegie
I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
When you walk in God’s favor, His blessings will chase you down and overtake you.
- Joel Olsteen
I am easily satisfied with the very best.
- Winston Churchill
Your faith is very important. I have done the math, and you are going to be dead a whole lot longer that you will be alive.
- Zig Ziglar
The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.
- Peter Drucker
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
The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.
- John C. Maxwell
The interview process takes twelve to fifteen hoursof your team’s time. This process is expensive for your team, so you should vet people in advance. A technique I use is to email the references and say, Rate this person one to ten. No one’s going to reply a five or a three by email; that means they hate the candidate. Call me is usually the response for a sub-seven rating. At the same time, nobody is going to reply with a ten. What you’re really looking for is a bunch of eights and nines. This is an exceptionally quick referencing system when you’re trying to triage a list.
- Reid Hoffman
Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
- Dale Carnegie
Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person your best shot, but don’t hang around long enough for his/her bad attitude to pull you down. Instead, surround yourself with optimistic people.
- Zig Ziglar
When I first joined the Irvine Company, I realized that less than 11,000 acres were designated as open space in the original master plan, and that just didn’t seem adequate to me. So, I began the lengthy process working with public and community organizations to add more open space.
- Donald Bren
Napoleon was criticized for giving toys” to war-hardened veterans, and Napoleon replied, Men are ruled by toys.
- Dale Carnegie
Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] … by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks … to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.
- Winston Churchill
There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.
- Richard Branson
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
If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered – the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.
- Larry Page
Put time limits on each item. Set an agenda for your meeting and your trips to Disney World.
- David Robinson
In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
- Lawrence Bossidy
As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.
- Zig Ziglar
About two-thirds of us work between forty-five and fifty-five hours per week.
- Thomas J Stanley
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
When you have no one to answer to, vendetta as investment strategy is as legitimate as anything.
- Carl Icahn
They said it was only a ground shark, but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.
- Winston Churchill
What most people want in a leader is something that’s very difficult to find: we want someone who listens…The secret, Reagan’s secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said – they’re less focused on whether or not you do what they said.
- Seth Godin
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.
- John C. Maxwell
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
It’s absolutely true we set out to expose Microsoft’s covert activities, I feel very good about what we did … Maybe our investigation organization may have done things unsavory, but it’s not illegal. We got the truth out.
- Larry Ellison
Luke: What’s in there? Yoda: Only what you take with you.
- Yoda
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?
- Elon Musk
Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.
- Timothy Ferriss
I do think – as self-serving as it sounds – that I was the right person, given the very, very strong headwind we had from the economy and our own issues, to come back and rewrite the future of the company.
- Howard Schultz
It’s not about size, it’s about your ability to make a difference. At that small size, collaboration is all the more important.
- John Chambers
Every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.
- Peter Thiel
It has always been my belief that a man should do his best, regardless of how much he receives for his services, or the number of people he may be serving or the class of people served.
- Napoleon Hill
It is not enough that we do our best, sometimes we must do what is required.
- Winston Churchill
You are here to enrich.
- Woodrow Wilson
By altering our attitudes we can alter our lives.
- Zig Ziglar
If you can dream it, you can do it. -Walt Disney
- Walt Disney
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
Rap helps me connect emotionally.
- Ben Horowitz
It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculate a Web site’s importance.
- Larry Page
Civilization is meant to be easy…
- Jack Dorsey
In order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going. America can’t have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations – can’t have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It’s got to have a vision.
- Jack Welch
By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.
- Bill Gates
The Center for Disease Control started out as the malaria war control board based in Atlanta. Partly because the head of Coke had some people out to his plantation, and they got infected with malaria, and partly ’cause all the military recruits were coming down and having a higher fatality rate from malaria while training than in the field.
- Bill Gates
Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.
- Ben Horowitz
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
- Dale Carnegie
If into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find.
- Yoda
I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.
- Ray Kroc
I’ve always taught that a poor economy is the best opportunity for salespeople because the naysayers and grumblers have already given up, leaving more territory, more opportunities to be successful than in a good economy when virtually all salespeople are out there, giving it their best.
- Zig Ziglar
I love doing a lot of things I’m told I can’t do. I think that’s what drives me and keeps me awake every day.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows? Maybe just like that little baby, putting your arm around somebody and letting him or her know that you care can help begin to heal that person’s heart. Maybe you can give a rescuing hug.
- Joel Olsteen
Ideas are cheap. The difficult part is finding the team to execute them.
- Raymond Kwok
If I could drink only one wine, it would be Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
