What’s important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn’t satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn’t right, or if the offerings aren’t right, it’s the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don’t get hung up on zeros.
- Jack Welch
Notable Quotables
Your workforce is your most valuable asset. The knowledge and skills they have represent the fuel that drives the engine of business – and you can leverage that knowledge.
- Harvey Mackay
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London
Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O.
- Ben Horowitz
I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm than a man who knows everything.
- John D. Rockefeller
I’m pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don’t see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I’m petrified of being wrong.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I loved doing ‘Pennies from Heaven.’ Because you have to understand that I’d been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don’t think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
- Steve Martin
Good product managers crisply define the target, the “what” (as opposed to the “how”), and manage the delivery of the “what.” Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out “how.” Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally. Good product managers don’t give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally.
- Ben Horowitz
I hate the photo shoots. I hate all that stuff.
- Reed Hastings
Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
- Dale Carnegie
This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do.
- Joel Olsteen
With the intensity of the first three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, fans have been treated to exciting finishes each race. Fans can expect nothing less than the same for the John Deere 200.
- Ed Clark
Get mad, then get over it.
- Colin Powell
To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
- W. Clement Stone
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Be frank. Reporters know when your story is all hype and no substance. Be honest with them.
- Michael Levine
Plan and execute your first failure so that you no longer have to fear it.
- John C. Maxwell
When Steve Jobs was at NeXT, he was really getting his head together and taking control and becoming the person that, when he came back to Apple, you know, he was ready to really run the company and keep control of things and watch what was being done and develop new products secretly that were really incredibly great.
- Steve Wozniak
Definiteness of purpose is the starting point from which one must begin. He recognized, too that definiteness of purpose of takes on animation, life, and power when backed by a burning desire to translate that purpose into its material equivalent. – Napoleon Hill (on leadership and vision)
- Napoleon Hill
What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.
- Winston Churchill
A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.
- P.T. Barnum
The men who have succeeded are men who have chosen one line and stuck to it.
- Andrew Carnegie
Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
- Reid Hoffman
I’m not as interested in what you make as I am in what you’re passionate about. What business are you really in?
- Howard Schultz
America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.
- Elon Musk
Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.
- John C. Maxwell
I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don’t hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.
- Zig Ziglar
I read the paper every day and the Bible every day, that way I know what both sides are up to.
- Zig Ziglar
Actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles.
- Peter Thiel
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward
Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.
- John C. Maxwell
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
The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.
- Bill Gates
It is always important that we have transparency, that we have shareholder protection. Then again, I think it is important that there are not so many regulations that management can’t make a decision without asking a lawyer whether he can do it.
- Michael Otto
Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
- Napoleon Hill
Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‘tap-dancing to work.
- Bill Gates
For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.
- Winston Churchill
He has always been like this. His mind works ten times faster than everybody’s else’s. I mean he just gets going and stays two or three jumps ahead, and he’s quick to go with what’s on his mind. If he gets something in his mind that needs to be done – regardless of what else might have been planned – the new idea takes priority, and it has to be done now. Everybody has their angenda already scheduled, and then bang! He just calls a meeting on something. (on CEO leadership and management with speed)
- Loretta Boss Parker
Rockefeller’s supreme insight was that he could solve the oil industry’s problems by solving the railroad’s problems at the same time, creating a double cartel in oil and rails. One of Rockefeller’s strength in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and then crafted mutually advanteous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper, albeit in away that fortified his own position.
- Ron Chernow
A decade and a half ago an ‘Esquire’ magazine reporter, noting our advertising played up the heros as aspects of great atheletes asked the question, who is your hero? My answer was simple. My college track coach and partner, Bill Bowerman. He had won four national championships, coached more sub four minute milers than anyone when he retired. He was the 1972 Olympic coach yet he insisted he was not a track coach. He was a professor of competitive response.
- Phil Knight
I’m not looking for a legacy, and you’ll never shut up the critics. I’ve been around 50 years. When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.
- Rupert Murdoch
I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.
- Andrew Carnegie
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
- Henry Ford
The life of a startup is full of ups and downs, an emotional roller coaster ride that you can’t quite imagine if you’ve spent your whole career in a corporation.
- Harvey Mackay
Whatever your critics say about you has no bearing on your worth. You are a child of the Most High God. The Creator of the universe breathed life into you. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. You’ve been crowned with favor. God has already equipped and empowered you with everything you need. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to play up to people, trying to win over all your critics, or trying to prove to someone that you’re important.
- Joel Olsteen
What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
- Napoleon Hill
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- Walt Disney
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- John C. Maxwell
We, we – as I say, ,we go in and shake up other industries and I think, you know, we do it differently and I think that indutjrises are not quite the same as a result of Virgin attacking the market.
- Richard Branson
Doubts [can] be swept away only by deeds.
- Winston Churchill
The connected economy of ideas demands that we contribute initiative. And yet we resist, because our lizard brain, the one that lives in fear, relentlessly exaggerates the cost of being wrong.
- Seth Godin
We understand the most important thing we do is market the product…
- Phil Knight
Fortune favors the bold.
- Virgil
Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart.
- Joel Olsteen
The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
- Zig Ziglar
Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.
- Walt Disney
It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players. A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.
- Steve Jobs
Leadership isn’t something that people hand to you. … [i]t’s a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that’s something we can teach.
- Seth Godin
Pretty much everything will come to him who hustles while he waits. I believe that restlessness is discontent, and discontent is merely the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
- Thomas Edison
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
Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.
- Henry Ford
Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee.
- Howard Schultz
The response to the Starbucks brand has been phenomenal in our international markets.
- Howard Schultz
No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
- Peter Drucker
I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.
- Walt Disney
You can’t just let nature run wild.
- Walt Disney
A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed.
- Seth Godin
I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.
- Joel Olsteen
The other buzzword that epitomizes a bias toward substitution is “big data.” Today’s companies have an insatiable appetite for data, mistakenly believing that more data always creates more value. But big data is usually dumb data. Computers can find patterns that elude humans, but they don’t know how to compare patterns from different sources or how to interpret complex behaviors. Actionable insights can only come from a human analyst (or the kind of generalized artificial intelligence that exists only in science fiction).
- Peter Thiel
Early must I rise. Leave now you must!
- Yoda
Intemperance.
- Napoleon Hill
The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.
- Bill Gates
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
I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
- Elon Musk
It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.
- Joel Olsteen
But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.
- Dale Carnegie
Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.
- Ben Horowitz
People suck at following advice. Even the most effective people in the world are terrible at it. There are two reasons: 1. Most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a nice-to-have, not a must-have. There has been no Harajuku Moment. 2. There are no reminders. No consistent tracking = no awareness = no behavioral change. Consistent tracking, even if you have no knowledge of fat-loss or exercise, will often beat advice from world-class trainers.
- Timothy Ferriss
My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
- Jeff Bezos
Experience has taught me,” says Sam Wood, that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren’t.
- Dale Carnegie
If you want to reap financial blessings, you have to sow financially.
- Joel Olsteen
No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.
- Harvey Mackay
You simply cannot manage people to better performance if you do not give candid, consistent feedback through a system that is loaded with integrity
- Jack Welch
My wife watches me like a hawk.
- Carl Icahn
Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain.
- Yoda
Many brilliant people believe that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains, ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.
- Peter Drucker
Most men go to their graves with their dreams still inside them.
- Zig Ziglar
The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.
- Tony Hsieh
Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.
- Dr. John G. Hibben
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
- George Soros
But no parties could live under such labels as Petitioners and Abhorrers. Instead of naming themselves they named each other. The term “Whig” had described a sour, bigoted, canting, money-grubbing Scots Presbyterian. Irish Papist bandits ravaging estates and manor-houses had been called “Tories”.
- Winston Churchill
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.
- Dale Carnegie
Advertising works most effectively when it’s in line with what people are already trying to do. And people are trying to communicate in a certain way on Facebook – they share information with their friends, they learn about what their friends are doing – so there’s really a whole new opportunity for a new type of advertising model within that.
- Mark Zuckerberg
If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.
- John C. Maxwell
This presents more of a challenge, given our current size and market leadership.
- John Chambers
Make it easy to believe.
- Seth Godin
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Keep a good attitude and do the right thing even when it’s hard. When you do that you are passing the test. And God promises you your marked moments are on their way.
- Joel Olsteen
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
