Companies are like countries in this way. Bad decisions made early on—if you choose the wrong partners or hire the wrong people, for example—are very hard to correct after they are made. It may take a crisis on the order of bankruptcy before anybody will even try to correct them. As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Every time you resist temptation you are winning for your children.
- Joel Olsteen
No company has a culture, every company is a culture.
- Peter Thiel
You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.
- Seth Godin
Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible.
- Donald Trump
You can make positive deposits in your own economy every day by reading and listening to powerful, positive, life-changing content and by associating with encouraging and hope-building people.
- Zig Ziglar
It will change the way we work, live, play and learn.
- John Chambers
There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
- Jerry Seinfeld
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it’s about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it’s less than one ton. It’s an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.
- Bill Gates
The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty.
- Francois Pinault
The most obvious market segment in email-based payments was the millions of emigrants still using Western Union to wire money to their families back home. Our product made that effortless, but the transactions were too infrequent.
- Peter Thiel
Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
- Steve Martin
When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Dell will participate in tablets and all sorts of client devices. Our main business is helping our customers secure, protect their data and access it from any device they want to.
- Michael Dell
If you can get better at your job, you should be an active member of LinkedIn, because LinkedIn should be connecting you to the information, insights and people to be more effective.
- Reid Hoffman
Many brilliant people believe that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains, ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.
- Peter Drucker
Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.
- Winston Churchill
You were not created to just get by with an average, unrewarding, or unfulfilling life. God created you to leave your mark on this generation.
- Joel Olsteen
A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.
- Winston Churchill
To Admiral Cunningham it was against all tradition to abandon the Army in such a crisis. He declared, “It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.
- Winston Churchill
Respect people’s wishes.
- Jack Dorsey
Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
- Zig Ziglar
The Internet revolution will determine which companies survive and which get left behind, … Increasingly, the Internet is recognized as the key driver in our global economy.
- John Chambers
The better at communicating you are, and the more people you communicate to, the better your cash flow will be.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success.
- Zig Ziglar
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
What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.
- Oprah Winfrey
Weak desires bring weak results.
- Napoleon Hill
A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.15 Smile. It increases your face value.
- Dale Carnegie
Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Certainly the caffeine in coffee, whether it’s Starbucks or generic coffee, is somewhat of a stimulant. But if you drink it in moderation, which I think four or five cups a day is, you’re fine.
- Howard Schultz
This is indicative of how quickly CEO caution can put the foot on the brake.
- John Chambers
If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!
- Michael Gerber
I love being the underdog.
- Howard Schultz
I’d rather have 1% of 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own.
- John D. Rockefeller
I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.
- Elon Musk
There’s been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that’s already legal, you’ll never get it.
- Travis Kalanick
We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend.
- Peter Thiel
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: 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. But I take my task with buoyancy and hope. Come, then, let us go forward with our united strenght.
- Winston Churchill
Friends are made my many acts and lost by only one.
- Harvey Mackay
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
And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.
- Winston Churchill
This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.
- Winston Churchill
If you have the character to hang in there when its tough, you will develop or acquire every other characteristic necessary to WIN in the game of life.
- Zig Ziglar
This country provides opportunities. If you don’t take advantage of them, it’s your own fault.
- Sam Huff
After all God doesn’t want you to be an imitation of someone else. You should be the original you were created to be. There is an anointing on your life, an empowerment. Not to be somebody else, but to be you. If you let people squeeze you into their molds and you bow down to their pressure to try to please your critics, it not only takes away your uniqueness, but it also lessens the favor on your life.
- Joel Olsteen
In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity, or you can pick yourself up and say, ‘Listen, I have to be responsible for myself.’
- Howard Schultz
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.
- Jim Collins
But I know newspapers. They have the first amendment and they can tell any lie knowing it’s a lie and they’re protected if the person’s famous or it’s a company.
- Steve Wozniak
The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening carefully to customers; tracking competitors’ actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technological change.
- Clayton M. Christensen
And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
- Romans 8:28
greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
- James C. Collins
We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.
- Ray Kroc
In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.
- Jeff Bezos
I’ve always had that gratitude that I had the opportunity to pursue my potential. So I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver. We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time.
- Sara Blakely
Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas.
- Seth Godin
If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.
- Zig Ziglar
In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.
- Elon Musk
So, the judgment that you have to make is (a) is this market really much bigger (more than an order of magnitude) than has been exploited to date? and (b) are we going to be number one? If the answer to either (a) or (b) is no, then you should consider selling.
- Ben Horowitz
Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it.
- Bill Gates
How will your new job differ from your current job?
- Ben Horowitz
Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.
- Seth Godin
A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.
- Seth Godin
Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
- Peter Thiel
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.
- Ben Horowitz
I think our leadership team is a highly accountable leadership team.
- Steve Ballmer
Mr. Morgan buys his partners. I grow my own.
- Andrew Carnegie
“Everyone will think it’s stupid!””Everyone says it’s impossible.”Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong.
- Seth Godin
I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.
- Joel Olsteen
A smart manager will establish a culture of gratitude. Expand the appreciative attitude to suppliers, vendors, delivery people, and of course, customers.
- Harvey Mackay
If you talk about Cabernet and Merlot-based value between $10 and $25, I will tell you that Bordeaux is the best value in the world.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
My parents got one bedroom, my three sisters got the other bedroom, and my brother and I made do with a rollaway in the kitchen.
- David Green
Your business plan is fluid, not concrete. Once you a build plan, the market place validates what works and what does not. Be flexible and evolve your business strategy.
- David Nilssen
Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs.
- P.T. Barnum
Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. I challenge you to look at whatever you read or watched today and tell me that it wasn’t at least two of the four. I read the front-page headlines through.
- Timothy Ferriss
To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.
- Bill Gates
My dad is like a cactus – introverted and tough. I’m a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He’s my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga.
- Mark Zuckerberg
There is more treasure in books then in all pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.
- Walt Disney
You can’t build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.
- Rupert Murdoch
The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination, between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals, between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition, between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity, between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard.
- Winston Churchill
A bunch of high-IQ people with the wrong kind of ambition won’t work.
- Ben Horowitz
When you import goods, you import poverty and you export jobs to other parts of the globe where such goods are produced.
- Aliko Dangote
Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.
- Winston Churchill
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet – how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
- Jeff Bezos
If we don’t end war, war will end us.
- Winston Churchill
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
- Og Mandino
Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by the actual doing of it
- Aristotle
Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.
- Peter Thiel
I’ve come too far to stop now. I may be knocked down, but I’m not knocked out. I’m going to get back up again. I know I’m a victor, not a victim.
- Joel Olsteen
The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on… through each generation. Because we have no social security, the overseas Chinese habit is not to spend a lot and to make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
Thank God for what He’s already done in your life. Thank Him for the victories in your past. Thank Him for how far He’s already brought you. And then take it one step further. Thank Him in advance for the victories He has planned ahead for you. Thank Him for the new doors He’s opening. Thank Him for the situations He’s turning around. Thank Him for the favor He has in your future. If you do that, you will feel a new joy rising up on the inside. You will feel your faith increase. You won’t have that victim mentality; you will have a victor mentality. One thing I’ve learned is you cannot praise and stay defeated at the same time. You cannot give God thanks and stay down and discouraged. Put on the Garment of Praise.
- Joel Olsteen
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford
The minute there’s a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.
- Seth Godin
You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.
- Seth Godin
We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.
- Walt Disney
