Notable Quotables

I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!

- Larry Page

Well, you know, News Corp is the only real media global – that has a global presence that’s involved in TV production, in movies, in publishing, in newspapers, digital media, et cetera. So for a company like that to function, clearly it does not depend only on Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

You may have heard of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. There’s another day you might want to know about: Giving Tuesday. The idea is pretty straightforward. On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, shoppers take a break from their gift-buying and donate what they can to charity.

- Bill Gates

Every person has a longing to be significant, to make a contribution, to be a part of something noble and purposeful.

- John C. Maxwell

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

- Bill Gates

I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.

- Steve Wozniak

I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.

- Bill Gates

The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Don’t think small when you pray. God has a way to bring your dreams to pass if you’ll dare to be bold enough to ask.

- Joel Olsteen

It has been almost a decade since the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Hong Kong has gone through both good times and bad times. During the past decade, Hong Kong has undoubtedly played an increasingly important role in the economic development of China.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Too many people are living below their privileges. It’s because their vision has been clouded by past mistakes, disappointments, or how they were raised. They don’t feel like royalty. They don’t think they could be successful and really accomplish what God has put in their hearts. But I believe today, as I’m speaking faith into you, something is happening on the inside.

- Joel Olsteen

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

- Joel Olsteen

The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.

- Wang Jianlin

Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one.

- Peter Thiel

Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.

- Arthur Golden

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.

- Winston Churchill

The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That’s approaching evil.

- Jeff Bezos

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. Why are we such fools—such tragic fools?

- Dale Carnegie

When SAP, and, specifically Hasso Plattner, said they’re going to build this in-memory database and compete with Oracle, I said. God, get me the name of that pharmacist, they must be on drugs.

- Larry Ellison

Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, – it largely increases the product.

- P.T. Barnum

Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.

- Zig Ziglar

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

If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.

- Winston Churchill

What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.

- Donald Trump

In a position to be more accommodating. There are some lights at the end of the tunnel. If political leaders in Europe can put things in order, things will be better. These days, much relies on politics.

- Lee Shau Kee

I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time.

- Ben Horowitz

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

- Warren Buffett

I hate politics. What they say and what they do is completely different.

- Tadashi Yanai

No matter what any of us has—and how grateful we are for what we have—no one has it all.

- Sheryl Sandberg

I have a particular relationship with Vinod Khosla because he’s got a lot of very interesting science-based energy startups.

- Bill Gates

It’s insane to me to ask anybody to be what they’re not. Know what you know the best, love the most. That’s always going to be the answer to the thing that you have the best shot at winning at.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.

- Zig Ziglar

Americans believe cotton is best, but we’ve invented new fabrics that will change your lifestyle.

- Tadashi Yanai

When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, ‘Let’s get a better board’ can be helpful.

- Ben Horowitz

If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.

- Jack Welch

With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.

- Zig Ziglar

I think the advantage of democracy is that it makes us less dependent on a group of leaders.

- Azim Premji

The reason I was able to grow my business was that every day, after producing 30 minutes of wine television, I spent 15 hours a day replying to every single person’s e-mail and every single person’s Twitter @ reply.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

I am concerned about any attrition in customer traffic at Starbucks, but I don’t want to use the economy, commodity prices or consumer confidence as an excuse. We must maintain a value proposition to our customers as well as differentiate the Starbucks Experience. That is the key.

- Howard Schultz

When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.

- Bill Gates

A person’s life is over in 50, 100 years. But a company lives on through the people it is composed of, and SoftBank group has to survive even after I’m gone.

- Masayoshi Son

This isn’t stealing this is standing on the shoulders of giants.

- David Novak

The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.

- Seth Godin

They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.

- Jack Dorsey

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.

- Seth Godin

NO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OR EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK PROCESS Your company now employs twenty-five people and you know that you should formalize the performance management process, but you don’t want to pay the price. You worry that doing so will make it feel like a “big company.” Moreover, you do not want your employees to be offended by the feedback, because you can’t afford to lose anyone right now. And people are happy, so why rock the boat? Why not take on a little management debt? The first noticeable payments will be due when somebody performs below expectations: CEO: “He was good when we hired him; what happened?” Manager: “He’s not doing the things that we need him to do.” CEO: “Did we clearly tell him that?” Manager: “Maybe not clearly . . .” However, the larger payment will be a silent tax. Companies execute well when everybody is on the same page and everybody is constantly improving. In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally across either dimension. Directions with no corrections will seem fuzzy and obtuse. People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of. The ultimate price you will pay for not giving feedback: systematically crappy company performance.

- Ben Horowitz

IN A NUTSHELL FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.

- Dale Carnegie

I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything – which as you know, always leads to something – cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.

- Jerry Seinfeld

How fortunate it was for the world that when these great trials came upon it there was a generation that terror could not conquer and brutal violence could not enslave.

- Winston Churchill

People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.

- Walt Disney

Indeed, the biggest winners in the world are those who answer yes to the question, “Am I living the life I choose?”

- Jack Welch

I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.

- Walt Disney

The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.

- Herb Kelleher

It’s better to have a hundred people that love you, than a million people that sort of like you.

- Paul Graham

In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

- Clayton M. Christensen

Anyone who prefers owning a part of your company to being paid in cash reveals a preference for the long term and a commitment to increasing your company’s value in the future. Equity can’t create perfect incentives, but it’s the best way for a founder to keep everyone in the company broadly aligned.

- Peter Thiel

If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.

- Muhammad Ali

(In reference to one of his first advertising sales mentors Howard Davis)… He was 6 foot 4 with silver hair…the quintessential advertising guy. He had a glass topped desk in his office because, as he put it, he like to be able to look down and see his Guccis while he worked. Howard taught me to get things done. He was very smart but he was also an animal. He exuded power and he could be very intimidating, and he knew how to use his power to get results while still managing to be a good guy. Howard’s personal style was very different from my own, but what he did teach me was how to create a sense of urgency, how to motivate performance by getting everyone’s heart pounding.

- David Novak

Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.

- Jack Taylor

If you’re a person struggling to eat and stay healthy, you might have heard about Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali, but you’ll never have heard of Bill Gates.

- Bill Gates

You cannot get into business for the fashion of it.

- Azim Premji

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

- Bill Gates

By spring of ’98, each company’s stock had more than quadrupled. Skeptics questioned earnings and revenue multiples higher than those for any non-internet company. It was easy to conclude that the market had gone crazy.

- Peter Thiel

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

- Thomas Carlyle

The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.

- Bill Gates

There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.

- Elon Musk

…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day… If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased… I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do… I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. …Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.

- Thomas Edison

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.

- Oprah Winfrey

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

- Mark Twain

When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmmm?

- Yoda

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

- Joel Olsteen

I don’t like to look back, and I’m always worried about the next thing rather than resting on the laurels or the degradations of the last thing.

- Steve Martin

It never hurts a fool to appear before an audience, for his capacity is not a capacity for feeling.

- Dale Carnegie

Role models who push us to exceed our limits, physical training that removes our spare tires, and risks that expand our sphere of comfortable action are all examples of eustress—stress that is healthful and the stimulus for growth.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

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

[In January 2011] We take a cut of every transaction. So we charge 2.75 percent and 15 cents on the transaction. Which we then pay the credit card companies out of. So the user only has to pay that 2.75 percent. They don’t pay any credit card fees. They don’t have to have a setup charged. They don’t have to pay for the hardware or even the software.

- Jack Dorsey

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn’t want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

- Bill Gates

Many of America’s and New York’s sons and daughters are around the world fighting for the freedoms that the Statue of Liberty stands for.

- Michael Bloomberg

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