Notable Quotables

The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.

- Walt Disney

The lawyers I worked with ran a valuable business, and they were impressive individuals one by one. But the relationships between them were oddly thin. They spent all day together, but few of them seemed to have much to say to each other outside the office. Why work with a group of people who don’t even like each other? Many seem to think it’s a sacrifice necessary for making money. But taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it’s not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together.

- Peter Thiel

Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.

- Peter Thiel

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

- Peter Drucker

Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.

- George Soros

There are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.

- Mark Twain

As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.

- Peter Thiel

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

You’d believe that a patient with hypertension, if you know you have hypertension or diabetes, you would take your drug every day. The compliance rate is more like 30% or 40%. Which means that 60% of patients don’t take their drugs, and they actually go into these crises, end up in the hospital.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends.

- Andrew Carnegie

I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.

- Og Mandino

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?

- Brian Tracy

In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.

- Dale Carnegie

I said one time that it shouldn’t matter who counts to 30 for filling up retail prescriptions, and I caught a lot of grief for that, and probably rightfully so. But that wasn’t the point. The point is that putting pills in a bottle doesn’t change health outcomes. It doesn’t matter whether you get your pills at Walgreen or CVS or Kroger. The reality is: What happens with that process? Who is taking care of that patient? It’s not counting pills and sticking them in bottles. That doesn’t add any value.

- George Paz

I recall that Harry made a trip to San Bernardino about the time we were really starting to roll, and Dick McDonald asked him what he thought the future of McDonald’s would be. Harry told him that one day this company would be bigger than F. W. Woolworth. Dick really did a double take at that. He told me later, ‘I thought you had a genuine nut on your hands, Ray.’ But Harry knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he knew how to get there.

- Ray Kroc

Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away, and move on to something that’s more productive.

- Donald Trump

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

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

- Richard Branson

It is exactly because we are a city that embraces freedom, that welcomes everyone and encourages their dreams, that New York remains on the front lines in the war on terror.

- Michael Bloomberg

Psychological despotism, whether enlightened or not, is gross misuse of psychology. The main purpose of psychology is to acquire insight into, and mastery of, oneself. Not for nothing were what we now call the behavioral sciences originally called the moral sciences and “Know thyself” their main precept. To use psychology to control, dominate, and manipulate others is self-destructive abuse of knowledge. It is also a particularly repugnant form of tyranny.

- Peter Drucker

Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to ‘gamble’ on an unknown.

- Zig Ziglar

It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.

- Bill Gates

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

- Peter Thiel

(Wright is) a visionary with a great strategic mind, and he’s a strong business leader with outstanding people skills, … He’s a terrific guy and will be a key force in guiding the company’s future growth.

- Jack Welch

It encourages you to focus on your work and the generosity that comes from interacting with (and helping) your community.

- 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

Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new.

- Peter Thiel

It’s unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.

- Bill Gates

If you don’t have peace, it isn’t because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.

- John C. Maxwell

Good talkers often choose to become sales professionals. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that selling well means listening well.

- Jerry Vass

Business in Russia was not being done like in the West, with contracts. In Russia, hundreds of millions of dollars were going forward and backward by word of mouth.

- David Reuben

I am optimistic that we can achieve a better future. It’s not true that the Philippines is a hopeless case.

- Henry Sy

Well, I am a Republican, and I would run as a Republican. And I have a lot of confidence in the Republican Party. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the president. I think what’s happening to this country is unbelievably bad. We’re no longer a respected country.

- Donald Trump

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

- Warren Buffett

Salvation and Christ’s love is a gift. You don’t earn it. You’ve got to receive that gift.

- Joel Olsteen

And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.

- Peter Drucker

I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.

- Walt Disney

No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like.

- Napoleon Hill

Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.

- James C. Collins

If you give a good thing to the world, then over time your karma will be good, and you’ll receive good.

- Russell Simmons

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

From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.

- Elon Musk

Figure out what the impact areas are in your business.

- Chet Holmes

Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.

- Reid Hoffman

When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.

- Jack Welch

After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.

- Jim Rohn

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.

- Wayne Gretzky

$1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.

- Timothy Ferriss

I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….

- Thomas Edison

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.

- Joel Olsteen

Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.

- Jeff Bezos

Use every customer point of contact to weave stories about who you are and what your brand stands for.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.

- Seth Godin

God wants to use you in spite of your weaknesses. Of God chose to use perfect people only, He’d have no one to use.

- Joel Olsteen

Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation.

- Travis Kalanick

Most of the fans have ideas about their perfect phone. But many of them can’t do it because building a phone is tough. So they would give us feedback about the features that they think should be included in our next model. And if we incorporated that in our new phone, they will share the good news with their friends.

- Lei Jun

The arrival of the 21st century precedes the onslaught of turmoil and tsunami. The business environment has become unpredictable and the global economy even harsher…

- Cheng Yu-tung

Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust.

- Howard Schultz

I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.

- Michael Gerber

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

- Bill Gates

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

- Timothy Ferriss

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

- Joel Olsteen

Indeed, the real question is not, Why greatness?” but What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, Why should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough?” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work.

- James C. Collins

The entrepreneur community, there’s a certain kind of founder, they call them a ‘lone wolf.’ I probably fit in that category.

- Travis Kalanick

The best—perhaps even the only—way to predict the future is to create it.

- Peter Drucker

Crash diets don’t work.They don’t work for losing weight, they don’t work for making sales quota and they don’t work for getting and keeping a job.The reason they don’t work has nothing to do with what’s on the list of things to be done (or consumed). No, the reason they don’t work is that they don’t change habits, and habits are where our lives and careers and bodies are made.

- Seth Godin

Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.

- Ray Dalio

And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…(Yoda pinches Luke’s shoulder)…not this crude matter. (a sweeping gesture) You must feel the Force around you. (gesturing) Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!

- Yoda

The only time to buy these is on a day with no ‘y’ in it.

- Warren Buffett

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

As the Readers’s Digest once said: ‘Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.

- Dale Carnegie

When my sister and I came along, my father’s political life was completely over. He ran for president the year I was born. So that was the end of it. He had been congressman first, then governor, before all that. So when we came along, he was running the Dayton newspaper.

- Anne Cox Chambers

The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.

- Thomas Edison

You may have made a lot of wrong choices, but you’ve also made a lot of choices that were right. Focus on your good qualities. Focus on your victories. Get off the treadmill of guilt.

- Joel Olsteen

There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.

- Richard Branson

Science is the pursuit of pure truth, and the systematizing of it.

- P.T. Barnum

Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

I am thinking about launching a wine website where there is a deal and the crowd can dictate how cheap it can get.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

It was definitely kind of surprising to see us come out and run the ball because we usually like to pass to start the game and put up some quick points. But tonight, we had real good balance offensively. We ran and passed the ball well, which kept them off balance all night.

- Jack Taylor

The freedom of the new kind of work (which most of us do, most of the time) is that the tasks are vague and difficult to measure. We can waste an hour surfing the ’Net because no one knows if surfing the ’Net is going to help us make progress or connections. This freedom is great, because it means no one is looking over your shoulder; no one is using a stopwatch on you. This freedom is a pox, because it’s an opening for the resistance. Freedom like this makes it easy to hide, easy to find excuses, easy to do very little.

- Seth Godin

We are interested in others when they are interested in us.

- Dale Carnegie

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

Leadership is the ability to get someone to follow you even if only out of curiosity.

- Ben Horowitz

There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in.

- Seth Godin

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