People with the right kind of ambition would not likely use the word play to describe their effort to work as a team to build something substantial. Finally, people who use the “me” prism find it natural and obvious to speak in terms of “building out my résumé” while people who use the “team” prism find such phrases to be somewhat uncomfortable and awkward, because they clearly indicate an individual goal that is separate from the team goal.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
I would always be studying a map.
- Jack Dorsey
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
- Warren Buffett
Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.
- Oprah Winfrey
Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.
- Napoleon Hill
Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
- Peter Drucker
U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.
- Bill Gates
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
- Og Mandino
In business, just the opposite is often true; silence means dissent. Have you ever been in a meeting where you sense there is obvious disagreement, but the disagreement never really gets put on the table? This what I call the Slow No’s.
- David Novak
I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
Incineration does not equal human digestion, eating a fireplace log will not store the same number of calories as burning one will produce.
- Timothy Ferriss
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
- Warren Buffett
It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.
- Joel Olsteen
Bolsheviks create their own difficulties which they successfully overcame later.
- Winston Churchill
Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.
- Elon Musk
The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.
- Steve Martin
Same problem as every Hollywood studio: how can you reliably produce a constant stream of popular entertainment for a fickle audience? (Nobody knows.)
- Peter Thiel
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Failure to deliver on committments is, in the end, unacceptable.
- Jack Welch
The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.
- Jack Welch
The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
Become genuinely interested in other people.
- Dale Carnegie
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
There are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.
- Mark Twain
It’s not one of the enduring mysteries of all time. A motivated employee treats the customer well. A customer is happy so they’ll keep coming back, which pleases the shareholder. It’s just the way it works.
- Herb Kelleher
The relationships we have with people are extremely important to success on and off the job.
- Zig Ziglar
The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.
- Nolan Bushnell
A valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.
- Peter Thiel
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
In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming found that a mysterious antibacterial fungus had grown on a petri dish he’d forgotten to cover in his laboratory: he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since. Modern drug discovery aims to amplify Fleming’s serendipitous circumstances a millionfold: pharmaceutical companies search through combinations of molecular compounds at random, hoping to find a hit.
- Peter Thiel
Today is life – the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
- Dale Carnegie
Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy
- Chris Humphrey
Many people who come to me with a business plan or to ask for money look like a mice that has been chewed by a cat. No matter how good their plan, their physical appearance is a limiting factor. In public speaking, it is said that body language accounts for approximately 55% of communication. Voice tone 35%, and words 10%. If you remember President Kennedy, JFK, he had 100% working for him and it physically attractive as he was, we can all do our best to dress and groom appropriately to make our points stronger.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.
- Sara Blakely
The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.
- Bill Gates
Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life’ (Prov. 4:23 KJV).
- Joel Olsteen
We want to do a lot of stuff, we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I always knew I wanted to run a business someday.
- Michael Dell
The greatest decision of all time, as far as any American citizen is concerned was reached in Philadelphia, July 4th 1776, when 56 men signed their names to a document, which they well knew would bring freedom to all Americans, or leave every one of the fifty-six hanging from the gallows. On July 4th 1776 Thomas Jefferson stood before the Assembly and fearlessly read the most momentus Decision ever placed upon paper.
- Napoleon Hill
The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, but it does mean you stand up and say, ‘I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it. If you want me to do it with you, raise your hand.
- Seth Godin
Gold is a kind of mortar and offers a form of capital preservation. We’re still bullish about gold.
- Lee Shau Kee
Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.
- Seth Godin
The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can’t bit a target that you can’t see. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.
- Zig Ziglar
I believe that God has put gifts and talents and ability on the inside of every one of us. When you develop that and you believe in yourself and you believe that you’re a person of influence and a person of purpose, I believe you can rise up out of any situation.
- Joel Osteen
Nevertheless, in the first years of Standard Oil, Rockefeller regularly toured his facilities and was extremely inquisitive and observant, soaking up information and assiduously quizzing plant superintendants. In his pocket, he carried a little red notebook in which he jotted suggestions or improvements and always followed up on them. He knew the terror inspired by the little red book. More than once I have gone to luncheon with a number of our heads of departments and have seen the sweat out of on the foreheads for some of them when that little red notebook was pulled out.
- Ron Chernow
We were old sinners – but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore.
- Joel Olsteen
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Its obvious that we don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Edison
Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.
- Sergey Brin
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.
- Dale Carnegie
This marks the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year top-line growth for Cisco.
- John Chambers
Value and purpose are about understanding the specific benefits you will help people receive if they receive what you have for them.
- Zig Ziglar
I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy — a little boy!
- Dale Carnegie
Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.
- Yoda
Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.
- Stephen R. Covey
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
- Stephen R. Covey
Nothing happens until something is sold.
- Joe Ricketts
Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.
- Oprah Winfrey
Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.
- Zig Ziglar
If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.
- Ray Kroc
A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better.
- Seth Godin
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
- Warren Buffett
If my life has had a theme, I suppose it has been a typical American theme in that, for most of it, I have been looking for happiness and success.
- Zig Ziglar
You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.
- Gary Keller
Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.
- Ray Kroc
Think global, but start local.
- Jack Nadel
Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see.
- Winston Churchill
Above all, you want to create something you’re proud of. This has always been my philosophy of business. I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off not doing it.
- Richard Branson
Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, Napster’s then-teenage founders, credibly threatened to disrupt the powerful music recording industry in 1999. The next year, they made the cover of Time magazine. A year and a half after that, they ended up in bankruptcy court.
- Peter Thiel
Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.
- Seth Godin
Riches does not mean money. You can never have enough money. By following the principles of God he will provide you with what you need materially and internal committment.
- Ben Meinhardt
When commercializing disruptive technologies, they found or developed new markets that valued the attributes of the disruptive products, rather than search for a technological breakthrough so that the disruptive product could compete as a sustaining technology in mainstream markets.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I love building technology, I love programming. I love building teams. And I also love building beautiful things.
- Jack Dorsey
Weed out the bad fits right away
- Tony Hsieh
The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”
- Ben Horowitz
Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
- Winston Churchill
Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it: if you are sick you should not take it.
- Henry Ford
Our favorite holding period is forever.
- Warren Buffett
I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn’t even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.
- Sara Blakely
Time is your most precious asset.
- Robert Kiyosaki
We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend.
- Peter Thiel
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.
- Andrew Carnegie
You can expect what you inspect.
- W. Clement Stone
Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.
- John C. Maxwell
DOS is ugly and interferes with users’ experience.
- Bill Gates
By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: ‘John, I’d love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I’ve got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said ‘no’ yesterday. Gotta run!
- Timothy Ferriss
There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything and an optimist who says, Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway. Either way, nothing happens.
- Yvon Chouinard
We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
- Jack Welch
You will either look back in life and say, I wish I had, or, I’m glad I did.
- Zig Ziglar
People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.
- Peter Drucker
It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.
- Mark Cuban
Employees were invited to send complaints or suggestions directly to him and he always took an interest in their affairs. He was the best employer of his time, instituting hospitalization and retirement pensions. He was a fine boss if workers abided by the rules, but if they did something foolish, like show interest in a union, they promptly forfeited his sympathy. Rockefeller never acknowledged the legitamacy of organized labor, nor did he tolerate union organizers on his premises.
- Ron Chernow
If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.
- Elon Musk
There is no substitute for hard work.
- Thomas Edison
With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain market share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device. But a lot of those users are frustrated. They can’t type. They can’t create documents.
- Bill Gates
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
- Winston Churchill
If you don’t have a voice that forces you back to basics, you’re a dangerous person. Or to put it another way: You’re at risk, and the people with you are at risk. I’m not a daredevil. I don’t fly without a safety net.
- Stephen Wynn
The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.
- John C. Maxwell
