Notable Quotables

You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.

- Larry Ellison

I want to sit with 80- and 90-year-old people more than anyone. They have played this game before. Not one of them has told me, ‘I wish I had more money.’

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.

- Jack Welch

Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.

- Yoda

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

- John C. Maxwell

I want to help people to help themselves, which is much more valuable for both sides than just making a donation. By training the child of a farmer you compound the value of that dollar spent on training since that child will now help their parents. This is the multiplier effect. There’s no point in just feeding them or just giving them money.

- Lee Shau Kee

In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.

- James C. Collins

Bush’s war in Iraq has done untold damage to the United States. It has impaired our military power and undermined the morale of our armed forces. Our troops were trained to project overwhelming power. They were not trained for occupation duties.

- George Soros

Thank your opponents sincerely for their interest. Anyone who takes the time to disagree with you is interested in the same things you are. Think of them as people who really want to help you, and you may turn your opponents into friends.

- Dale Carnegie

If the United States has to accept the U.N. resolutions, we have to generalize it across the board. We can’t just pick and choose where we impose and accept the U.N. resolution and don’t accept them. U.N. Resolution 242 is very clear and states very clearly that Israel has to go back to the borders of the pre-war of 1967.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

New ideas can be gained through reviewing past experience. Inspirations and thoughts may even come from failures in the past. This is because modern and advanced technologies as well as new knowledge are able to make up the shortcomings of and add value to old methods.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

- Henry Ford

The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.

- Ray Dalio

We saw – we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.

- Larry Ellison

It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.

- Sara Blakely

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

My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.

- Steve Jobs

Failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

- Sara Blakely

Game-playing is more fun when it’s virtual because you’re more successful. … in reality, only one person gets to be LeBron

- Larry Ellison

Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.

- Howard Schultz

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

- Henry Ford

My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.

- Mukesh Ambani

Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.

- Peter Thiel

A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation, a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity, but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.

- Winston Churchill

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

American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.

- Russell Simmons

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

- Winston Churchill

Don’t go in and tell somebody else how to run their business.

- Carl Icahn

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

- Jack Canfield

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

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

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.

- Elon Musk

We are fastidious investors. On average, we investnearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year. Most of us invest at least 15 percent. Seventy-nine percent of us have at least one account with a brokerage company. But we make our own investment decisions.

- Thomas J Stanley

To lead a meaningful life, one must build trust with others. To enjoy peace, a nation must win the confidence and support of its people. To achieve stable growth, an enterprise must live up to its conviction.

- Cheng Yu-tung

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

- John D. Rockefeller

Yes, they broke the law, but we can’t deport them. Let’s get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it – they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need.

- Michael Bloomberg

The Arab League tells us to go in and take out Qaddafi. We’ve spent billions of dollars already with respect to the Arab League. Billions of dollars, because they told us to do it. Why aren’t they paying for it? They don’t like Qaddafi, Qaddafi’s been a terrible thorn in their side.

- Donald Trump

In the next decade, I see Spanx going worldwide. Everywhere. No butt left behind. It’s going to be all over the world and it’s going to be an aspirational brand that transcends categories. There’s so many things we can improve upon and make better.

- Sara Blakely

I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.

- Larry Ellison

For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.

- Richard Branson

The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.

- Bill Gates

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

- Winston Churchill

If you concentrate on what you have, you will always end up having more. If you focus on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.

- Oprah Winfrey

I was the only westerner to succeed in a place that’s like a toilet, and you always come out of a toilet with a smell.

- David Reuben

E – Edge, ability to make tough yes and no decisions

- Jack Welch

I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.

- Jack Ma

The thing about fashion – it’s like ducks going quack, quack quack. It’s being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.

- Sara Blakely

Starbucks has a role and a meaningful relationship with people that is not only about the coffee.

- Howard Schultz

Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that’s associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.

- Bill Gates

Middle-income countries are the biggest users of GMOs. Places like Brazil.”

- Bill Gates

Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.

- Bill Gates

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.

- Napoleon Hill

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family that would have killed for each other – and we still are. x

- Richard Branson

VaynerMedia filters the world how humans interact. This is how people are going to make buying decisions.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.

- Steve Martin

Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.

- Ben Horowitz

I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.

- Steve Martin

When you own your choices, you own their consequences.

- Jack Welch

The story about GE that hasn’t been told is the value of an informal place. I think it’s a big thought. I don’t think people have ever figured out that being informal is a big deal.

- Jack Welch

What products in the marketplace are similar? Who else in the marketplace is doing this successfully? How big is the market?

- Jack Nadel

Mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view. About building a business that works not because of you but without you.

- Michael Gerber

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

- John C. Maxwell

In business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.

- Peter Thiel

Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.

- Seth Godin

No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.

- Peter Drucker

My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.

- Elon Musk

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

- John C. Maxwell

Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass – the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that – so they’re kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not.

- Bill Gates

Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice – fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.

- Sergey Brin

Well, it’s very clear that the Arab population is rising because they’d like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

If you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.

- David Nilssen

The choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.

- Oprah Winfrey

The Successful leader must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power and power calls for cooperation.

- Napoleon Hill

That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.

- Peter Thiel

I just wanted to be in show business. I didn’t care if I was going to be an actor or a magician or what. Comedy was a point of the least resistance, really. And on the simplest level, I loved comedy.

- Steve Martin

You’re got to worry about what’s coming up to stay ahead of the curve…

- Phil Knight

Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.

- Herb Kelleher

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

- Joel Olsteen

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean, if a few drops of ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

- Mahatma Gandhi

It was a big momentum deal, so when the bottom comes out from under it, you have to go back to the well and start the whole thing.

- Travis Kalanick

Strive to be the very best you can be. Run the race against yourself and not the guy in the other lane. The reason I say that is, as long as you give it 110% you are going to succeed. But as long as you’re trying to beat the guy over there, you are worried about him; you’re not worrying about how you’ve got to perform

- Herschel Walker

If you want to increase your success rate, double your rate of failure.

- Thomas J Watson

And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.

- John D. Rockefeller

The person who dumps garbage into your mind will do you considerably more harm than the person who dumps garbage on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your possibilities and lowers your expectations.

- Zig Ziglar

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