Notable Quotables

There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?

- John Chambers

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Passion isn’t project-specific. It’s people-specific.

- Seth Godin

Foreign politicians don’t have resources – or limited resources. It’s useless dealing with them.

- Wang Jianlin

You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.

- Joel Olsteen

I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.

- Elon Musk

Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.

- Steve Ballmer

What is Oracle? It’s people. We rely on our HR department to build this organization, to help find those people, to help grow those people.

- Larry Ellison

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

There are a few other things that I built when I was at Harvard that were kind of smaller versions of Facebook. One such program was this program called Match. People could enter the different courses that they were taking, and see what other courses would be correlated with the courses they are taking.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I think it’s a problem that we don’t have more companies like Facebook. It shouldn’t be the only company that’s doing this well.

- Peter Thiel

It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.

- James C. Collins

We vote for a presidential candidate without saying, “Why not run the country for a month and then we’ll see . .

- Seth Godin

I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.

- Steve Martin

By my count, more business leaders have failed and derailed because of arrogance than any other character flaw.

- Harvey Mackay

Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity. The things that we were forced to learn and do, because we started out underfinanced and undercapitalized in these remote small communities, contributed mightily to the way we’ve grown as a company. Had we been capitalized, or had we been the offshoot of a large corporation the way I wanted to be, we might not ever have tried…

- Sam Walton

Well, sometimes you just don’t like somebody.

- Henry Ford

Cold steel and discipline and the slight capital surplus necessary to move and organise armies constituted the sole defences.

- Winston Churchill

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

- Bill Gates

Encouragement and hope are the two most powerful qualities any person can provide to others.

- Zig Ziglar

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

- Herbert Simon

I like winning. There’s also a certain joy in it. I feel fulfilled by it.

- Carl Icahn

The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.

- Winston Churchill

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

- Steve Jobs

The guerrilla is a cheapskate. She knows that every dollar allocated to marketing is essential, and she doesn’t plan to waste a penny. But she’s not foolish. When necessary, she hires the best designers, media planners, and experts in the business—she realizes that the best is often the cheapest in the end.

- Jay Conrad Levinson

The real question for me is, do people have the tools that they need in order to make those decisions well? And I think that it’s actually really important that Facebook continually makes it easier and easier to make those decisions… If people feel like they don’t have control over how they’re sharing things, then we’re failing them.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Youths of today aspire to be like me but they want to achieve it overnight. It’s not going to work.

- Aliko Dangote

We often hear military experts inculcate the doctrine of giving priority to the decisive theatre. There is a lot in this. But in war this principle, like all others, is governed by facts and circumstances; otherwise strategy would be too easy. It would become a drill-book and not an art; it would depend upon rules and not on an instructed and fortunate judgment of the proportions of an ever-changing scene.

- Winston Churchill

Well, we have to provide the world’s best schools. We certainly don’t have them, but that’s our objective.

- Michael Bloomberg

Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path.

- Seth Godin

This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.

- John Chambers

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

- Henry Ford

Wealth won’t give you satisfaction, creating a good product that’s well received by users is what matters most.

- Ma Huateng

I’d always try to remind managers at every level that they had to share my passion for developing people.

- Jack Welch

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.

- Steve Jobs

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.

- Elon Musk

Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.

- Tim Westergren

Well, yes, I’ve fired a lot of people. Generally I like other people to fire, because it’s always a lousy task. But I have fired many people.

- Donald Trump

The first three-and-a-half months of calendar year 2001 have been extremely challenging for many of us in high-tech.

- John Chambers

My son is now an ‘entrepreneur.’ That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job

- Ted Turner

The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window.

- Herb Kelleher

People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important.

- Timothy Ferriss

I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.

- Vagit Alekperov

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us the latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Jobs and businesses are just vehicles to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

- Clay Clark

I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.

- Ronald Perelman

I am a former sabre fencer and fenced as part of the Uzbek republic team.

- Alisher Usmanov

My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….

- Thomas Edison

People easily confuse skill with personality.

- Jerry Vass

Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing. But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love.

- Dale Carnegie

Good intentions aren’t enough. People have good intentions when they set a goal to do something, but then they miss a deadline or other milestone.

- Harvey Mackay

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

- Jerry Seinfeld

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

- Seth Godin

Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.

- Jerry Seinfeld

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

- Napoleon Hill

If you go out looking for friends, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.

- Zig Ziglar

There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, ‘Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?

- Sara Blakely

In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.

- Bill Gates

All companies of any size have to continue to push to make sure you get the right leaders, the right team, the right people to be fast acting, and fast moving in the marketplace. We’ve got great leaders, and we continue to attract and promote great new leaders.

- Steve Ballmer

You can’t explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don’t have to. It’s that simple.

- Phil Knight

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

- Napoleon Hill

Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.

- Jack Dorsey

I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.

- Brian Tracy

I DECLARE God is going before me making crooked places straight. He has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities and solutions to problems I haven’t had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment, can stop His plan. What he promised will come to pass.

- Joel Olsteen

Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.

- Jack Welch

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

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

- David Nilssen

Rich dad said to Mike and me, I am so rich because I’ve made more financial mistakes than most people. Each time I made a mistake, I learned something new. In the business world, that something new is often called experience.

- Robert Kiyosaki

If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.

- Timothy Ferriss

Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.

- James C. Collins

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

A smart, motivational good manager can work what some outsiders call Wal-Mart magic with folks everywhere. It make take more time. You may have to sift through more people, and you may have to become more skilled with your hiring practices. But I truly believe that people anywhere will eventually respond to the same sorts of motivational techniques we use, if they are treated right and are given the opportunities to be properly trained. If you are good to people, and fair with them, and demanding of them, they will eventually decide you’re on their side.

- Sam Walton

If you count E-mail, I’m on the Internet all day, every day.

- Bill Gates

The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by.

- Seth Godin

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

- Peter Drucker

The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.

- Peter Thiel

In the early days, anybody with a glue pot and a pair of scissors could get into the shoe business…

- Phil Knight

A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.

- Winston Churchill

PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE my young padawan.

- Yoda

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

- Winston Churchill

Comparing Apple to Netflix is like comparing apples to oranges, especially if the oranges made so many mistakes that people stopped eating oranges and just went back to Blockbuster.

- Reed Hastings

I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.

- Timothy Ferriss

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