It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.
- Dale Carnegie
That’s your opportunity–to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.
- Seth Godin
The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.
- George Soros
The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.
- Timothy Ferriss
A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy, so (he keeps) coming back, which pleases the shareholder.
- Herb Kelleher
I enjoy myself a lot but I derive my joy from working. I believe in hard work and one of my business success secret is hard work.
- Aliko Dangote
To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
- Peter Drucker
Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it’s easier, it scales and it’s profitable. But people don’t like it – we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.
- Seth Godin
That’s why it is important to enjoy the journey not just the destination. In this world, we will never arrive at a place where everything is perfect and we have no more challenges. As admirable as setting goals and reaching them maybe, you can’t get so focused on accomplishing your goals that you make the mistake of not enjoying where you are right now.
- Joel Olsteen
Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.
- Steve Martin
The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.
- Bill Gates
Write your life story as if it has already happened and live it out using your faith in yourself, and in the reality that you are embracing.
- Clay Clark
One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.
- Dale Carnegie
Cisco believes that the Internet, and related technologies, will be a key enabler for India to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation.
- John Chambers
On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
I’ve been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I’m getting really tired of Disneyland.
- Elon Musk
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
- Thomas Edison
Steve Jobs didn’t really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don’t deny that.
- Steve Wozniak
What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
- Reid Hoffman
I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.
- Jeff Bezos
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.
- Bill Gates
Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.
- Jack Ma
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
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
Let us work together to take Hong Kong to new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Our minds become magnetized with the dominating thoughts we hold in our minds and these magnets attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.
- Napoleon Hill
The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of poverty.
- Napoleon Hill
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you’ve got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don’t give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
- Jack Ma
I’m going to start these art museums that are basically converted homes, and I have one for modern art, and I have one for 19th century European art, and one for French impressionism. I’ve got Japanese.
- Larry Ellison
You don’t need a big close, as many sales reps believe. You risk losing your customer when you save all the good stuff for the end. Keep the customer actively involved throughout your presentation, and watch your results improve.
- Harvey Mackay
Never Cease to Proclaim in Fearless Tones the Great Principles of Freedom
- Winston Churchill
It’s Never Over ’till it’s over! Never Give Up! Never.
- Winston Churchill
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
- Warren Buffett
One of the greatest failures to execute is the lack of follow-up. This seems so obvious, yet very few companies place as much emphasis on accountability as they do on figuring what they want to get done. Steve Reinemund, who was president of Pizza Hut when I was head of marketing there, is the best I’ve ever seen on this front. He always carried a three-by-five note card in his shirt pocket. When saw something that needed to be done, he’d pull out the card and write it down. Like everyone else who witnessed this, I quickly realized that I had better write down the same things because he’d surely be on me until they got done. Steve got results everywhere he went, whether it was as president of Pizzas Hut or Frito-Lay or chairman of PepsiCo, because he made a point of following up. People often lose track of what they’ve talked about in meetings of what they promised to do, but when you write it down, you won’t forget it.
- David Novak
If a man’s heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.
- Dale Carnegie
Don’t solicit feedback on your product, your idea, or your business just for validation purposes. Be really careful about that. You want to tell the people that can help move your idea forward. But if you’re just looking to your friend, coworker, husband, wife, for validation, be careful. Because out of love… a lot of people will express some concerns, and it can stop a lot of multi-million dollar ideas right in their tracks.
- Sara Blakely
The problem we have with America is that you come over here and want to make a deal. We meet you and want to form a relationship from which we can make a deal. We meet you and want to form a relationship from which we can make many deals. Most importantly and the basis of everything is that we have a relationship where we honor and trust each other.
- Akio Morita
If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying.
- Joel Olsteen
You will never change what you tolerate.
- Joel Olsteen
If the United States wants access to Chinese, Indian or Vietnamese markets, we must get access to theirs. U.S. protectionism is very subtle but it is very much there.
- Azim Premji
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
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
- Colin Powell
If you don’t plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.
- Zig Ziglar
How many companies have you encountered that articulate a clear ideology at the start of the company, yet cannot articulate a clear idea of what products to make?
- James C. Collins
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
- Timothy Ferriss
Contrary to popular belief, the price of real estate does go down on occasion.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal. The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.
- Seth Godin
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
You can achieve difficult things, but you can’t achieve the impossible.
- Peter Thiel
More than trends, consumers need functionality. Everything needs an element of fashion, but that’s more like a spice.
- Tadashi Yanai
If you don’t agree with the core principles, which are the premise of that compromise, then you have to have what I call principled confrontation. And so that is the thing that we do that I think can rub some people the wrong way.
- Travis Kalanick
As CEO, you should have an opinion on absolutely everything. You should have an opinion on every forecast, every product plan, every presentation, and even every comment. Let people know what you think. If you like someone’s comment, give her the feedback. If you disagree, give her the feedback. Say what you think. Express yourself.
- Ben Horowitz
I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.
- Zig Ziglar
The basic problem with the computer in business is not that computer technicians do not understand the managers’ needs. It is that the managers do not take the time and trouble to think through their needs and to communicate them to the computer people.6 How the computer people satisfy the needs of the manager is their business. What the needs are is the manager’s business. To expect the computer people to define the information needs of the managers is abdication.
- Peter Drucker
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked, leadership is defined by results not attributes.
- Peter Drucker
[In January 2011] There are so many features Twitter could build. There’s so many features that Square can build. But there is only one or two going to bring us to the next level.
- Jack Dorsey
Whenever I go on a ride, I’m always thinking of what’s wrong with the thing and how it can be improved.
- Walt Disney
As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice.
- Seth Godin
If you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
- James C. Collins
So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.
- Reed Hastings
Nobody wanted to gamble on that first Wal-Mart. I think Bud put in 3 percent, and Don Whitaker – whom I had hired to manage the store from TG&Y store out in Abilene, Texas, and I had to put up 95 percent of the dollars. Helen and I had to sign all the notes along with me, and her statement allowed us to borrow more than I could alone. We pledges houses and property, everything we had.. But in those days we were always borrowed to the hilt. We were about to go into the discount business for real now. And from the time those doggone Wal-Marts opened until almost today, it has been a little challenging.
- Sam Walton
You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.
- Winston Churchill
The foundation of the Germanic system was blood and kin.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t care about revenues.
- Jack Ma
Never forget that people are your greatest asset.
- John Maxwell
I’m afraid Japanese people tend to collective hysteria.
- Tadashi Yanai
I like definitive things.
- Jerry Seinfeld
People around the world, they want the authentic Starbucks experience.
- Howard Schultz
The Effective Executive itself is not a book on what people at the top do or should do. It is addressed to everyone who, as a knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization
- Peter Drucker
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
- Henry Ford
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
Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.
- Ray Dalio
That was a great day in my life! Your time is too valuable to worry about pleasing everyone else or making them happy. I know people who spend more time worrying about what others think about them than they do focusing on their own dreams and goals. You’ve got to get free from that.
- Joel Olsteen
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
- Sun Tzu
I loved doing ‘Pennies from Heaven.’ Because you have to understand that I’d been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don’t think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
- Steve Martin
Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it’s the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers. And once they arrive at Goldman, they find that even inside finance, everything is indefinite. It’s still optimistic—you wouldn’t play in the markets if you expected to lose—but the fundamental tenet is that the market is random; you can’t know anything specific or substantive; diversification becomes supremely important.
- Peter Thiel
My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
- Jeff Bezos
Ill Health (though not taking care of one’s body).
- Napoleon Hill
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
- John D. Rockefeller
Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.
- Ben Horowitz
Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.
- Seth Godin
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
- Seth Godin
Leading, not following We’ve been trained to follow. In fact, the very nature of training has following built right into it. We follow instructions. We follow the rules. We follow the leader. The challenge in a six-billion person world is that we don’t have a shortage of followers. Followers are easy to find, and the tools for compliance are more powerful (but less useful) than ever. Now the economy is demanding leaders. Human beings who can engage in what it really means to be a person—to forge connections, to see a path and to make a difference.
- Seth Godin
I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.
- Wang Jianlin
China has set its cultural industries as pillar industries.
- Wang Jianlin
You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.
- Warren Buffett
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
Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.
- Elon Musk
When I hung in, he saw character, and that was the end of it. Later, it was funny to watch him hazing other guys the same way – funny after you’d been through the cycle.
- Phil Knight
You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.
- Dale Carnegie
Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.
- Tadashi Yanai
Play by the rules, but be ferocious.
- Phil Knight
I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.
- Jack Ma
Politicians make decisions in favor of their interest groups or their supporters back in their hometowns.
- Tadashi Yanai
No genuine leader is ever too busy to do anything which may be required of him in his capacity as leader. When a man, whether he is a leader of followers, admits he is too busy to change his plans, or to give attention to any emergency, he admits his inefficiency. The successful leader must be the master of all details connected with his position.
- Napoleon Hill
Today, and I’m very strongly against tax increases.
- Donald Trump
The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know.
- Seth Godin
