My organization, my colleagues and I, are paid to run hotels in good times and fair times. We’re professionals. That’s what we do. I don’t give a damn about the short-term market implications.
- Stephen Wynn
Notable Quotables
In the beginning, I thought mobile search was not much different from Web search. It’s just a smaller screen, a slower speed; it’s all the bad things. When I thought about mobile Internet, it’s all the disadvantages.
- Robin Li
I run a bunch of charities and I say this line to people: ‘I am somebody who has always been helped.’ A little thing like that can make people believe it.
- Russell Simmons
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Edison
And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thoughts and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged in. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line; to lead in it. Adopt every improvement, have the best machinery and know the most about it.
- Andrew Carnegie
Bury your mistakes.
- Rupert Murdoch
My father died during open-heart surgery on March 29 of my senior year in college. I was getting set to go to law school. I remember sitting in the waiting room when the doctor walked in. I said to myself, The worst possible thing just happened. What will you do?
- Stephen Wynn
The secret to 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.
- Seth Godin
If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the where withal to do what it takes to make your product work.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts … genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation … the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality …though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]
- Winston Churchill
If you look upon chronic diseases as an epidemic, and you see that the chronically ill are the poor, then you see that this issue of the uninsured is not really a moral but a financial obligation to change health care.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it’s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.
- George Soros
I think that society has to be careful not to shift all of its resources to the elderly versus the young.
- Bill Gates
A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.
- Zig Ziglar
My parents were ordinary people, we lived in a small apartment.
- Viktor Vekselberg
I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver.
- Sara Blakely
Once the habit is ingrained and you become the starter, the center of the circle, you will find more and more things to notice, to instigate, and to initiate. Momentum builds and you get better at generating it. If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you’ll wake up with a list. And as you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised. What might be considered a board-level decision at one of your competitors’ companies gets done as a matter of course. What might be reserved for a manager’s intervention gets handled at the customer level, saving you time and money (and generating customer joy). This incredibly prosaic idea, the very simple act of initiating, is actually profoundly transformative. Forward motion is a defensible business asset.
- Seth Godin
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
You should evaluate your organizational design on a regular basis and gather the information that you need to decide without tipping people off to what you plan to do. Once you decide, you should immediately execute the reorg: Don’t leave time for leaks and lobbying.
- Ben Horowitz
Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do.
- Seth Godin
The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.
- Bill Gates
should go out each day expecting good things, anticipating God’s blessings and favor. God has planned all of your days for good, not evil.
- Joel Olsteen
WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.
- James C. Collins
Bottom line: God will not allow any person to keep you from your destiny. They may be bigger, stronger, or more powerful, but God knows how to shift things around and get you to where you’re supposed to be.
- Joel Olsteen
I don’t generally read a lot of fiction.
- Bill Gates
Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.
- Bill Gates
You build trust with others each time you choose integrity over image, truth over convenience, or honor over personal gain.
- John C. Maxwell
Revolution has values, revolution has purpose. Revolution has direction. Revolution has leaders. Revolution looks at the intersection ahead and pushes people to do the right thing. And it doesn’t always have to be loud. It doesn’t always have to be violent. It’s just as powerful in it’s stillness.
- Jack Dorsey
The only meat I eat is from animals I’ve killed myself.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.
- Bill Gates
Maintain ‘baseball cards’ and/or ‘believability matrixes’ for your people. Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.
- Seth Godin
Trust your instincts
- Estée Lauder
Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
- James C. Collins
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
- Dale Carnegie
Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
- Michael Bloomberg
Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.
- Seth Godin
It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.
- Timothy Ferriss
Do I take criticism of Starbucks personally? Of course I do.
- Howard Schultz
If I could drink only one wine, it would be Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius.
- Peter Thiel
Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.
- Napoleon Hill
When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.
- Zig Ziglar
I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.
- Elon Musk
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
It is impossible to divide the interest of a country and a company that works on its soil.
- Vagit Alekperov
The time will never be right to start. Today is your day. Study successful people, do what they do, and you too will be successful.
- Clay Clark
The fastest and best way to build value for your business is to build your people
- Clay Clark
You don’t have to start from scratch to have a massive impact on the world.
- Jack Dorsey
I’ll trade glib for common sense any day.
- Stephen Wynn
What’s important at the grocery store is just as important in engines or medical systems. If the customer isn’t satisfied, if the stuff is getting stale, if the shelf isn’t right, or if the offerings aren’t right, it’s the same thing. You manage it like a small organization. You don’t get hung up on zeros.
- Jack Welch
Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
- Bill Gates
We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.
- Thomas Edison
Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.
- Wayne Gretzky
In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren’t management books out there that could help me.
- Ben Horowitz
A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest… Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.
- Jack Welch
So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.
- Steve Ballmer
We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.
- Winston Churchill
I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
- Elon Musk
The result of information overload is usually distraction, and it dilutes your focus and takes you off your game.
- Zig Ziglar
If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.
- Jack Welch
What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don’t actually improve their lives.
- Jeff Bezos
Improvement is to invent something completely new.
- Peter Thiel
The Habit of Indiscriminate Spending.
- Napoleon Hill
Sales is a simple conversation where I ask you questions and I relate to your answers.
- Bryan Smith
The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
- Bill Gates
Success must never be measured by how much money you have.
- Zig Ziglar
You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.
- Jerry Seinfeld
He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom.
- Winston Churchill
It’s lonely at the top, so you had better take someone with you…and it’s lonely at the top, so you had better know why you are there.
- Napoleon Hill
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
- Steve Martin
Encourage yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
He climbs highest who helps another up.
- Zig Ziglar
Superstition of Prejudice.
- Napoleon Hill
If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: ‘Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?’ From what I’ve seen, it’s not likely.
- Timothy Ferriss
The number of units that were sold by the Group including those for which the Group acted as sales agent summed up to 2,960 residential units, amounting to approximately HK$9.2 billion in total sales proceeds.
- Lee Shau Kee
This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules.
- Peter Thiel
Keep a good attitude and do the right thing even when it’s hard. When you do that you are passing the test. And God promises you your marked moments are on their way.
- Joel Olsteen
Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.
- Vida D. Scudder
The story drives the mission.
- Jim Cathcart
Feel the force!
- Yoda
One of my biggest personal holdings is Rotana. That company has a very dominant force in the Middle East. It has around 45% of all the movie industry and around 75% of all the music.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I’d learned the hard way that when hiring executives, one should follow Colin Powell’s instructions and hire for strength rather than lack of weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake- you can’t learn anything from being perfect.
- Adam Osborne
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.
- Jim Collins
I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
- Steve Martin
A lie cannot live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth. People who feel like they’re being listened to feel accepted and appreciated. They feel like they’re being taken seriously and what they say really matters.
- Harvey Mackay
The lesson for business is that we need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme; we need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism.
- Peter Thiel
A smart manager will establish a culture of gratitude. Expand the appreciative attitude to suppliers, vendors, delivery people, and of course, customers.
- Harvey Mackay
For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.
- Jeff Bezos
The most frightful of all spectacles is the strength of the civilization without its mercy.
- Winston Churchill
Your workforce is your most valuable asset. The knowledge and skills they have represent the fuel that drives the engine of business – and you can leverage that knowledge.
- Harvey Mackay
You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don’t seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.
- Henry Ford
Do what you want to do. Do what you like to do.
- Lei Jun
Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.
- Jerry Vass
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.
- Tom Landry
When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.
- Howard Schultz
When you’ve got a strong enough why, you can always find the how.
- Zig Ziglar
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
- Thomas Edison
