Notable Quotables

The great thing about a computer notebook is that no matter how much you stuff into it, it doesn’t get bigger or heavier.

- Bill Gates

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

- Joel Olsteen

Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed, A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden of weeds.

- John D. Rockefeller

I cut the feet out of my control top pantyhose to wear under these white pants and that was the ah-ha moment that started Spanx. My own butt was my own inspiration!

- Sara Blakely

I’m a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

- Carl Icahn

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

- Bill Gates

Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.

- Ben Horowitz

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

- Winston Churchill

I’ve got some good days, I’ve got some bad. (But my) game has definitely improved.

- Ed Clark

Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures

- Sam Walton

The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it’s allowed is silos of interest.

- Seth Godin

For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.

- Timothy Ferriss

To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership—not only on the movie set where I learned it, but everywhere.

- Ronald Reagan

Although DJ Clay may never sleep, all of his dreams come true!

- Blake Fraley

I think they are fine. I don’t think you have a choice between iPad models so that’s just saying that the iPad is good … that’s a very different statement (and contrary to the implication) that, if I chose not to upgrade now, less than a year after my last upgrade, then I, Woz, am saying that the new Apple iPad is bad.

- Steve Wozniak

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.

- Dale Carnegie

I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing….

- Thomas Edison

Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people.

- Dee Hock

Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.

- Andrew Carnegie

We have an ideal location for a couple of organic wineries on the island. But the reintroduction of commercial agriculture to Lanai is 100% dependent upon increasing the available water on the island. So we’re going to use solar energy to convert seawater to fresh water.

- Larry Ellison

I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.

- Ray Dalio

EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.

- Jack Ma

Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone needs to be appreciated. Every person needs that blessing.

- Joel Olsteen

I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work. And I taught myself how to program so I can understand how the city works.

- Jack Dorsey

Selling is the highest paid profession in the world. Our leaders in business, politics, research and the arts are all great sales people or they have great sales people on their payrolls.

- Jerry Vass

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 might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can.

- Peter Thiel

Leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum.

- Peter Thiel

[On signing up Michael Jordan in 1984 when he was just 21 years old] We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.

- Phil Knight

The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts.

- James C. Collins

I was the night foreman of a galvanizing factory, which is hot and smelly and dirty and miserable.

- Ronald Perelman

It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.

- Dale Carnegie

I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I’m not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.

- Howard Schultz

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

- Warren Buffett

For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.

- Winston Churchill

Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it’s cute but boring and expensive.

- P.J. O'Rourke

I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.

- Elon Musk

There is only one excuse for a speaker’s asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.

- Dale Carnegie

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

I’ve viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening work ethic.

- Will Smith

Every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.

- Peter Thiel

Developing a customer who loves the business so much that they become an unpaid and passionate marketer for the company.

- Clay Clark

Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile!

- Og Mandino

Experience has proven that the best educated people are often those who are known as self-made, or self-educated. It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists no so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and peristently applied. Men are paid nor merely for tha they know, but more particulary for what they do with that which they know.

- Napoleon Hill

People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.

- Joel Olsteen

I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.

- Jerry Seinfeld

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

- Jeff Bezos

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

- Napoleon Hill

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

Look, the whole world wants to modernize, and when you look to what they mean by modernizing, they mean Americanize. Would a modern Greek prefer to live in Orange County than Piraeus? Yes. Absolutely.

- Rupert Murdoch

If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.

- Peter Thiel

The financial world has long been missing immediacy, transparency, and approachability and this is what’s needed now.

- Jack Dorsey

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

- Walt Disney

The real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.

- Mark Zuckerberg

It is not your aptitude but your ATTITUDE that decides your altitude in life.

- Zig Ziglar

I don’t think it’s a big deal to show opera glasses to someone searching for binoculars that you somehow infer is a woman. But you don’t want to pop up ads for H.I.V. drugs on someone’s page, because you inferred they have H.I.V., when their boss is standing there looking at their computer

- Sergey Brin

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.

- Winston Churchill

Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.

- Steve Ballmer

We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.

- Phil Knight

So you need two professions: the one you have studied all this time, and your other profession the profession of persuasion that allows you to make good use of all those years of education, practice and dues-paying.

- Jerry Vass

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

- Warren Buffett

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.

- Bill Gates

But at the Lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgments under a searching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

- Winston Churchill

Starting means you’re going to finish. If it doesn’t ship, you’ve failed. You haven’t poked the box if the box doesn’t realize it’s been poked. To merely start without finishing is just boasting, or stalling, or a waste of time. I have no patience at all for people who believe they are doing their best work but are hiding it from the market. If you don’t ship, you actually haven’t started anything at all. At some point, your work has to intersect with the market. At some point, you need feedback as to whether or not it worked. Otherwise, it’s merely a hobby.

- Seth Godin

We have set the course for the future and are very happy about a successful generational change at the top of the company.

- Stefan Quandt

Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business.

- Dale Carnegie

In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.

- Yoda

I’m not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you’re in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places.

- Timothy Ferriss

To live your best life now, you must learn to trust God’s timing, you may not think He’s working, but you can be sure that right now, behind the scenes, God is arranging all the pieces to come together to work out His plan for your life.

- Joel Olsteen

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

- Mark Twain

In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.

- Robert Kiyosaki

I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It’s seeing what other people don’t see And pursuing that vision.

- Howard Schultz

I think my whole life, because of where I came from, I had a fear of failure.

- Howard Schultz

The success we are now taking in is the natural outcome of our adhesion to our principles to start with: an enterprise shall take care of the people’s livelihood, through thick and thin; an enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.

- Cheng Yu-tung

God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel You have everything.

- Joel Olsteen

I believe that success can be measured in the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have.

- Timothy Ferriss

Everyone has the potential, but it isn’t accomplished overnight. It requires perseverance.

- John Maxwell

It’s God’s will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It’s God’s will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt.

- Joel Olsteen

I understood the importance of hiring for strength rather than for lack of weakness, and I understood the meaning of “fit.”

- Ben Horowitz

Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you’re doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they’re hiding out in the comfortable zone. When your uncomfortable actions lead to success, the organization rewards you and brings you back for more.

- Seth Godin

I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.

- Thomas Edison

The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event.

- Elon Musk

Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they’re hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that my not always make sense, so that’s why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them.

- George Foreman

Anything you’re interested in the world – whether it be Charlie Rose or JetBlue or a public figure or your local coffee shop – they’re on Twitter and broadcasting what is interesting to them.

- Jack Dorsey

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