Notable Quotables

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

- Napoleon Hill

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.

- Phil Knight

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.

- Ben Horowitz

Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.

- Ray Dalio

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‘Didn’t you make that movie already?’ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

- Jerry Seinfeld

The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.

- Peter Thiel

I would hope that , where possible, the newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is some news that does more harm than good. The risk is that it threatens the commercial or industrial interests of our country.

- Serge Dassault

There are not many companies in China that dare to say in public, ‘We don’t offer bribes’, or companies that operate only by market rules.

- Wang Jianlin

Successful people have fear, successful people have doubts, and successful people have worries. They just don’t let these feelings stop them.

- T. Harv Eker

Maybe I was accepted to Harvard only because of my tennis skills, since I definitively had no great academic achievements. I was 17 and only thought about surfing and playing tennis. I had almost never left Rio de Janeiro and had never been to the United States.

- Jorge Paulo Lemann

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

- Dale Carnegie

I said a long time ago that Foursquare can make cities better. You have these augmented realities like Foursquare and Twitter and Facebook that provide these virtual nodes and instant feedback from anywhere, adding annotation around a physical places.

- Jack Dorsey

Without passion, you don’t have energy; without energy, you have nothing. Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.

- Donald Trump

When you walk in God’s favor, His blessings will chase you down and overtake you.

- Joel Olsteen

As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.

- Peter Thiel

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.

- Jeff Bezos

This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.

- Seth Godin

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.

- Oprah Winfrey

No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.

- Napoleon Hill

The question I ask myself like almost every day is, ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?’ … Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time.

- Mark Zuckerberg

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

- Winston Churchill

Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.

- Reed Hastings

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

- Winston Churchill

Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done.

- Peter Thiel

The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.

- Ben Horowitz

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

- Andrew Carnegie

Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors and it keeps us on our toes.

- Bill Gates

Leadership must wake up every day with the mission of Finding a Better Way Every Day…There are no modest revolutions…GE was a place where the people got up everyday to searching for a better way.

- Jack Welch

If you want to spend time saying this is cool, you’re going to get your ass kicked.

- Phil Knight

We’ve all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight. It’s a terrible sin. If you don’t make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn’t count.

- Jack Welch

A Carnegie or a Rockefeller or a James J. Hill or a Marshall Field accumulates a fortune through the applications of the same principles available to all of us, but we envy them and their wealth without ever thinking of studying their philosophy and applying it to ourselves. We look at a successful person in the hour of their triumph and wonder how they did it, but we overlook the importance of analyzing their methods. And we forget the price they had to pay in the careful, well-organized preparation that had to be made before they could reap the fruits of their efforts.

- Napoleon Hill

We just sort of factor all that information into the computer between the ears and come up with conclusions.

- Phil Knight

In K-12, almost everybody goes to local schools. Universities are a bit different because kids actually do pick the university. The bizarre thing, though, is that the merit of university is actually how good the students going in are: the SAT scores of the kids going in.

- Bill Gates

Praise is like sunlight to the warm human spirit; we cannot flower and grow without it. And yet, while most of us are only too ready to apply to others the cold wind of criticism, we are somehow reluctant to give our fellow the warm sunshine of praise.

- Dale Carnegie

A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see and who sees before others see.

- Leroy Eimes

You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.

- Jack Ma

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

The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities.

- Peter Thiel

I really do encourage other manufacturers to bring electric cars to market. It’s a good thing, and they need to bring it to market and keep iterating and improving and make better and better electric cars, and that’s what going to result in humanity achieving a sustainable transport future. I wish it was growing faster than it is.

- Elon Musk

Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you must seek out.

- Seth Godin

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.

- Colin Powell

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

- John C. Maxwell

This marks the eighth consecutive quarter of year-over-year top-line growth for Cisco.

- John Chambers

One of the most important management lessons for a founder/CEO is totally unintuitive. My single biggest personal improvement as CEO occurred on the day when I stopped being too positive.

- Ben Horowitz

Whether it’s eight o’clock in the morning or eight o’clock at night, I always try to greet others before they have a chance to speak to me.

- Zig Ziglar

If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you’ll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job.

- Seth Godin

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

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Churchill: “Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?” Socialite: “My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course… “Churchill: “Would you sleep with me for five pounds?”Socialite: “Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!” Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price

- Winston Churchill

Frank Wells 1888 instruction to his agents: The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all – let them be men, women or children, rich or poor, white or black – it must not be forgotten, that the company is dependent on these people for its business.

- Frank Wells

You’re not better than anybody else, but you’re not less than anybody else. You’re a child of the Most High God.

- Joel Olsteen

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

I believe that visualization is one of the most powerful means of achieving personal goals.

- 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

Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.

- Ben Horowitz

I encourage all my key people to bring their mobiles when they travel.

- Raymond Kwok

The top salesperson in the organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made.

- Zig Ziglar

The more you are grateful for what you have the more you will have to be grateful for.

- Zig Ziglar

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

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t think that ambition should not be in the dictionary of entrepreneurs. But our ambition should be realistic. You have to realise that you can’t do everything.

- Mukesh Ambani

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

- Seth Godin

Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises that the listeners do not perceive.

- Thomas Edison

Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship.

- Ben Horowitz

Options – the ability to choose – is real power. This book is all about how to see and create those options with the least effort and cost. It just so happens, paradoxically, that you can make more money – a lot more money – by doing half of what you are doing now.

- Timothy Ferriss

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.

- Dale Carnegie

Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.

- Bill Gates

The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies: listening carefully to customers; tracking competitors’ actions carefully; and investing resources to design and build higher-performance, higher-quality products that will yield greater profit. These are the reasons why great firms stumbled or failed when confronted with disruptive technological change.

- Clayton M. Christensen

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

- Warren Buffett

When the pressure is on, great leaders are at the their best.

- Napoleon Hill

People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I DECLARE I am special and extraordinary. I am not average! I have been custom-made. I am one of a kind. Of all the things God created, what He is the most proud of is me. I am His masterpiece, his most prized possession. I will keep my head held high, knowing I am a child of the most high God, made in his very image. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

- Bill Gates

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

- Richard Branson

You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years

- Sara Blakely

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

- Winston Churchill

Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.

- Brene Brown

But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.

- Timothy Ferriss

It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.

- Donald Trump

Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.

- Steve Martin

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

- Ronald Perelman

The arrival of the 21st century precedes the onslaught of turmoil and tsunami. The business environment has become unpredictable and the global economy even harsher…

- Cheng Yu-tung

You know what, Steve Jobs is real nice to me. He lets me be an employee and that’s one of the biggest honors of my life.

- Steve Wozniak

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.

- Dale Carnegie

I have mentioned before that financial intelligence is a synergy of accounting, investing, marketing and law. Combine those four technical skills and making money with money is easier.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it’s taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, ‘Let’s get out the camera and get that shot.’ You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

- Bill Gates

I’m a strange mixture of my mother’s curiosity; my father, who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family, who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility; and my mother’s father, who was always in trouble with gambling debts.

- Rupert Murdoch

The goal is to get the buyer to like and trust you.

- Clay Clark

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