If I want a better-than-average career, I can’t simply ‘go with the flow’ and get it. Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome. If they would just do something most people would find that they get some version of the outcome they’re looking for. That’s been my secret. Stop wishing and start doing.
- Timothy Ferriss
Notable Quotables
There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize any-one. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.
- Dale Carnegie
Journalists should think of themselves as outside the Establishment, and owners can’t be too worried about what they’re told at their country clubs.
- Rupert Murdoch
I have no interest in going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids. I’m just not that kind of dude.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power.
- Dale Carnegie
Networking is one of the most powerful tools you can use to grow your company and reputation.
- Business Insider.com
Thinking (of how to improve your life and business) is the hardest thing there is. That is why so few people engage in it.
- Henry Ford
I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.
- Winston Churchill
Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
- Yoda
No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, or nonmusic radio. Music is permitted at all times. No news websites whatsoever (cnn.com, drudgereport.com, msn.com,10 etc.). No television at all, except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening. No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction11 pleasure reading prior to bed. No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary, not nice to have.
- Timothy Ferriss
Art changes posture and posture changes innocent bystanders.
- Seth Godin
When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome.
- Winston Churchill
Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.
- Seth Godin
[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold
- Phil Knight
Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.
- Larry Ellison
Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.
- John C. Maxwell
Weak desires bring weak results.
- Napoleon Hill
What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- Steve Jobs
Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.
- Seth Godin
There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.
- Winston Churchill
Many people who want to be great aren’t willing to do the work to make it possible!
- Zig Ziglar
It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever.
- Dale Carnegie
From the economic slowdown after the financial crisis in 1997 through the economic boom in 2007, the motherland has been supporting Hong Kong in recovering from adversity; on the other hand, Hong Kong has been actively cooperating with the motherland in going international.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It’s flattering to people who stop you and say that you’ve helped them and all. But, again, you know, you’ve got to stay humble because as quick as you came up, you can come down.
- Joel Olsteen
The outside of a horse is good for the inside of man.
- Winston Churchill
Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle and a victory.
- Mahatma Gandhi
It will change the way we work, live, play and learn.
- John Chambers
The Cult of Done Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog: 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more.
- Seth Godin
People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.
- Walt Disney
Driving up the value of the advertising is a big commitment for Microsoft.
- Bill Gates
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.
- Dale Carnegie
We’re working toward the ability for all Cisco devices to work together and communicate with each other to stop attacks. The idea is that one device can warn another device of a threat.
- John Chambers
About one in five of us is retired. About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed peoplemake up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires.
- Thomas J Stanley
The third way is less common and certainly less of a layup—a culture of integrity, meaning a culture of honesty, transparency, fairness, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. In such cultures, there can be no head fakes or winks. People who break the rules do not leave the company for “personal reasons” or to “spend more time with their families.” They are hanged—publicly—and the reasons are made painfully clear to everyone.
- Jack Welch
You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies – all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
- Steve Martin
It’s easier to explain price once than to apologize for quality forever.
- Zig Ziglar
I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.
- Oprah Winfrey
Great investments may look crazy but really may not be.
- Peter Thiel
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
So sure, start with a slogan. But don’t bother wasting any time on it if you’re merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.
- Seth Godin
I try to keep in touch with the details… I also look at the product daily. That doesn’t mean you interfere, but it’s important occasionally to show the ability to be involved. It shows you understand what’s happening.
- Rupert Murdoch
Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.
- Zig Ziglar
Use technology to remind people that we are really human and civilization is meant to connect together. Civilization is meant to be easy, and the technology to completely disappear. And should be easy to pick up.
- Jack Dorsey
American Dream – and it says that you should graduate from high school, graduate from college, get married, find a job with good benefits, have sex with your spouse two times per week, buy a home with a mortgage, get a pet, go on vacation two times per year, have two kids, invest in mutual funds and IRAs, recycle when possible, and aim to retire early in your mid-fifties to early sixties, if you are lucky. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s kind of hard to be passionate about that American Dream.
- Clay Clark
You are going to fire Mark Hurd and hire Leo? What I said at the time was that this was the best idea since the Apple board fired Steve Jobs. Really brilliant.
- Larry Ellison
I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.
- Elon Musk
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
You can make something big when young that will carry you through life. Look at all the big startups like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They were all started by very young people who stumbled on something of unseen value. You’ll know it when you hit a home run.
- Steve Wozniak
Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
We wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don’t end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.
- Phil Knight
Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
- Walt Disney
I think when companies are struggling, they don’t want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren’t interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it’s like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That’s slanted the whole thing quite a bit.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
- Steve Martin
One of my lifelong practices is to pay my obligations on time, especially my suppliers. Even in my early years as retailer, I didn’t delay my payments to suppliers, because I tell my kids that we have to be considerate to suppliers and think of their own hinyong or how they have to protect their sense of trustworthiness with others.
- Henry Sy
Customers have different need states and life experiences.
- Howard Schultz
I always knew I wanted to run a business someday.
- Michael Dell
Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.
- Jerry Vass
When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Each failure to sell will increase your chances for success at your next attempt.
- Og Mandino
Casualness causes casualties.
- Tim Redmond
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.
- Andrew Carnegie
Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all.
- Winston Churchill
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
We all need a daily checkup from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s not enough to use information for something”—it needs to be immediate and important.
- Timothy Ferriss
Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.
- Bill Gates
I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.
- Oprah Winfrey
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’
- Peter Drucker
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
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
- Napoleon Hill
Many people who I respected were disappointed when I started ‘Wine Library TV.’ They thought I was dumbing down wine, but I always knew I was one of the biggest producers of new wine drinkers in the world, and people are realizing it now.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Success is determined by your daily agenda
- John Maxwell
Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.
- Joel Olsteen
Good leaders know that one secret to success is to staff their weaknesses.
- John Maxwell
We made a disastrous move into casual shoes.
- Phil Knight
Social media is a giant distraction to the ultimate aim, which is honing your craft as a songwriter. There are people who are exceptional at it, however, and if you can do both things, then that’s fantastic, but if you are a writer, the time is better spent on a clever lyric than a clever tweet.
- Bryan Adams
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
- Peter Drucker
I have asked thousands of business people to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to class and talk about the results.
- Dale Carnegie
Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location.
- Reid Hoffman
‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.
- Bill Gates
We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
Here’s Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can’t even deal with him because he’s always saying something that people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe Kanye said that. I can’t believe he did that.’
- Ben Horowitz
Although DJ Clay may never sleep, all of his dreams come true!
- Blake Fraley
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.
- Elon Musk
My husband is such a healthy eater. Except when it comes to sweets. He never consumes anything except fruit until noon. And then from noon on he might have some brown rice and some tofu, and then, come eight or nine at night, he orders three mud-pie double-chocolate pieces of cake and eats all three of them.
- Sara Blakely
More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
Medicare and Medicaid costs are skyrocketing. The cost of compliance with some pretty tough rules has become very costly. If I’m small, I have to spend the same amount of money to comply with Medicare, whether I’m 10 members or if I’m 10 million.
- George Paz
When people get at each other’s throat, the rich and the poor and the Left and the Right and so on, and you have a basic breakdown, that becomes very threatening.
- Ray Dalio
The productivity now at universities is terrible. Tenure is a terrible idea. It keeps them around forever and they don’t have to work hard.
- Jack Welch
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali
[On someone with a new idea.] The first thing is to draw it out, program it, play with it and get other people playing with it so you can get feedback right away… Once you get that feedback you know if it’s something you should pursue and give more of your attention to, or if it’s something you should put on the shelf for another da
- Jack Dorsey
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
- Winston Churchill
I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.
- Bill Gates
When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Cherish you visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.
- Napoleon Hill
I am someone who tweets about what I have for breakfast, what I have for lunch, what I have for dinner, and for 99.99999 percent of the world, it’s useless. It’s meaningless. But for my mother, she loves it.
- Jack Dorsey
Worry is the most significant factor that relates to the root of negative thinking.
- Zig Ziglar
The boss would be present at the beginning of each session, laying out the rationale for the Work-Out. He or she would also commit to two things: to give an on-the-spot yes or no to 75 percent of the recommendations that came out of the session, and to resolve the remaining 25 percent within thirty days. The boss would then disappear until the end of the session, so as not to stifle open discussion, returning only at the end to make good on his or her promise.
- Jack Welch
