Notable Quotables

Backed by our conviction, we remain committed to investing wholeheartedly to improve the people’s living conditions, regardless of all uncertainties.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I work hard, I eat fishballs and nood­les. I drink coffee and tea from a street vendor. I am quite casual about personal wealth, life hasn’t changed at all.

- Lui Che Woo

At first, we couldn’t be establishment, because we didn’t have any money. We were guerrilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit. But, as we became No. 1 in our industry, we’ve had to modify our culture and become a bit more planned.

- Phil Knight

A decade and a half ago an ‘Esquire’ magazine reporter, noting our advertising played up the heros as aspects of great atheletes asked the question, who is your hero? My answer was simple. My college track coach and partner, Bill Bowerman. He had won four national championships, coached more sub four minute milers than anyone when he retired. He was the 1972 Olympic coach yet he insisted he was not a track coach. He was a professor of competitive response.

- Phil Knight

One who works their tail off because they hate working for other people so much, but who has no concept of what they are doing and who justifies their poverty when anyone more successful gives them advice by saying their business is different.

- Clay Clark

Let go of yesterday. Let today be a new beginning and be the best that you can, and you’ll get to where God wants you to be.

- Joel Olsteen

The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.

- Timothy Ferriss

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn’t want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

- Bill Gates

Google’s motto—“Don’t be evil”—is in part a branding ploy, but it’s also characteristic of a kind of business that’s successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence.

- Peter Thiel

It doesn’t hurt to ask Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.

- Seth Godin

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

- Bill Gates

If I were to retire, I would keep my family’s interest in the company the same and say, Don’t sell.

- Sheldon Adelson

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‘Boy, those were great old days.’ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

- Joel Olsteen

No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.

- Harvey Mackay

After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.

- Jim Rohn

Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.

- Peter Drucker

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.

- Oprah Winfrey

Worry is the most significant factor that relates to the root of negative thinking.

- Zig Ziglar

There are only two kinds of employees that I’ve run across in 30 years. There are ones that get results, and ones that make excuses. If you’re in that second camp, you’re not going to like Dish.

- Charles Ergen

If there is any one secret of success,’ said Henry Ford, ‘it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

- Dale Carnegie

[In 1998] The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.

- Phil Knight

I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.

- Oprah Winfrey

Here’s a statistician joke for your next hot date: Person A: What happens when Bill Gates walks into a bar of 55 people? Person B: I don’t know. What? Person A: The average net worth jumps to more than a billion dollars!

- Timothy Ferriss

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

- John D. Rockefeller

You can’t move people to action unless you first move them with emotion. The heart comes before the head…to lead yourself use your head, to lead others use your heart.

- John Maxwell

Humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. We call these miracles technology.

- Peter Thiel

Some libertarians say, ‘Well, if people work harder, they can make more money.’ But, you know, my mother is a nurse and I am a venture capitalist. I think no matter how great a nurse she is, she wouldn’t earn a one-thousandth of what I can make, if that.

- Ben Horowitz

Everything we do is about getting people to be more open, more creative, more courageous.

- Jack Dorsey

Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.

- Seth Godin

Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.

- Dale Carnegie

NO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OR EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK PROCESS Your company now employs twenty-five people and you know that you should formalize the performance management process, but you don’t want to pay the price. You worry that doing so will make it feel like a “big company.” Moreover, you do not want your employees to be offended by the feedback, because you can’t afford to lose anyone right now. And people are happy, so why rock the boat? Why not take on a little management debt? The first noticeable payments will be due when somebody performs below expectations: CEO: “He was good when we hired him; what happened?” Manager: “He’s not doing the things that we need him to do.” CEO: “Did we clearly tell him that?” Manager: “Maybe not clearly . . .” However, the larger payment will be a silent tax. Companies execute well when everybody is on the same page and everybody is constantly improving. In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally across either dimension. Directions with no corrections will seem fuzzy and obtuse. People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of. The ultimate price you will pay for not giving feedback: systematically crappy company performance.

- Ben Horowitz

[On his son Matt dying in 2004 in a scuba diving accident] It aged me much faster than anything you can imagine…

- Phil Knight

So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.

- Dale Carnegie

The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.

- Wang Jianlin

Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.

- Larry Page

We are currently not planning on conquering the world.

- Sergey Brin

All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school – my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

- Ray Kroc

A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them.

- Ben Horowitz

Manufacture, don’t just trade. There’s money in manufacturing even though it is capital intensive.

- Aliko Dangote

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ‘naturals’, the ones who somehow know how to teach.

- Peter Drucker

Well, all comedy starts with anger. You get angry, and its never for a good reason, right? You know its not a good reason. And then you try and work it from there.

- Jerry Seinfeld

When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.

- Peter Thiel

Most people have never thought through how they’re going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance.

- Clayton M. Christensen

If you are a big company, a big website, and lots of users come to your website, you will have attacks, and you have to deal with that. It just cannot be a reason to take actions to exit certain markets.

- Robin Li

when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.

- Dale Carnegie

The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.

- Jeff Bezos

I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident…. Almost none of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.

- Thomas Edison

Value and purpose are about understanding the specific benefits you will help people receive if they receive what you have for them.

- Zig Ziglar

Named must your fear be before banish it you can.

- Yoda

Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

- Viktor E. Frankl

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

- Peter Drucker

Great companies are built on great products.

- Elon Musk

If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook. And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone. If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault. That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. ‘I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.’ What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.

- Seth Godin

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.

- Sara Blakely

We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.

- George Soros

Team Together / Team Apart means you respect the final decision even if you would do something diffently, and make it happen with positive energy.

- David Novak

30 MAJOR CAUSES OF FAILURE: – Napoleon Hill (on leadership and management)

- Napoleon Hill

It’s hard for me to imagine how a $50 million marketing campaign is ever appropriate for any business to launch an ideavirus. If you need to interrupt that many people, you’re doing something wrong.

- Seth Godin

Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.

- Winston Churchill

The future is in green energy, it’s in making steel for energy-efficient cars.

- Alexei Mordashov

Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining – it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn’t solve any problems.

- Zig Ziglar

Successful heretics create their own religions….You can recognize the need for faith in your idea, you can find the tribe you need to support you, and yes, you can create a new religion around your faith. Steve Jobs did it on purpose at Apple and Phil Knight is famous for doing it at Nike.

- Seth Godin

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.

People in tough times – it doesn’t mean they don’t have a great attitude.

- Joel Olsteen

Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and “do well by doing good.” Usually they end up doing neither.

- Peter Thiel

Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

- Napoleon Hill

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

- Henry Ford

You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.

- Zig Ziglar

The Law of the Garbage Truck,” was this: Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you’ll be happier.

- Joel Olsteen

We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it.

- Ray Kroc

People have no confidence that Washington, both sides of aisle, are coming together to try and do what’s right for the economy.

- Michael Bloomberg

you don’t need to understand any of the biology, just as you don’t need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven.

- Timothy Ferriss

In the U.S. there are many people willing to work on $9 per hour, which is causing Tasmania to lose its famous apple industry and Australia to import more and more of its fruit and food from lower cost countries. In fact, all over Australia there are warning signs of us killing or restricting our own industries.

- Gina Rinehart

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

- Stephen King

Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we’ve had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you’re really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.

- Steve Ballmer

Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that’s what a number of us are trying to do.

- Richard Branson

Networking is one of the most valuable uses of your time in terms of return—and not just in monetary terms.

- Business Insider.com

Excepting for reading my numbers on Saturday morning and going to our regular meetings, I don’t have much of a routine for anything else. I always carry my little tape recorder on trips, to record ideas that come up in my conversations with the associates. I usually have my yellow legal pad with me, with a list of ten or fifteen things we need to be working on as a company. My list drives the executives around here crazy, but it’s probably one of my more important contributions.

- Sam Walton

My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….

- Thomas Edison

Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning.

- John C. Maxwell

Too many companies think they want to do a video blog to sell merchandise, but if you turn your site into QVC, you lose. I have an audience that trusts me. It’s about building a global brand – not selling four more bottles of Pinot Grigio.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I think I will always have a connection to young people, to try to bring their voices to the polls, bring their voices wherever they can make a difference.

- Russell Simmons

During their lifetimes, every man and woman will stumble across a great opportunity. Sadly, most of them will simply pick themselves up, dust themselves down and carry on as if nothing ever happened.

- Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

- Winston Churchill

When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.

- Zig Ziglar

You hope that one or both of them win a race right before our race. I know that in the past, when Bill Elliott won it always boosted sales here.

- Ed Clark

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

- Mark Zuckerberg

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