In this early period, Rockefeller was a chronic worrier who labored under a great deal of self-imposed stress. Though not versed in the scientific side of refining, he often excercised a direct managerial role in the plant. With fluctuating market conditions, he sometimes needed shipments to New York with great dispatch and personally rushed down to the railroad tracks to motivate the freight handlers. I shall never forget how hungry I was in those days. I stayed out of doors day and night; I ran up and down the tops of freight cars, when necessary; I hurried up the boys.
- Ron Chernow
Notable Quotables
In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
- Donald Trump
Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it. This describes Europe since the early 1970s, when the continent succumbed to undirected bureaucratic drift. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow-motion crisis, and nobody is in charge. The European Central Bank doesn’t stand for anything but improvisation: the U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar; the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro. Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse.
- Peter Thiel
THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR – One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it.
- Seth Godin
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar
Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
- Zig Ziglar
Good policies without the right people will achieve nothing.
- Aliko Dangote
Good leaders know that one secret to success is to staff their weaknesses.
- John Maxwell
The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
The idea would be in my mind – and I know it sounds strange – is that the most important advances in medicine would be made not by new knowledge in molecular biology, because that’s exceeding what we can even use. It’ll be made by mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, figuring out a way to get all that information together.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.
- Ben Horowitz
Get through your fears and the world will open up. Give in to your fears and your world will get smaller every year.
- Robert Kiyosaki
People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
- Elon Musk
You’re either remarkable or invisible.
- Seth Godin
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.
- Seth Godin
But each country has to advance and move at its own speed.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.
- Winston Churchill
You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.
- Henry Ford
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
As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.
- Donald Trump
Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go.
- Winston Churchill
The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning, and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.
- Og Mandino
It’s not where you start or even what happens to you along the way that’s important. What is important is that you persevere and never give up on yourself.
- Zig Ziglar
A CEO’s job is to supervise all systems and to indentify weaknesses before the weaknesses turn into system failures. This can happen in many different ways, but it is exceptionally disconcerting when you company is growing rapidly. Your sales are increasing, your product of service is getting attention from the media, and suddenly you can’t deliver. Why? Uusually, it’s because your systems imploded from the increased demand. You didn’t have enough phone lines, or operators answering the phones. You didn’t have enough production capacity or enough hours in the week to meet the demand; or you didn’t have the money to build the product or hire additional help. Whatever the reason, you missed the opportunity to move your business to the next level of success due to failure of one of your systems…At each new level of growth, the CEO must start planning the systems needed to support the next level of growth, from phone lines to lines of credit for production needs. Systems drive both cash flow management and communication. As your systems get better, you or your employees will have to exert less and less effort. Without well-designed and successful operating systems, your business will be labor intensive. Once you have well-designed and successful operating systems, you will have a saleable business asset.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The U.S. has done a great job improving productivity. We’re making a lot more steel in Dearborn with fewer people. The unions have accepted much better work rules.
- Alexei Mordashov
Trust but Verify.
- Ronald Reagan
All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.
- John C. Maxwell
There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.
- Winston Churchill
Economic cycles are just like riding on a Ferris wheel.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines wont make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa and its about getting a balance.
- Richard Branson
Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.
- Tim Westergren
How we respond to the opportunities and challenges of the outside world now determines how much the outside world values us.
- Seth Godin
He who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species.
- P.T. Barnum
Certainly the caffeine in coffee, whether it’s Starbucks or generic coffee, is somewhat of a stimulant. But if you drink it in moderation, which I think four or five cups a day is, you’re fine.
- Howard Schultz
Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.
- Thomas Edison
Faith in your new apprentice, misplaced may be. As is your faith in the dark side of the Force.
- Yoda
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
Building companies involves creating great wealth. If that means I am an oligarch, OK, it’s fine. But if being an oligarch is about buying football clubs, it is not for me.
- Alexei Mordashov
In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.
- Bill Gates
There are two kinds of cultures in this world: cultures where what you do matters and cultures where all that matters is who you are. You can be the former or you can suck.
- Ben Horowitz
Never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, you will be successful.
- Brian Tracy
The basic principle is I command, and my employees carry it out immediately.
- Wang Jianlin
There’s an energy and excitement when you’re building a company. You have so much tail wind. You’re planting new seeds. But it’s also scary, because there’s no safety net.
- Howard Schultz
The thing that I’m going to focus on today is essentially the cloud that has been over Nike’s head over the last couple years.
- Phil Knight
The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.
- Thomas Edison
The problem with New Year’s resolutions – and resolutions to ‘get in better shape’ in general, which are very amorphous – is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn’t work. I don’t care if you’re a world-class CEO – you’ll quit.
- Timothy Ferriss
Whether changes happen depends on people’s mind and view.
- Cheng Yu-tung
No company has a culture, every company is a culture.
- Peter Thiel
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
The quality of research in the U.S. is absolutely the best.
- Bill Gates
The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.
- Michael Bloomberg
Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn’t mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It’s about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.
- Steve Martin
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
When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
- Ben Horowitz
The more you complain about your problems, the more problems you will have to complain about.
- Zig Ziglar
Learn to listen and think.
- Jack Nadel
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
- Benjamin Franklin
I started NetSuite. NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, ‘We’re going to do ERP on the Internet, software-as-a-service.’ Six months later Marc Benioff, finding out what NetSuite was doing, and kind of copied it.
- Larry Ellison
There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.
- P.T. Barnum
Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows? Maybe just like that little baby, putting your arm around somebody and letting him or her know that you care can help begin to heal that person’s heart. Maybe you can give a rescuing hug.
- Joel Olsteen
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
The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it’s hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you’ll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero.
- Peter Thiel
The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.
- Napoleon Hill
We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it.
- Ray Kroc
The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.
- Seth Godin
I don’t spend any time thinking about my place in history, ever. If people say I changed things, it’s nice, and I take it – but if I could give it to a charity it would be useful. I really believe now that my only job in life is to achieve a state of comfort and happiness.
- Russell Simmons
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.
- Joel Olsteen
My little girls are the most beautiful women in the world. I am a lucky, lucky man. I will spend every day making sure that they know this.
- Russell Simmons
Cherish your dreams as they are the children of your soul… –
- Napoleon Hill
If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.
- Joel Olsteen
Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands
- David Novak
We’re running the company to serve more people.
- Mark Zuckerberg
To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.
- Sam Walton
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.
- Thomas Edison
Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.
- Yoda
…[if you] use discrimination in the selection of your Master Mind group, your objective will have been half-way reached, even before you begin to recognize it.
- Napoleon Hill
And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that’s there.
- Steve Ballmer
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 built a steel plant from the grassroots, so I learned all the nuts and bolts. When there was a problem, I would be able to guide them, though I am not a technical person.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Every dream I’ve ever had in life has come true ten times over.
- Steve Wozniak
The issue of Palestine has been there since more than 60 years. But more important since 1967 when the war was, ended in the defeat of some Arab countries.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I will study and prepare myself, and someday the opportunity will come.
- Abraham Lincoln
Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you’ll create credit… So you reach a certain point that that you can’t do that anymore… There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?
- Ray Dalio
I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.
- Steve Martin
To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.
- Aliko Dangote
You may have made a lot of wrong choices, but you’ve also made a lot of choices that were right. Focus on your good qualities. Focus on your victories. Get off the treadmill of guilt.
- Joel Olsteen
It is well documented that I am a lifelong football fan. My love of the British game started with the 1966 World Cup.
- Alisher Usmanov
Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with.
- Timothy Ferriss
I try to make my life about service, and hope that one day we can all ‘see’ a little better because God is with everyone and everywhere.
- Russell Simmons
It really matters whether people are working on generating clean energy or improving transportation or making the Internet work better and all those things. And small groups of people can have a really huge impact.
- Larry Page
To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.
- Michael Bloomberg
Structure a deal and create a plan around it.
- Jack Nadel
Don’t just accept whatever comes your way in life. You were born to win, you were born for greatness, you were created to be a champion in life.
- Joel Olsteen
In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
- Sid Caesar
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.
- Jack Welch
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
People buy titles, and not contents of books. By merely changing the name of one book that was not moving his sales on that book jumped upward more a million copies. The inside of the book was no changed in any way. He merely ripped off the cover bearing the title that did not sell, and put on new cover with a title that had box-office value.
- Napoleon Hill
