Notable Quotables

Even if you do something that others might consider wrong, you should at least be willing to talk about it and tell your parents what you’re doing because you believe it’s right.

- Steve Wozniak

The conquest was not achieved without one frightful convulsion of revolt. “In this year A.D. 61”, according to Tacitus, “a severe disaster was sustained in Britain.” Suetonius, the new governor, had engaged himself deeply in the West. He transferred the operational base of the Roman army to Chester. Because it was the centre of Druid resistance he prepared to attack “the populous island of Mona [Anglesey], which had become a refuge for fugitives, and he built a fleet of flat-bottomed vessels suitable for those shallow and shifting seas. The infantry crossed in the boats, the cavalry went over by fords: where the water was too deep the men swam alongside of their horses. The enemy lined the shore, a dense host of armed men, interspersed with women clad in black like the Furies, with their hair hanging down and holding torches in their hands. Round this were Druids.

- Winston Churchill

When men are fighting for their lives they are not often disposed to be complimentary to those who are trying to kill them.

- Winston Churchill

Even if you are predisposed to being overweight, you’re not predestined to be fat.

- Timothy Ferriss

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.

- Thomas Edison

Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.

- Peter Drucker

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

- Winston Churchill

If you are starting a business I believe it has to be your passion.

- David Robinson

You don’t make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you’re-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don’t know what’s going to happen.

- Michael Bloomberg

The reason the social-networking phenomenon is something that I invested in early and massively – I led the Series A financing for Friendster; I founded a company called Socialnet in 1997; I founded LinkedIn; and I was part of the first round of financing in Facebook – it sounds trivial, but people matter.

- Reid Hoffman

Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates’ colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.

- Peter Drucker

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.

- Howard Schultz

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Steve really took over the project when I had a plane crash and wasn’t there. He took over the project, and it was really my own opinion — only my opinion — that he wanted to compete with the Lisa group that had kicked him out.

- Steve Wozniak

If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.

- Elon Musk

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

In the early days, anybody with a glue pot and a pair of scissors could get into the shoe business…

- Phil Knight

All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.

- Winston Churchill

I know a lot of people are upset by our decision but it is something we have deliberated for a number of years.

- Sergey Brin

the more ‘Yeses’ we can, at the very outset, induce, the more likely we are to succeed in capturing the attention for our ultimate proposal.

- Dale Carnegie

For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.

- James C. Collins

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 boxing, you get hit, it’s painful, then you sit on the stool when the adrenaline is gone and you feel that pain. And then you fight the next round.

- Ben Horowitz

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.

- Alexander Graham Bell

How Many Marriages Would Be Better If the Husband and the Wife Clearly Understood That They’re On the Same Side?

- Zig Ziglar

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

- Steven Wright

Every pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, but every optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

- Winston Churchill

Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.

- Sam Walton

Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is–the strong horse that pulls the whole cart.

- Winston Churchill

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

A Good Mentor… Is Direct Yet Supportive. It’s no use if a mentor softens his language to make you feel good aboutyourself. A good mentor is direct yet supportive. Even difficult messages can be delivered in a supportive way. The best mentors offer practical, timely advice and encourage you to take action.

- Rod Ebrahimi

For those that have fixed exchange-rate regimes, you will need a greater amount of foreign reserves. That’s the case in Belize, it’s the case in the Eastern Caribbean zone and it’s also the case in Barbados. In those cases, the level of reserve coverage is one of credit weakness. Where you have a bit more flexibility in the exchange rate ? for instance, Jamaica ? you would require a smaller amount of international reserves.

- John Chambers

Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool.

- Phil Knight

It is easy to think that the things that bother you will upset your people more. That’s not true. The opposite is true. Nobody takes the losses harder than the person most responsible. Nobody feels it more than you.

- Ben Horowitz

It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.

- Peter Drucker

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.

- Og Mandino

DAY FOURTEEN I DECLARE that I will use my words to bless people. I will speak favor and victory over my family, friends, and loved ones. I will help call out their seeds of greatness by telling them I’m proud of you, I love you, you are amazing, you are talented, you are beautiful, you will do great things in life.” This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

We’ve been trained to prefer being right to learning something, to prefer passing the test to making a difference, and most of all, to prefer fitting in with the right people, the people with economic power. Now it’s your turn to stand up and stand out.

- Seth Godin

In the Networked Age, we’re all like the little kid from The Sixth Sense. If you’re not seeing networks when you enter a room, you might want to check your pulse.

- Reid Hoffman

There is a winner in you. You were created to be successful, to accomplish your goals, to leave your mark on this generation. You have greatness in you. The key is to get it out.

- Joel Olsteen

The order for the seats amounted to $90,000. Who do you suppose got the order—James Adamson or one of his competitors? From the time of this story until Mr. Eastman’s death.

- Dale Carnegie

Most governments are pragmatic, most people are logical. There are pockets of extremism in Israel, in the U.S. and in the Muslim world. But we have to fight them with reason, with logic and with compassion.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

History recalls the remarkable resilience of the territory’s people.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.

- Henry Ford

Tip #17 – Perceived value is what sells. Real value is what repeats.

- Jack Nadel

There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.

- Elon Musk

When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmmm?

- Yoda

Even if you have a world class idea and want to give it away for the good of humanity, you will have to sell the concept. If you can’t sell it, you’ll be stuck with your idea, poorer for your brilliance and generosity.

- Jerry Vass

No, markets weren’t “efficient” at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion—often the wrong conclusion.

- Ben Horowitz

When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough.

- Donald Trump

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862)

- Timothy Ferriss

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

Well, real estate is always good, as far as I’m concerned.

- Donald Trump

Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.

- Michael Dell

The trouble with energy farming is that the energy isn’t always where you want to use it, and it isn’t always when you want to use it.

- Bill Gates

The secret to modern life is finding the measure in time management. I have two kids, career and I travel, and I don’t think my life is any different than most couples. The most valuable commodity now for many people is time and how to parcel that out.

- Hugh Jackman

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

- Aristotle

Niklas Zennstroem has a thorough background as a successful entrepreneur with extensive expertise in areas such as IT and online.

- Stefan Persson

Success must never be measured by how much money you have.

- Zig Ziglar

Job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living.

- Sam Walton

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

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

- Napoleon Hill

We can’t have democracy if we’re having to protect you and our users from the government over stuff we’ve never had a conversation about. We need to know what the parameters are, what kind of surveillance the government is going to do, and how and why.

- Larry Page

I’m skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education…. People are on these tracks. They are getting these credentials and it’s very unclear how viable they are in many cases.

- Peter Thiel

We live in a culture that relishes tearing others down. It’s ultimately more fulfilling, though, to help people reach their goals. Instead of feeling jealous, remember: If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

- Joel Olsteen

We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.

- Seth Godin

We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.

- Larry Page

The Group sold an attributable HK$3,434.6 million worth of properties in Hong Kong as compared with HK$6,810.9 million for the year before. In light of the then cautious market sentiment, the Group decided to defer the launch of a few new developments…

- Lee Shau Kee

Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done.

- Ben Horowitz

You may not realize initially how many other opportunities are wrapped up inside the first one. After you go through the first door, you’ll then discover more doors automatically opening behind that one. One door leads you to another door, which leads to another door, and so one. It’s like ten other boxes packed inside one box. The initial door that God opens is your access to more opportunities. But you must be willing to walk through the first one to get to the other good things God has for you.

- George Foreman

I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple.

- Joel Olsteen

The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by.

- Seth Godin

The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.

- Bill Gates

I’m not even sure what it’s getting at … personalities are very wrong although mine is closer … don’t forget that my purpose was inspired by the values of the Homebrew Computer Club along with ideas of the value of such machines and Steve J. wasn’t around and didn’t attend the club so he was the one learning about such social impact of the future.

- Steve Wozniak

And I think the more money you put in people’s hands, the more they will spend. And if they don’t spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that.

- Michael Bloomberg

It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.

- Henry Ward Beecher

The first complaint we hear from everyone is: ‘Why would I want to join this stupid useless thing and know what my brother’s eating for lunch?’ But that really misses the point because Twitter is fundamentally recipient-controlled – you choose to listen and you choose to leave. But you also choose what to put down and what to share.

- Jack Dorsey

Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you.

- J. Gitomer

Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.

- Zig Ziglar

I have always respected education, which is why I actually went back secretly and taught school for eight years.

- Steve Wozniak

MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future.

- Peter Thiel

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

- Seth Godin

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

- Dale Carnegie

Nobody enjoys the ‘little show about nothing’ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

George W. Bush stated, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation. That’s when I knew Bush was headed for trouble. With all due respect for the office, I completely disagree with him. In my view, it’s the leader’s responsibility to explain his or her actions every step of the way. And the higher up you are, the more important it is.

- David Novak

The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realise in some subtle way that you realise their importance, and recognise it sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS Some things that you want to encourage will be quantifiable, and some will not. If you report on the quantitative goals and ignore the qualitative ones, you won’t get the qualitative goals, which may be the most important ones. Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers—it’s strictly for amateurs. At HP, the company wanted high earnings now and in the future. By focusing entirely on the numbers, HP got them now by sacrificing the future. Note that there were many numbers as well as more qualitative goals that would have helped: Was our competitive win rate increasing or declining? Was customer satisfaction rising or falling? What did our own engineers think of the products? By managing the organization as though it were a black box, some divisions at HP optimized the present at the expense of their downstream competitiveness. The company rewarded managers for achieving short-term objectives in a manner that was bad for the company. It would have been better to take into account the white box. The white box goes beyond the numbers and gets into how the organization produced the numbers. It penalizes managers who sacrifice the future for the short term and rewards those who invest in the future even if that investment cannot be easily measured. CLOSING THOUGHT It is easy to see that there are many ways for leaders to be misinterpreted. To get things right, you must recognize that anything you measure automatically creates a set of employee behaviors. Once you determine the result you want, you need to test the description of the result against the employee behaviors that the description will likely create. Otherwise, the side-effect behaviors may be worse than the situation you were trying to fix.

- Ben Horowitz

We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.

- Warren Buffett

Deep knowledge from your manager goes a long way toward motivating you. And I have a pretty good capability for that.

- Larry Page

Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.

- Sam Walton

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