Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
- Seth Godin
I think there’s a lot of merit in an international economy and global markets, but they’re not sufficient because markets don’t look after social needs.
- George Soros
When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.
- Jerry Seinfeld
It was definitely kind of surprising to see us come out and run the ball because we usually like to pass to start the game and put up some quick points. But tonight, we had real good balance offensively. We ran and passed the ball well, which kept them off balance all night.
- Jack Taylor
Ohhh. Great warrior.Wars not make one great.
- Yoda
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
- Dale Carnegie
If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.
- Joel Olsteen
Life’s most soothing things are a child’s goodnight and sweet music….
- Thomas Edison
God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.
- Gail Devers
Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think what we’re lacking in society, not only in the U.S. but also around the world, is to find heroes once again and to celebrate these kind of people.
- Howard Schultz
When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America – a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.
- Howard Schultz
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
- Peter Drucker
The Chinese market is a very good expansion opportunity for us, and we will continue looking to buy stakes and make acquisitions.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
- Socrates
What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!
- Larry Page
Little phrases such as ‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ ‘Would you be so kind as to –?’ ‘Won’t you please?’ ‘Would you mind?’ ‘Thank you’ – little courtesies like these oil the cogs of the monotonous grind of everyday life – and incidentally, they are the hallmark of good breeding.
- Dale Carnegie
AP pleaded guilty to criminal theft of our software. Let me be clear. I’m not accusing SAP of anything. What did SAP do? Did you engage in criminal behavior and steal lots of Oracle software? Yes. That’s SAP. Who was CEO when you were doing all this criminal stuff? Leo.
- Larry Ellison
When people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options.
- Peter Thiel
Ethical decisions ensure that everyone’s best interests are protected. When in doubt, don’t.
- Harvey Mackay
None of Us is as Good as All of Us.
- Ray Kroc
Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.
- Elon Musk
The clear, unmistakable sign of a bureaucrat is somebody who worries about whether he has a window.
- Herb Kelleher
If he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.
- Peter Thiel
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.
- Seth Godin
There is an immeasurable distance between late and too late.
- Og Mandino
How you look, talk, and market your business is what should be keeping everyone busy.
- Bryan Smith
The skill sets it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, a successful marketer, or a relevant celebrity is a different skill set than you needed ten years ago, even though that was the skill set that mattered for decades.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
- Warren Buffett
A wise man is a confirmed optimist.
- Andrew Carnegie
Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.
- John C. Maxwell
Out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.
- Ben Horowitz
Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.
- Bill Gates
Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was… just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But…it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since [1945]…. And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.
- James C. Collins
Increasingly, the Chinese will own a lot more of the world because they will be converting their dollar reserves and U.S. government bonds into real assets.
- George Soros
Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each of these three stages, there are two key concepts, shown in the framework and described below. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept we came to call the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great.
- James C. Collins
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and it’s hard to trust somebody that you don’t know.
- Ben Horowitz
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
Optimists are those who go after Moby dick in a row boat with a bucket of tarter sauce.
- Zig Ziglar
If you want to be enthusiastic, act enthusiastic.
- Dale Carnegie
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
- Henry Ford
Don’t sit around depressed and discouraged. Get a new vision for your life.
- Joel Olsteen
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
- Og Mandino
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
- Warren Buffett
Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.
- Seth Godin
People have been indoctrinated so completely by their jobs that they don’t want to know how something works, they’re willing to accept that perhaps the laws of nature don’t work as they expect, and by the way, can I have the remote?
- Seth Godin
Do not look like you are playing the fiddle while Rome is burning….stay focussed – Paraphrased from
- David Novak
Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn’t matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you’re going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.
- Harvey Mackay
Sunseeker is well placed to take full advantage of opportunities in China, one of the world’s fastest growing luxury yacht markets.
- Wang Jianlin
Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.
- Henry Ford
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
- John Naisbitt
Never fear to negotiate, but never negotiate out of fear.
- Jack Nadel
Look – this is the terror of being a founder & CEO. It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do – ultimately, you’re at the end.
- Ben Horowitz
People who do not succeed have one distinguishing trait in common. They know all the reasons for failure, and have what they believe to be air-tight alibis to explain their lack of achievement: 1) If I had the money… 2) If I could get the job… 3) If I had been given a chance… 4) If I were younger… 5) If I were older… 6) If I only had a better education… 7) If I could just save some money… 8) If I lived in a big city… 9) If I were not so fat… 10) If my talents were better known… 11) If I didn’t have a past… 12) If I had my own business… 13) If I had the courage…
- Napoleon Hill
I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven’t done the work that has built the foundation to support it.
- Howard Schultz
Many people are unhappy and are not experiencing life to its fullest because they’ve closed their hearts to compassion, they are motivated by only what they want and what they think they need. They rarely do anything for anybody else unless they have an ulterior goal in mind. They are self-involved and self-centered.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Entrepreneurs must think in specifics with laser-like precision.
- Jack Nadel
If you say too much or mix in multiple pitches, you diffuse your goal. You must give the media a pitch they can hit.
- Michael Levine
You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.
- Warren Buffett
It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable.
- Sara Blakely
Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.
- Winston Churchill
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Foreign politicians don’t have resources – or limited resources. It’s useless dealing with them.
- Wang Jianlin
Stop whining, start hustling.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
It had been a ‘grow, grow, grow’ era, and some people, especially young people who’d never been through a downturn before, didn’t like being told to suddenly get very conservative. But I insisted we were facing a very risky environment
- Debra Cafaro
Differentiation (rating and evaluating people) Develops Great Organizations. Differentiation is hard, anybody who finds it easy doesn’t belong in the organization, and anyone who can’t do it falls in the same category…It is important for companies to continually remove the bottom 10 percent of their employees anually.
- Jack Welch
Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it’s rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything that you know. So who do you tell? Whoever you need to, and no more. In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody—and that’s a company. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.
- Peter Thiel
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
- Napoleon Hill
I’m a physician. I’ve been blessed with ideas and resources to use technology to make the world a better place. That’s what I would like to leave behind.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Edison
The good-will of a business which is losing money is not worth much.
- Ron Chernow
As the Readers’s Digest once said: ‘Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.
- Dale Carnegie
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.
- John D. Rockefeller
Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
Don’t panic.
- David Novak
If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.
- Sam Walton
It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.
- Peter Drucker
Each failure to sell will increase your chances for success at your next attempt.
- Og Mandino
Personally, I just hope that my family keeps getting bigger and bigger. That would make me very happy.
- Lee Shau Kee
When it call comes down to it, nothing trumps execution.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
- Bill Gates
I enjoy the hunt much more than the ‘good life’ after the victory.
- Carl Icahn
China and India will, separately and together, unleash an explosion of demand.
- Mukesh Ambani
Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.
- Bill Gates
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
- Henry Ford
I definitely think there’s some way to understand how people emotionally feel about somebody, but I don’t think data collects it. They’re not going to click your bit.ly link or click your TweetMeme retweet every time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Now when I consider investing in a startup, I study the founding teams. Technical abilities and complementary skill sets matter, but how well the founders know each other and how well they work together matter just as much. Founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together—otherwise they’re just rolling dice.
- Peter Thiel
The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.
- Helen Keller
I mean, we’ve built a lot of products that we think are good, and will help people share photos and share videos and write messages to each other. But it’s really all about how people are spreading Facebook around the world in all these different countries. And that’s what’s so amazing about the scale that it’s at today.
- Mark Zuckerberg
While 9:00 to 5:00 and what happens in the job is important… what happens from 5:00 – 9:00 while you’re off the job is INFINITELY more important.
- Zig Ziglar
My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I’ve given.
- Russell Simmons
My strength is programming. I also think my biggest strength is simplification. That’s what I love doing.
- Jack Dorsey
The trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.
- Peter Thiel
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.
- Thomas Edison
