Notable Quotables

Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future…the past. Old friends long gone.

- Yoda

It seems like a good cause. I’ve been watching it on TV and, it makes me want to help.

- Ed Clark

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

As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in.

- Howard Schultz

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you maycome to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

- Winston Churchill

He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.

- Andrew Carnegie

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.

- Brian Tracy

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

- Ray Kroc

Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.

- Walt Disney

They don’t understand that Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.

- Seth Godin

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

It’s the next opportunity that keeps us motivated.

- Zig Ziglar

Arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.

- Dale Carnegie

Put time limits on each item. Set an agenda for your meeting and your trips to Disney World.

- David Robinson

One of [Bill] Bowerman’s more legendary innovations is the Waffle outsole, which he discovered by pouring rubber into a waffle iron.

- Phil Knight

The story about GE that hasn’t been told is the value of an informal place. I think it’s a big thought. I don’t think people have ever figured out that being informal is a big deal.

- Jack Welch

Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.

- Ben Horowitz

By becoming interested in the cause, we are less likely to dislike the effect.

- Dale Carnegie

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

- Henry Ford

There is a time to provide advice and offer an opinion, and there is a time not to. Don’t be too quick to offer unsolicited advice. It certainly will not endear you to people.

- Harvey Mackay

Play like you’re ten points behind in the final quarter. I’ve always heard this defined as operational cadence – creating a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of doing business that drives the relentless pursuit of results. Whatever I’ve learned about creating a sense of urgency started when I worked for Howard Davis at Tracy Locke. He really knew how to push people. Everything had to be done yesterday. And I was one of the people who go pushed. Howard was a master of intimidation. Everyone knew if you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to find another way to get it, and if your weren’t part of the solution then you were part of the problem. The clients loved Howard because they knew he’d kill for them (and none of us wanted to be killed). It wasn’t always comfortable, but it taught me the value of constantly putting pressure on myself and the people who work for me. In corporate America, pressure is a way of life, so rather that resist it or merely accept it, you have to learn to use it as a personal motivator.

- David Novak

Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.

- Yoda

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

Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team.

- James C. Collins

You must have a vision and not just a vision but you must have a plan that would make you fulfil that vision.

- Aliko Dangote

The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.

- Ben Horowitz

Since Henry Ford. It is changing the way every idea is handled, every product is created, every person interacts. It’s not going to be willing to make a detour around your gig, it’s not going to be interested in giving you a permanent sinecure. No, the revolution doesn’t care.

- Seth Godin

Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.

- Jeff Bezos

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

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

- Winston Churchill

I believe it’s important that we use names of endearment that reflect a special feeling for the individual involved.

- Zig Ziglar

It is confidence in our bodies, minds and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn – which is what life is all about.

- Oprah Winfrey

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I think the move by Mr. Greenspan was welcomed by everyone here.

- Jack Welch

Satisfied, loyal and repeat customers are at the heart of Walmart’s spectacular profit margins, and those customers are loyal to us because our associates treat them better than salespeople in other stores do. So, in the whole Wal-Mart scheme of things, the most important contact ever made is between the associated in the store and the customer. I didn’t catch on to that idea for quite a while. In fact, the biggest single regret in my whole business career is that we didn’t include our associates in the initial, managers-only profit-sharing plan when we took the company public in 1970. But there was nobody around preaching that philosophy in those days, and I guess I was just too worried about my own debt, and in too big a hurry to get somewhere fast. Today, some of our company’s critics would like everybody to believe we started our profit-sharing program and other benefits merely as away to stave off union organizing.

- Sam Walton

Diversification and globalization are the keys to the future.

- Fujio Mitarai

For example, a world without secrets would enjoy a perfect understanding of justice. Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few people recognize early on: in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust. At first, only a small minority of abolitionists knew that slavery was evil; that view has rightly become conventional, but it was still a secret in the early 19th century. To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.

- Peter Thiel

You’ve got to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have what it takes. God created you to excel, and He’s given you ability, insight, talent, wisdom, and His supernatural power to do so.

- Joel Olsteen

No matter who you are, you need two kinds of friends in your life. The first kind is one you can call when something good happens, and you need someone who will be excited for you. Not a fake excitement veiling envy, but a real excitement. You need someone who will actually be more excited for you than he would be if it had happened to him. The second kind of friend is somebody you can call when things go horribly wrong—when your life is on the line and you only have one phone call. Who is it going to be? Bill Campbell is both of those friends.

- Ben Horowitz

Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

- Thomas Edison

Certainly, other people can pray for you, they can believe for you, they can quote the scripture to you, but you must exercise faith for yourself. If you are always depending on somebody else to keep you happy, somebody else to encourage you or to get you out of trouble, you will live in perpetual weakness and disappointment. You must make a decision that you are going to be a believer. Take charge of your life and decide, No matter what comes against me, I believe in God. I’m going to have a positive outlook for my life! Other people’s faith can indeed bolster yours. But your own faith will bring you a miracle much faster than anybody else’s. What you believe has a much greater impact on your life than what anybody else believes.

- Joel Olsteen

With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.

- Elon Musk

Developing a customer who loves the business so much that they become an unpaid and passionate marketer for the company.

- Clay Clark

But the three rules I always stuck with were 1) Be on time 2) No profanity and 3) Never criticize a teammate.

- David Novak

I’m trying to change the culture in New York City, that’s hard enough!

- Michael Bloomberg

If you spend money on what you want, you’ll beg for what you need.

- T.D Jakes

I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors.

- Dale Carnegie

We think when God speaks to us, there’s going to be a boom out of Heaven or we’re going to get some chill bumps, but I really believe God’s talking to us all the time. He’s talking to us right in here. I call it our heart, our conscience, but it’s the Holy Spirit talking to us.

- Joel Olsteen

Isn’t it amazing how much stuff we get done the day before vacation?

- Zig Ziglar

Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

- Bill Gates

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

- Steve Jobs

Frank Wells 1888 instruction to his agents: The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all – let them be men, women or children, rich or poor, white or black – it must not be forgotten, that the company is dependent on these people for its business.

- Frank Wells

Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.

- Peter Thiel

The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.

- Ma Huateng

Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship.

- Ben Horowitz

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

- Warren G. Bennis

I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.

- Michael Bloomberg

A great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future. Investors expect Twitter will be able to capture monopoly profits over the next decade, while newspapers’ monopoly days are over.

- Peter Thiel

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

- Winston Churchill

Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?

- Winston Churchill

I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.

- Winston Churchill

When you own your choices, you own their consequences.

- Jack Welch

In the Soviet Union I was the head of all oil production. And you know in the Soviet Union, you didn’t get that job unless you were really worth it.

- Vagit Alekperov

Let’s find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. …When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book The Origin Of Species he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.

- Dale Carnegie

Establish good internal controls over the handling of cash. The people who record the cash receipts on the bank deposits must be different from those who post it to the accounts receivable and general ledger.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.

- Peter Drucker

You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you’re an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party… My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.

- Mark Zuckerberg

You can build a successful career, regardless of your field of endeavor, by the dozens of little things you do on and off the job.

- Zig Ziglar

Only engage in mutually beneficial relationships.

- Clay Clark

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

If David our CEO, devotes so much of his time to this, then all this stuff about teamwork and learning how to be a great leader must be pretty important.

- David Novak

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.

- Bill Gates

Exercise is better than any medicine I can take, exercise and sleep.

- Aliko Dangote

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.

- Napoleon Hill

A good engineering interview will include some set of difficult problems to solve. It might even require that the candidate write a short program. In addition, it will test the candidate’s knowledge of the tools she uses in great depth.

- Ben Horowitz

A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.

- Elon Musk

We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.” It’s a simple saying, but it’s deep. “Taking care of the people” is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it, the other two won’t matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work.

- Ben Horowitz

I think that the first thing is you should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don’t know what the future is going to hold.

- Ray Dalio

Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It’s something you have to learn. It’s a very lonely job.

- Ben Horowitz

When sales people don’t know what to do, they talk. The ordinary salesperson vomits the presentation onto the Buyer’s desktop.

- Jerry Vass

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Many brilliant people believe that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains, ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.

- Peter Drucker

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