I think my greatest moment in business was when the first Southwest airplane arrived after four years of litigation, and I walked up to it and I kissed that baby on the lips and I cried.
- Herb Kelleher
Notable Quotables
Saudi Arabia has stability. The social contract and the political contract between the king and the rulers and the royal family and the ruled people in Saudi Arabia is very strong and the bondage is so solid.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.
- Dale Carnegie
There’s a fascinating statistic: One out of every four people in America has visited New York since 9/11. It is astounding. Now, I don’t know how you count it; it’s some people coming multiple times.
- Michael Bloomberg
Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up.
- Sam Walton
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
- Thomas Edison
The cold harsh reality is that we have to balance the budget.
- Michael Bloomberg
Visionary companies make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and—quite literally—accident. What looks in retrospect like brilliant foresight and preplanning was often the result of Let’s just try a lot of stuff and keep what works.
- James C. Collins
Uber is efficiency with elegance on top. That’s why I buy an iPhone instead of an average cell phone, why I go to a nice restaurant and pay a little bit more. It’s for the experience.
- Travis Kalanick
My organization, my colleagues and I, are paid to run hotels in good times and fair times. We’re professionals. That’s what we do. I don’t give a damn about the short-term market implications.
- Stephen Wynn
You can literally force yourself to be courteous, happy and enthusiastic with every person you meet. After you have forced yourself to be so for a short period of time… the habit takes over.
- Zig Ziglar
I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.
- Elon Musk
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
Quite or be exceptional. Average is for losers.
- Seth Godin
Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.
- Winston Churchill
Nevertheless, in the first years of Standard Oil, Rockefeller regularly toured his facilities and was extremely inquisitive and observant, soaking up information and assiduously quizzing plant superintendants. In his pocket, he carried a little red notebook in which he jotted suggestions or improvements and always followed up on them. He knew the terror inspired by the little red book. More than once I have gone to luncheon with a number of our heads of departments and have seen the sweat out of on the foreheads for some of them when that little red notebook was pulled out.
- Ron Chernow
The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios… The idea that you can actually predict what’s going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market.
- George Soros
When it comes to social consequences, they’ve got all different people acting in different ways, very difficult to even have a proper criterion of success. So, it’s a difficult task.
- George Soros
My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers’ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.
- Joel Olsteen
Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
Winning isn’t everything but wanting to win is.
- Zig Ziglar
God has already done everything He’s going to do. The ball is now in your court. If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
[In June 2011] I mean, what is Twitter? Ask 100 people, ‘what is the world?’ and you’ll get a thousand different answers. The same is true for Twitter. It’s different things to different people. Twitter is the world.
- Jack Dorsey
Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it’s a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline.
- Harvey Mackay
I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I’m afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States.
- Stephen Wynn
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean, if a few drops of ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Be the one to stand out in the crowd.
- Joel Olsteen
She said, ‘My family is OK, John, but we lost everything.
- John Chambers
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.
- Andrew Carnegie
Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.
- Peter Thiel
I started, actually, to make my first animated cartoon in 1920. Of course, they were very crude things then and I used sort of little puppet things.
- Walt Disney
The wars of people will be more terrible than those of kings.
- Winston Churchill
Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.
- Peter Drucker
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
Cleantech shows the result: hundreds of undifferentiated products all in the name of one overbroad goal.
- Peter Thiel
If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications, teamwork, self-development, and development of others.
- Peter Drucker
Only 17 percent of us or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private highschool. But 55 percent of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools.
- Thomas J Stanley
The foundations and the intent of the Affordable Care Act are laudable. The way it’s being implemented is a disaster.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.
- Joel Olsteen
God wants to bless us where we are.
- Joel Olsteen
A right delayed is a right denied.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Don’t equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don’t let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you’d like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.
- Harvey Mackay
The economy in Hong Kong remained on a declining path. Occurrence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (‘SARS’) in March this year led to a sharp drop in consumer spending and an increasing unemployment rate. The decline in the economy resulted in downward adjustment in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.
- Bill Gates
The Internet moves very fast. In the old world, we could afford to sit and analyze forever. But in the new world, the first mover has the advantage.
- Raymond Kwok
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
At the margin, they’ll be biased to claim value in the near term, not help you create more in the future. That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided,
- Peter Thiel
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
- Henry Ford
When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.
- Jack Handee
Yes, iD is a machine vision and sensor browser for the physical world. That’s what we have been working on with Coca-Cola, Verizon, Bank of America and Disney to launch content when an image is recognised.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
One who starts a business without written plans of any kind, without a pro-forma or any concept of their overall profitability per customer, yet believes that if they work hard enough and give enough money away to those in need that eventually they will not be in need.
- Clay Clark
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them…let them be your friends.
- Winston Churchill
DOS is ugly and interferes with users’ experience.
- Bill Gates
We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.
- Howard Schultz
You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.
- Winston Churchill
He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.
- Ray Dalio
Stay focused instead of getting offended or off track by others.
- John C. Maxwell
If Google Books is successful, others will follow.
- Sergey Brin
Over 80% of America’s millionaires are self-made.
- Thomas J Stanley
Too often the investment in people stops there.
- Ben Horowitz
I don’t think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you’re willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn’t work. If you’re going to invent, it means you’re going to experiment, and if you’re going to experiment, you’re going to fail, and if you’re going to fail, you have to think long term.
- Jeff Bezos
He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.
- Thomas Edison
Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.
- Mark Zuckerberg
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
I want to get involved in things that makes a difference in peoples lives and lifts them up. I don’t want to be a part of anything that’s not inspiring or helpful to the community that I’m serving.
- Russell Simmons
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
- Oprah Winfrey
I would rather have people think we’re confused than let our competitors know what we’re going to do.
- Larry Page
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
- Winston Churchill
Well… I graduated from the business school of Northumberland University in Newcastle.
- Alexei Mordashov
I Always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but i am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter
- Walt Disney
Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.
- Bill Gates
You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.
- Warren Buffett
You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.
- Elon Musk
When I started the diamond business, no black person, period, was in it to do what we’re trying to do to change the industry. So I like to do things that I see clearly that are in my, you know, scope. And then, I had to figure how I get talented or smart business people around me to execute. That’s what I have to do.
- Russell Simmons
The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.
- Seth Godin
I’d learned the hard way that when hiring executives, one should follow Colin Powell’s instructions and hire for strength rather than lack of weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
It would be nice to design a real briefcase – you open it up and it’s your computer but it also stores your books.
- Steve Wozniak
Artists don’t think outside the box, because outside the box there’s a vacumm. Outside the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you’ll never be able to do the real work of art. You can’t ship if you’re far outside the box. Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done. That’s where the audience is, that’s where the means of production are available, and that’s where you can make impact.
- Seth Godin
You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The world got enamored with smartphones and tablets, but what’s interesting is those devices don’t do everything that needs to be done. Three-D printing, virtual-reality computing, robotics are all controlled by PCs.
- Michael Dell
The idea of Twitter started with me working in dispatch since I was 15 years old, where taxi cabs or firetrucks would broadcast where they were and what they were doing.
- Jack Dorsey
You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’
- Jerry Seinfeld
In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is.
- Ma Huateng
I didn’t follow up on the exchanges we had on Time Warner Cable (TWC) that were mentioned in the media because we were not ready.
- Patrick Drahi
To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.
- Peter Thiel
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
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
We are still masters of our fate.We are still captains of our souls.
- Winston Churchill
The record results for the third quarter once again demonstrate the ability of GE’s diverse mix of leading global businesses to deliver top-line growth, increased margins and strong cash generation.
- Jack Welch
So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.
- Peter Drucker
If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you.
- Peter Thiel
If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either. Part of leadership (a big part of it, actually) is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time. Long enough that the critics realize that you’re going to get there one way or another…so they follow.
- Seth Godin
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.
- Winston Churchill
It is exactly because we are a city that embraces freedom, that welcomes everyone and encourages their dreams, that New York remains on the front lines in the war on terror.
- Michael Bloomberg
A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.
- Jack Ma
Business leaders cannot be bystanders.
- Howard Schultz
