Notable Quotables

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

I have always believed that if we do well, we must also do something to help others in society.

- Henry Sy

Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual . . . Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude – the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

- Dale Carnegie

I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don’t like beautiful things. But I don’t like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.

- Vladimir Potanin

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ we will fall, but ‘when.’ There are no exceptions.

- John C. Maxwell

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

- Henry Ford

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

- Joel Olsteen

People who smile tend to manage, teach and sell more effectively, and to raise happier children.

- Dale Carnegie

The Group has three areas. The first is Henderson Land the listed company. Now it has a total developable land bank of 75 million square feet of gross floor area in China. I hope that in the next two or three months that figure can rise to 150 million square feet. That would be a remarkable feet. So, Henderson is one hope. The second is Hong Kong and China Gas, which I also have high hopes for. In the mainland we already have had many projects in 12 cities there. No, actually I mean, we have projects in 55 cities in 12 provinces. Probably about 60 in total that we are working on. So that is the second area. The third area or hope is Shau Kee Finance. It’s assets have already doubled from $50 billion and I hope they can double again to $200 billion.

- Lee Shau Kee

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

- Henry Ford

I cut the feet out of my control top pantyhose one night, threw them on under my white pants and realized that the toning and shaping was perfect and that the hosiery material is thin enough that I could make shape wear out of it.

- Sara Blakely

He wants to do something amazing in your life. Get in agreement and say, God, this is for me today. I’m raising my expectations. I’m shaking off doubt, negativity, disappointments, self-pity, little dreams, and little goals, and God, I will make room for a flood of Your goodness.

- Joel Olsteen

Regardless of what position people originally took, once the decision is made, everyone supports it. That’s why it is critical that no one hold anything back during the discussion.

- Patrick M. Lencioni

If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.

- Zig Ziglar

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.

- Lee Iacocca

In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?

- Bill Gates

Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.

- Seth Godin

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation.

- Soren Kierkegaard

This approach appeals to the media’s innate curiosity.Whereas a fastball stresses logic over emotion, the curveball stresses emotion over logic.

- Michael Levine

your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.

- Dale Carnegie

The first is the result of a decision to act—to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold. The second is the result of a decision of sloth—to not do something—wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences.

- Timothy Ferriss

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.

- Oscar Wilde

Our leaders in business, politics, research, and the arts are all great salespeople or they have great sales people on their payroll.

- Jerry Vass

There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.

- Winston Churchill

For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.

- Winston Churchill

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

- Timothy Ferriss

When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.

- Rupert Murdoch

A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing.

- Phil Knight

Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.

- Ray Dalio

Movies always are open to being remade because times change so much, and the tempo of movies changes. I think of it like a James Bond. They can have different actors play the same role… I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘We want to remake ‘The Jerk’ with so and so.’ And I say, ‘Fine.’ It just doesn’t bother me. It’s an honor actually.

- Steve Martin

For every sale you miss because you were too enthusiastic, you’ll miss a hundred because you weren’t enthusiastic enough.

- Zig Ziglar

It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.

- Joel Olsteen

Always pass on what you have learned.

- Yoda

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

Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.

- Napoleon Hill

[In 1998] The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.

- Phil Knight

To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.

- Yoda

I couldn’t figure out what to wear under my clothes. The body shapers were too thick at the time.

- Sara Blakely

I have an obligation to use what I know to try to bring real, usable medical science to every doctor and bedside and patient.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

People who are able to lift up others and boost the morale in organization are invaluable, and they are always a tremendous asset to a leader’s inner circle.

- Napoleon Hill

I have a list of the hardest, most challenging problems that our company needs to solve and I start at the top and work my way down. And I have a list of the coolest most fascinating things that we can invent and I start at the top of the list and I work my way down.

- Travis Kalanick

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

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

- Bill Gates

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

- Peter Drucker

Do you know of the water and the moon? The river flows endlessly, yet it never disappears. The moon waxes and wanes, yet it never grows bigger or smaller. Therefore, if you look in the eyes of change, everything in this world changes in an instant. But if you look in the eyes of stability, everything in the world, including humanity, is eternal. Dozens of worlds have demonstrated precisely the truth of the changing universe. The changes of the water and the moon happen on their appearances, but never on their physical natures. Therefore, whether changes happen depends on people’s mind and view. Since nothing remains permanent in the world, change is just the eternal fact.

- Cheng Yu-tung

There’s pros and cons of a big church. Cons is I don’t get to know everybody, I don’t get to go to their ballgame, I don’t get to marry everybody, but the pros are you get all this community, 800 ushers come in to serve, getting there at 7 in the morning on their day off and coming in on Saturday to make all those wafers.

- Joel Olsteen

If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.

- Benjamin Hooks

I will study and prepare myself, and someday the opportunity will come.

- Abraham Lincoln

God will lead you from where you are right now to where He wants to you to be, if you’ll let Him.

- George Foreman

But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.

- Peter Thiel

If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55 percent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?

- Dale Carnegie

Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.

- Seth Godin

All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.

- Jeff Bezos

The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another Mexican restaurant in the American suburb surely take a risk. But are they entrepreneurs? All they do is what has been done many times before. They gamble on the increasing popularity of eating out in their area, but create neither a new satisfaction nor new consumer demand. Seen under this perspective they are surely not entrepreneurs even though theirs is a new venture. McDonald’s, however, was entrepreneurship. It did not invent anything, to be sure. Its final product was what any decent American restaurant had produced years ago. But by applying management concepts and management techniques (asking, What is “value” to the customer?), standardizing the “product,” designing process and tools, and by basing training on the analysis of the work to be done and then setting the standards it required, McDonald’s both drastically upgraded the yield from resources, and created a new market and a new customer. This is entrepreneurship.

- Peter Drucker

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent benefit.

- Napoleon Hill

Businesses often forget the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can’t deliever good service from unhappy employees.

- Tony Hsieh

When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.

- Elon Musk

Remember that failure is an event, not a person.

- Zig Ziglar

Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising.

- Howard Schultz

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

- Henry Ford

I’d never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn’t exist.

- Sara Blakely

Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.

- Seth Godin

If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.

- Joel Olsteen

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

- Walt Disney

Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people”, that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

- Peter Drucker

While there’s always room for improvement, … we were very pleased with our results in what is a seasonally-challenging quarter.

- John Chambers

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

- John D. Rockefeller

Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.

- Steve Martin

We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.

- Larry Page

Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.

- Jack Ma

If you have a lot of [visionaries], you’ll have a lot of great ideas, something awesome that people will love; but you never get it done. It doesn’t ship. Nothing happens. If you have too many [execution oriented] people on your team, you’re executing like mad, things are getting built, and you’re shipping like crazy – but you’re building something that nobody wants. If you have a good balance of both in your company, you’re more likely to stay on track. Those people compliment each other.

- Caterina Fake

My son is now an ‘entrepreneur.’ That’s what you’re called when you don’t have a job

- Ted Turner

On this basis, we intend to increase the dividend for the third time in a row. We are proposing a distribution of €3.25 per share, corresponding to a dividend payout ratio of 27.4 percent, which is again up slightly on the previous year’s level.

- Elmar Degenhart

Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.

- Peter Drucker

The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves.

- Peter Drucker

Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.

- Bill Gates

The breadth and maturity of our own businesses is allowing us to weather the prevailing storms.

- Cheng Yu-tung

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

Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that everything changes except the law of change. He said: You cannot step in the same river twice. The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?

- Dale Carnegie

Great leaders, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, also focused on the long term.

- Reed Hastings

They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.

- Larry Ellison

You think Yoda stops teaching, just because his student does not want to hear? A teacher Yoda is. Yoda teaches like drunkards drink, like killers kill.

- Yoda

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

- Winston Churchill

But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.

- Dale Carnegie

This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules.

- Peter Thiel

Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of his imagination

- Napoleon Hill

No matter how many times people say it – ‘Oh, I’m just writing this for myself’ ‘Oh, I’m just doing this for myself’ – nobody’s doing it for themselves! You’re doing it for an audience. So whether I’m performing or writing a book or playing music, it’s definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.

- Steve Martin

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

IM is interesting because you look at your buddy list and, at a glance, see what your friends are listening to, what they’re working on, what they’re doing. The problem was that you were bound to the computer keyboard.

- Jack Dorsey

You’re got to worry about what’s coming up to stay ahead of the curve…

- Phil Knight

I think you have a danger of regulating, putting regulations in place which will mean there will be no press in 10 years to regulate.

- Rupert Murdoch

The evolving social and digital media platforms and highly innovative and relevant payment capabilities are causing seismic changes in consumer behavior and creating equally disruptive opportunities for business.

- Howard Schultz

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