Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on the accumulation of capital, but under perfect competition all profits get competed away.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar
Be more splendid, more extraordinary. Use every moment to fill yourself up.
- Oprah Winfrey
If you want to understand what drives Cisco, look at our approach to customers. The manner in which we serve our customers defines our company values and demonstrates our priorities. Cisco is proud to be honored with this important certification that recognizes the foundation of our culture — the importance that we place on ensuring our customers are successful with Cisco technology.
- John Chambers
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
- John C. Maxwell
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
- Elon Musk
I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.
- Og Mandino
What chance does a five-foot-seven billionaire Jew who’s divorced really have of becoming president?
- Michael Bloomberg
Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
- Seth Godin
I remember one time I didn’t want to spend any money on motels so we all slept in sleeping bags on the floor of one of our guys’ houses. His furniture hadn’t gotten there yet.
- Sam Walton
When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.
- Yoda
We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
Getting every employee’s mind into the game is a huge part of what the CEO job is all about. Taking everyone’s best ideas and transferring them to others it the secret. Nothing is more important.
- Jack Welch
Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases.
- Dale Carnegie
If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.
- John C. Maxwell
We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.
- Walt Disney
I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
- Steve Martin
I think how you start the day many times determines what kind of day you’re going to have.
- Joel Olsteen
Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
- James C. Collins
Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
- Benjamin Franklin
Hong Kong is a good fashion city. The interest is enormous. There’s good potential in the Asian market.
- Stefan Persson
People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
There is a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. The policies of the Bush administration and the Sharon administration contribute to that. It’s not specifically anti-Semitism, but it does manifest itself in anti-Semitism as well.
- George Soros
I’m going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.
- Joel Olsteen
We made a disastrous move into casual shoes.
- Phil Knight
Trust your instincts
- Estée Lauder
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
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
In this early period, Rockefeller was a chronic worrier who labored under a great deal of self-imposed stress. Though not versed in the scientific side of refining, he often excercised a direct managerial role in the plant. With fluctuating market conditions, he sometimes needed shipments to New York with great dispatch and personally rushed down to the railroad tracks to motivate the freight handlers. I shall never forget how hungry I was in those days. I stayed out of doors day and night; I ran up and down the tops of freight cars, when necessary; I hurried up the boys.
- Ron Chernow
Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.
- Bill Gates
America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.
- Elon Musk
Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.
- Larry Ellison
I built a steel plant from the grassroots, so I learned all the nuts and bolts. When there was a problem, I would be able to guide them, though I am not a technical person.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Same problem as every Hollywood studio: how can you reliably produce a constant stream of popular entertainment for a fickle audience? (Nobody knows.)
- Peter Thiel
Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.
- Richard Branson
What you sow you reap. What you give.
- Zig Ziglar
One who works their tail off because they hate working for other people so much, but who has no concept of what they are doing and who justifies their poverty when anyone more successful gives them advice by saying their business is different.
- Clay Clark
We thought this [downturn] would last for two quarters, … Now we are saying that it will last for at least – at least ? three quarters.
- John Chambers
Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.
- Ray Kroc
I do not believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process
- Oprah Winfrey
Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.
- Timothy Ferriss
The top salesperson in the organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made.
- Zig Ziglar
We remain confident about the market opportunity ahead of us over the next three to five years.
- John Chambers
I think that any wealth creates a sense of trusteeship… it is characteristic of the new generation which has created wealth to have some amount of responsibility for it.
- Azim Premji
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that good ones slip through.
- Seth Godin
A person’s life is over in 50, 100 years. But a company lives on through the people it is composed of, and SoftBank group has to survive even after I’m gone.
- Masayoshi Son
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
- Steve Martin
Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
- Bill Gates
I’m a creative guy. And I only do businesses as a result of like I’ve – I’m try to find what my gifts are and give them immediately. As soon as I get them and I understand, I give them back.
- Russell Simmons
Expect more than others think possible.
- Howard Schultz
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.
- Napoleon Hill
Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.
- Dale Carnegie
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
For PayPal to work, we needed to attract a critical mass of at least a million users. Advertising was too ineffective to justify the cost. Prospective deals with big banks kept falling through. So we decided to pay people to sign up. We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend. This got us hundreds of thousands of new customers and an exponential growth rate.
- Peter Thiel
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
- Vince Lombardi
If you believe, as I do, that your employees truly are your most valuable asset, you will do whatever you can to help them do their jobs as well as possible.
- Harvey Mackay
For me, privacy and security are really important. We think about it in terms of both: You can’t have privacy without security.
- Larry Page
It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’ve gotten more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
- Winston Churchill
The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.
- Michael Bloomberg
If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.
- Dale Carnegie
They did not die because of sickness or anything but because of hunger. I remember that and how people suffered.
- Lui Che Woo
…[if you] use discrimination in the selection of your Master Mind group, your objective will have been half-way reached, even before you begin to recognize it.
- Napoleon Hill
We don’t know exactly how it will work. Advertisers want greater access, better accountability.
- Sergey Brin
Nobody enjoys the ‘little show about nothing’ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
When you start a company, you’re basically jumping off a cliff. You don’t have any sense of where you’re going to land, what to do when you land, or what you should be doing inmidair. It’s very very scary. But it’s much easier when you have somebody to commiserate with you who knows what you’re going through, and who you know will always be on your side.
- Seth Goldman
Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.
- Tadashi Yanai
So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it…Fortunate indeed is the person who has discovered how to give sex emotion an outlet through some form of creative effort, for he has by that discovery lifted himself to the status of a genius…The majority of men lower themselves through misunderstanding and misuse of this great force to the status of the lower animals…Highly sexed people always have a plentiful supply of magnetism…Highly sexed people move briskly and with grace and ease…The public speaker, orator, preacher, laywer or salesman who is lacking in sex energy is a flop as far as being able to influence others is concerned…The salesman who knows how to take his mind off the subject of sex, and direct it in sales effort with as much enthusiasm and determination as he would apply to its original purpose, has acquired the art of sex transmutation, whether he knows it or not….Intemperance in sex habits is just as detrimental as intemperance in habits of drinking and eating…A sex-mad is not essentially different than a dope-mad man! Both have lost control over their their faculties of reason and will-power…When driven by his desire to please a woman based upon the motive of sex alone, a man may steal , cheat and even committ murder. But when the emotion of LOVE is mixed with the emotion of sex, that same sme man will guide his actions with more sanity, balance, and reason…The emotion of love, when mixe dwith the emotion of sex softens, modifies, and beautifies the facial expression. No character analyst is needed to tell you this, you may observe it for yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
Opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison
When screening engineers from other companies, its smart to value engineers from great companies more than those from mediocre companies.
- Ben Horowitz
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
- Napoleon Hill
Sustaining faith is what sets you through those dark nights of the soul when you don’t know where to go or what to do, and it seems that you can’t last another day…but because of your faith in God, you do.
- Joel Olsteen
King Alfred’s Book of Laws, or Dooms, as set out in the existing laws of Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, attempted to blend the Mosaic code with Christian principles and old Germanic customs. He inverted the Golden Rule. Instead of “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you”, he adopted the less ambitious principle, “What ye will that other men should not do to you, that do ye not to other men”, with the comment, “By bearing this precept in mind a judge can do justice to all men; he needs no other law-books. Let him think of himself as the plaintiff, and consider what judgment would satisfy him.” The King, in his preamble, explained modestly that “I have not dared to presume to set down in writing many laws of my own, for I cannot tell what will meet with the approval of our successors.
- Winston Churchill
After my death, I want to be remembered as Africa’s greatest industrialist.
- Aliko Dangote
You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.
- Joel Olsteen
The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
Respect people’s wishes.
- Jack Dorsey
From a systematic standpoint, I think that capitalism is the best system. I can spend a lot of time explaining why I like communism, but it is actually not a good solution. Nor is socialism. So, capitalism is the right model.
- Ben Horowitz
Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.
- Bill Gates
Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World.
- Bill Gates
Complaints are your best learning opportunity
- Bill Gates
CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.
- Jack Welch
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
Managers will play every game in the book to avoid identifying their bottom 10. Sometimes they’ll sneak in people who were planning to retire that year or others who already have been told to leave the organization.
- Jack Welch
One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.
- Seth Godin
My strength is programming. I also think my biggest strength is simplification. That’s what I love doing.
- Jack Dorsey
I was hooked and I would make reward and recognition one of my primary focuses as a leader
- David Novak
Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it.
- Henry Ford
The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places,
- Peter Thiel
We’ve used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II.
- Warren Buffett
As an entrepreneur, I try to push the limits. Pedal to the metal.
- Travis Kalanick
There is nothing either good or bad.
- William Shakespeare
Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above—that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager’s performance.
- Peter Drucker
Surround yourself only with those that uplift you.
- Oprah Winfrey
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.
- Peter Drucker
Whenever you have multiple devices including multiple PCs that you want to share information with, it’s always been a bit complicated.
- Bill Gates
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.
- Tom Landry
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
- Steve Martin
