Notable Quotables

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship.

- Seth Godin

Whenever a company proudly announces the establishment of its beautiful, new, modern corporate headquarters, you can be sure it’s heading downhill. Why? Because instead of focusing on their business, the company’s managers are focusing on themselves. Messy desks, cramped quarters and unlovely surroundings are the physical manifestations of people too busy getting the work done to care much about their own creature comforts. The greatest danger to a business is not risk. It’s a lack of risk: complacency.

- Harvey Mackay

In the most minimal sense, the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come.

- Peter Thiel

I was not naturally talented. I didn’t sing, dance or act, though working around that minor detail made me inventive.

- Steve Martin

Be courageous! Whatever setbacks America has encountered, it has always emerged as a stronger and more prosperous nation…. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward!

- Thomas Edison

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.

- Bill Gates

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

- John F. Kennedy

When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.

- Seth Godin

Taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible.

- Larry Ellison

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

There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

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

Art allows people a way to dream their way out of their struggle.

- Russell Simmons

Thinking (of how to improve your life and business) is the hardest thing there is. That is why so few people engage in it.

- Henry Ford

If you’re a Wal-Mart of a Meijer you can draw the shoppers without using signs to advertise your specials, … But when you’re a little guy, you really depend on those signs.

- Michael Ward

When I’m bored or tired of being blonde, I’ll throw on a wig. It’s a lot less of a permanent way to change your look, and I have about 10 – all different colors, shapes, bobs, long hair, short, feathered.

- Sara Blakely

Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.

- Sam Walton

Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t consciously agree with that statement, your brain sure does.

- Seth Godin

Consensus decisions about executives almost always sway the process away from strength and toward lack of weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

Well, sometimes you just don’t like somebody.

- Henry Ford

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You’ve got to be before you can do and do before you can have.

- Zig Ziglar

Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amounts of virtual cash, 25-30 cents, for each hour of good behaviour. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun – whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise – come out of their own individual accounts. No balance, no goodies. This often requires more self-control on the part of the parents than the children.

- Timothy Ferriss

Ideas are cheap. The difficult part is finding the team to execute them.

- Raymond Kwok

In reality it is the focus on the first three D’s that ultimately gains you the data, and the dollars you need to become very, very rich…in other words the dollars are derived from having a dream, being dedicated, and having the drive to win.

- Robert Kiyosaki

I recall that Harry made a trip to San Bernardino about the time we were really starting to roll, and Dick McDonald asked him what he thought the future of McDonald’s would be. Harry told him that one day this company would be bigger than F. W. Woolworth. Dick really did a double take at that. He told me later, ‘I thought you had a genuine nut on your hands, Ray.’ But Harry knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he knew how to get there.

- Ray Kroc

Walking in circles Dr. Jan Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, studied what happens to us when we have no map, no compass, no way to determine landmarks. I’m not talking about a metaphor—he researched what happens to people lost in the woods or stumbling around the Sahara, with no north star, no setting sun to guide them. It turns out we walk in circles. Try as we might to walk in a straight line, to get out of the forest or the desert, we end up back where we started. Our instincts aren’t enough. In the words of Dr. Souman, “Don’t trust your senses because even though you might think you are walking in a straight line when you’re not.” Human nature is to need a map. If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow.

- Seth Godin

You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years

- Sara Blakely

Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.

- Wayne Gretzky

Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.

- Ben Horowitz

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

- Winston Churchill

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.

- Yoda

Trees will improve property values, take pollutants out of the air, help with water runoff.

- Michael Bloomberg

I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Blackjack is very scientific. There’s always a right answer and a wrong answer. Do you take a card, increase your bet, bet big or bet small. There’s absolutely a right and wrong answer.

- Charles Ergen

If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.

- Elon Musk

I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

If you believe in quality, you can’t just tell everybody We believe in quality! You’ve got to pay bonuses based on quality. You’ve got to let everyone in the organization know that they are being judged on quality.

- Jack Welch

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

- Winston Churchill

As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.

- Reid Hoffman

In the face of challenging economic and market conditions of the past 12 months, our diversified portfolio of multiple earnings streams has served us well.

- Cheng Yu-tung

From my experience, there are so many regulations for investing in the United States that they become an impediment, a barrier to investing.

- Michael Otto

Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.

- Jack Ma

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.

- Elon Musk

[In January 2011] I think Twitter is so unique that we must stay independent.

- Jack Dorsey

Market the change; be bold. Remember don’t be a bad ad, be a good one.

- David Novak

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

- Thomas Edison

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

- Joel Olsteen

My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.

- Howard Schultz

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.

- Bill Gates

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

- Elon Musk

If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.

- Dale Carnegie

What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

- Winston Churchill

There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don’t like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed. I don’t spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.

- Michael Dell

I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great thing that entrepreneurship is getting easier. When I started, it was just much harder to begin a company.

- Ben Horowitz

Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business—the creation of new value—cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.

- Peter Thiel

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

- Winston Churchill

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

We have the best flat land, you can grow anything in the cheapest possible way; turning Nigeria around is not really that difficult. Nigeria is really the best place to invest, it is one of the places to make money; all over the world it (Nigeria) is the best kept secret actually in terms of investment.

- Aliko Dangote

If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.

- John C. Maxwell

I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.

- Howard Schultz

The market … demands a signal from you that you’re serious, powerful, accepted, and safe.

- Seth Godin

Never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, you will be successful.

- Brian Tracy

MAY 13 Guard Against Pessimism For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. ROMANS 14:17 NLT I HEARD A STORY ABOUT TWO FARMERS. When the rain fell, one farmer said, Thank You, Lord, for watering our crops.” But the other farmer said, Yeah, but if the rain keeps up, it’s going to rot the roots.” When the sun came out, the positive farmer said, Thank You, Lord, that our crops are getting the vitamins and minerals they need. We’ll have a wonderful harvest this year.” But the negative farmer said, Yeah, but if it keeps up, it’s going to scorch those plants. We’re never going to make a living.” Don’t you know people who are always focused on the negative? Be sure to guard against their negative attitudes infecting your thinking! Stay focused on the positive things in life.

- Joel Olsteen

Do not look like you are playing the fiddle while Rome is burning….stay focussed – Paraphrased from

- David Novak

CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.

- Peter Thiel

I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.

- Elon Musk

The most obvious clue was sartorial: cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans. So we instituted a blanket rule: pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings.

- Peter Thiel

If you can’t communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you’re giving up your potential.

- Warren Buffett

I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.

- Randy Pausch

Write your life story as if it has already happened and live it out using your faith in yourself, and in the reality that you are embracing.

- Clay Clark

I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread

- Mitch Hedberg

I don’t want any more concentration camps for animals that are cruelly treated, force-fed to fatten themselves up for our consumption.

- Stephen Wynn

I’d be happy to provide advice if anybody asked me no matter who the President is.

- Michael Bloomberg

Often, out of our greatest rejection comes our greatest direction.

- Joel Olsteen

Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we’re just trying to accomplish something.

- Thomas Edison

The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.

- Napoleon Hill

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

To Be Success In Life Forget The Problems That You Face…But Don’t Forget The Lessons That Those Problems Taught To..

- Harvey Mackay

So the challenge, as you contemplate your next opportunity to be boring or remarkable, is to answer these two questions: (1) “If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impact? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat, or lose important friendships?” If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you’ll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off. And then, once you’ve compared the bad feeling and the benefits, and you’ve sold yourself on taking the remarkable path, answer this one: (2) How can I create something that critics will criticize?

- Seth Godin

The interesting products out on the Internet today are not building new technologies. They’re combining technologies. Instagram, for instance: Photos plus geolocation plus filters. Foursquare: restaurant reviews plus check-ins plus geo.

- Jack Dorsey

Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it. “ 14. “Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity.

- Sam Walton

I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.

- Zig Ziglar

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

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

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