When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.
- James C. Collins
Notable Quotables
Fail openly.
- Jack Dorsey
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
- Bill Gates
In South Africa, being Chinese meant I wasn’t white and I wasn’t black. I trained in Baragwanath Hospital, the largest black hospital in South Africa. That was around 1976, the time of the Soweto Uprising, when police fired on children and students who were protesting. I was part of the group of interns who volunteered to treat them.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
The only way to solve the problem of Boko Haram is to create jobs.
- Aliko Dangote
People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.
- Bill Gates
I feel that people I trusted – I don’t know who, on what level – have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.
- Rupert Murdoch
By spring of ’98, each company’s stock had more than quadrupled. Skeptics questioned earnings and revenue multiples higher than those for any non-internet company. It was easy to conclude that the market had gone crazy.
- Peter Thiel
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money, it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows?
- Joel Olsteen
My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
- Michael Gerber
Superstition of Prejudice.
- Napoleon Hill
Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards–and living up to them–is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.
- Seth Godin
Be factual. Lying is really, really a bad idea, mostly because they’ll find you out. And then you’ll never get another item in that outlet for as long as they remember you, which will be forever.
- Michael Levine
Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.
- Peter Thiel
I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It’s really a different product category.
- Jeff Bezos
Husbands and wives, have fun with each other. I’m convinced it makes all the difference in the world.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!
- Og Mandino
I guarantee you it will not be anyone from the outside.
- Jack Welch
Some of the biggest failures I’ve ever met, are people that have never failed.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Getting over the war was biggest adversity I have ever faced.
- Jack Nadel
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Edison
Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking all day from one laboratory table to another. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.
- Thomas Edison
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
Doing the wrong thing daily, compounds over time.
- John C. Maxwell
Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success.
- Zig Ziglar
When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.
- Bill Gates
What options expensing will determine is job creation and job loss, … This is why we are debating it so strongly and I’m proud to champion it.
- John Chambers
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.
- Seth Godin
There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.
- Phil Knight
In order to become rich, you need to learn to build systems that can work without you. .
- Robert Kiyosaki
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
- Henry Kissinger
The Internet will help achieve friction free capitalism” by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.
- Bill Gates
Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
- Bill Gates
Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you’ll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it’s twice the efficiency of a Prius.
- Elon Musk
Do more than you are being paid to do, and you’ll eventually be paid more for what you do.
- Zig Ziglar
That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.
- Steve Jobs
Our mail product, Hotmail, is the market leader globally.
- Steve Ballmer
The world is facing a new networked, digital lifestyle, and we will ensure that Canon remains ahead of the game.
- Fujio Mitarai
Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.
- Confucius
I think that the act of teaching is the most gratifying and rewarding of all human endeavors.
- David Novak
Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.
- Sam Walton
Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffett
Nobody roots for a product.
- Phil Knight
Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
- Dale Carnegie
Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.
- John C. Maxwell
The courage take tough yes-or-no decisions. Look, the world is filled with gray. Anyone can look at an issue from every different angle. Some smart people can –and will-analyze those angles indefinitely. But effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.
- Jack Welch
Who you attract is not determined by what you want. It’s determined by who you are.
- John Maxwell
Promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.
- Peter Thiel
So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.
- Thomas Edison
Sometimes I say ‘Go to Joe’s Diner’ and [Siri] doesn’t know where Joe’s Diner is. And very often usually I find out that Android does.
- Steve Wozniak
We were looking to guide and help people who want to start small businesses.
- David Nilssen
If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.
- Larry Page
I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Get the right people on the bus and get the wrong people off of the bus.
- Jim Collins
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
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
Control, control, you must learn control!
- Yoda
Always avoid the acute angle.
- Dale Carnegie
TV is a great big megaphone,” and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find.
- Peter Thiel
I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.
- Wang Jianlin
Always remember, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
- Winston Churchill
You’ve got to embrace what you don’t know.
- Sara Blakely
To lead a meaningful life, one must build trust with others. To enjoy peace, a nation must win the confidence and support of its people. To achieve stable growth, an enterprise must live up to its conviction.
- Cheng Yu-tung
To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.
- Peter Drucker
The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
What we need to do is always lean into the future, when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.
- Jeff Bezos
You will have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.
- Zig Ziglar
Think about how Google talks about its business. It certainly doesn’t claim to be a monopoly.
- Peter Thiel
[On the cost to found Nike] Six hundred dollars each. Twelve hundred dollars total investment.
- Phil Knight
To me, we’re marketing hope.
- Joel Olsteen
I have the courage to surround myself with people who are smarter than me.
- Andrew Carnegie
What you keep before your eyes will affect you.
- Joel Olsteen
I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.
- Bill Gates
A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It’s a gasoline car with slightly better mileage.
- Elon Musk
The most “successful” companies seemed to embrace a sort of anti-business model where they lost money as they grew.
- Peter Thiel
Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).
- Seth Godin
The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.
- Ben Horowitz
Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.
- Jack Ma
I’m an entrepreneur first and a wine critic second.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
What’s your vision for the future of your follicles?
- Clay Clark
Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee.
- Howard Schultz
Your people give their days (and sometimes their nights) to you. They give their hands, brains, and hearts. Sure, the company pays them. It fills their wallets. But as a leader, you need to fill their souls. You can do that by getting in their skin, by giving the work meaning, by clearing obstacles, and by demonstrating the generosity gene. And you can do it, perhaps most powerfully, by creating an environment that’s exciting and enjoyable.
- Jack Welch
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it’s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.
- George Soros
1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.
- Peter Thiel
Disruptive technology should be framed as a marketing challenge, not a technological one.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Many people fail to make a favourable impression because they don’t listen attentively.
- Isaac F. Marcosson
I was raised with ‘Laurel and Hardy’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it’s the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you’re performing in your bedroom for yourself.
- Steve Martin
Almost everything is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.
- Herb Kelleher
Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.
- Napoleon Hill
the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities. Take time to stop and smell the roses, or—in this case—to count the pea pods.
- Timothy Ferriss
Bury your mistakes.
- Rupert Murdoch
I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.
- Joel Olsteen
All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
Globalization replaced technology as the hope for the future. Since the ’90s migration “from bricks to clicks” didn’t work as hoped, investors went back to bricks (housing) and BRICs (globalization). The result was another bubble, this time in real estate.
- Peter Thiel
There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.
- Elon Musk
