The secret of happiness is renunciation.
- Andrew Carnegie
Notable Quotables
BLAMING IDIOTS FOR interruptions is like blaming clowns for scaring children—they can’t help it. It’s their nature. Then again, I had (who am I kidding—and have), on occasion, been known to create interruptions out of thin air. If you’re anything like me, that makes us both occasional idiots. Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse. This is infinitely easier when you have a set of rules, responses, and routines to follow.
- Timothy Ferriss
It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
Positive thinking is more than just a tagline. It changes the way we behave. And I firmly believe that when I am positive, it not only makes me better, but it also makes those around me better.
- Harvey Mackay
Uber is “way more” evil than Google, the most ethically challenged company in Silicon Valley.
- Peter Thiel
Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.
- Bill Gates
All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
- Brian Tracy
My revenue was $4 million my first year in business, off of one $20 item.
- Sara Blakely
Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that’s where charisma comes from, from the leading.
- Seth Godin
You can’t be in neutral and hope to reach your full potential.
- Joel Olsteen
If we can get you a car in five minutes, we can get you anything in five minutes.
- Travis Kalanick
Historians will record 1998 as a time when the impossible happened in Asia
- Cheng Yu-tung
Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.
- Steve Ballmer
One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.
- Napoleon Hill
Someday, man will harness the rise and fall of the tides, imprison the power of the sun, and release atomic power.
- Thomas Edison
I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
- Oprah Winfrey
We all know far too many stories where the third generation just destroys everything that the first two have built up, and I certainly hope my family are different because I’ve worked too hard and my father has worked too hard for it to be given away.
- Gina Rinehart
My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.
- Elon Musk
The Real ReasonNew College Grads Can’t Get Hired shocked many when it reported, The Workforce Solutions Group at St. Louis Community College finds that more than 60% of employers say applicants lack communication and interpersonal skills
- Martha C. White
A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest… Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.
- Jack Welch
Most books on management are written by management consultants, and they study successful companies after they’ve succeeded, so they only hear winning stories.
- Ben Horowitz
But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.
- Peter Thiel
I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.
- Jerry Seinfeld
To enjoy peace, a nation must win the confidence and support of its people.
- Cheng Yu-tung
That’s why I can tell you with confidence that you are coming into greater victories. Enlarge your vision. Take the limits off God. You have not seen your best days. God has victories in your future that will amaze you. He will show up and show out in unusual ways. You may be in a tough time right now, but remember this: The enemy always fights you the hardest when he knows God has something great in store for you.
- Joel Olsteen
And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thoughts and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged in. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line; to lead in it. Adopt every improvement, have the best machinery and know the most about it.
- Andrew Carnegie
Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.
- Seth Godin
In fact, stories only magnify the need to have something remarkable (and honest) to say.
- Seth Godin
Everyone deserves at least a chance to make things better. And besides people can surprise you.
- David Novak
People at McDonald’s get trained for their positions, but people with far more complicated jobs don’t. It makes no sense. Would you want to stand on the line of the untrained person at McDonald’s? Would you want to use the software written by the engineer who was never told how the rest of the code worked? A lot of companies think their employees are so smart that they require no training. That’s silly.
- Ben Horowitz
It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
- Ronald Reagan
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
Motivation doesn’t last, neither does shower. That why we need it everyday.
- Zig Ziglar
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The ballplayer who loses his head can’t keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.
- Lou Gehrig
When I used to play sports, I’d be the one cheering the team on, ‘Come on, we can beat these guys!’ That’s just in me.
- Joel Olsteen
Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet.
- Zig Ziglar
One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.
- Arthur Golden
A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.
- Seth Godin
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.
- Larry Ellison
Your legacy is being written by yourself. Make the right decisions.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
No one has a transparent view of the world. In fact, we all carry around a personal worldview—the biases and experiences and expectations that color the way we perceive the world.
- Seth Godin
As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-time. Sometimes you’ll have to break this rule; it usually makes sense to hire outside lawyers and accountants, for example. However, anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned.
- Peter Thiel
Over three hundred years ago Galileo said: You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
- Dale Carnegie
There’s been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that’s already legal, you’ll never get it.
- Travis Kalanick
I want the services to look and sound like the Grammys. It’s not showy, but we represent God, and it should be first class.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.
- Rupert Murdoch
I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.
- Winston Churchill
After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.
- Winston Churchill
For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.
- Lee Shau Kee
So we really need jobs now. We have to take jobs away from other countries because other countries are taking our jobs. There is practically not a country that does business with the United States that isn’t making – let’s call it a very big profit. I mean China is going to make $300 billion on us at least this year.
- Donald Trump
When you are full of pride on the inside, it makes you stiff, stubborn, and creates strife with others.
- John C. Maxwell
Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.
- Seth Godin
The path of least resistance makes all rivers, and some men, crooked.
- Napoleon Hill
Cisco Systems Capital will be investing in companies working on networking technology.
- John Chambers
If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.
- Joel Olsteen
I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet.
- Russell Simmons
Who told you that something was wrong with you?
- Joel Olsteen
I always joke and say I want to invent a comfortable stiletto and then retire.
- Sara Blakely
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
- Napoleon Hill
Look at all the billionaires. If I know 15 billionaires, I know 13 unhappy people.
- Russell Simmons
I have ten marathons under my belt, including four New York races and one Boston.
- Harvey Mackay
Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.
- Timothy Ferriss
Taking in a baseball game on TV is also a big treat.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Starbucks is in my blood. It is such a part of me that letting it unravel simply was not an option.
- Howard Schultz
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
Kickstarter isn’t a profit center, it’s an organizer and an instigator.
- Seth Godin
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 you live for the weekends and vacations, your shit is broken.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Ow, ow, OW! On my ear you are!
- Yoda
Pacifists become militants. Freedom fighters become tyrants. Blessings become curses. Help becomes hindrance. More becomes less.
- Timothy Ferriss
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
Uncontrolled Desire For Something For Nothing.
- Napoleon Hill
We live in an age where everything is based on the short term.
- Howard Schultz
Motivation needs to be a part of your own life for you to be effective in conveying it to other people.
- Zig Ziglar
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
If standard of living is your #1 objective, then quality of life almost never improves. But, if quality of life is your #1 objective, then standard of living improves.
- Zig Ziglar
There are some people that can get things done, and it seems there are others who just can’t. That’s why we move heaven and earth to retain our stars and the main reason we manage out our lowest performers – the bottom 10% at least – each year.
- David Novak
Now that I have called you on your false accusation, you are using additional smear tactics.
- George Soros
The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what’s going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn’t allow for that.
- Jack Dorsey
One evening, intending to ask my host mother to wake me the next morning (okosu), I ask her to violently rape me (okasu). She is very confused.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’m skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.
- Jeff Bezos
I think alot about money when I do not have it.
- Stacy Thorn
If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.
- Jack Welch
Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.
- Ben Horowitz
Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.
- Seth Godin
I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument— and that is to avoid it. Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.
- Dale Carnegie
Take time to be kind and to say ‘thank you.’
- Zig Ziglar
Well, real estate is always good, as far as I’m concerned.
- Donald Trump
I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace – a connection to what matters.
- Oprah Winfrey
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
- Steve Martin
Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.
- Peter Thiel
Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you’re doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they’re hiding out in the comfortable zone. When your uncomfortable actions lead to success, the organization rewards you and brings you back for more.
- Seth Godin
Unfavorable hereditary back ground.
- Napoleon Hill
I should be only paying for things that matter. I shouldn’t be paying for things that don’t matter. And, if Walgreen wants a premium, and they’re not doing anything different, why should I pay them more?
- George Paz
I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
- Steve Martin
Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
- Jack Welch
I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a might oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.
- Og Mandino
