The Starbucks customer and the Teavana customer are two very different customers, two different need states that are highly complimentary.
- Howard Schultz
Notable Quotables
There’s a sucker born every minute.
- P.T. Barnum
In setting goals and executing a strategy, Wanda is sophisticated. We have good systems and departments. If targets are not reached, a yellow light goes off.
- Wang Jianlin
How much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes?
- Peter Thiel
When advice is freely given, the receiver is free to use it as he or she sees fit.
- Harvey Mackay
When I hear something going wrong, I insist on it being put right.
- Rupert Murdoch
India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.
- Bill Gates
People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.
- Peter Drucker
I’m never fully satisfied with any Microsoft product.
- Bill Gates
About two-thirds of us work between forty-five and fifty-five hours per week.
- Thomas J Stanley
I’m a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they’re simpler for customers.
- Jeff Bezos
The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.
- Peter Thiel
The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.
- Michael Gerber
You hope that one or both of them win a race right before our race. I know that in the past, when Bill Elliott won it always boosted sales here.
- Ed Clark
TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.
- Jack Dorsey
Expect to make some mistakes when you try new and different approaches. Sometimes colossal failures lead to spectacular successes.
- Harvey Mackay
The dangers of unchecked bureauracy are a constant thorn in the CEO’s side.
- Jack Welch
The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.
- Bruce Lee
Smith never wavered. Twenty-five years later, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper outright and beat Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories.12 In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.
- James C. Collins
Diligence is the mother of good luck.
- Benjamin Franklin
Arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.
- Peter Thiel
How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world?
- Reed Hastings
I very much believe that creating a sense of fun and keeping up everyone’s energy level is part of my job description. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands
- David Novak
RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.
- Jack Welch
Really, truly, try to figure out what your palate is all about. If you’ve determined that you don’t like dirty old stinky wine – old-world flavors – you probably like new-world fruit bombs. Stick to Shirazes and California Cabernets or Zinfandels.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Post-9/11, we saw an immediate uptick in the amount of people in our stores, all over the country. People wanted that human connection. We are not going to fracture the Starbucks experience.
- Howard Schultz
Companies should not have a singular view of profitability. There needs to be a balance between commerce and social responsibility… The companies that are authentic about it will wind up as the companies that make more money.
- Howard Schultz
Middle-income countries are the biggest users of GMOs. Places like Brazil.”
- Bill Gates
GE’s businesses turned in a terrific first quarter. Our products and services are being well received in unusually robust global markets.
- Jack Welch
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.
- Dale Carnegie
I don’t make deals for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it.
- Donald Trump
Selling and delivering a product is at least as important as the product itself.
- Peter Thiel
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
- Jim Rohn
Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.
- Andrew Carnegie
It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.
- Larry Ellison
When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Pale ink is better than the most retentive memory.
- Harvey Mackay
Lack of Capital.
- Napoleon Hill
If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.
- Dale Carnegie
To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.
- Peter Drucker
I have this system where if I buy three or four new things, I give away three or four things. Sometimes, it’s a very painful system, but shopping is even better when you know that someone else who needs it will be getting. Keep the clothing karma going, I say.
- Sara Blakely
Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?”
- Ben Horowitz
Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.
- Winston Churchill
People buy titles, and not contents of books. By merely changing the name of one book that was not moving his sales on that book jumped upward more a million copies. The inside of the book was no changed in any way. He merely ripped off the cover bearing the title that did not sell, and put on new cover with a title that had box-office value.
- Napoleon Hill
In the early days, anybody with a glue pot and a pair of scissors could get into the shoe business…
- Phil Knight
A lot of people feel very good about Mitt Romney and I think he’s going to do a great job.
- Donald Trump
When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.
- Mark Zuckerberg
We believe the competitive and economic environment will remain very challenging in the year ahead. Whilst we think we have the opportunity to make improvements to some of our ranges, we are still budgeting on the basis of negative like-for-like retail sales for the year.
- Simon Wolfson
The most valuable companies in the future won’t ask what problems can be solved with computers alone. Instead, they’ll ask: how can computers help humans solve hard problems?
- Peter Thiel
Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.
- Bill Gates
I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.
- Steve Martin
Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.
- Seth Godin
I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm than a man who knows everything.
- John D. Rockefeller
People ask me all the time, ‘How can I become a successful entrepreneur?’ And I have to be honest: It’s one of my least favorite questions, because if you’re waiting for someone else’s advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you’re not one.
- Michael Dell
They said it was only a ground shark, but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.
- Winston Churchill
If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong—yes, even that you know is wrong—isn’t it better to begin by saying: Well, now, look. I thought otherwise, but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong, I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.” There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.
- Dale Carnegie
Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
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
At Uniqlo, we’re thinking ahead. We’re thinking about how to create new, innovative products… and sell that to everyone.
- Tadashi Yanai
I have this old ’57 Porsche Speedster, and the way the door closes, I’ll just sit there and listen to the sound of the latch going, ‘cluh-CLICK-click.’ That door! I live for that door. Whatever the opposite of planned obsolescence is, that’s what I’m into.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Yes, they broke the law, but we can’t deport them. Let’s get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it – they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need.
- Michael Bloomberg
Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.” Everyone around the table nodded assent. “Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.
- Peter Drucker
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I don’t have all the answers.
- Joel Olsteen
Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Government isn’t that good at rapid advancement of technology. It tends to be better at funding basic research. To have things take off, you’ve got to have commercial companies do it.
- Elon Musk
As Google CEO Larry Page put it in his 2014 TED talk: “The main thing that has caused companies to fail, in my view, is that they missed the future.
- Jack Welch
Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.
- John C. Maxwell
If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.
- Elon Musk
The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo, the job is to invent the status quo.
- Seth Godin
Your best days are not behind you. They’re in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
- Peter Drucker
Not long ago somebody showed me an article written for a local magazine in 1960. IT was called Success Story of the Year, and it described how we had built up an empire of nine variety stores. Then it quoted me as saying that we probably wouldn’t grow much more because I believed in personally supervising the nine-store group, and I thought any more stores would be unwieldy to manager without additional supervisors. So what the heck happened? How did we ever get to be the largest retailer in the world with a philosophy like that?
- Sam Walton
We create stress for ourselves because you feel like you have to do it. You have to. I don’t feel that anymore.
- Oprah Winfrey
Don’t sling mud at others or soon you will find yourself in a deeper hole than when you started.
- Clay Clark
One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest.
- Winston Churchill
The basic principle is I command, and my employees carry it out immediately.
- Wang Jianlin
When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.
- Winston Churchill
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate?
- Larry Page
For people to be fully committed, they should be properly compensated. Whenever an entrepreneur asks me to invest in his company, I ask him how much he intends to pay himself. A company does better the less it pays the CEO—that’s one of the single clearest patterns I’ve noticed from investing in hundreds of startups. In no case should a CEO of an early-stage, venture-backed startup receive more than $150,000 per year in salary.
- Peter Thiel
lasting transformations from good to great follow a general pattern of buildup followed by breakthrough.
- James C. Collins
Cold steel and discipline and the slight capital surplus necessary to move and organise armies constituted the sole defences.
- Winston Churchill
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
We’ll continue to expand our footprint… Oracle’s Fusion cloud applications for HCM, CRM and ERP all have a new simplified user interface and an integrated social network that makes our enterprise applications as easy-to-use and familiar as Facebook, while enabling better collaboration and teamwork among your employees and your customers.
- Larry Ellison
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
- Bill Gates
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
- Bill Gates
When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough.
- Donald Trump
When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.
- Bill Gates
With the intensity of the first three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, fans have been treated to exciting finishes each race. Fans can expect nothing less than the same for the John Deere 200.
- Ed Clark
We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
- Bill Gates
Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.
- Dale Carnegie
Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.
- Andrew Carnegie
The problem with pity parties is very few people come, and those who do don’t bring presents.
- Zig Ziglar
You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.
- Winston Churchill
Cherish you visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.
- Napoleon Hill
Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.
- Elon Musk
Better to be called a cult—or even a mafia
- Peter Thiel
Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.
- Peter Thiel
Experience has taught me,” says Sam Wood, that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren’t.
- Dale Carnegie
People don’t want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology – all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why.
- Peter Thiel
