Notable Quotables

Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded, or how much power you have.

- Oprah Winfrey

I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick – it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.

- Sara Blakely

So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work – what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business?

- Ray Dalio

She said, ‘My family is OK, John, but we lost everything.

- John Chambers

In a world where wealth is growing, you can get away with printing money. Doubling the debt over the next 20 years is not a problem.

- Peter Thiel

We’re profitable and have the potential to be very profitable, … We generate cash from operations of over $1 billion per quarter. We have $19 billion in cash and equivalents in an industry that is in debt. We’ve gained more market share than we’ve ever gained in this last quarter. We’ve got the customer loyalty and strategy for where the industry’s going, which is combining networks for service providers and enterprises. So I’m very optimistic about our future if we execute right.

- John Chambers

Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.

- Zig Ziglar

It’s absolutely a necessary and inevitable evolution in retailing (of Wal-Mart putting small stores out of business), as inevitable as the replacement of the buggy by the car, and the dissappearance of the buggy whip makers. The small stores (and DJs) were destined to dissappear, at least in the numbers they once existed., because the whole thing is driven by customers, who are free to choose where to shop.

- Sam Walton

Let’s test the Shakespearean model in the real world. Imagine a production called Gates and Schmidt, based on Romeo and Juliet. Montague is Microsoft. Capulet is Google. Two great families, run by alpha nerds, sure to clash on account of their sameness.

- Peter Thiel

You’re not better than anybody else, but you’re not less than anybody else. You’re a child of the Most High God.

- Joel Olsteen

What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.

- Zig Ziglar

Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring.

- Seth Godin

Put everything you’ve got into what you’re doing. Be totally focused–nothing should be haphazard.

- Donald Trump

One of my lifelong practices is to pay my obligations on time, especially my suppliers. Even in my early years as retailer, I didn’t delay my payments to suppliers, because I tell my kids that we have to be considerate to suppliers and think of their own hinyong or how they have to protect their sense of trustworthiness with others.

- Henry Sy

But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.

- Peter Thiel

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.

- Og Mandino

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

- Steven Wright

It was not her sex appeal but the obvious relish with which she devoured the hamburger that made my pulse begin to hammer with excitement.

- Ray Kroc

As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.

- Winston Churchill

(Physics is) a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

- Elon Musk

In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.

- Seth Godin

I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.

- Seth Godin

As you stumble and learn, stumble and learn again, resolve to talk to yourself as if you were your best friend. So no What a #?%$@ idiot! when your BFF smashes an egg on the floor, m’kay? Be cool, like the Fonz.

- Timothy Ferriss

Keep doing the right. God is building character in you, and you are passing that test. Remember, the greater the struggle, the greater the reward.

- Joel Olsteen

The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive. When I was managing thousands of people at Hewlett-Packard after the sale of Opsware, there was an incredible number of incoming demands on my time. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Little companies wanted to partner with me or sell themselves to me, people in my organization needed approvals, other business units needed my help, customers wanted my attention, and so forth. As a result, I spent most of my time optimizing and tuning the existing business. Most of the work that I did was “incoming.” In fact, most skilled big company executives will tell you that if you have more than three new initiatives in a quarter, you are trying to do too much. As a result, big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup executive, nothing happens unless you make it happen. In the early days of a company, you have to take eight to ten new initiatives a day or the company will stand still. There is no inertia that’s putting the company in motion. Without massive input from you, the company will stay at rest.

- Ben Horowitz

A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.

- Reid Hoffman

With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.

- Oprah Winfrey

I do think that religion has turned a lot of people off. Part of it is because it was all about the rules and was political. I think now people have a hunger for God, they want to have a relationship, but they don’t want to be called religious. I’m not trying to get them to join my religion, I’m just trying to plant a seed of hope in their heart.

- Joel Olsteen

A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.

- P.T. Barnum

Twenty years ago, the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 either dug something out of the ground or turned a natural resource (iron ore or oil) into something you could hold. Today, fewer than half of the companies on the list do that. The rest make unseemly profits by trafficking in ideas.

- Seth Godin

The Group will continue to press ahead steadily with an open mindset, a practical attitude, a broad vision and a unique insight, adhering to its ultimate objective of serving the nation and the wider community in the changing landscape.

- Cheng Yu-tung

A remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

- Winston Churchill

My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….

- Thomas Edison

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

- Dale Carnegie

It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.

- Paul Graham

Maybe you once were excited about that person God supernaturally brought into your life as a marriage partner, but now all the excitement has worn off. Don’t’ allow that sense of a miracle to slip away. Don’t get so familiar with each other that you take one another for granted.

- Joel Olsteen

I like the idea that one thing leads to another. You can tweet something completely innocuous, and then find yourself going off on a tangent that’s inspired by a response.

- Steve Martin

If you talk about Cabernet and Merlot-based value between $10 and $25, I will tell you that Bordeaux is the best value in the world.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

At an early age, my mother gave me this feeling that anything is possible, and I believe that.

- Howard Schultz

With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence?

- Timothy Ferriss

Being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.

- Peter Thiel

Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.

- Bill Gates

Too often we judge people based on our own backgrounds and experiences, but when you understand people’s stories, it’s easier to understand their demeanor.

- Joel Olsteen

Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.

- Jack Dorsey

The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.

- Timothy Ferriss

Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.

- Bill Gates

Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.

- Zig Ziglar

I’d never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn’t exist.

- Sara Blakely

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.

- Sara Blakely

I know if I stopped hosting ‘Wine Library TV,’ we’d probably lose 75 percent of our audience, but the remaining 25 percent is still a big number.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

In his rigidgly compartmentalized life, each hour was tightly budgeted, whether for business, religion, family or exercise. Perhaps those daily rituals helped him deal with the underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable, for although he tried to project to an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain the surface, was constantly on edge. In one of his few admissions of weakness he recalled, for years on end I never had a solid night’s sleep, worrying about how it was to come out…I tossed about in bed night after night worrying over the outcome…All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.

- Ron Chernow

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

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

- Elon Musk

Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice.

- John C. Maxwell

I produced Run DMC. I produced some early records, lots of records early on.

- Russell Simmons

If you ask where Nike came from, I would say it came from a kid who had that world-class shock administered at age seventeen by Bill Bowerman.

- Phil Knight

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without vicory there is no survival.

- Winston Churchill

So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.

- Oprah Winfrey

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly–until you can learn to do it well.

- Zig Ziglar

The buyer needs to talk at least 70% of the time.

- Clay Clark

One of the most powerful forms of communication that affects a business is one over which you have little control (after the conversation has already begun): The communication from your existing customers to your potential customers. At CASHFLOW Technologies, Inc. we attribute a large part of our success to our customers telling other people about us. The power of this word-of-mouth advertising is immeasurable.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Be frank. Reporters know when your story is all hype and no substance. Be honest with them.

- Michael Levine

My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.

- Jack Ma

After putting economics aside, I found that there were two primary reasons why people quit: They hated their manager; generally the employees were appalled by the lack of guidance, career development, and feedback they were receiving. They weren’t learning anything: The company wasn’t investing resources in helping employees develop new skills.

- Ben Horowitz

Your business plan is fluid, not concrete. Once you a build plan, the market place validates what works and what does not. Be flexible and evolve your business strategy.

- David Nilssen

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

- Winston Churchill

In tennis, you strike a ball just after the rebound for the fastest return. It’s the same with investment.

- Masayoshi Son

[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.

- Phil Knight

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

- Michael Bloomberg

No individual may have great power without availing himself of the Master Mind.

- Napoleon Hill

Assume employees are going across a lot of networks. So you have to build in security from the home to any number of networks.

- John Chambers

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

No one has any idea what’s next… the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it’s delaying the recovery.

- Stephen Wynn

How do you tap in to what God has already done? Very simple: just act like you’re blessed, talk like you’re blessed, walk like you’re blessed, think like you’re blessed, smile like you’re blessed, dress like you’re blessed. Put actions behind your faith, and one day you will see it become a reality.

- Joel Olsteen

The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants.

- Michael Dell

The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.

- Herb Kelleher

TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE Principle 1—Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Principle 2—Give honest and sincere appreciation. Principle 3—Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

This can only be accomplished by people who live, breathe, eat and sleep what they are doing…. [I am] associated with a large group of knowledgeable, dedicated [people] who eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics…. Man’s objective should be opportunity for greater accomplishment and greater service. The greatest pleasure life has to offer is the satisfaction that flows from… participating in a difficult and constructive undertaking.

- James C. Collins

It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don’t think it’s possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car.

- Elon Musk

It’s about stories. If I can tell the story to America, whether it’s Riesling or a boxer from Harlem, it will sell. I know on my gravestone it’s going to be, ‘Storyteller.’

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

Establish a core value that drives the business and helps promote it in perpetuity.

- Ben Horowitz

The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination, between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals, between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition, between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity, between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard.

- Winston Churchill

The ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

- Jack Welch

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.

- Steve Jobs

Getting knocked down in life is a given. Getting up and moving forward is a choice.

- Zig Ziglar

A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa.

- Dale Carnegie

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