Notable Quotables

Passion is everything. In fact, you’ve got to be borderline fanatical about what you do.

- Chris Gardner

Our leaders in business, politics, research, and the arts are all great salespeople or they have great sales people on their payroll.

- Jerry Vass

If your business is not a brand, it is just a commodity.

- Donald Trump

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.

- Winston Churchill

That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.

- Peter Thiel

The story about GE that hasn’t been told is the value of an informal place. I think it’s a big thought. I don’t think people have ever figured out that being informal is a big deal.

- Jack Welch

Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person’s life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader’s style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.

- John C. Maxwell

The fallout from the US sub-prime issue, turbulence on global financial markets and the resulting credit tightening, slow-down in the global economies and increasing inflationary pressure all threaten to pose a drag on the economic growth in Hong Kong.

- Lee Shau Kee

In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

- Clayton M. Christensen

I just think that trusting God means we’re going to have unanswered questions, and God is so much bigger than us, we’re never going to understand them all.

- Joel Olsteen

Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants, comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache and their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things.

- Winston Churchill

As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay.

- Ben Horowitz

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

Quit worrying about how everything is going to turn out. Live one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment. It’s good to have a big – picture outlook, to set goals, to establish budgets and make plans, but if you’re always living in the future, you’re never really enjoying the present in the way God wants you to.

- Joel Olsteen

One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a deep dive. It’s spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference…one that looks like it would be fun, and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it meddling….I followed up on all of them with a passion and a mania that often veered toward the lunatic fringe…To make the initiatives work, it took a passionate all-consuming commitment from the top. Beyond passion, there was alot of rigor…Making initiates successful is all about focus and passionate commitment. The drumbeat must be relentlessness. Every leadership action must demonstrate total committment to the initiative….I was an outrageous champion of everything that we did from our early need to face reality and change the culture to our major initiatives that reshaped the company. Whenever I had an idea or message that I wanted to drive into the organization, I could never say it enough. I repeated it over and over, at every meeting and review for years, until I could almost gag on the words.

- Jack Welch

Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.

- Jack Welch

Alibaba is an ecosystem that helps small business to grow.

- Jack Ma

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

- Winston Churchill

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

- Elon Musk

We, in short, propose to tax luxuries, monopolies, and superfluities, but we scrupulously avoid taxing the necessaries of life.

- Winston Churchill

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

Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.

- Seth Godin

The factory has programmed that adventurous impulse out of us. The economic imperative of the last century has been to avoid risk, avoid change, and most of all, avoid exploration and the new. An efficient factory fears change because change means retooling and risk and a blip in productivity. Sure, we’ll put up with change if we have to, and welcome the predictable incremental change of productivity improvement, but please leave us alone when it comes to the word “bold.” Avoiding risk worked then but doesn’t work now. Now “what’s next?” is in fact the driving force for individuals and for organizations. Ever onward, ever faster.

- Seth Godin

The most terrifying phrase in the English language is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’

- Ronald Reagan

You may not realize initially how many other opportunities are wrapped up inside the first one. After you go through the first door, you’ll then discover more doors automatically opening behind that one. One door leads you to another door, which leads to another door, and so one. It’s like ten other boxes packed inside one box. The initial door that God opens is your access to more opportunities. But you must be willing to walk through the first one to get to the other good things God has for you.

- George Foreman

My Golden Rule of Networking is simple: Don’t keep score.

- Harvey Mackay

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

- Henry Ford

In the next two to three years there will probably be only three to five players in this area. The chances to gain or lose market share are exciting.

- John Chambers

With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.

- Zig Ziglar

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.

- Joel Olsteen

I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.

- Elon Musk

Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code – with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It’s very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

- Elon Musk

Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.

- Seth Godin

The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble…We want to buy them when they’re on the operating table.

- Warren Buffett

Litigation is the basic legal right which guarantees every corporation its decade in court.

- David Porter

They were making a deal for a property that clearly was a property that we wanted to own, so we had to act, and act as quickly as we could, and make the offer more attractive,

- Jack Welch

Since we happened to be good at shoes, we thought we could be successful with casual shoes. But we got our brains beat out.

- Phil Knight

Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.

- Ben Horowitz

From the economic slowdown after the financial crisis in 1997 through the economic boom in 2007, the motherland has been supporting Hong Kong in recovering from adversity; on the other hand, Hong Kong has been actively cooperating with the motherland in going international.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Life is a classroom — only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.

- Zig Ziglar

If you think about computing, there isn’t just one way to compute, just like there’s not just one way to move around. You can have shoes, you can have a car, you can have a bicycle, submarine, rocket, plane, train, glider, whatever. Because you have one doesn’t mean you get rid of another one… But PCs continue to be important.

- Michael Dell

The lower and individual’s ability to lead, the lower the lid on his potential.

- John Maxwell

It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

- Joel Olsteen

Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.

- John C. Maxwell

When you import goods, you import poverty and you export jobs to other parts of the globe where such goods are produced.

- Aliko Dangote

It’s true that I run a multi-national group but I have no interests in India. So please tell me, what should my identity be?

- Lakshmi Mittal

The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.

- Peter Drucker

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.

- Lee Iacocca

Napoleon was criticized for giving toys” to war-hardened veterans, and Napoleon replied, Men are ruled by toys.

- Dale Carnegie

In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.

- Joel Olsteen

Get through your fears and the world will open up. Give in to your fears and your world will get smaller every year.

- Robert Kiyosaki

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

- Elon Musk

Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.

- Seth Godin

Don’t use your words to describe the situation. Use your words to change the situation.

- Joel Olsteen

We certainly employ a lot of immigrants at Fox… and we do not take any consistent anti-immigrant line.

- Rupert Murdoch

You don’t have to start from scratch to have a massive impact on the world.

- Jack Dorsey

Desire is the catalyst that enables a person with average ability to compete and win against others with more natural talent.

- Zig Ziglar

The patterns of success and failure we see among firms faced with sustaining and disruptive technology change are a natural or systematic result of good managerial decisions. That is, in fact, why disruptive technologies confront innovators with such a dilemma. Working harder, being smarter, investing more aggressively, and listening more astutely to customers are all solutions to the problems posed by new sustaining technologies. But these paradigms of sound management are useless—even counterproductive, in many instances—when dealing with disruptive technology.

- Clayton M. Christensen

If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.

- Seth Godin

Today, Andy Quinn pitched a great game finally, and that’s what he’s capable of. He fell behind a few hitters, but he got stronger as he went on.

- Jack Taylor

When advice is freely given, the receiver is free to use it as he or she sees fit.

- Harvey Mackay

Difference between TV and the internet was how far you sat from the screen. TV was an 8 foot activity, and you were a consumer. The internet was a 16 inch activity, and you participated. I think the sitting down thing is similar. You’re not going to buy an armoir while standing on the subway.

- Seth Godin

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

- Sam Walton

It is easy to think that the things that bother you will upset your people more. That’s not true. The opposite is true. Nobody takes the losses harder than the person most responsible. Nobody feels it more than you.

- Ben Horowitz

Give your subconscious a chance to work by turning your brain off from time to time. Don’t focus on work or solving problems constantly.

- Harvey Mackay

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

- Richard Branson

When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.

- Howard Schultz

And you know, I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

- Richard Branson

The difficult task is to marry relentless discipline with creativity, neither letting discipline inhibit creativity nor letting creativity erode discipline.

- James C. Collins

When you start a company, you’re basically jumping off a cliff. You don’t have any sense of where you’re going to land, what to do when you land, or what you should be doing inmidair. It’s very very scary. But it’s much easier when you have somebody to commiserate with you who knows what you’re going through, and who you know will always be on your side.

- Seth Goldman

Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.

- Peter Thiel

I do not believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process

- Oprah Winfrey

Often, it is in trying times that the greatest endeavours are realised.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems.

- Napoleon Hill

As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big.

- Donald Trump

We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don’t decide for you.

- Larry Ellison

There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.

- Zig Ziglar

The typical project design time for a large company like IBM – and they keep track of this – is a little over four years.

- Bill Gates

You may be at a crossroads in your life. You may have issues to deal with; people you need to forgive. You can go one of the two ways. You can ignore what you now know to be true and keep burying that bitterness in your life, pushing it deeper and allowing it to poison and contaminate you and those around you. Or you can make a much better choice by getting it out in the open and asking God to help you to totally forgive and let it all go.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.

- Larry Ellison

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

- Thomas Edison

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