The best way to be missed when you’re gone,Is to stand for something when you’re here.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
When you become a leader success is all about growing others.
- Jack Welch
In a start-up company where there are no processes in place to get things done, then everything that is done must be done by individual people–resources. In this circumstance, it would be risky to draft someone with no experience to do the job–because in the absence of processes that can guide people, experienced people need to lead. But in established companies where much of the guidance to employees is provided by processes, and is less dependent upon managers with detailed, hands-on experience, then it makes sense to hire or promote someone who needs to learn from experience.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.
- Timothy Ferriss
Canada sets aside 36 percent of their visas for people with skills they think their country needs. We set aside six percent. We educate the doctors, and then don’t give ’em a green card.
- Michael Bloomberg
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
- Winston Churchill
Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering—to personality and the ability to lead people.
- Dale Carnegie
What is school for? If you’re not asking that, you’re wasting time and money.
- Seth Godin
There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.
- Phil Knight
I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.
- Winston Churchill
Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship.
- Ben Horowitz
Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.
- Peter Thiel
Although office rental in Hong Kong recorded a general downward adjustment and the slowdown in the economy in the past financial year brought along its negative impacts on the local retailing and food sectors, the major retail shopping properties owned by the Group were able to maintain an overall occupancy rate of 93% whilst rental levels generally remained steady.
- Lee Shau Kee
If you don’t have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don’t take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It’s crazy.
- Jack Welch
At the end of the day, the Irvine Co. is slowly being transformed. Our long-term goal is to transform what was once an agricultural company to a development company, and to that, the next, final step is to create a large real estate investment company.
- Donald Bren
The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job.
- Zig Ziglar
Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.
- Dale Carnegie
Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.
- Jack Welch
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
- Peter Drucker
We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
We just sort of factor all that information into the computer between the ears and come up with conclusions.
- Phil Knight
Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.
- John C. Maxwell
I have over 2 million followers now on Google Plus.
- Larry Page
Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity. The things that we were forced to learn and do, because we started out underfinanced and undercapitalized in these remote small communities, contributed mightily to the way we’ve grown as a company. Had we been capitalized, or had we been the offshoot of a large corporation the way I wanted to be, we might not ever have tried…
- Sam Walton
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I really don’t think in the past. I sit down with many friends at dinner, and they like to talk about the good old days. I’m respectful of the good old days, but I find myself spending very little time reminiscing. I’m really looking forward.
- Donald Bren
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Disruptive companies often pick fights they can’t win.
- Peter Thiel
Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.
- Larry Page
Make sure your ego lies in the performance of the company, not in the performance of the stock.
- Warren Buffett
He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.
- David Novak
I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.
- Timothy Ferriss
Mentorship is a pain free way to learn.
- Paul Pressey
Often we don’t even realize who we’re meant to be because we’re so busy trying to live out someone else’s ideas. But other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.
- Oprah Winfrey
The polar opposite business cliché warns that “the best product doesn’t always win.
- Peter Thiel
Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.
- Guy Kawasaki
Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.
- Elon Musk
In the ’30s, the Keynesian stuff worked at least in the sense that you could print money without inflation because there was all this productivity growth happening. That’s not going to work today.
- Peter Thiel
Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.
- Dale Carnegie
Any area of achievement in your life required you to stick with the basics until you became great…it’s not about learning 4,000 moves but about doing just a handful of moves 4,000 times.
- Chet Holmes
If you don’t have a competitive advantage — don’t compete.
- Jack Welch
People might not think that, but the Republicans have all of the cards. And this is the time to get rid of Obamacare. This is the time to make the great deal.
- Donald Trump
The only antidote is simplicity. The simplicity of leading through truth and trust. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter. In every decision, in every action. Truth is a determined pursuit, a personal and unquenchable fire, burning to know what is really happening inside the company and out.
- Jack Welch
The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
How Many Marriages Would Be Better If the Husband and the Wife Clearly Understood That They’re On the Same Side?
- Zig Ziglar
Medicare and Medicaid costs are skyrocketing. The cost of compliance with some pretty tough rules has become very costly. If I’m small, I have to spend the same amount of money to comply with Medicare, whether I’m 10 members or if I’m 10 million.
- George Paz
Hewlett Packard Chairman Built Company by Design, Calculator by Chance.
- James C. Collins
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford
While technology is still important, the consumer has to lead innovation.
- Phil Knight
I think part of the reason we’re successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.
- Larry Page
Never allow anyone to get between you and your customers and suppliers.
- Jack Welch
Not an hour is lost that is spent in the saddle.
- Winston Churchill
The social network is the paradigm of the modern service application.
- Larry Ellison
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.
- Steve Jobs
Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
- Yoda
What I’m trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there’s inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.
- Ray Dalio
Visibility remains limited, and this should come as no surprise, given that our customers’ visibility is limited.
- John Chambers
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
- Warren Buffett
Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.
- Michael Dell
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
The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
- Napoleon Hill
Slow Dance: Have you ever watched kids, On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain, Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance too fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day, On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed, With the next hundred chores, Running through your head? You’d better slow down, Don’t dance too fast. Time is short, The music won’t last. Ever told your child we’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die, Cause you never had time, To call and say Hi? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere, You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music, Before the song is over.
- Timothy Ferriss
I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.
- Bill Gates
Life isn’t fair. It’s true, and you still have to deal with it. Whining about it rarely levels the playing field, but learning to rise above it is the ultimate reward.
- Harvey Mackay
The reality is gas prices should be much more expensive then they are because we’re not incorporating the true damage to the environment and the hidden costs of mining oil and transporting it to the U.S. Whenever you have an unpriced externality, you have a bit of a market failure, to the degree that eternality remains unpriced.
- Elon Musk
Dreams grow if you grow.
- Zig Ziglar
I could never have imagined that firing 67 people on national television would actually make me more popular, especially with the younger generation.
- Donald Trump
Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.
- Ben Horowitz
The “non-profit” institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its “product” is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their “product” is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.
- Peter Drucker
I don’t spend any time thinking about my place in history, ever. If people say I changed things, it’s nice, and I take it – but if I could give it to a charity it would be useful. I really believe now that my only job in life is to achieve a state of comfort and happiness.
- Russell Simmons
I’d never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn’t exist.
- Sara Blakely
An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes—the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions. People are quite flexible, in that they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. An employee of IBM, for example, can quite readily change the way he or she works, in order to work successfully in a small start-up company. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Similarly, values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high-margin products, cannot simultaneously accord priority to low-margin products. The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context.
- Clayton M. Christensen
PR is gift-wrapping. If you package a bracelet in a Tiffany box, it will have a higher perceived value than if you presented it in a Kmart box.
- Michael Levine
Reality is negotiable.
- Timothy Ferriss
The profile of homebuyers in Hong Kong is becoming more diverse and a wider range of marketing channels is thus needed to promote the Group’s Hong Kong property projects.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
- Bill Gates
As we go forward, I hope we’re going to continue to use technology to make really big differences in how people live and work.
- Sergey Brin
Life is a buzzer box. Poke it.
- Seth Godin
The invaders brought into Britain a principle common to all Germanic tribes, namely, the use of the money power to regulate all the legal relations of men. If there was any equality it was equality within each social grade. If there was liberty it was mainly liberty for the rich. If there were rights they were primarily the rights of property. There was no crime committed which could not be compounded by a money payment.
- Winston Churchill
I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.
- Joel Olsteen
Hong Kong still offers the best value.
- Lee Shau Kee
Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.
- Winston Churchill
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
- Winston Churchill
My Golden Rule of Networking is simple: Don’t keep score.
- Harvey Mackay
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
The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning, and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.
- Og Mandino
There’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives.
- Tony Dungy
It’s different when you’re trying to turn something around, especially something that you built, at a time when so many constituents – the media, Wall Street, competitors, ex-employees – are all saying that Starbucks’s best days are behind it, and that Schultz is never going to be able to bring it back.
- Howard Schultz
I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
- Oprah Winfrey
My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Don’t sling mud at others or soon you will find yourself in a deeper hole than when you started.
- Clay Clark
At first, Uniqlo was a casual chain on the back streets of Hiroshima. Then… we became a national brand in Japan. So, the next step is to become a global brand.
- Tadashi Yanai
Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’ve got some good days, I’ve got some bad. (But my) game has definitely improved.
- Ed Clark
