When interviewing candidates, it’s helpful to watch for small distinctions that indicate whether they view the world through the “me” prism or the “team” prism.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
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
We build dwellings and thereafter they build us.
- Winston Churchill
They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t marry too early in life. It’s better to work hard when young and establish a career first.
- Lee Shau Kee
Your best days are still out in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
The air of the English is down-to-earth. They care about details; there’s a tradition, but there’s also a counter-culture: the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that’s well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.
- Tadashi Yanai
Planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out.
- Peter Thiel
I’ve always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize.
- Jeff Bezos
The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn’t have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want.
- Steve Wozniak
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.So the question is: Have you ever done that?
- Seth Godin
It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word ‘pessimist’ was not in our vocabulary at that time. It’s a modern ‘invention’ which I believe we should ‘dis-invent.’
- Zig Ziglar
God has amazing things in your future.
- Joel Olsteen
When people are around us, they should leave better off than they were previously. Rather than feeling discouraged or defeated, people should feel challenged and inspired after spending any time with you and me.
- Joel Olsteen
Kickstarter isn’t a profit center, it’s an organizer and an instigator.
- Seth Godin
The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.
- Sam Walton
Other people and things can stop you temporarily. You’re the only one who can do it permanently.
- Zig Ziglar
Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass – the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that – so they’re kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not.
- Bill Gates
Whoever is first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover in the whole market.
- Peter Thiel
I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.
- Sara Blakely
You make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
- Winston Churchill
You are the only person on earth who can use your ability. It’s an awesome responsibility.
- Zig Ziglar
Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.
- Santana
I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It’s really a different product category.
- Jeff Bezos
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
I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.
- Bill Gates
The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers Their name alone can practically guarantee hit records.
- Richard Branson
If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.
- Jeff Bezos
Video is emerging as the key strategic application in the service provider triple play bundle of consumer entertainment, communication and online services.
- John Chambers
Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present, good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future.
- Peter Thiel
If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.
- Richard Branson
Luck Is When Preparation Meets Opportunity.
- Seneca
I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.
- Steve Martin
In Russia, or anywhere, people don’t like rich people. Yeah, OK, I have money, but the question is how I use it. It’s not easy, believe me; it’s not easy.
- Viktor Vekselberg
My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had — everyday I’m learning something new.
- Richard Branson
We’re trying to identify the key influencers and make them distribution points.
- Jack Dorsey
Our leaders in business, politics, research, and the arts are all great salespeople or they have great sales people on their payroll.
- Jerry Vass
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
- Bill Gates
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
- Dale Carnegie
It is very clear that the Republicans do not want to raise taxes.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Le Reve’ may be one of the three best pictures Pablo Picasso ever painted.
- Stephen Wynn
On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you’re doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you’re mediocre. You’re free to contribute.
- Seth Godin
Refrain from throwing the executive under the bus.
- Ben Horowitz
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
Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn’t.
- Ben Horowitz
Technological advance seemed to accelerate automatically, so the Boomers grew up with great expectations but few specific plans for how to fulfill them.
- Peter Thiel
Success is determined by your daily agenda
- John Maxwell
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
For me, learning to my control my temper has been a lifelong process. So has the process of being will to take risks, make mistakes and be grateful for the other person, even if I may no longer speak to or do business with that person. When I reflect back on my life, I would say that it is this mental attitude that has made me the most money, has brought me the most success, and has ultimately allowed me to have the most magic in my life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
As you schedule individual tasks, give yourself a cushion. Mark the due date a few days ahead of the actual deadline so you have time to deal with changes or last-minute emergencies.
- Harvey Mackay
I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.
- Elon Musk
Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates’ colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.
- Peter Drucker
If you cannot persuade people to do things, you simply will not be a success because you are not an island unto yourself. Everything in life is about persuading people to do what you want them to do.
- David Robinson
If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.
- Woodrow Wilson
You can’t grow long-term if you can’t eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is.
- Jack Welch
Feel the force!
- Yoda
A valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.
- Peter Thiel
I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.
- Winston Churchill
Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go.
- Winston Churchill
“Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.
- Ben Horowitz
There’s no mystery in business success. If you do each day’s task successfully and stay faithfully within these natural operations of commercial laws which I talk so much about and keep your head clear, you will come out all right.
- John D. Rockefeller
The time to look for a new job is when you don’t need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable.
- Seth Godin
In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you’re going to be 20 years from now is how well you’re doing in your education system.
- Bill Gates
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.
- Colin Powell
I really believed that I said then, and I still do. But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop. The way I approached managing the business, I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision – usually flying around to take a look at our stores on a regular basis. But from the very beginning, even on my paper routes in college, I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage the stores. That’s been the case since back in Newport….We’re big now. We’re really big. That’s not something I like to focus on. I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not necessarily the biggest…(being big poses opportunities), but being big also poses big dangers. It has ruined many a fine company – including some giant retailers – who started out strong and got bloated or out of touch or were slow to react to the needs of their customers. Here’s the point: the biggest Wal-Mart gets, the more essential it is that we think small. Because that is exactly how we have become a big corporation.
- Sam Walton
The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.
- Ma Huateng
By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.
- Bill Gates
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
- Winston Churchill
Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
- Michael Bloomberg
Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don’t, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.
- Harvey Mackay
We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city.
- Michael Bloomberg
Nearly every person who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.
- Thomas Edison
In War: Resolution,In Defeat: Defiance,In Victory: MagnaminityIn Peace: Good Will.
- Winston Churchill
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
I already told you that it is 100% outside buyers.
- Lee Shau Kee
You either trust someone day one until they prove you wrong, or you say, ‘I don’t trust you until you show me I can trust you.’ I’m the latter.
- Charles Ergen
SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.
- Elon Musk
Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.
- Michael Dell
I’m going to start these art museums that are basically converted homes, and I have one for modern art, and I have one for 19th century European art, and one for French impressionism. I’ve got Japanese.
- Larry Ellison
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
One who works the same reactive 40 hours per week and takes the same amount of sick days and holidays off as his or her employees, yet expects to make significantly more than everyone else simply because they have the title of owner and are thus making the loan payments and the lease payments.
- Clay Clark
I don’t think that ambition should not be in the dictionary of entrepreneurs. But our ambition should be realistic. You have to realise that you can’t do everything.
- Mukesh Ambani
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
Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
- Henry Ford
A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere.
- Zig Ziglar
Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.
- Zig Ziglar
Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man.
- Winston Churchill
I’m a big supporter of President Obama.
- Russell Simmons
If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
- Winston Churchill
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward
My favorite writers are all Jews – David, Solomon, Matthew, Mark – well, you get the picture.
- Zig Ziglar
Beaujolais is so underrated.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
What is school for? If you’re not asking that, you’re wasting time and money.
- Seth Godin
I shall pass this way but once. Therefore any good that I can do or any kindness that I can show-let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
- Dale Carnegie
Abundance and scarcity In a society where value is created by the manufacture of goods or the allocation of limited resources, it’s not a surprise that organizations seek scarcity. We hesitate to share, because if I give you this, then I don’t have it any more. We erect barriers and create rules to make it difficult for some people to have access to these limited resources. While we don’t set out to become miserly, it’s an economic instinct, because what’s yours is no long mine. Even though we give lip service to sharing when kids show up for kindergarten classes, most of school is organized around the same ideas. We rank students, we cut players from the roster, we grade on a curve. Success, we teach, is scarce. Our new economy, though, is based on abundance, the abundance that comes from ideas and access. If I benefit when everyone knows my idea, then the more people I give the idea to, the better we all do. If I benefit when I earn a reputation leading, connecting and creating positive change, then I’ll benefit if I can offer these insights to anyone who can benefit from them. With an abundance mindset, we intentionally create goods that can be shared. It’s not based on our traditional factory-based economy, but it works now (in fact, it’s just about all that works)… engaging with the mesh, building communities that benefit from sharing resources instead of destroying them is a strategy that scales. With an abundance mindset, we create ideas and services that do better when people share.
- Seth Godin
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
