It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.
- Steve Jobs
Notable Quotables
One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.
- Seth Godin
When you allow what someone says or does to upset you, you’re allowing that person to control you.
- Joel Olsteen
This is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com. Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets.
- Jeff Bezos
I want to do transformational work to actually fix the world.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
To integrate the new information into your existing network, you need to do three things: prioritize, organize and follow up on your contacts. You will follow your own inclinations, preferences and criteria for accomplishing each of these tasks, but the end result of your efforts should always be to strengthen, extend and enhance the effectiveness of your network of contacts.
- Ivan Misner
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
- Winston Churchill
Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.
- Michael Dell
The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
- Ben Horowitz
Lo que una persona diga de ti no define quién eres. Su opinión de ti no determina tu dignidad propia. Deja que eso te resbale como si fuera agua sobre el plumaje de un pato. Esa persona tiene todo el derecho a tener una opinión, y tú tienes todo el derecho a pasarla por alto.
- Joel Olsteen
I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
When companies fail, or fail to grow, it’s almost always because they don’t invest in the people, the systems, and the processes they need.
- Howard Schultz
I am not a best-writing author. I am a best-selling author.
- Robert Kiyosaki
One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.
- Richard Branson
The potential financial reward for building the ‘next Windows’ is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.
- Bill Gates
Two things about Sam Walton distinguish him from almost everyone else I know. First he gets up everyday bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I’ve ever know. And once he sees he’s wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction. (qualities of great leaders)
- David Glass
[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.
- Yoda
It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.
- Winston Churchill
Never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, you will be successful.
- Brian Tracy
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
- Winston Churchill
Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, – it largely increases the product.
- P.T. Barnum
Giving away money to the right cause, with a leveraged effect and your own involvement in how it is spent, will ‘give you peace of mind.’
- Lee Shau Kee
We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone.
- Richard Branson
You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.
- Seth Godin
There’s pros and cons of a big church. Cons is I don’t get to know everybody, I don’t get to go to their ballgame, I don’t get to marry everybody, but the pros are you get all this community, 800 ushers come in to serve, getting there at 7 in the morning on their day off and coming in on Saturday to make all those wafers.
- Joel Olsteen
Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.
- Michael Dell
In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.
- Seth Godin
My training of cold-calling and everyone under the sun telling me no, and my keeping going, was a huge part of the first two years of Spanx.
- Sara Blakely
We’ve only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?
- Jack Welch
When you supervise something, it is one thing. When you are in the middle of something, there is a different pace of life.
- Vladimir Potanin
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked
- Warren Buffett
Middle-income countries are the biggest users of GMOs. Places like Brazil.”
- Bill Gates
I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out
- Russell Simmons
Fulfilling the vision of the Irvine Ranch master plan has been a lifetime dedication and lifetime passion, and I am hopeful the heritage of our Irvine stewardship will live on in many new ways.
- Donald Bren
I look at every business and ask, How long can this last? How can I identify the status quo and change it?
- Sheldon Adelson
Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.
- Ben Horowitz
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill
Nobody roots for a product.
- Phil Knight
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s undervalued and underinvested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board.
- Evan Williams
Don’t have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.
- Steve Martin
Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future…the past. Old friends long gone.
- Yoda
MARCH 1 Envision Your Dreams I counsel you to buy from me . . . salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. REVELATION 3:18 DO YOU LOOK UPON your life with eyes of faith? Think of it this way: when we close our eyes, we should see more than we do when we have our eyes open. See your whole family serving God. See yourself rising to new levels of effectiveness. See yourself stronger, healthier, and living a more abundant life. See God using you in.
- Joel Olsteen
I don’t know why you should be proud of something. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. You are what you are.
- Michael Bloomberg
Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.
- Henry Ford
Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.
- Jack Welch
Young people in China and Hong Kong are the future of the motherland.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The great football coach John Madden was once asked whether he would tolerate a player like Terrell Owens on his team. Owens was both one of the most talented players in the game and one of the biggest jerks. Madden answered, “If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you’ll be so late you’ll miss the game, so you can’t do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you’ll have a player that’s so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.
- Ben Horowitz
She said, ‘My family is OK, John, but we lost everything.
- John Chambers
Dell will participate in tablets and all sorts of client devices. Our main business is helping our customers secure, protect their data and access it from any device they want to.
- Michael Dell
I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir ’em up, but you can’t do that on television. It’s just not on.
- Rupert Murdoch
As Indian companies strive to be globally competitive, they have realized the importance of investing in information technology and networking to adapt quickly to rapidly shifting market transitions.
- John Chambers
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
- Winston Churchill
Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that ‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’ Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.
- Warren Buffett
When you have got a thing where you want, it is a good thing to leave it where it is.
- Winston Churchill
For now, if the Hong Kong environment doesn’t change, then in the long term, investing in Hong Kong is best.
- Lee Shau Kee
I am very optimistic about china’s growth.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
When I became proficient as a salesman I was invited to teach new hires.
- Zig Ziglar
The freedom of the new kind of work (which most of us do, most of the time) is that the tasks are vague and difficult to measure. We can waste an hour surfing the ’Net because no one knows if surfing the ’Net is going to help us make progress or connections. This freedom is great, because it means no one is looking over your shoulder; no one is using a stopwatch on you. This freedom is a pox, because it’s an opening for the resistance. Freedom like this makes it easy to hide, easy to find excuses, easy to do very little.
- Seth Godin
The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses.
- Dale Carnegie
Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
- Alexander Graham Bell
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
- Maya Angelou
Danger: if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.
- Muhammad Ali
It would be nice to design a real briefcase – you open it up and it’s your computer but it also stores your books.
- Steve Wozniak
There is nothing more tragic than to find an individual bogged down in the length of life, devoid of breadth.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
India has been and continues to be a strategic market for Cisco both in terms of business opportunities and as a base for outstanding engineering talent, … With the launch of our new campus in Bangalore today, Cisco will be well placed to continue building our presence in India as a critical part of our R&D efforts and as the domestic market for networking products and solutions continues to expand.
- John Chambers
Search engine optimization is essentially about obtaining admission to an event in which you are competing. Getting invited to compete in the event has no bearing on how you do within the competition itself, but you don’t get to play in the game unless you are on Page 1 of Google search results.
- Clay Clark
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
- Oprah Winfrey
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
It’s lonely at the top, so you had better take someone with you…and it’s lonely at the top, so you had better know why you are there.
- Napoleon Hill
The thing that I’m most passionate about, I’m writing a book called ‘Jab Jab Jab Jab Jab Right Hook,’ and it really focuses on how to story-tell in a noisy, ADD world.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Heroes always come from young people.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It’s very beautiful over there.
- Thomas Edison
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
Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.
- Wang Jianlin
Being nice to people is just 20% of providing good customer service. The important part is designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All the smiles in the world arent going to help you if your product or service is not what the customer wants. –
- Service Profit Chain
I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, ‘Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,’ and he would high-five me and say, ‘Way to go.’
- Sara Blakely
The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
- Jerry Seinfeld
Sometimes, we’re so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing.
- Seth Godin
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.
- Joel Olsteen
Let’s find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. …When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book The Origin Of Species he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.
- Dale Carnegie
It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.
- James C. Collins
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
- Jeff Bezos
I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine’s books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man…Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters – seldom in any school of writing.Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object….we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:’The world is my country; to do good my religion.’Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in ‘The Rights of Man’, and that genius busy at his favorite task – liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, ‘The Rights of Man’ yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke’s effort in his ‘Reflections’.Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.’Tom Paine is quite right,’ said Pitt, the Prime Minister, ‘but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.’Here we see the progressive quality of Paine’s genius at its best. ‘The Rights of Man’ amplified and reasserted what already had been said in ‘Common Sense’, with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre’s enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of ‘The Age of Reason’ and now turned his time to the latter part.Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events ‘The Age of Reason’ appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle – a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.
- Thomas Edison
Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.
- Ray Kroc
In the beginning, I was so chintzy I really didn’t pay my employees well.
- Sam Walton
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
- Warren Buffett
Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Computing shows up in many different ways. You have computing that you wear, computing that you carry. What you think of as the traditional PC market has a long tail of usage, particularly in the commercial world, but also in consumer.
- Michael Dell
By my count, more business leaders have failed and derailed because of arrogance than any other character flaw.
- Harvey Mackay
Desire is the catalyst that enables a person with average ability to compete and win against others with more natural talent.
- Zig Ziglar
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
- Warren Buffett
I’ve got some good days, I’ve got some bad. (But my) game has definitely improved.
- Ed Clark
I think the definition of a book is changing.
- Jeff Bezos
I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.
- Winston Churchill
Hong Kong has remained a strong financial centre. It has a solid business environment and geographically, it is well located, being next to China. During this time, there is no city that can match it.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
A change is as good as a rest.
- Winston Churchill
I swore I would never get involved in another startup ever again in my entire life.
- Larry Ellison





