1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.2. A bad plan is better than no plan.3. Competitive markets destroy profits.4. Sales matters just as much as product.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.
- Peter Thiel
No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.
- Mark Zuckerberg
A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance. This will give her a chance to cancel the meeting if nothing is pressing.
- Ben Horowitz
I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.
- Joel Olsteen
Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson – from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers.
- Sara Blakely
It took Flickr two years to reach the milestone of 100 million uploaded pictures. It took Instagram eight months
- Gary Vaynerchuk
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
- Winston Churchill
I am looking to buy companies that are run by painters. Most great artists have a hard time letting go of their paintings. That’s because the joy is not in the finished work, the joys is in the painting. They are constantly adding a dab of color here, a little more texture there. I’m looking for the boss who is always tweaking his company, constantly trying to make it better. No matter how successful he may have already been, what he still sees is a master-piece-in-progress.
- Warren Buffett
Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.
- Steve Ballmer
If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte… ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual’s taste.
- Reed Hastings
It is simply service that measures success.
- George Washington Carver
I am convinced that in order for you, as a patient, to be protected, it has to be transparent, evidence-based, objective information. Not self-serving information. Not pharma-driven information. Not ad-driven information. It is transparent, objective, evidence-based information.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
- Winston Churchill
It’s absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others.
- Zig Ziglar
That Newport store was really the beginning of where Walmart is today. We did everything. We would wash windows, sweep floors, trim windows. We did all the stockroom work, checked the freight in. Everything it took to run a store. We had to keep expenses to a minimum. That is where it started, years ago. Our money was made by controlling expenses. That, and Sam always being so ingenius. He never stopped trying to do something different. One thing, though: I never forgave him for was making me clean out that damned ice cream machine.
- Bud Walton
I’m killing two birds at once, so to speak. Animal-based food kills people. This way, by going vegan… we get healthy and save animals. I’m being selfish, too, because if I can get my employees healthier, we cut down on sick days and gain more productivity.
- Stephen Wynn
The most obvious clue was sartorial: cleantech executives were running around wearing suits and ties. This was a huge red flag, because real technologists wear T-shirts and jeans. So we instituted a blanket rule: pass on any company whose founders dressed up for pitch meetings.
- Peter Thiel
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
Rap helps me connect emotionally.
- Ben Horowitz
I hate how many people think “glass half-empty” when their glass is really four-fifths full. I’m grateful when I have one drop in the glass because I know exactly what to do with it.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.
- Zig Ziglar
Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
- Yoda
Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken.
- Donald Trump
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.
- Dale Carnegie
The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.
- Steve Martin
Winning ‘Motor Trend’ Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.
- Elon Musk
Don’t fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else’s expense.
- Harvey Mackay
Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war. Stir up the mighty men. Let all the warriors draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong.
- Joel 3:9
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- Winston Churchill
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The global economy has experienced considerable slowdown in recent times. However there has been one notable exception: China.
- Cheng Yu-tung
For every ailment under the sun, There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it.
- Dale Carnegie
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
- Henry Ford
And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.
- Winston Churchill
Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will be doing things absolutely differently from everybody else.
- Sara Blakely
Once you go from 10 people to 100, you already don’t know who everyone is. So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale.
- Sergey Brin
If you are going to run a successful business you are going to have to be committed to your customers 100% of the time. If customers consistently tell you that they don’t like a certain product or service you offer or an employee that you have working for you, you must be willing to act based upon their feedback if you find it to be factual.
- Clay Clark
For me, my father was, and still is, a symbol of qualified persons in the Ministry of Foreign Trade under Soviet conditions.
- Vladimir Potanin
To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark – in a way that you think is important and lasting – that’s a life well-lived.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
Measure, coach and reward the right things. Measure the vitally important. Reward the doers.
- David Novak
Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.
- Winston Churchill
One of my goals is to inspire everyone I meet to become a better person.
- George Foreman
We think we’re going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java.
- Larry Ellison
The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.
- Jeff Bezos
To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.
- Dale Carnegie
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
We know that if you just were to take the drugs that you were supposed to take for diabetes or hypertension, just take it, as opposed to not take it, we could save $7,000, $3,000 per patient per year.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
You’ll never find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
- Winston Churchill
The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
- Peter Thiel
When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.
- Mark Zuckerberg
You always have to give something when you get something.
- Jack Nadel
I’ve always leaned toward a feminine, funky style, even in business settings. I used to paint my nails blue in 1993, before it was mainstream.
- Sara Blakely
We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
1. Make incremental advances Grand visions inflated the bubble, so they should not be indulged. Anyone who claims to be able to do something great is suspect, and anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble. Small, incremental steps are the only safe path forward.2. Stay lean and flexible All companies must be “lean,” which is code for “unplanned.” You should not know what your business will do; planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out, “iterate,” and treat entrepreneurship as agnostic experimentation.3. Improve on the competition Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.4. Focus on product, not sales If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.
- Peter Thiel
Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne, knowing him was like drinking it.
- Winston Churchill
What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.
- Larry Ellison
In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It’s a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems. A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve taken those pharmacists and asked them to reach out to doctors. Doctors still misprescribe very often. They leave gaps with care. People with asthma, they don’t take their inhalers, they wait until they’re sick, and by then, it’s too late. Now we’re already running up the bills and going to emergency rooms. We’re using our pharmacist to do the things they were educated to do, not to count pills. That’s not where the value is.
- George Paz
What you study is more important than how you study. Students are subordinate to materials, much like novice cooks are subordinate to recipes. If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn’t matter how much (or how well) you study. It doesn’t matter how good your teacher is. One must find the highest-frequency material. Material beats method.
- Timothy Ferriss
You can follow your favorite company or organization. You can also mix that in with your family and your social network and talk about all these interests in real time. That’s the value, not the brand ‘Twitter.’ Twitter just provides the venue for it.
- Jack Dorsey
Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
- Henry Ford
A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good, but that I heard never.
- Dale Carnegie
Measuring and establishing facts at every step of the process. Without facts, assumptions and misperceptions will defeat whatever reason and good judgment can be brought to effort
- Service Profit Chain
I don’t know what would have happened to Wal-Mart if we had laid low and never stirred up the competition. My guess is that we would have remained a strictly regional operator.
- Sam Walton
If you do not believe in your product or service enough to offer it to your own family and friends, then you should question the value of what you are selling.
- Zig Ziglar
If you truly love what you are doing, why stop?
- Barry Schwartz
Abe Lincoln once remarked that most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Dale Carnegie
I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.
- Seth Godin
It is a very big exaggeration to say I am a friend of Mr. Putin.
- Alexei Mordashov
There’s a way to do it better – find it.
- Thomas Edison
My father left me with a clear sense that the media was something different.
- Rupert Murdoch
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.
- Bill Gates
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
- Winston Churchill
Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power.
- Joel Olsteen
When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.
- Winston Churchill
Doing the Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing the Realistic
- Timothy Ferriss
I cut the feet out of my control top pantyhose to wear under these white pants and that was the ah-ha moment that started Spanx. My own butt was my own inspiration!
- Sara Blakely
You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don’t let that stop you from blooming. Realize that your environment does not prevent you from being happy. Some people spend all their time trying to pull up all the weeds. Meanwhile, they miss much of their lives. Don’t worry about things you can’t change. You can’t change the traffic in the morning. You can’t fix everybody at work. You can’t make all your family members serve God. But you shouldn’t let that keep you from being happy. Bloom anyway and focus on the things that you can change. You can change your own attitude. You can choose to be happy right where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
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.
When it comes to social consequences, they’ve got all different people acting in different ways, very difficult to even have a proper criterion of success. So, it’s a difficult task.
- George Soros
Connectors understand the necessity of creating value for others. If you want to be in the middle of the action, you must seek ways to enhance the lives of those surrounding you. The best connectors I know are extremely generous with introductions where they make sense. One of my favorite questions is, What are you most excited about right now? From that answer, I know who I can hook that person up with.
- Forbes
Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.”
- Sam Walton
The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth.
- Stephen Wynn
Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.
- Phil Knight
When you have no one to answer to, vendetta as investment strategy is as legitimate as anything.
- Carl Icahn
I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian – or just being in show business, is really more accurate.
- Steve Martin
There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The most “successful” companies seemed to embrace a sort of anti-business model where they lost money as they grew.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.
- John D. Rockefeller
Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.
- Elon Musk
Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.
- 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
The breadth and maturity of our own businesses is allowing us to weather the prevailing storms.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.
- Seth Godin
Age doesn’t matter: an open mind does.
- Timothy Ferriss
I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them-nine-tenths of them never happened.
- Andrew Carnegie
