the major fears of modern man could be boiled down to two things: too much e-mail and getting fat.
- Timothy Ferriss
Notable Quotables
The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
- Rupert Murdoch
A startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.
- Peter Thiel
A business is a complex system of inter-operating systems.
- Robert Kiyosaki
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- John C. Maxwell
If the merit of the idea is strong, it spreads really quickly no matter who you are or where you are from.
- Jack Dorsey
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
We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city.
- Michael Bloomberg
Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.
- Ray Dalio
I’ve come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside,”
- James C. Collins
Frequently I’ll be interviewing with somebody or talking and in about 15 minutes they’ll interrupt me mid-stream and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re nothing like I’d thought you’d be.’
- Larry Ellison
I think what we’re lacking in society, not only in the U.S. but also around the world, is to find heroes once again and to celebrate these kind of people.
- Howard Schultz
People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.
- Timothy Ferriss
swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table.
- Dale Carnegie
If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.
- Zig Ziglar
Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.
- James C. Collins
I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
- Thomas Edison
Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.
- Dale Carnegie
He who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species.
- P.T. Barnum
When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do you think was discovered to be the main reason wives ran away? It was lack of appreciation.
- Dale Carnegie
You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.
- Dale Carnegie
What we maybe should’ve realized sooner was that we are running a political campaign and the candidate is Uber. And this political race is happening in every major city in the world. And because this isn’t about a democracy, this is about a product, you can’t win 51 to 49. You have to win 98 to 2.
- Travis Kalanick
The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
- Elon Musk
The paradox of teaching entrepreneurship is that such a formula necessarily cannot exist; because every innovation is new and unique, no authority can prescribe in concrete terms how to be innovative.
- Peter Thiel
The best investments are on main street, not Wall Street.
- Robert P. Miles
Game-playing is more fun when it’s virtual because you’re more successful. … in reality, only one person gets to be LeBron
- Larry Ellison
There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.
- Walt Disney
If I’m in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what’s possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that’s a valuable thing.
- Ben Horowitz
The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.
- Thomas Edison
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
- Winston Churchill
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
- Jeff Bezos
Nobody ever accused me of wisdom of any kind, let alone conventional.
- Phil Knight
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
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
- Robert J. Sawyer
Many people who I respected were disappointed when I started ‘Wine Library TV.’ They thought I was dumbing down wine, but I always knew I was one of the biggest producers of new wine drinkers in the world, and people are realizing it now.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you are nervous about making the jump or simply putting it off out of fear of the unknown, here is your antidote. Write down your answers to these questions, and keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain vomiting on the page. Write and do not edit – aim for volume. Spend a few minutes on each answer.1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probably scenarios?4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?5. What are you putting off out of fear?6. What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – to postpone action?7. What are you waiting for?
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
- Bill Gates
I’m skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education…. People are on these tracks. They are getting these credentials and it’s very unclear how viable they are in many cases.
- Peter Thiel
Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
- Bill Gates
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
Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution. It just needs clarity.
- Ben Horowitz
Your job is not to judge. Your job is not to figure out if someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, to restore the broken, and to heal the hurting.
- Joel Olsteen
If you cannot read all your books…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 you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.
- Winston Churchill
[In February 2011 on Square.] Starting a startup after twitter is so much easier than before.
- Jack Dorsey
If you believe as I do that you were born to win, you’re going to have to find your fears and start facing them.
- Zig Ziglar
Much like us, our customers are rigorously working to improve their profitability and capacity for innovation. For us, this means doing everything possible when it comes to efficiency, effectiveness, and innovations – and all that on the basis of the highest quality. After all, quality creates trust – and trust creates orders. In short, we need to constantly become better and better at the high level we are already operating at.
- Elmar Degenhart
The trouble with energy farming is that the energy isn’t always where you want to use it, and it isn’t always when you want to use it.
- Bill Gates
All I want is compliance with my wishes, after reasonable discussion.
- Winston Churchill
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
The basic principle is I command, and my employees carry it out immediately.
- Wang Jianlin
Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous.
- Peter Thiel
One of the things that I’m really proud of is that I have really good timing. It’s very easy for me to see what’s coming up and it’s no coincidence that I went headfirst into wine and then headfirst into new media – none at all.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We’re trying to identify the key influencers and make them distribution points.
- Jack Dorsey
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
I am excited for the opportunity to pursue new interests, including my work with a few public company boards, several universities in the U.S. and the UK and ophthalmic charities whose goals are to improve eye health in emerging markets.
- David Pyott
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one.
- Winston Churchill
King Alfred’s Book of Laws, or Dooms, as set out in the existing laws of Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, attempted to blend the Mosaic code with Christian principles and old Germanic customs. He inverted the Golden Rule. Instead of “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you”, he adopted the less ambitious principle, “What ye will that other men should not do to you, that do ye not to other men”, with the comment, “By bearing this precept in mind a judge can do justice to all men; he needs no other law-books. Let him think of himself as the plaintiff, and consider what judgment would satisfy him.” The King, in his preamble, explained modestly that “I have not dared to presume to set down in writing many laws of my own, for I cannot tell what will meet with the approval of our successors.
- Winston Churchill
It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.
- Bill Gates
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.
- Peter Drucker
We’re running the company to serve more people.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!
- Og Mandino
The U.S. is talking about keeping interest rates near zero.
- Lee Shau Kee
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
- Winston Churchill
No matter how many times people say it – ‘Oh, I’m just writing this for myself’ ‘Oh, I’m just doing this for myself’ – nobody’s doing it for themselves! You’re doing it for an audience. So whether I’m performing or writing a book or playing music, it’s definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
- Steve Martin
I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.
- Thomas Edison
The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.
- Ray Dalio
…The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.
- Seth Godin
Do you know how many companies have wanted me to do an energy drink for them because I named my book ‘Crush It!’? It might be fun one day, but right now I think it would undermine the personal brand I’ve built.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.
- Tony Robbins
It’s not one of the enduring mysteries of all time. A motivated employee treats the customer well. A customer is happy so they’ll keep coming back, which pleases the shareholder. It’s just the way it works.
- Herb Kelleher
While the uncertainties that the economic climate holds are a challenge for all companies, we are confident that by drawing from the strengths of our people, as well as on our core values of quality, initiative, trust and creativity, we will maintain our focus and strategic direction.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Restructuring a job usually means restructuring a score of jobs, moving people around, and upsetting everybody. There is one exception: the exceedingly rare, truly exceptional man for whose sake the rule should be broken.
- Peter Drucker
A good book can be both a window to the world and a mirror to one’s self. It is easier to build community and remain true to the brand when you have zealots instead of marketing mercaries.
- Radical Marketing
Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.
- Mark Zuckerberg
People have come to me over the years and said to me: ‘I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?’ I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
- Howard Schultz
What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
- Steve Martin
Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.
- Sam Walton
The average occupancy rate of the core investment properties of the group was maintained at a high level of 96%.
- Lee Shau Kee
The microprocessor is a miracle.
- Bill Gates
You have to be responsible when you’re running an organization, and firing people who are your friends is part of that responsibility.
- Ben Horowitz
I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
- Warren Buffett
People are the key to success or extraordinary success.
- Azim Premji
At an early age, my mother gave me this feeling that anything is possible, and I believe that.
- Howard Schultz
I’m not going to run for president. No way, no how.
- Michael Bloomberg
Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalues people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented.
- Jack Welch
Money isn’t everything , but it’s right up there with oxygen.
- Zig Ziglar
Believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.
- Seth Godin
Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It’s just always all in the way you use it. So there’s no – you can’t really blame anything on the technology. It’s just the way people use it, and it always has been.
- Steve Martin
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
- Og Mandino
We’re responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software.. that’s something we brought to computing. And so it’s a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don’t get in the way of that dream.
- Bill Gates
Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.
- Yoda
Confidence is a habit that can be developed by acting as if you already had the confidence you desire to have.
- Brian Tracy
Well, we have to provide the world’s best schools. We certainly don’t have them, but that’s our objective.
- Michael Bloomberg
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
- Napoleon Hill
Money doesn’t make people happy. People make people happy.
- Stephen Wynn
SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it’s very inexpensive to send mail.
- Bill Gates
It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.
- Seth Godin
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
- Richard Branson
