The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
- Jeff Bezos
Notable Quotables
Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.
- Peter Drucker
The problem is not getting rid of fear, but using it properly.
- Zig Ziglar
Use what you have to run toward your best – that’s how I now live my life.
- Oprah Winfrey
I’ve found that many of the greatest ideas surface in bars because that’s where many people cultivate inspiration.
- Herb Kelleher
Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.
- Joel Olsteen
What did I do that was right—and in what way could I have improved my performance? What lessons can I learn from that experience?
- Dale Carnegie
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The evidence is inarguable that Australia is becoming too expensive and too uncompetitive to do export-oriented business. Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day. Such statistics make me worry for this country’s future. We are becoming a high-cost and high-risk nation for investment.
- Gina Rinehart
Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man.
- Winston Churchill
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
- Warren Buffett
I’m an Urban Scholar.
- Michael Ward
But it’s possible the orbits of the asteroids today show some memory of having had a planet in the asteroid belt.
- John Chambers
We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.
- Walt Disney
Quality is a cornerstone of the [Henderson] Group underpinning all our activities.
- Lee Shau Kee
IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.
- Jack Welch
In business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
Your thoughts about your circumstances have you down. On the other hand, you can be in one of the biggest battles of your life, and still be filled with joy and peace and victory – if you simply learn how to choose the right thought. It’s time to think about what you’re thinking about.
- Joel Olsteen
The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me….
- Thomas Edison
Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I was raised with ‘Laurel and Hardy’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it’s the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you’re performing in your bedroom for yourself.
- Steve Martin
I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee.
- Howard Schultz
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
- John D. Rockefeller
A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed.
- Seth Godin
If you go out looking for friends, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
- Zig Ziglar
There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, learning from failure.
- Colin Powell
You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.
- Jack Ma
The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain.
- Yoda
Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.
- Oprah Winfrey
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
In 2008, people who invested in hedge funds needed capital badly, but many of the funds would not return their money. However, I gave money back to any investor who requested it. It was the bottom of the market and a pretty tough time.
- Carl Icahn
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.
- Bill Gates
CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.
- Peter Thiel
School districts in the US don’t adopt technology very quickly.
- Reed Hastings
“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.
- Sergey Brin
We will make our products work out of the box.
- Steve Ballmer
If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?
- Bill Gates
If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.
- Jack Ma
How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.
- Seth Godin
…People have lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first and then build you actions on the backs of their lessons.
- Gary Keller
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
- Seth Godin
Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, one step at a time, picking your feet up and putting them down. At the end of the day, twenty miles later, you stop at a hotel. And what happens the next morning? Either you quit the project or you start again, walking to Cleveland. In fact, every step is a new beginning. Sure, you’re closer than you were yesterday or last week, but you’re still…
- Seth Godin
I enjoy the hunt much more than the ‘good life’ after the victory.
- Carl Icahn
Effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible.
- Jack Welch
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
It encourages you to focus on your work and the generosity that comes from interacting with (and helping) your community.
- Seth Godin
Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.
- Bill Gates
TAKE CARE OF THE PEOPLE, THE PRODUCTS, AND THE PROFITS—IN THAT ORDER.
- Ben Horowitz
The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet.
- William Gibson
The dangers of unchecked bureauracy are a constant thorn in the CEO’s side.
- Jack Welch
Disneyland will never be the completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.
- Walt Disney
What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
- Napoleon Hill
The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
- Winston Churchill
He will give you strength for every battle, wisdom for every decision, peace that passes understanding. God will vindicate you for the wrongs that have been done. He will pay you back for unfair situations. He promised He will not only bring your dreams to pass but He will give you even the secret desires of your heart. Dare to trust Him. Come back to that place of peace. Quit being worried, stressed out, wondering if it will happen. God has you in the palm of His hand. He has never once failed before, and the good news is He is not about to start now.
- Joel Olsteen
The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor.
- Seth Godin
What is Oracle? It’s people. We rely on our HR department to build this organization, to help find those people, to help grow those people.
- Larry Ellison
I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s where the fun is.
- Donald Trump
The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.
- Thomas Edison
We will be one of the most productive residential developers in China in the next few years.
- Lee Shau Kee
Each morning before breakfast, Rockefeller led the family in prayer, charging out a penny fine to latecomers.
- Ron Chernow
When you start a company, it’s a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.
- Howard Schultz
Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what’s coming.
- Steve Martin
Failure is an event not a person.
- Zig Ziglar
Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends, the best paths are new and untried.
- Peter Thiel
I find that I have about six bloggable ideas a day. I also find that writing twice as long a post doesn’t increase communication, it usually decreases it. And finally, I found that people get antsy if there are unread posts in their queue.
- Seth Godin
The S.A.L.H. were mostly South Africans, with a high proportion of hardbitten adventurers from all quarters of the world, including a Confederate trooper from the American Civil War.
- Winston Churchill
Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?
- Winston Churchill
I know nothing about technology.
- Jack Ma
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
Where did your art go while you were tweeting?
- Seth Godin
Art is what we call…the thing an artist does. It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the …eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.
- Seth Godin
MySpace is like a bar, Facebook is like the BBQ you have in your back yard with friends and family, play games, share pictures. Facebook is much better for sharing than MySpace. LinkedIn is the office, how you stay up to date, solve professional problems.
- Reid Hoffman
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
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. But I take my task with buoyancy and hope. Come, then, let us go forward with our united strenght.
- Winston Churchill
Treasure the love you have received above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished.
- Og Mandino
A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.
- Peter Thiel
To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.
- George Soros
The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.
- John C. Maxwell
‘We are interested in others when they are interested in us.
- Publilius Syrus
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.
- Seth Godin
Who told you that something was wrong with you?
- Joel Olsteen
Play the game for more than you can afford to lose . . . only then will you learn the game.
- Zig Ziglar
Sometimes I look out there and I get goosebumps…
- Phil Knight
About one in five of us is retired. About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed peoplemake up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires.
- Thomas J Stanley
Be friendly, but not so friendly, it’s creepy.
- Michael Levine
Given the uncertainty going into the Y2K quarter, we are very pleased with our quarterly results.
- John Chambers
Checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized.
- Atul Gawande
The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little.
- Zig Ziglar
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
- Brian Tracy
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.
- Russell Simmons
If you truly love what you are doing, why stop?
- Barry Schwartz
You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.
- Oprah Winfrey
A lie cannot live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.
- Dale Carnegie
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
People really criticize professional athletes going into the Olympics. People don’t like change. A bunch of people don’t like the Olympics now because we’ve added skateboarding… We’re modernizing the sport.
- Larry Ellison
College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.
- Peter Thiel
We are in turbulent times.
- Lee Shau Kee
