Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.
- P.T. Barnum
Notable Quotables
Every great man, every successful man, no matter what the field of endeavor, has known the magic that lies in these words: every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.
- W. Clement Stone
I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.
- Donald Bren
We are in control of the one asset that we all give the most f#%ks about, and that is time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.
- P.T. Barnum
In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
- Thomas J Stanley
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.
- Tom Landry
We know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition.
- Peter Thiel
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
- Steve Jobs
Dear Sir: My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to a rapidly growing bank like yours. In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all phases of banking including depositor relations, credits, loans and administration. I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals. Sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
Changes that used to occur over quarters are literally occurring over months.
- John Chambers
If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag.
- Zig Ziglar
When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.
- Ray Dalio
People suck at following advice. Even the most effective people in the world are terrible at it. There are two reasons: 1. Most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a nice-to-have, not a must-have. There has been no Harajuku Moment. 2. There are no reminders. No consistent tracking = no awareness = no behavioral change. Consistent tracking, even if you have no knowledge of fat-loss or exercise, will often beat advice from world-class trainers.
- Timothy Ferriss
I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
- Steve Martin
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
- Vince Lombardi
Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.
- Guy Kawasaki
There is no substitute for hard work. There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money.
- Henry Sy
I’m going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.
- Joel Olsteen
A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist.
- Seth Godin
I DECLARE Ephesians 3:20 over my life. God will do exceedingly, abundantly above all that I ask or think. Because I honor Him, His blessings will chase me down and overtake me. I will be in the right place at the right time. People will go out of their way to be good to me. I am surrounded by God’s favor. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
- Dale Carnegie
Every great business is built on friendship.
- JC Penney
The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
- Dale Carnegie
We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.
- Seth Godin
A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.
- James C. Collins
We have a number of difficulties facing our nation, but I believe fatherlessness is right at the top of the list.
- Tony Dungy
Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.
- Bill Gates
My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.
- Jack Dorsey
I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.
- Seth Godin
I know how to make decisions and stand up to the criticism every day.
- Michael Bloomberg
My father encouraged me to study something I was interested in, not necessarily the basis for a career.
- Michael Balmuth
Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyon has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by opinions when you reach decisions you will not succeed in any undertaking, much less in that of transmuting YOUR OWN DESIRE into money…Close friends and relatives, while not meaning to do so, often handicap one through opinions and sometimes through ridicule, which is meant to be humorous. Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life, because some well-meaning, but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through opinions or ridicule.
- Napoleon Hill
I’m going to retain a lot of Microsoft’s stock.
- Bill Gates
Your real boss is the one who walks around under your hat.
- Napoleon Hill
Ebooks had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.
- Bill Gates
This morning did you wake up to an alarm clock, or an “opportunity” clock?
- Zig Ziglar
We beat our expectations in the run up to Christmas and this time last year we had particularly high stock levels leading to a bigger clearance.
- Simon Wolfson
Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.
- Seth Godin
We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these nonmillionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?
- Thomas J Stanley
Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, – it largely increases the product.
- P.T. Barnum
It’s unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
When I cut the feet out of my pantyhose that one time, I saw it as my sign. I had been visualizing being self employed prior to this happening. It was my mental preparation meeting the opportunity in that moment.
- Sara Blakely
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
- Thomas Edison
Happiness can be bought with a bottle of wine and has become ambiguous through overuse.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you can dream it, you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
Possession of Power That Was Not Acquired Through Self Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
- Andrew Carnegie
It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project.
- Napoleon Hill
The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks.
- Andrew Carnegie
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
I have over 2 million followers now on Google Plus.
- Larry Page
The lifeblood of job creation in America is small business, but they can’t get access to credit.
- Howard Schultz
On the Internet you get continuous innovation, so every year the streams are a little better.
- Reed Hastings
I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations.
- Winston Churchill
Mr Churchill, to what do you attribute your success in life? Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down
- Winston Churchill
There’s no magic line between an application and an operating system that some bureaucrat in Washington should draw.
- Bill Gates
I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.
- Elon Musk
Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!
- Winston Churchill
There is no such thing as a good tax.
- Winston Churchill
Catering to a mass audience usually backfires. Instead the key thing is to stay in your lane, and if you are good enough and interesting enough, people move to you…If you never compromise, your core audience will come with you as you grow. Then you build on their loyalty and bring in other people.
- Russell Simmons
When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal. And it has nothing to do with money. I mean, you buy clothes with money, and cars. But I really wanted to work with people I enjoyed working with, who I admired and liked.
- Larry Ellison
If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
- Bill Gates
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
The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
- Richard Branson
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
- James C. Collins
I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not a politician.
- Robin Li
You know, in Saudi Arabia, there is a body of 40 people – 34 people exactly, that once the succession comes, they will meet and they will elect a king in there.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.
- Elon Musk
People in any organization are always attached to the obsolete – the things that should have worked but did not, the things that once were productive and no longer are.
- Peter Drucker
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
When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.
- Larry Ellison
The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.
- Jeff Bezos
Owners don’t fire all the players. They fire the leader and bring in someone they hope the players will buy into.
- Napoleon Hill
When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: Try to bear lightly what needs must be. Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and resignation that touched the hem of divinity.
- Dale Carnegie
Put time limits on each item. Set an agenda for your meeting and your trips to Disney World.
- David Robinson
Expect more than others think possible.
- Howard Schultz
Learn to listen and think.
- Jack Nadel
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.
- Donald Trump
One of More of the Six Basic Fears.
- Napoleon Hill
I had a terrible time hiring rich people. It sounds funny, but the problem is when things go wrong they can ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You don’t ever want anybody asking that question. You want them to say, ‘I know why I’m doing it, I need the money, let’s go’ or whatever it is that draws them.
- Ben Horowitz
So the challenge, as you contemplate your next opportunity to be boring or remarkable, is to answer these two questions: (1) “If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impact? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat, or lose important friendships?” If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you’ll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off. And then, once you’ve compared the bad feeling and the benefits, and you’ve sold yourself on taking the remarkable path, answer this one: (2) How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
This country provides opportunities. If you don’t take advantage of them, it’s your own fault.
- Sam Huff
The Field of Dreams conceit is especially popular in Silicon Valley, where engineers are biased toward building cool stuff rather than selling it. But customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.
- Peter Thiel
The 1990’s sure aren’t like the 1980’s.
- Donald Trump
I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.
- Winston Churchill
The cost of praising someone is nil – but every psychological study shows the payoff is huge.
- Harvey Mackay
If you have the character to hang in there when its tough, you will develop or acquire every other characteristic necessary to WIN in the game of life.
- Zig Ziglar
Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it’s cute but boring and expensive.
- P.J. O'Rourke
In business, if you don’t kick and hug, you don’t love.
- Clay Clark
I can’t afford to be indifferent to politics, but I don’t have personal ambitions.
- Vagit Alekperov
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
- Warren Buffett
The laws of business physics have been broken in terms of how many customers you can acquire and how fast. No one in history has ever acquired 450 million customers in the same amount of time that WhatsApp did
- Ben Horowitz
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
- Oprah Winfrey
The economy is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
