Artists don’t think outside the box, because outside the box there’s a vacumm. Outside the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you’ll never be able to do the real work of art. You can’t ship if you’re far outside the box. Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done. That’s where the audience is, that’s where the means of production are available, and that’s where you can make impact.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
- Jeff Bezos
You should give 80% of your time and attention to your best 20% of employees. If you have one hundred customers, the top twenty will provide you with 80% of your business.
- John Maxwell
I’m going to give away a lot more than half my money. I’d be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I’m giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.
- Ray Dalio
You’re not really free until you’re free from trying to please everybody.
- Joel Olsteen
You have in the U.S. around two million new diagnoses of cancer a year, and 13 million survivors, so you have about 10,000 patients that require analysis every day. That’s about five petabytes that need to be transmitted and computed on a daily basis.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy — a little boy!
- Dale Carnegie
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet – how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
- Jeff Bezos
If you are a big company, a big website, and lots of users come to your website, you will have attacks, and you have to deal with that. It just cannot be a reason to take actions to exit certain markets.
- Robin Li
Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
- Henry Ford
Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.
- P.T. Barnum
Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to close it for us.
- Oprah Winfrey
The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.
- Bill Gates
Don’t take anyone for granted.
- Jack Dorsey
A few years ago there was a poll in china to name the greatest man ever. The winner was Mao, but there was a tie for second between [revolutionary hero] Zhou Enlai and Michael Jordan of the Chicago Red Oxen!
- Phil Knight
Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurt his sense of importance and arouses resentment.
- Dale Carnegie
Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.
- Bill Gates
Economic cycles come and go…
- Cheng Yu-tung
At the end of the day you have to keep emotions away.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Your real boss is the one who walks around under your hat.
- Napoleon Hill
Buoyant consumer confidence will continue to underpin retial spending and hence rental growth for shopping centres. The office market is expected to perform well on the back of tight supply being met by keen demand from companies looking for expansion opportunities.
- Lee Shau Kee
Control, control, you must learn control!
- Yoda
Weak desires bring weak results.
- Napoleon Hill
A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long.
- Napoleon Hill
I learned that people don’t buy anything from unknown stores.
- Tadashi Yanai
Future public education will require involvement and collaboration among various local, civic, private and nonprofit entities, a concept I like to refer to as ‘community entrepreneurship.’
- Donald Bren
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.
- Zig Ziglar
Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.
- Joel Olsteen
Capital isn’t scarce, vision is.
- Sam Walton
Just as ships are built to sail the seas and planes to fly the heavens, so is man created for a purpose.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m a huge believer in clarity.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve worked very hard, but my life’s always been fun.
- Reed Hastings
Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.
- Jeff Bezos
You will never change what you tolerate.
- Joel Olsteen
The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.
- Peter Drucker
Everybody was writing about computers and electronics, but all I really knew about was running. It’s what I’ve chosen to do with my life.
- Phil Knight
Wild Turkey whiskey and Philip Morris cigarettes are essential to the maintenance of human life!
- Herb Kelleher
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford
Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.
- Ben Horowitz
I encourage all my key people to bring their mobiles when they travel.
- Raymond Kwok
Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
- Peter Thiel
You want your customers to value your service.
- Jeff Bezos
I’m not trying to follow a set of rules and stuff. I’m just living my life.
- Joel Olsteen
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.
- Steve Jobs
The most stable companies have strong leaders at every level of the organization. The only way to develop such widespread leadership is to make developing leaders a part of your culture. That is a strong part of Coca-Cola’s legacy.
- John Maxwell
Save someone’s face once and your influence with him rises. Save his face every time you can, and there is practically nothing he won’t do for you.
- Dale Carnegie
Typically, your corporate e-mail account is not, today, that spam-targeted. It’s more the free e-mail accounts that are spam-targeted.
- Bill Gates
A broad trend I’m completely obsessed with is mobile commerce. Like completely. I’m completely convinced that everybody’s going to be buying from their mobile devices. Whoever can claim that space or be in that space, I’m very interested in.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A man who succeeds in life must sometimes go against the current.
- Ron Chernow
In the U.S. there are many people willing to work on $9 per hour, which is causing Tasmania to lose its famous apple industry and Australia to import more and more of its fruit and food from lower cost countries. In fact, all over Australia there are warning signs of us killing or restricting our own industries.
- Gina Rinehart
Motivation needs to be a part of your own life for you to be effective in conveying it to other people.
- Zig Ziglar
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
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.
- Yoda
Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself.
- Peter Thiel
American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.
- Russell Simmons
Be honest, always.
- Jack Dorsey
There certainly is a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive.
- Bill Gates
It is expected that Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation will materialise in the near future and the country will see further growth in its economy unfolding at a faster pace.
- Lee Shau Kee
The ballplayer who loses his head can’t keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.
- Lou Gehrig
I’m from the country and I like it that way.
- Tracy Byrd
If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.
- Joel Olsteen
I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.
- Elon Musk
Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today.
- Peter Thiel
Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.
- Zig Ziglar
We all know far too many stories where the third generation just destroys everything that the first two have built up, and I certainly hope my family are different because I’ve worked too hard and my father has worked too hard for it to be given away.
- Gina Rinehart
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.
- Bill Gates
My message is that God is a good God.
- Joel Olsteen
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
- Winston Churchill
People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.
- Warren Buffett
Every well built house started in the form of a definite purpose plus a definite plan in the nature of a set of blueprints.
- Napoleon Hill
I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It’s got the market. It’s got consumer confidence and it’s got banks throwing – I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
- Jack Welch
Some city-council people are really awesome, but most are uninspired. I meet with them as little as possible.
- Travis Kalanick
In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins – not through strength, but through persistence.
- Buddha
Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.
- Mary Kay Ash
We cannot start over, but we can begin now, and make a new beginning.
- Zig Ziglar
Sometimes put the idea away…
- Jack Dorsey
We need to reinvent food at Starbucks. Less could be more.
- Howard Schultz
One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.
- Jeff Bezos
People will come to the pharmacy because they want the advice.
- Stefano Pessina
As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-time. Sometimes you’ll have to break this rule; it usually makes sense to hire outside lawyers and accountants, for example. However, anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned.
- Peter Thiel
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
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
So we really need jobs now. We have to take jobs away from other countries because other countries are taking our jobs. There is practically not a country that does business with the United States that isn’t making – let’s call it a very big profit. I mean China is going to make $300 billion on us at least this year.
- Donald Trump
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
- Bill Gates
I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.
- John D. Rockefeller
Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.
- Seth Godin
From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.
- Elon Musk
We found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.
- James C. Collins
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill
The best ideas in a company are the ones that people come up with themselves because then they really own their ideas and are committed to making them work. – David Novak CEO of YUM Brands
- David Novak
In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
- Donald Trump
Failure to deliver on committments is, in the end, unacceptable.
- Jack Welch
There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
- Henry Ford
People tend to over-weigh risks on a personal level. It’s one thing if you’ve got a mortgage to pay and kids to support, so that if you were to deviate from your job, well, how are you going to feed your family and pay the rent? That’s understandable, but let’s say you’re young and you’re just coming out of college, what are your risks? You’re not going to starve, certainly not in any kind of modern economy. It’s so easy to earn enough money just to live somewhere and eat food. Very easy to do. So I don’t know what they’re afraid of. Mostly afraid of failure, I think, but people should be less risk averse, when there’s not much at risk.
- Elon Musk
Never, never, never give up.
- Winston Churchill
