Notable Quotables

Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

- Peter Thiel

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

- Winston Churchill

I was reading an article in the ‘New York Times;’ it talked about being in the zone, and being in the zone you’re so focused that time ceases to exist. It’s when you think, ‘Oh, I’ve been doing this for five hours and didn’t even know it.’ It’s the difference between hard work and going, ’12 o’clock, not moving.’

- Steve Martin

I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I’d have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.

- Sara Blakely

Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

- Bill Gates

The purpose of process is communication. If there are five people in your company, you don’t need process, because you can just talk to each other.

- Ben Horowitz

Pay attention to those employees who respectfully ask why. They are demonstrating an interest in their jobs and exhibiting a curiosity that could eventually translate into leadership ability.

- Harvey Mackay

Pull in your belt, spend less, and reduce debt.

- Ray Dalio

our skills and talent, but above all, be tenacious. See yourself as victorious–which means never giving up

- Donald Trump

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

- James C. Collins

Stories let us lie to ourselves. And those lies satisfy our desires.

- Seth Godin

The annals of business are filled with stories of companies that thought they had it made and could milk their enterprises without having to bother about improving their products or services. It’s amazing how fast they found their markets disappearing.

- Harvey Mackay

The ballplayer who loses his head can’t keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.

- Lou Gehrig

No genuine leader is ever too busy to do anything which may be required of him in his capacity as leader. When a man, whether he is a leader of followers, admits he is too busy to change his plans, or to give attention to any emergency, he admits his inefficiency. The successful leader must be the master of all details connected with his position.

- Napoleon Hill

Some people are averse to change, but the advertising model is going to change with or without the Hopper. What we’re saying to the broadcasters is, ‘There’s a way for you not to put your head in the sand.’

- Charles Ergen

It is crucial that rappers have the chance to express the truth that is in their heart.

- Russell Simmons

Take time to be kind and to say ‘thank you.’

- Zig Ziglar

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

- Jerry Seinfeld

We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.

- Seth Godin

Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.

- Jack Welch

The cost of praising someone is nil – but every psychological study shows the payoff is huge.

- Harvey Mackay

Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs, Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain, Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves.

- Peter Thiel

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.

- Winston Churchill

People shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to get high-quality clothing.

- Tadashi Yanai

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

- Dale Carnegie

It is equally important that diversification is an ongoing process.

- Cheng Yu-tung

You know, the diversity that America has is so special. It’s starting to really become a cool thing for young people.

- Russell Simmons

Japanese businesspeople and companies are lacking in individuality.

- Tadashi Yanai

There comes a precious moment in all of our lives when we are tapped on the shoulder and offered the opportunity to do something very special that is unique to us and our abilities, what a tragedy it would be if we are not ready or willing.

- Winston Churchill

Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.

- Sergey Brin

In the long run, your human capital is your main base of competition. Your leading indicator of where you’re going to be 20 years from now is how well you’re doing in your education system.

- Bill Gates

A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

- Peter Thiel

Abe Lincoln once remarked that most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

- Dale Carnegie

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

- Walt Disney

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

The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by.

- Seth Godin

It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.

- Dale Carnegie

Use what you have to run toward your best – that’s how I now live my life.

- Oprah Winfrey

I believe God’s keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, someway, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can’t give God something without God giving you more in return, whether it’s peace or joy or satisfaction.

- Joel Olsteen

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

- Henry Ford

G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.

- Laszlo Bock

L.A. is only where you live, because otherwise it’s just a sprawling mass of everything, and I think if you live in L.A., you get a little network of places you go, and people you see, and when you leave town, you do miss those places and your friends.

- Steve Martin

The residential leasing market remained robust with expatriates from the banking and financial sectors continuing to be the major source of tenant demand for luxury properties on Hong Kong Island.

- Lee Shau Kee

I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. I do not read management or economics.

- Peter Drucker

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

And I think the more money you put in people’s hands, the more they will spend. And if they don’t spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that.

- Michael Bloomberg

I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything – which as you know, always leads to something – cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.

- Jerry Seinfeld

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

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

- Bill Gates

I come back to the same thing: We’ve got the greatest pipeline in the company’s history in the next 12 months, and we’ve had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we’re predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year ’06.

- Steve Ballmer

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

- Winston Churchill

It is possible to become world-class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6-12 months, or even 6-12 weeks.

- Timothy Ferriss

It’s your ATTITUDE not your APTITUDE that ultimately determines your ALTITUDE!

- Zig Ziglar

…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

If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was ‘satisfactory,’ I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?

- Bill Gates

Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.

- John C. Maxwell

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

- Steve Jobs

Being a great leader means sometimes pissing people off.

- Colin Powell

While technology is still important, the consumer has to lead innovation.

- Phil Knight

FATHER FORGETS W. Livingston Larned Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse 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. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, ‘Goodbye, Daddy!’ and I frowned, and said in reply, ‘Hold your shoulders back!’ Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. ‘What is it you want?’ I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed! It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! 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!’ I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much. Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. ‘To know all is to forgive.

- Dale Carnegie

Once you hit the critical mass, you can’t push it much further. Otherwise the meaning gets fuzzy and confused, and before long, the brand is on the way out.

- Phil Knight

With no clear picture of how you wish your life to be, how on earth are you going to live it? What is your Primary Aim? Where is the script to make your dreams come true? what is the first step to take and how do you measure your progress? How far have you gone and how close are you to getting to your goals?

- Michael Gerber

There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.

- Winston Churchill

During the past financial year, development properties sold by the Group amounted to approximately HK$3,592 million in total attributable sales proceeds, representing around 1,700 units…

- Lee Shau Kee

A valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.

- Peter Thiel

If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you’re going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to ‘be different’.

- Larry Ellison

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

- Andrew Carnegie

We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, … We have just completed a very successful management transition and I’ve never been more confident about the company’s future.

- Jack Welch

A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.

- Richard Branson

Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.

- Seth Godin

If my mother hadn’t been the most patient person in the world, I might never have gone to school.

- Ben Horowitz

I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

- Winston Churchill

Hong Kong’s history of success is built on its flexibility in the ever-changing global economy.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The guerrilla is a cheapskate. She knows that every dollar allocated to marketing is essential, and she doesn’t plan to waste a penny. But she’s not foolish. When necessary, she hires the best designers, media planners, and experts in the business—she realizes that the best is often the cheapest in the end.

- Jay Conrad Levinson

The road doesn’t have to be infinite after all. Take the hidden paths.

- Peter Thiel

There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.

- Dale Carnegie

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

- Bill Cosby

They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people have their say” so that they could buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.

- James C. Collins

Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.

- Steve Martin

A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t like accidental success. It’s what Bill Gates calls ‘random,’ a term he uses with the opposite of respect.

- Masayoshi Son

The employees who share innovative ideas may also be the folks who have some hidden talents that would help incorporate their suggestions.

- Harvey Mackay

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

- Steve Jobs

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

- Bill Gates

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