Notable Quotables

Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie until you can find a rock.

- Will Rogers

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.

- Peter Drucker

Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It’s really a great invention and I wouldn’t under-estimate the value of that, but they’re not designed to take care of social needs.

- George Soros

Money isn’t everything… but it ranks right up there with oxygen.

- Zig Ziglar

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

- Elon Musk

One thing I resent is the slur that I just support political candidates because of the business.

- Rupert Murdoch

On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.

- Ron Chernow

Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.

- Jack Welch

Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering.

- Bill Gates

Within the Nasdaq as an example, I do believe that out of the top 100 companies … half of them will not be around five years from now.

- John Chambers

When we are harassed and reach the limit of our own strength, many of us then turn in desperation to God-There are no atheists in foxholes. But why wait till we are desperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For years I have had the habit of dropping into empty churches on weekday afternoons. When I feel that I am too rushed and hurried to spare a few minutes to think about spiritual things, I say to myself: Wait a minute, Dale Carnegie, wait a minute. Why all the feverish hurry and rush, little man? You need to pause and acquire a little perspective. At such times, I frequently drop into the first church that I find open. Although I am a Protestant, I frequently, on weekday afternoons, drop into St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and remind myself that I’ll be dead in another thirty years, but that the great spiritual truths that all churches teach are eternal. I close my eyes and pray. I find that doing this calms my nerves, rests my body, clarifies my perspective, and helps me revalue my values. May I recommend this practice to you?

- Dale Carnegie

People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important.

- Timothy Ferriss

Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.

- Larry Ellison

The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.

- Zig Ziglar

Value and purpose are about understanding the specific benefits you will help people receive if they receive what you have for them.

- Zig Ziglar

Why is this mediocre? We love to point out how broken our systems are. We enjoy getting angry at hotels or government agencies or airlines that are so obviously doing a poor job. Idiots! But we almost never look at merely mediocre products and wonder why they aren’t great. Mediocre services or products do what they’re supposed to, but have set the bar so low that it’s hardly worth the energy to cross the street to buy them. A resolute generic sameness pervades this mediocrity. Why isn’t every restaurant meal a fabulous buy for the money? Why isn’t every tax dollar spent with the intensity and focus it could be spent with? It seems as though we are willing to accept mediocre as long as the product, the service, or the organization isn’t totally broken.

- Seth Godin

No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.

- Harvey Mackay

The U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar, the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro.

- Peter Thiel

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

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

- Winston Churchill

All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.

- Winston Churchill

Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it’s cute but boring and expensive.

- P.J. O'Rourke

India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.

- Bill Gates

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

Tip 29 – A good Accountant is not just a scorekeeper.

- Jack Nadel

I think like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Failure is a great teacher. At the same time, you must remember, success will never last… Whether it’s tech or fashion, it must be for the customer.

- Tadashi Yanai

Anyone, even a child, can be taught to develop a positive mental attitude. The method is to repeat positive affirmations such as: Day by day, in every way, through the grace of God, I am getting better and better.

- Napoleon Hill

The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.

- Oprah Winfrey

People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

- Dale Carnegie

The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.

- Bill Gates

Takings were down by 25 per cent as a result of the security scares following the London bombings.

- Michael Ward

Every pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, but every optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

- Winston Churchill

When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.

- Larry Ellison

AP pleaded guilty to criminal theft of our software. Let me be clear. I’m not accusing SAP of anything. What did SAP do? Did you engage in criminal behavior and steal lots of Oracle software? Yes. That’s SAP. Who was CEO when you were doing all this criminal stuff? Leo.

- Larry Ellison

1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.2. A bad plan is better than no plan.3. Competitive markets destroy profits.4. Sales matters just as much as product.

- Peter Thiel

To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That’s what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games – nothing like saving the world.

- Elon Musk

A startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed.

- Peter Thiel

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

- Jeff Bezos

Apply the blacksmith’s homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.

- Dale Carnegie

Life isn’t fair. It’s true, and you still have to deal with it. Whining about it rarely levels the playing field, but learning to rise above it is the ultimate reward.

- Harvey Mackay

Paper money will suffer. I’d be in mortar, not paper (money). We are in a time when paper investments are riskier than in the past. There is also a great amount of sovereign risk.

- Lee Shau Kee

Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you can get better at your job, you should be an active member of LinkedIn, because LinkedIn should be connecting you to the information, insights and people to be more effective.

- Reid Hoffman

I feel very strongly that SpaceX would not have been able to get started, nor would we have made the progress that we have, without the help of NASA.

- Elon Musk

The Loire Valley is grossly underestimated. The prices are fair, and the wines are real.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

(Physics is) a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

- Elon Musk

Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!

- Yoda

The thing for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak and I will see that you get it.

- Dale Carnegie

I said a long time ago that Foursquare can make cities better. You have these augmented realities like Foursquare and Twitter and Facebook that provide these virtual nodes and instant feedback from anywhere, adding annotation around a physical places.

- Jack Dorsey

I didn’t follow up on the exchanges we had on Time Warner Cable (TWC) that were mentioned in the media because we were not ready.

- Patrick Drahi

Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they’re hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that my not always make sense, so that’s why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them.

- George Foreman

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

- Bill Gates

Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.

- P.T. Barnum

Storytelling is the game. It’s what we all do. It’s why Nike is Nike, it’s why Apple is Apple, it’s why Walt Disney built Disney World and it’s why Vince McMahon makes a billion dollars.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I’m not as interested in what you make as I am in what you’re passionate about. What business are you really in?

- Howard Schultz

I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years.

- Howard Schultz

Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.

- Peter Drucker

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

- Richard Branson

I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

- Jeff Bezos

The good-will of a business which is losing money is not worth much.

- Ron Chernow

We are pleased to report the 33rd consecutive quarter of revenue and earnings growth. We are especially pleased with the balanced growth rate across almost all countries in both Europe and the Americas.

- John Chambers

The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.

- Winston Churchill

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

- Winston Churchill

Determine your destiny or somebody else will.

- Jack Welch

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

- John C. Maxwell

A smart, motivational good manager can work what some outsiders call Wal-Mart magic with folks everywhere. It make take more time. You may have to sift through more people, and you may have to become more skilled with your hiring practices. But I truly believe that people anywhere will eventually respond to the same sorts of motivational techniques we use, if they are treated right and are given the opportunities to be properly trained. If you are good to people, and fair with them, and demanding of them, they will eventually decide you’re on their side.

- Sam Walton

You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying. Success is achieved and maintained by those who keep trying with a positive mental attitude.

- Napoleon Hill

So sure, start with a slogan. But don’t bother wasting any time on it if you’re merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.

- Seth Godin

Creating content that allows us to share our experiences, thoughts, and ideas in real time is becoming an intrinsic part of life in the twenty-first century.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.

- Michael Dell

For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

In the beginning, I thought mobile search was not much different from Web search. It’s just a smaller screen, a slower speed; it’s all the bad things. When I thought about mobile Internet, it’s all the disadvantages.

- Robin Li

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules – not just for governments but for private companies.

- Bill Gates

I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?

- Steve Martin

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

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.

- Thomas Edison

Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.

- Seth Godin

Pareto’s Law can be summarized as follows: 80% of the outputs results from 20% of the inputs.

- Timothy Ferriss

When I hear Mitt Romney say that he believes that Jesus is the Son of God, that He’s the Christ, raised from the dead, that He’s his savior – that’s good enough for me.

- Joel Olsteen

I actually do think you’re seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that’s a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what’s going on with them.

- Mark Zuckerberg

There is no sure path to success, but the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone.

- Timothy Ferriss

What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.

- Dave Thomas

“Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.”

- Sam Walton

When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away. It’s them writing a simple message and them knowing that people are going to see it.

- Jack Dorsey

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