Notable Quotables

All my friends ask me, ‘Am I number one in the world in [receiving] dividend payments?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, ask Forbes.’

- Lee Shau Kee

If you talk about Cabernet and Merlot-based value between $10 and $25, I will tell you that Bordeaux is the best value in the world.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…(Yoda pinches Luke’s shoulder)…not this crude matter. (a sweeping gesture) You must feel the Force around you. (gesturing) Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!

- Yoda

If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte… ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual’s taste.

- Reed Hastings

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.

- Richard Branson

My natural inclination to be improv rather than an educated character serves me well.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I DECLARE I am special and extraordinary. I am not average! I have been custom-made. I am one of a kind. Of all the things God created, what He is the most proud of is me. I am His masterpiece, his most prized possession. I will keep my head held high, knowing I am a child of the most high God, made in his very image. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us the latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Rockefeller’s supreme insight was that he could solve the oil industry’s problems by solving the railroad’s problems at the same time, creating a double cartel in oil and rails. One of Rockefeller’s strength in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and then crafted mutually advanteous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper, albeit in away that fortified his own position.

- Ron Chernow

I was leading a lot of idea and the vision for where the product was going. Ev [Evan Williams] was funding and supporting what we were doing. He put the shelter over our heads. And Biz [Stone] was just an amazingly creative guy.

- Jack Dorsey

Nobody walks this earth thinking he’s better than I think I am – I think I’m great. At the same time, it’s so obvious to me that I’m nobody.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Don’t settle in the land of barely enough. That is where you are, it is not who you are. That’s your location, it’s not your identity. No matter what it looks like, have an abundant mentality.

- Joel Olsteen

Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that’s where charisma comes from, from the leading.

- Seth Godin

That’s just $30 for two tickets. Racing is a family sport and we strive to make our tickets affordable for any families that want to come watch a race.

- Ed Clark

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

- Ray Kroc

We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.

- Phil Knight

The prevailing low mortgage rate, reasonable affordability and the low completion volumes for private-residential units in the coming few years should lend support to the local residential property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

If somebody’s going on your board, and you’re going to be C.E.O., it will help if that person knows how to be C.E.O., who has done it before.

- Ben Horowitz

Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.

- Seth Godin

Isn’t it amazing how much stuff we get done the day before vacation?

- Zig Ziglar

I believe Success is achieved by ordinary people with Extraordinary Determination.

- Zig Ziglar

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win — essential to success.

- Napoleon Hill

Anyone that makes me a quarter of a billion dollars, I like.

- Carl Icahn

Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.

- Ben Horowitz

I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I’m in the shoe business. Look at these things. They’re called Tigers. I faked out the company. I’m the US distributor. Come with me.

- Phil Knight

You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.

- Peter Thiel

Failure to deliver on committments is, in the end, unacceptable.

- Jack Welch

Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me – they’re going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, ‘This guy is obnoxious.’ I spend enormous time with them – every negative review of ‘Crush It!’ on Amazon has a response from me – and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.

- John C. Maxwell

If you’ve found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

- Bill Gates

The concept of serviced apartments makes economic sense for tenancies of short to medium term duration – a fact many leading Hong Kong and overseas corporations now appreciate.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge….

- Thomas Edison

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

- Joel Olsteen

If you end your training now — if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did — you will become an agent of evil.

- Yoda

We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.

- Joel Olsteen

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

- David Ogilvy

Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.

- Dale Carnegie

Waiting isn’t easy, which is precisely why it is so effective when engaging with other people.

- Seth Godin

The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.

- Jeff Bezos

In the ’30s, the Keynesian stuff worked at least in the sense that you could print money without inflation because there was all this productivity growth happening. That’s not going to work today.

- Peter Thiel

In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.

- Lee Shau Kee

Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon. Sorry I’m all out of cards. Boy, does your country ever eat up business cards.

- Phil Knight

Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?

- Elon Musk

I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.

- Jerry Seinfeld

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

- Henry Ford

Puffery makes you look weak and not very bright. Representation makes you look strong and smart.

- Jerry Vass

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

Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.

- Og Mandino

We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.

- Larry Page

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

There are abundant business opportunities to bring about the recovery of the local economy.

- Lee Shau Kee

You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

- Bill Gates

When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.

- Elon Musk

If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55 percent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?

- Dale Carnegie

You’re only as good as the people you hire.

- Ray Kroc

We have two turbines in our company: One is engineering, and the other is operations. And so our business people are on equal footing with our engineering and technology culture. Cars are moving because of what we do, so there’s an imperative to go beyond just the technology.

- Travis Kalanick

I’m tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

- Steve Martin

If I designed a computer with 200 chips, I tried to design it with 150. And then I would try to design it with 100. I just tried to find every trick I could in life to design things real tiny.

- Steve Wozniak

Luke: What’s in there? Yoda: Only what you take with you.

- Yoda

When you do more than you’re paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do.

- Zig Ziglar

To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.

- Seth Godin

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

Listening is just as important in one’s home life as in the world of business.

- Dale Carnegie

True success is when you reach back and bring somebody along with you.

- Joel Olsteen

To succeed in business, you must build a brand and never destroy it.

- Aliko Dangote

I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time America was run like a business.

- Donald Trump

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Things get much easier if one jumps on the bandwagon of existing trends.

- Lei Jun

My children – in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.

- Steve Ballmer

If you are nervous about making the jump or simply putting it off out of fear of the unknown, here is your antidote. Write down your answers to these questions, and keep in mind that thinking a lot will not prove as fruitful or as prolific as simply brain vomiting on the page. Write and do not edit – aim for volume. Spend a few minutes on each answer.1. Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering.2. What steps could you take to repair the damage or get things back on the upswing, even if temporarily?3. What are the outcomes or benefits, both temporary and permanent, of more probably scenarios?4. If you were fired from your job today, what would you do to get things under financial control?5. What are you putting off out of fear?6. What is it costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – to postpone action?7. What are you waiting for?

- Timothy Ferriss

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

- Winston Churchill

Just like Mark Snider told the Board of Elections within a couple hours of when he first became aware of it… first of all, Mike and I didn’t even know anything about this till March 16, … Second of all, nobody benefited from this in any way, shape or form whatsoever.

- Michael Ward

You’re asking somebody who has a wife and is really happily married, ‘So, what’s your next wife going to be like?’ And I’m like, ‘What?

- Travis Kalanick

Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.

- Bill Gates

An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn’t have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

- Jack Welch

At the very beginning I actually felt a bit nervous. I didn’t have much experience in gaming.

- Lui Che Woo

Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.

- Thomas Edison

Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.

- Seth Godin

We sold ‘Seinfeld’ all over the world but it was a very specific kind of show. In some countries it went down really well, in others they hated it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Be ready for problems–you’ll have them every day. Keep open to new ideas–that’s where innovation begins.

- Donald Trump

My two primary areas of focus have been open-space conservation and education, and I expect those to remain my priorities in the future. The Irvine open space and parklands provide serenity and balance to our unique Orange County lifestyle.

- Donald Bren

You may be sitting around waiting for God to change your circumstances. Then you’re going to be happy, then your’re going to have a good attitude, then you’re going to give God praise. But God is waiting on you to get up on the inside. When you do your part, He’ll begin to change things and work supernaturally in your life.

- Joel Olsteen

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

- Elon Musk

If you are satisfied with the results you are now getting, why change? If you are not satisfied, why not experiment?

- Dale Carnegie

It’s insane to me to ask anybody to be what they’re not. Know what you know the best, love the most. That’s always going to be the answer to the thing that you have the best shot at winning at.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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