You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Execution begins with a vision and your people saying, I understand it. I’m excited about it. I can help make it happen.
- David Novak
You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.
- Oprah Winfrey
To be a champion, you have to learn to handle stress and pressure. But if you’ve prepared mentally and physically, you don’t have to worry.
- Harvey Mackay
Consensus decisions about executives almost always sway the process away from strength and toward lack of weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?
- Timothy Ferriss
The Internet economy continues to create unprecedented growth opportunities for people, companies and countries on a global basis.
- John Chambers
You can’t be in neutral and hope to reach your full potential.
- Joel Olsteen
[Less than a week after founding the forerunner to Nike] I forgot to make it part of the original agreement, but I think it ought to be made explicit: There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.
- Phil Knight
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
- Winston Churchill
Hong Kong’s history of success is built on its flexibility in the ever-changing global economy.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.
- P.T. Barnum
Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.
- Elon Musk
I still get real nervous when I go in front of more than two people.
- Phil Knight
Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison
Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Build on what you know so that you don’t repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company’s life.
- Harvey Mackay
Statistics doesn’t work when the sample size is one.
- Peter Thiel
It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.
- Paul Theroux
At Tencent, we may be businessmen, but we are still chasing our IT, our science. We are still striving to create something really cool, trying to create things we couldn’t even imagine without our new technologies. I am still clinging to this enthusiasm.
- Ma Huateng
There’s only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that’s already been written.
- Bill Gates
Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.
- Harvey Mackay
Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.
- Seth Godin
Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.
- Dale Carnegie
Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
- Winston Churchill
Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.
- Joel Olsteen
I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.
- Sara Blakely
Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in business and politics, it works in family life as well.
- Dale Carnegie
Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo’s sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey’s angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.
- John C. Maxwell
Woody’s Allen’s great line about relationships. A relationship is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies. And that’s true about your company.
- Larry Ellison
Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed, A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden of weeds.
- John D. Rockefeller
A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed.
- Seth Godin
I like money, but it’s never been about the money.
- Jerry Seinfeld
There are two kinds of cultures in this world: cultures where what you do matters and cultures where all that matters is who you are. You can be the former or you can suck.
- Ben Horowitz
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge….
- Thomas Edison
I’ve already figured out when I’m going to be No. 2 and No. 1.
- Sheldon Adelson
Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.
- Larry Page
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater their power to harm us.
- Voltaire
Sam hired me in 1970 as a district manager in charge of new store openings. He had eighteen Wal-Marts and some variety stores doing about $31 million a year. I moved my family and as the van was unloading furniture into our rented house, they called from the office and said, Can you set up this new store in Missouri? My wife, who had three babies and a moving van to deal with, helped me find some clothes and I left. I didn’t see her again for two weeks. Then there was a managers’ meeting so I didn’t see her again for two more weeks. It would be safe to say that in those days we all worked a minimum of 16 hours a day.
- Jack Shewmaker
Although office rental in Hong Kong recorded a general downward adjustment and the slowdown in the economy in the past financial year brought along its negative impacts on the local retailing and food sectors, the major retail shopping properties owned by the Group were able to maintain an overall occupancy rate of 93% whilst rental levels generally remained steady.
- Lee Shau Kee
There is no shame in taking pride in achievements or position. But nobody gets to the top alone.
- Harvey Mackay
The New Rich ( NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.
- Timothy Ferriss
I mean, you know, we don’t live in a perfect world.
- Michael Bloomberg
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
I will always serve my country in any capacity, but I’m very happy with what I’m doing right now.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
The pancreas is by far the most complex organ in the body.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
- Mark Twain
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
- Benjamin Franklin
Applied Faith – Faith is a state of mind through which your aims, desires, plans and purposes may be translated into their physical or financial equivalent.
- Napoleon Hill
We can’t wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious.
- Howard Schultz
Profitability is a shallow goal if it doesn’t have a real purpose, and the purpose has to be share the profits with others.
- Howard Schultz
Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.
- Larry Ellison
I don’t blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.(…) You can say that and be 100 percent sincere, because if you were the other person you, of course, would feel just as he does (…) Suppose you had inherited the same body and temperament and mind (…) Suppose you had had his environment and experiences. You would then be precisely what he was – and where he was. For it is those things -and only those things – that made him what he was. (…) You deserve very little credit for being what you are – and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot underestimate people’s ability to spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away. It’s a big reason why so many companies that have dipped a toe in social media waters have failed miserably.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim.
- Napoleon Hill
Young men starting in life should avoid running into debt. There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt. It is a slavish position to get ill, yet we find many a young man, hardly out of his “teens,” running in debt. He meets a chum and says, “Look at this: I have got trusted for a new suit of clothes.” He seems to look upon the clothes as so much given to him; well, it frequently is so, but, if he succeeds in paying and then gets trusted again, he is adopting a habit which will keep him in poverty through life. Debt robs a man of his self-respect, and makes him almost despise himself.
- P.T. Barnum
They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. Rather they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.
- Peter Drucker
It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.
- Winston Churchill
Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged.
- Russell Simmons
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- Winston Churchill
The millionaires and billionaires who chose to invest in Australia are actually those who most help the poor and our young. This secret needs to be spread widely.
- Gina Rinehart
A true entrepreneur is someone who seeks to profitably solve a problem that the world has in exchange for enough monetary compensation to achieve their dreams.
- Clay Clark
I love the presentation from the more flamboyant guy, who excitedly presents his plans.
- Jack Welch
The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?
- John D. Rockefeller
This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Whoever is first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover in the whole market.
- Peter Thiel
There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.
- Zig Ziglar
Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.
- Timothy Ferriss
I DECLARE a legacy of faith over my life. I declare that I will store up blessings for future generations. My life is marked by excellence and integrity. Because I’m making right choices and taking steps of faith, others will want to follow me. God’s abundance is surrounding my life today. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.
- Bill Gates
[On a small business class taught at university by Frank Shallenberger] Shallenberger started by defining the type of person who was an entrepreneur, and I realized he was talking to me.
- Phil Knight
There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track… We and the consumer were one and the same.
- Phil Knight
Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
- Oprah Winfrey
Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.
- Bill Gates
I’d learned enough about circuitry in high school electronics to know how to drive a TV and get it to draw – shapes of characters and things.
- Steve Wozniak
The connected economy of ideas demands that we contribute initiative. And yet we resist, because our lizard brain, the one that lives in fear, relentlessly exaggerates the cost of being wrong.
- Seth Godin
But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.
- Dale Carnegie
If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.
- Elon Musk
My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers’ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.
- Joel Olsteen
Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above—that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager’s performance.
- Peter Drucker
God puts people in our lives on purpose so we can help them succeed and help them become all He created them to be. Most people will not reach their full potential without somebody else believing in them.
- Joel Olsteen
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
- Steve Martin
Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.
- Henry Ford
To change somebody’s behavior, change the level of respect she receives by giving her a fine reputation to live up to. Act as though the trait you are trying to influence is already one of the person’s outstanding characteristics.
- Dale Carnegie
Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
- Winston Churchill
I know a lot of people are upset by our decision but it is something we have deliberated for a number of years.
- Sergey Brin
People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell
To find the right things, we’ll need to go to the garden.
- Timothy Ferriss
Pick a movement. Pick a revolution. And join it.
- Jack Dorsey
I was the only westerner to succeed in a place that’s like a toilet, and you always come out of a toilet with a smell.
- David Reuben
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting of until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
- Napoleon Hill
When a person says No” and really means it, he or she is doing far more than saying a word of two letters. The entire organism—glandular, nervous, muscular—gathers itself together into a condition of rejection.
- Dale Carnegie
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.
- Thomas Edison
You’ll never achieve real success unless you like what you’re doing.
- Dale Carnegie
Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
- Walt Disney
If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
- Bill Gates
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.
- Sam Walton
Not good — great.
- Jack Welch
The dreams and passions stored within hearts are powerful keys which can unlock a wealth of potential.
- John C. Maxwell
