Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.
- Vladimir Potanin
Notable Quotables
This is not checkers; this is motherfuckin’ chess. Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves, the market moves, the people move. As a result, like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek, there is always a move. You think you have no moves? How about taking your company public with $2 million in trailing revenue and 340 employees, with a plan to do $75 million in revenue the next year? I made that move. I made it in 2001, widely regarded as the worst time ever for a technology company to go public. I made it with six weeks of cash left. There is always a move.
- Ben Horowitz
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
- Winston Churchill
Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
- Mark Twain
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain
Owners don’t fire all the players. They fire the leader and bring in someone they hope the players will buy into.
- Napoleon Hill
Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.
- Jack Ma
As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.
- Richard Branson
Ethics to me is very important.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
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
No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.
- Andrew Carnegie
Not long ago somebody showed me an article written for a local magazine in 1960. IT was called Success Story of the Year, and it described how we had built up an empire of nine variety stores. Then it quoted me as saying that we probably wouldn’t grow much more because I believed in personally supervising the nine-store group, and I thought any more stores would be unwieldy to manager without additional supervisors. So what the heck happened? How did we ever get to be the largest retailer in the world with a philosophy like that?
- Sam Walton
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
- Winston Churchill
Choose your customers, choose your future.
- Seth Godin
I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.
- Winston Churchill
Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn’t an artist, he was a plumber.
- Seth Godin
It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
- Warren Buffett
Don’t be afraid of new arenas.
- Elon Musk
When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
- Walt Disney
You build trust with others each time you choose integrity over image, truth over convenience, or honor over personal gain.
- John C. Maxwell
Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
- Thomas Edison
No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy — unless you let him.
- Napoleon Hill
There’s a belief that you’re supposed to be poor, and suffering, and show your humility. I just don’t see the Bible that way. I see that God came and Jesus died so that we might live an abundant life and be a blessing to others.
- Joel Olsteen
Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
I was born in Africa. I came to California because it’s really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don’t see a viable competitor.
- Elon Musk
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar
Every single important thing we do is something we didn’t use to be good at, and in fact, might be something we used to fear.
- Seth Godin
Don’t be intimidated as you design your pitch. The fact is that nobody will come to you at first. You must be the aggressor, or you will not be heard.
- Michael Levine
you don’t need to understand any of the biology, just as you don’t need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven.
- Timothy Ferriss
the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities. Take time to stop and smell the roses, or—in this case—to count the pea pods.
- Timothy Ferriss
The best investments are on main street, not Wall Street.
- Robert P. Miles
Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.
- Yoda
It didn’t matter how bleak the situation or how stultifying their mediocrity, they all maintained unwavering faith that they would not just survive, but prevail as a great company. And yet, at the same time, they became relentlessly disciplined at confronting the most brutal facts of their current reality.
- James C. Collins
People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
- Peter Thiel
Video is emerging as the key strategic application in the service provider triple play bundle of consumer entertainment, communication and online services.
- John Chambers
Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.
- Zig Ziglar
I knew, of course, that I had nothing to worry about—personally, at least. But.
- Dale Carnegie
You can literally force yourself to be courteous, happy and enthusiastic with every person you meet. After you have forced yourself to be so for a short period of time… the habit takes over.
- Zig Ziglar
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
- Warren Buffett
My parents were ordinary people, we lived in a small apartment.
- Viktor Vekselberg
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
A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.
- Peter Thiel
I’m a huge believer in clarity.
- Ben Horowitz
If you try to make such projects, unseen by others, as perfect as any human could, you’ll develop skills that other professionals don’t have.
- Steve Wozniak
To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark – in a way that you think is important and lasting – that’s a life well-lived.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
But the vast majority of books ever written are not accessible to anyone except the most tenacious researchers at premier academic libraries. Books written after 1923 quickly disappear into a literary black hole.
- Sergey Brin
Humans, particularly those who build things, only listen to leading indicators of good news.
- Ben Horowitz
Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.
- P.T. Barnum
Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
- Zig Ziglar
Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.
- Peter Thiel
Differentiate yourself! Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
Learn to listen and think.
- Jack Nadel
Similar to all of you, we would like to see higher growth.
- John Chambers
Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
I’ve found that many of the greatest ideas surface in bars because that’s where many people cultivate inspiration.
- Herb Kelleher
Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.
- Ben Horowitz
What kind of business world are we living in?
- Jack Ma
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.
- Thomas Edison
I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.
- Joel Olsteen
Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher.
- Oprah Winfrey
Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.
- Peter Drucker
I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, ‘It’s all your fault.’ Your reaction is, ‘It’s not my fault.’ But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it.
- Ben Horowitz
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.
- Elon Musk
In the middle of that process four power plants just tripped off all at once in unison.
- Ed Clark
China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.
- Bill Gates
We’re introducing separate rooms with double beds in all our planes so people can actually go with their partner and have a proper night’s sleep.
- Richard Branson
I don’t know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me.
- Steve Ballmer
Word of mouth works now, much more than ever. @-reply every single person.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Health is worth more than learning.
- Thomas Jefferson
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
When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.
- Dale Carnegie
Think and grow rich.
- Napoleon Hill
Be a coach, not a cheerleader
- Stacy Thorn
For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn boat.
- Tony Hsieh
Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with anyone in the outside world. Every bit of contact. That means a lot of marketing opportunities. It does not mean investing a lot of money.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Don’t kill competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you – the entrepreneur – on your toes.
- Aliko Dangote
Why do I drive a truck? What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?
- Sam Walton
When I was 7, I came up with the idea of ‘charm socks.’ My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.
- Sara Blakely
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
Do not look like you are playing the fiddle while Rome is burning….stay focussed – Paraphrased from
- David Novak
Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire.
- Dale Carnegie
Dream more than others think practical.
- Howard Schultz
Hong Kong has, throughout it’s history, experienced periods of uncertainties… I believe that the virtues of Hong Kong people – diligent, flexible and entrepreneurial – will once again overcome the obstacles before us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You may think using Google’s great, but I still think it’s terrible.
- Larry Page
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.
We need students who can learn how to learn, who can discover how to push themselves and are generous enough and honest enough to engage with the outside world to make those dreams happen.
- Seth Godin
[On only having 4-6 hours for sleep in guiding two companies in June 2011.] Most people have major positions at companies and they’re also raising families. They have two year olds. I have it easy.
- Jack Dorsey
If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.
- Seth Godin
Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11.
- Michael Bloomberg
I think George Will is somebody that said recently that the Republicans will not lose, as a Republican, that the Republicans will not win the election. I think it was a terrible statement.
- Donald Trump
You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you’re an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party… My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I own almost 100 hotels in North America. Some of them are only in management, but some of them we have some small stakes in them.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.
- Seth Godin
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.
- Rupert Murdoch
Each close you use should be an educational process by which you are able to raise the value in the prospect’s mind.
- Zig Ziglar
There’s 20 companies that I have investments in – some batteries, some solar-thermal, one big nuclear thing. We need hundreds and hundreds of companies like that, so that in a 20-year time frame we really are starting to change the energy infrastructure.
- Bill Gates
Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that’s what I think keeps me hungry.
- Warren Buffett
To do the most good requires saying no to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.
- Peter Drucker
