Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. 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
Notable Quotables
Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
- Henry David Thoreau
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
- Winston Churchill
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
- Winston Churchill
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
- Bill Gates
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Doubts [can] be swept away only by deeds.
- Winston Churchill
You know what, Steve Jobs is real nice to me. He lets me be an employee and that’s one of the biggest honors of my life.
- Steve Wozniak
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
In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.
- Winston Churchill
My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.
- Steve Jobs
Competition is a sin.
- John D. Rockefeller
I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It’s got the market. It’s got consumer confidence and it’s got banks throwing – I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
- Jack Welch
Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.
- Ben Horowitz
Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy
- Jim Rohn
The factory has programmed that adventurous impulse out of us. The economic imperative of the last century has been to avoid risk, avoid change, and most of all, avoid exploration and the new. An efficient factory fears change because change means retooling and risk and a blip in productivity. Sure, we’ll put up with change if we have to, and welcome the predictable incremental change of productivity improvement, but please leave us alone when it comes to the word “bold.” Avoiding risk worked then but doesn’t work now. Now “what’s next?” is in fact the driving force for individuals and for organizations. Ever onward, ever faster.
- Seth Godin
If you wish to build a powerful personal network, branch out. Build a diverse network of professional contacts that includes people that don’t look like you, sound like you, speak like you or have your background, education or history. The only thing they should have in common with you and the other people in your network is that they should be really good at what they do. Create a personal network like that, and you’ll have a network that can help you succeed at anything.
- Ivan Misner
Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself.
- Peter Thiel
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.
- Jim Collins
In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.
- Reed Hastings
This is indicative of how quickly CEO caution can put the foot on the brake.
- John Chambers
The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.
- Seth Godin
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
Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it.
- Seth Godin
It is definitely true that the fundamental enabling technology for electric cars is lithium-ion as a cell chemistry technology. In the absence of that, I don’t think it’s possible to make an electric car that is competitive with a gasoline car.
- Elon Musk
Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.
- Seth Godin
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.
- Bill Gates
This approach appeals to the media’s innate curiosity.Whereas a fastball stresses logic over emotion, the curveball stresses emotion over logic.
- Michael Levine
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
- Winston Churchill
When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley.
- Sergey Brin
Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.
- Peter Drucker
Opinions are the cheapest commodities on earth. Everyon has a flock of opinions ready to be wished upon anyone who will accept them. If you are influenced by opinions when you reach decisions you will not succeed in any undertaking, much less in that of transmuting YOUR OWN DESIRE into money…Close friends and relatives, while not meaning to do so, often handicap one through opinions and sometimes through ridicule, which is meant to be humorous. Thousands of men and women carry inferiority complexes with them all through life, because some well-meaning, but ignorant person destroyed their confidence through opinions or ridicule.
- Napoleon Hill
A man has not right to occupy another man’s time unnnecessary
- Ron Chernow
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.
- George Soros
Dig your well before you’re thirsty.
- Seth Godin
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
- Warren Buffett
Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
- Zig Ziglar
Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Self-disciplined begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.
- Napoleon Hill
Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
- Thomas J Stanley
Sometimes, we’re so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing.
- Seth Godin
To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.
- Winston Churchill
In business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
A wise man is a confirmed optimist.
- Andrew Carnegie
Common Core is a big win for education.
- Bill Gates
Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.
- Paula Poundstone
I don’t like paying taxes, but I like sleeping at night.
- Leonardo Del Vecchio
You watch television and see what’s going on on this debt ceiling issue. And what I consider to be a total lack of leadership from the President and nothing’s going to get fixed until the President himself steps up and wrangles both parties in Congress.
- Stephen Wynn
A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.
- Winston Churchill
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
- Donald Trump
We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.
- Winston Churchill
If you’re single and you want to get married, put an empty photo album on your table. That’s where you’re going to put your wedding photos. When you see it, you’re moving toward it.
- Joel Olsteen
The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
- Napoleon Hill
If you look – look at – I mean, look at what’s going on with your gasoline prices. They’re going to go to $5, $6, $7 and we don’t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, ‘Fellas, it’s time. It’s over. You’re not going to do it anymore.’
- Donald Trump
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
- Winston Churchill
We have the brand, and we have the fulfillment capability. Now we had to get the Net, and that’s the easiest part of the game,
- Jack Welch
I have always believed that if we do well, we must also do something to help others in society.
- Henry Sy
Art allows people a way to dream their way out of their struggle.
- Russell Simmons
Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
It truly levels the playing field and puts all the emphasis on the content. And all the emphasis on the merit of the idea.
- Jack Dorsey
When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Make it easy to believe.
- Seth Godin
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
- Steve Martin
We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.” It’s a simple saying, but it’s deep. “Taking care of the people” is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it, the other two won’t matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work.
- Ben Horowitz
At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization—taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere.
- Peter Thiel
If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.
- Sam Walton
You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’
- Jerry Seinfeld
Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long.
- Napoleon Hill
For a rich and reasonably successful guy, it is impossible not to enjoy your job; otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort doing it? I am a great fan of Norilsk, and I like this kind of challenge.
- Vladimir Potanin
I’m born into the cycle of giving that we’re all born into, and I recognize it. So just because something is a good business, I’m not a business guy. I’m a creative guy.
- Russell Simmons
Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Edison
When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
- Lakshmi Mittal
King Alfred’s Book of Laws, or Dooms, as set out in the existing laws of Kent, Wessex, and Mercia, attempted to blend the Mosaic code with Christian principles and old Germanic customs. He inverted the Golden Rule. Instead of “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you”, he adopted the less ambitious principle, “What ye will that other men should not do to you, that do ye not to other men”, with the comment, “By bearing this precept in mind a judge can do justice to all men; he needs no other law-books. Let him think of himself as the plaintiff, and consider what judgment would satisfy him.” The King, in his preamble, explained modestly that “I have not dared to presume to set down in writing many laws of my own, for I cannot tell what will meet with the approval of our successors.
- Winston Churchill
At least three time per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active? Charney captured the essence of this with less-abstract wording: Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important? He eliminated all of the activities he used as crutches and began to focus on demonstrating results instead of showing dedication. Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat.
- Timothy Ferriss
You know the funny thing, I don’t get along with rich people. I get along with the middle class and the poor people better than I get along with the rich people.
- Donald Trump
As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.
- John C. Maxwell
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
I know when one door closes God will open up another door. What was meant for my harm God will use to my advantage. I’m not only coming out, I will come out better off than I was before.
- Joel Olsteen
If the merit of the idea is strong, it spreads really quickly no matter who you are or where you are from.
- Jack Dorsey
The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people. Bringing the right people on board saves you thousands, and your business will run smoothly and efficiently.
- Brian Tracy
I’m a big fan of Mashable and TechCrunch and other outlets like that, but TechMeme obviously does an amazing job of aggregating.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Entrepreneurs are always biased to understate the scale of competition, but that is the biggest mistake a startup can make.
- Peter Thiel
Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.
- Elon Musk
The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.
- Bruce Lee
Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.
- Seth Godin
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I kept saying, Sam, we’re making a good living. Why go out why expand so much more? The stores are getting farther and farther away. After the seventeenth store, though, I realized there wasn’t going to any stopping it.
- Helen Walton
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
- Elon Musk
Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so love the people who treat you right, forget about the ones who don’t, and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would be worth it.
- Harvey Mackay
Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?
- Rupert Murdoch
With the right pitch, you’ll get no argument. This is where the salesmanship comes in…It requires of you a substantial degree of self-confidence to pull it off, but your belief in your own project will help you muster that.
- Michael Levine
The first four months of 2001 were extremely challenging, … This may be the fastest deceleration any company of our size has ever experienced.
- John Chambers
I would hope that , where possible, the newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is some news that does more harm than good. The risk is that it threatens the commercial or industrial interests of our country.
- Serge Dassault
At the same time, we invested more than €4 billion, in property, plant and equipment, software, and research and development. The capital expenditure ratio is again expected to be around 6 percent in the current fiscal year.
- Elmar Degenhart
Don’t ally your personal interests with the development of the company.
- Wang Jianlin
Companies such as Echelon are poised to help drive this change with Cisco and extend the power of the Internet from business to the home.
- John Chambers
