If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.
- John C. Maxwell
Notable Quotables
Not only was the casual shoe effort a failure, but it was diluting our trademark and hurting us in running.
- Phil Knight
Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.
- Bill Gates
De-escalating the rivalry post-merger wasn’t easy, but as far as problems go, it was a good one to have.
- Peter Thiel
When people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options.
- Peter Thiel
If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the where withal to do what it takes to make your product work.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
I tell my employees that we’re in the service business, and it’s incidental that we fly airplanes.
- Herb Kelleher
Be candid with everyone.
- Jack Welch
The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim.
- Napoleon Hill
I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.
- Mark Zuckerberg
When you acknowledge God, He will go before you and make the crooked places straight.
- Joel Olsteen
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I’ve learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that’s what kids are playing. That’s what people are talking about.
- Bill Gates
Demand is best measured in terms of spending. You know, I think in traditional economics, it’s a mistake to measure it in terms of the quantity of goods.
- Ray Dalio
Don’t simply settle for what your parents had. You can go further than that. You can do more, have more, be more.
- Joel Olsteen
I move onward, the only direction Can’t be scared to fail in search of perfection.
- Jay-Z
If the merit of the idea is strong, it spreads really quickly no matter who you are or where you are from.
- Jack Dorsey
I have a lot of things to prove to myself. One is that I can live my life fearlessly.
- Oprah Winfrey
If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.
- Winston Churchill
When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
- Thomas Edison
Frank Wells 1888 instruction to his agents: The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all – let them be men, women or children, rich or poor, white or black – it must not be forgotten, that the company is dependent on these people for its business.
- Frank Wells
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
- Henry Ford
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
Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
- Timothy Ferriss
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
- Elon Musk
In order to be happy, every individual needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done.
- Peter Thiel
It will be disastrous when a leader or manager shows up with one attitude one day and treats people with a different attitude the next day.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Twitter has been my life’s work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now.
- Jack Dorsey
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
We have most of the software industry running Autonomy.
- Larry Ellison
I aim to be pretty – I gave up dressing to be sexy in the eighties.
- Sara Blakely
Ultimately, broadcasters and advertisers have to change the way they do business or they run the risk of linear TV becoming obsolete.
- Charles Ergen
Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.
- Dale Carnegie
I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.
- John D. Rockefeller
No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.
- Harvey Mackay
Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose…
- Thomas Edison
People buy titles, and not contents of books. By merely changing the name of one book that was not moving his sales on that book jumped upward more a million copies. The inside of the book was no changed in any way. He merely ripped off the cover bearing the title that did not sell, and put on new cover with a title that had box-office value.
- Napoleon Hill
No leader enjoys making the tough decision. We constantly faced severe resistence from even the best people in our organization. I’ve struggled with this problem myself and have often been guilty of not being rigorous enough. Every impulse is to look the other way.
- Jack Welch
I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.
- George Soros
My drive into high tech doesn’t involve a lot of people – just me and a very small team.
- Raymond Kwok
I’ve always been interested in science – one of my favourite books is James Watson’s ‘Molecular Biology of the Gene.
- Bill Gates
In the 1960s, if you were a blue collar worker or uneducated, and you had an injury on the job, the company basically dismissed you.
- Howard Schultz
Use your life to serve the world, and you will find that it also serves you.
- Oprah Winfrey
I have Internet fame. Real fame is more intense.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The rest of their generation was left behind, but the wealthy Boomers who shape public opinion today see little reason to question their naïve optimism.
- Peter Thiel
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.
- Jeff Bezos
Work hard and persevere.
- Lee Shau Kee
I don’t want to hear the specials. If they’re so special, put ’em on the menu.
- Jerry Seinfeld
You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Care more than others think wise.
- Howard Schultz
I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.
- Bill Gates
[Introducing himself to Sony co-founder Akio Morita] I have six of your TVs in my house.
- Phil Knight
Colleges are the equivalent of the subprime mortgage lenders who…
- Brian Tracy
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.
- Thomas Edison
What did I do that was right—and in what way could I have improved my performance? What lessons can I learn from that experience?
- Dale Carnegie
A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.
- Winston Churchill
There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.
- Thomas Edison
Economic cycles are just like riding on a Ferris wheel.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
- Henry Ford
Love is a promise delivered already broken.
- Steve Martin
To live your best life now, you must learn to trust God’s timing, you may not think He’s working, but you can be sure that right now, behind the scenes, God is arranging all the pieces to come together to work out His plan for your life.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.
- Bill Gates
On average, our total annual realized income is less than 7 percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than 7 percent of our wealth.
- Thomas J Stanley
You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.
- Elon Musk
Being nice to people is just 20% of providing good customer service. The important part is designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All the smiles in the world aren’t going to help you if your product or service is not what the customer wants,
- James L. Heskett
The entrepreneur community, there’s a certain kind of founder, they call them a ‘lone wolf.’ I probably fit in that category.
- Travis Kalanick
Strong is Vader. Mind what you have learned. Save you it can.
- Yoda
The book ‘Do You!’ is about your inner voice. And when you connect to that voice then you – then the freedom comes. And we’re only here to be happy. So happy makes money. Money doesn’t make happy.
- Russell Simmons
I will everyday as just a blow from my blade against a mighty oak…strike until it falls quote.
- Og Mandino
I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you believe as I do that you were born to win, you’re going to have to find your fears and start facing them.
- Zig Ziglar
Life is a classroom — only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.
- Zig Ziglar
Choose your customers, choose your future.
- Seth Godin
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
Competition and capitalism are opposites.
- Peter Thiel
American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.
- Russell Simmons
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
We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners.
- Phil Knight
Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn’t.
- Ben Horowitz
Wealth won’t give you satisfaction, creating a good product that’s well received by users is what matters most.
- Ma Huateng
Properties that were sold by the Group during this financial year amounted to approximately HK$15.6 billion, comprising around 8,000 residential units.
- Lee Shau Kee
I’ve always wanted to be a businessman. No other ambitions, I just wanted to be in business, even when I was a child in Fujian province, south China.
- Henry Sy
Maintain a pragmatic approach, keep up with the multitude of trials and strive to remain its level of attainment in order for achieving sound performance and scaling new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.
- Bill Gates
Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we’ve had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you’re really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.
- Steve Ballmer
We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.
- Walt Disney
The story about GE that hasn’t been told is the value of an informal place. I think it’s a big thought. I don’t think people have ever figured out that being informal is a big deal.
- Jack Welch
A successful manager told me that stopped wearing a watch. She found that the work was so immersive, anchoring it to whatever hour it happened to be was pointless. The watch reminded her of the rigors of appointments and the status quo, while her goal was to be there, right here, right now, in the moment, and to do the work in front of her. The watch had no role in doing that right, so, for now, it’s gone.
- Seth Godin
With an export-driven economy, Hong Kong is unavoidably affected by any hiccup in the outside world.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I love people, and the hustle.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Nobody enjoys the ‘little show about nothing’ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
We all know now that the 747 became the flagship jumbo jet of the airline industry, but the decision looks much different from the perspective of the late 1960s. Yet—and this is the key point—Boeing was willing to make the bold move in the face of the risks. As in Boeing’s case, the risks do not always come without pain.
- James C. Collins
Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.”
- Ben Horowitz
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
- Jim Rohn
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
- Peter Thiel
A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, ‘You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish!’ They won. Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.
- Napoleon Hill
