I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.
- Herb Kelleher
Notable Quotables
My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.
- Elon Musk
Winners never quit and quitters never win.
- Vince Lombardi
Doughnuts are a normal part of a healthy, balanced diet.
- Brooke Smith
Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.
- Jack Taylor
You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‘Well gee, let’s not mess this up.’ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put
- Winston Churchill
Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.
- Elon Musk
Most companies that go through layoffs are never the same. They don’t recover because trust is broken. And if you’re not honest at the point where you’re breaking trust anyway, you will never recover.
- Ben Horowitz
Of course, the challenge of being the initiator is that you’ll be wrong. You’ll pick the wrong thing, you’ll waste time, you’ll be blamed. This is why being an initiator is valuable. Most people shy away from the challenge. They’ve been too abused, they’re too fearful, they hold back, they’re happy to let someone else take the heat. Initiative is scarce. Hence valuable. Ditch digging is not scarce. It’s not hard at all to find manual labor at minimum wage, which is precisely why manual labor gets paid minimum wage. It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence, because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.
- Seth Godin
I mean, there’s no arguing. There is no anything. There is no beating around the bush. ‘You’re fired’ is a very strong term.
- Donald Trump
I think my greatest moment in business was when the first Southwest airplane arrived after four years of litigation, and I walked up to it and I kissed that baby on the lips and I cried.
- Herb Kelleher
Selling and delivering a product is at least as important as the product itself.
- Peter Thiel
We found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.
- James C. Collins
The three Rs in educationare reading, writing and arithmetic. Without these basic skills, learning becomes almost impossible. In a similar way, business starts with a relationship. You are then judged by the results. Rewards spring from the results.
- Jack Nadel
Everything man creates or acquires begins in the form of desire, that desire is taken on the first lap of its journey, from the abstract to the concrete, into the workshop of the imagination, where plans for its transition are created and organized.
- Napoleon Hill
Don’t panic.
- David Novak
I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.
- Elon Musk
We just want to have great people working for us.
- Sergey Brin
The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
- Andrew Carnegie
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
- Winston Churchill
If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you.
- Peter Thiel
I said one time that it shouldn’t matter who counts to 30 for filling up retail prescriptions, and I caught a lot of grief for that, and probably rightfully so. But that wasn’t the point. The point is that putting pills in a bottle doesn’t change health outcomes. It doesn’t matter whether you get your pills at Walgreen or CVS or Kroger. The reality is: What happens with that process? Who is taking care of that patient? It’s not counting pills and sticking them in bottles. That doesn’t add any value.
- George Paz
Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.”
- Sam Walton
When you do things the right way, you have nothing to lose because you have nothing to fear.
- Zig Ziglar
Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
- Dale Carnegie
Inability to Cooperate With Others.
- Napoleon Hill
You can abuse me, you can strike me, so long as you let me have my own.
- Ron Chernow
We should remember the warning of the wise Grail knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: You must choose, but choose wisely, for as the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.Choose the highest-yield material and you can be an idiot and enjoy stunning success. Choose poorly and, as the Grail knight implied, you’re screwed no matter what. You’ll chase your own tail for years.
- Timothy Ferriss
Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.
- Seth Godin
The first quality that is needed is audacity.
- Winston Churchill
You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.
- Joel Olsteen
Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
Cooperativeness in conversation is achieved when you show that you consider the other person’s ideas and feelings as important as your own.
- Dale Carnegie
Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.
- Jeff Bezos
When you develop yourself to the point where your belief in yourself is so strong that you know that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to, your future will be unlimited.
- Brian Tracy
MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once.
- Peter Thiel
Where I get my energy is: ‘How can I make it better?’
- Sara Blakely
In any new business, someone has to have a vision. You are as good as the people around you. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Identify your core community and go from there. Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. In my experience it often takes as long as five years to make a business work. Partners can fail you. Staff may not execute properly. You could be too far ahead of the market. SO you have to be willing to hand in there and make it happen. From the founding of Phat Farm in 1992 until 1997, I lost money. By my account, I experienced $10 million in losses. But today Phat Farm is visible, it is imitated and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars. It took time, but good ideas often do need time to take off. Being an entrepreneur requires instinct, fortitude and the ability to accept that the world does not run on your schedule. Sometimes you just have to believe.
- Russell Simmons
Arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
- Dale Carnegie
Dear Sir: My ten years of bank experience should be of interest to a rapidly growing bank like yours. In various capacities in bank operations with the Bankers Trust Company in New York, leading to my present assignment as Branch Manager, I have acquired skills in all phases of banking including depositor relations, credits, loans and administration. I will be relocating to Phoenix in May and I am sure I can contribute to your growth and profit. I will be in Phoenix the week of April 3 and would appreciate the opportunity to show you how I can help your bank meet its goals. Sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
American Dream – and it says that you should graduate from high school, graduate from college, get married, find a job with good benefits, have sex with your spouse two times per week, buy a home with a mortgage, get a pet, go on vacation two times per year, have two kids, invest in mutual funds and IRAs, recycle when possible, and aim to retire early in your mid-fifties to early sixties, if you are lucky. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s kind of hard to be passionate about that American Dream.
- Clay Clark
Networking is one of the most valuable uses of your time in terms of return—and not just in monetary terms.
- Business Insider.com
Show a real interest in his problem and helping him solve it.
- Jack Nadel
I have 2 million Twitter followers. Some of those people are also yogis and activists and people who really go out and make a difference. I do as much as I can with my voice. It’s effortless in some cases. I try to remind everybody that they have that kind of voice.
- Russell Simmons
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
- Peter Drucker
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Every morning brings new potential, but if you dwell on the misfortunes of the day before, you tend to overlook tremendous opportunities.
- Harvey Mackay
I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
- Herbert Bayard Swope
We are always listening to ideas presented by our customers and in an effort to keep up with their demands, we are adding those quality improvements to Atlanta Motor Speedway. The changes we have planned are a direct result of fan input and are aimed at giving our fans options they currently don’t have.
- Ed Clark
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
- Richard Branson
In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
- Lee Iacocca
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
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
- Timothy Ferriss
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
- Winston Churchill
No matter how many times people say it – ‘Oh, I’m just writing this for myself’ ‘Oh, I’m just doing this for myself’ – nobody’s doing it for themselves! You’re doing it for an audience. So whether I’m performing or writing a book or playing music, it’s definitely to be put out there and to be received in some way, definitely.
- Steve Martin
From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.
- Thomas Edison
If you tell me how you get your feeling of importance, I’ll tell you what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
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
We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
I think part of the reason we’re successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.
- Larry Page
Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute.
- Zig Ziglar
I like to play cards. I’m not very good, because I don’t want to calculate, I just play by instinct. But I’ve learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker.
- Jack Ma
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
- Seth Godin
The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition.
- Peter Thiel
No man ever achieved worthwhile success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.
- Napoleon Hill
Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.
- Walt Disney
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.
- Elon Musk
And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America.
- Stephen Wynn
People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.
- Peter Thiel
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
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
Everything in life is luck.
- Donald Trump
Some questions that I’ve found to be very effective in one-on-ones: If we could improve in any way, how would we do it? What’s the number-one problem with our organization? Why? What’s not fun about working here? Who is really kicking ass in the company? Whom do you admire? If you were me, what changes would you make? What don’t you like about the product? What’s the biggest opportunity that we’re missing out on? What are we not doing that we should be doing? Are you happy working here?
- Ben Horowitz
Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I’ve never played with a band. I’ve always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.
- Steve Martin
If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it.
- Timothy Ferriss
More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.
- Peter Drucker
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
- Warren Buffett
You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.
- Winston Churchill
ZERO TO ONE EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
- Peter Thiel
The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it.
- Ray Kroc
We gradually came to the realization that we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese people.
- Sergey Brin
Part of company culture is path-dependent – it’s the lessons you learn along the way.
- Jeff Bezos
The most terrifying phrase in the English language is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’
- Ronald Reagan
Clear your mind must be, if you are to find the villains behind this plot.
- Yoda
If a person makes a statement that you think is wrong—yes, even that you know is wrong—isn’t it better to begin by saying: Well, now, look. I thought otherwise, but I may be wrong. I frequently am. And if I am wrong, I want to be put right. Let’s examine the facts.” There’s magic, positive magic, in such phrases as: I may be wrong. I frequently am. Let’s examine the facts.
- Dale Carnegie
Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.
- Joel Olsteen
If I go public, I’ll stick to it.
- David Novak
I believe Success is achieved by ordinary people with Extraordinary Determination.
- Zig Ziglar
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
Ranking among the greatest Christmas movie classics, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ tells a beautiful story about the priceless value of relationships.
- John C. Maxwell
People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Effectiveness must be learned.
- Peter Drucker
More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision.
- John C. Maxwell
The customer reaction to Dell going private has been a lot more positive than I would have ever imagined. Customers see it as – ‘You don’t have to be distracted. Now you can totally focus on your business.’ So they see it as a positive.
- Michael Dell
Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.
- Timothy Ferriss
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
- Dale Carnegie
There are only two kinds of employees that I’ve run across in 30 years. There are ones that get results, and ones that make excuses. If you’re in that second camp, you’re not going to like Dish.
- Charles Ergen
