All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
Notable Quotables
China is investing in factories in Eastern Europe, not because their labor costs are lower, but because they want to be closer to their markets.
- Michael Bloomberg
In a climate of tight budgets, reduced workforces and stiff competition, internal training can be a great substitute for costly offsite workshops and conferences.
- Harvey Mackay
It’s too easy, as a team grows, to put up with a few B players, and they then attract a few more B players, and soon you will even have some C players. A players like to work only with other A players, which means you can’t indulge B players.
- Steve Jobs
Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.
- Warren Buffett
When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do you think was discovered to be the main reason wives ran away? It was lack of appreciation.
- Dale Carnegie
As long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot.
- Ray Kroc
It’s different when you’re trying to turn something around, especially something that you built, at a time when so many constituents – the media, Wall Street, competitors, ex-employees – are all saying that Starbucks’s best days are behind it, and that Schultz is never going to be able to bring it back.
- Howard Schultz
The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, but it does mean you stand up and say, ‘I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it. If you want me to do it with you, raise your hand.
- Seth Godin
[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
My father left me with a clear sense that the media was something different.
- Rupert Murdoch
Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I’d put myself in the latter category. But I’d never call myself a normal designer of anything.
- Steve Wozniak
How can we walk away from requirements that we know to be true to pursue something that we think will help?” It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.
- Ben Horowitz
Will flash cards invade the disk drive makers’ core markets and supplant magnetic memory? If they do, what will happen to the disk drive makers? Will they stay atop their markets, catching this new technological wave? Or will they be driven out?
- Clayton M. Christensen
In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …
- Dale Carnegie
The first thing I ever invested in was Twitter. Blaine Cook, former CTO, was leaving the company and asked me if I wanted to buy his stock.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
- Steve Ballmer
Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
- Yoda
The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
You have to know what sparks the light in you so that you, in your own way, can illuminate the world.
- Oprah Winfrey
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.
- Jerry Seinfeld
A business with a good definite plan will always be underrated in a world where people see the future as random.
- Peter Thiel
In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.
- Bill Gates
For any business to grow, individuals must be accountable for each of the systems, and a general overall director must be in charge of making sure all the systems operate at the highest capacity.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The legacy of Steve Jobs and the strength of Steve Jobs is that he established a company that’s clearly firing on all cylinders and clicking very well.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
If you can’t be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.
- Seth Godin
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
Unfavorable hereditary back ground.
- Napoleon Hill
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
Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.
- W. Clement Stone
My strength is programming. I also think my biggest strength is simplification. That’s what I love doing.
- Jack Dorsey
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
Confidence in our own independence of mind. But advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away, it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. Anyone who can’t acknowledge its likely effect on himself is doubly deceived.
- Peter Thiel
The only reason, for example, that you are not a rattlesnake is that your mother and father weren’t rattlesnakes. You deserve very little credit for being what you are.
- Dale Carnegie
God wants to use you in spite of your weaknesses. Of God chose to use perfect people only, He’d have no one to use.
- Joel Olsteen
(1) Define a to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list. In general terms, there are but two questions:
- Timothy Ferriss
Once we assembled the entire package, Mike named it Netscape SuiteSpot, as it would be the “suite” that displaced Microsoft’s BackOffice. We lined everything up for a major launch on March 5, 1996, in New York. Then, just two weeks before the launch, Marc, without telling Mike or me, revealed the entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is. We are getting killed killed killed out there. Our current product is radically worse than the competition. We’ve had nothing to say for months. As a result, we’ve lost over $3B in market capitalization. We are now in danger of losing the entire company and it’s all server product management’s fault. Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you, Marc I received this email the same day that Marc appeared barefoot and sitting on a throne on the cover of Time magazine. When I first saw the cover, I felt thrilled. I had never met anyone in my life who had been on the cover of Time. Then I felt sick. I brought both the magazine and the email home to Felicia to get a second opinion. I was very worried. I was twenty-nine years old, had a wife and three children, and needed my job. She looked at the email and the magazine cover and said, “You need to start looking for a job right away.” In the end, I didn’t get fired and over the next two years, SuiteSpot grew from nothing to a $400 million a year business. More shocking, Marc and I eventually became friends; we’ve been friends and business partners ever since. People often ask me how we’ve managed to work effectively across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.
- Ben Horowitz
Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.
- Thomas J Watson
Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it’s rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything that you know. So who do you tell? Whoever you need to, and no more. In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody—and that’s a company. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.
- Peter Thiel
This is just going to be a great event and we have an outstanding speaker.
- Jack Taylor
Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.
- Bill Gates
There is a difference between what technology enables and what historical business practices enable.
- Bill Gates
Remember, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Luke… Luke… do not… do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor or suffer your father’s fate you will. Luke, when gone am I… the last of the Jedi will you be. Luke, the Force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned, Luke. There is… another… Sky… walker.
- Yoda
Everybody at home speaks mandarin except me.
- Rupert Murdoch
The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.
- Peter Drucker
If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
- Warren Buffett
History is more or less bunk.
- Henry Ford
All of the great empires of the future will be empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill
In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is.
- Ma Huateng
There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
- Michael Gerber
Eroom’s law—that’s Moore’s law backward—observes that the number of new drugs approved per billion dollars spent on R&D has halved every nine years since 1950.
- Peter Thiel
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
In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.
- Yoda
Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.
- Zig Ziglar
Pull in your belt, spend less, and reduce debt.
- Ray Dalio
Making money from money is like aerobatics.
- Alisher Usmanov
And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
- Romans 8:28
We are interested in any sector with good growth potential.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.
- Bill Gates
No matter how dark and gloomy it looks in your life right now, if you’ll release the weight of those burdens, you will see the sun break forth.
- Joel Olsteen
I feel that people I trusted – I don’t know who, on what level – have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.
- Rupert Murdoch
For people who are readers, reading is important to them.
- Jeff Bezos
Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining – it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn’t solve any problems.
- Zig Ziglar
(In reference to one of his first advertising sales mentors Howard Davis)… He was 6 foot 4 with silver hair…the quintessential advertising guy. He had a glass topped desk in his office because, as he put it, he like to be able to look down and see his Guccis while he worked. Howard taught me to get things done. He was very smart but he was also an animal. He exuded power and he could be very intimidating, and he knew how to use his power to get results while still managing to be a good guy. Howard’s personal style was very different from my own, but what he did teach me was how to create a sense of urgency, how to motivate performance by getting everyone’s heart pounding.
- David Novak
If I go public, I’ll stick to it.
- David Novak
It’s almost unfathomable how much I still have to learn. Learning never ends…I always have another mountain to climb is what keeps you going.
- David Novak
Accountability breeds response-ability.
- Stephen R. Covey
And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world.
- Seth Godin
Well, in war, you can only be killed once. But in politics, many times.
- Winston Churchill
I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.
- Elon Musk
My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.
- Elon Musk
We want to be the most predictable, boring growth company.
- John Chambers
Around the survivors a perimeter create.
- Yoda
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
- Dale Carnegie
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job.
- Zig Ziglar
Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.
- Ben Horowitz
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
- Warren Buffett
I do everything on my phone as a lot of people do.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.
- Reid Hoffman
Some of the biggest failures I’ve ever met, are people that have never failed.
- Robert Kiyosaki
As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.
- Reid Hoffman
Fascinatingly, as companies begin to struggle, the third category always seems to grow much faster than the first. In addition, the sudden wave of “semi-performance-related attrition” usually happens in companies that claim to have a “super-high talent bar.” How do all these superstar employees suddenly go from great to crap?
- Ben Horowitz
We’re talking about changing every aspect of our lives.
- John Chambers
It is unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing what it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot . .
- Zig Ziglar
A broad trend I’m completely obsessed with is mobile commerce. Like completely. I’m completely convinced that everybody’s going to be buying from their mobile devices. Whoever can claim that space or be in that space, I’m very interested in.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
- Steve Martin
We all have done something unethical.
- John C. Maxwell
The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.
- Napoleon Hill
Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life.
- Dale Carnegie
That’s just $30 for two tickets. Racing is a family sport and we strive to make our tickets affordable for any families that want to come watch a race.
- Ed Clark
Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial.
- Timothy Ferriss
Out of clutter, find simplicity.
- Albert Einstein
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Peter Drucker
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
- Jack Welch
Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
Some libertarians say, ‘Well, if people work harder, they can make more money.’ But, you know, my mother is a nurse and I am a venture capitalist. I think no matter how great a nurse she is, she wouldn’t earn a one-thousandth of what I can make, if that.
- Ben Horowitz
It’s the next opportunity that keeps us motivated.
- Zig Ziglar
