Notable Quotables

For me, my father was, and still is, a symbol of qualified persons in the Ministry of Foreign Trade under Soviet conditions.

- Vladimir Potanin

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.

- Og Mandino

Most of the fans have ideas about their perfect phone. But many of them can’t do it because building a phone is tough. So they would give us feedback about the features that they think should be included in our next model. And if we incorporated that in our new phone, they will share the good news with their friends.

- Lei Jun

People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.

- Jack Welch

I put forward a pretty general theory that financial markets are intrinsically unstable. That we really have a false picture when we think about markets tending towards equilibrium.

- George Soros

There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one.

- Winston Churchill

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

- Bill Gates

If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.

- Dale Carnegie

Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.

- Seth Godin

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

- James C. Collins

It’s no use saying, “We are doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

- Winston Churchill

On Facebook, the definition of great content is not the content that makes the most sales, but the content that people most want to share with others.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

It’s easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.

- Seth Godin

And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t need you to be funny. I don’t want to be entertained.

- Jerry Seinfeld

I think that people will always want music; I think that the form that they will get it in, or distributed to them from, and the price they pay for it is what’s up in question.

- Ronald Perelman

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes, but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

- Bill Gates

I believe in that Old Chinese Proverb, When the student is willing, the teacher appears. But I would add, It also doesn’t hurt to be a little proactive about it.

- David Novak

We are currently not planning on conquering the world.

- Sergey Brin

I have never known a concern to make a decided success that did not do good, honest work, and even in these days of fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be a matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality. The eff …

- Andrew Carnegie

It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

- Steve Jobs

Too many companies think they want to do a video blog to sell merchandise, but if you turn your site into QVC, you lose. I have an audience that trusts me. It’s about building a global brand – not selling four more bottles of Pinot Grigio.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.

- Zig Ziglar

Too many people are living below their privileges. It’s because their vision has been clouded by past mistakes, disappointments, or how they were raised. They don’t feel like royalty. They don’t think they could be successful and really accomplish what God has put in their hearts. But I believe today, as I’m speaking faith into you, something is happening on the inside.

- Joel Olsteen

I wanted to be a sailor, I wanted to sail the world, to navigate it.

- Jack Dorsey

By getting your customers to agree with you in small steps along the way, you have a better chance of reaching agreement when it’s time to do business.

- Harvey Mackay

In the Soviet Union I was the head of all oil production. And you know in the Soviet Union, you didn’t get that job unless you were really worth it.

- Vagit Alekperov

The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.

- Jack Welch

When you expect your employees to act like adults, they generally do. If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.

- Ben Horowitz

Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.

- Joel Olsteen

Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.

- Thomas Edison

I don’t shop online, but my wife buys everything at home. We buy sea crabs, fresh crabs, all kinds of things.

- Jack Ma

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

- Dale Carnegie

One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.

- Seth Godin

If people look inward, they would see the opportunities for greatness.

- Aliko Dangote

The internet had yet to take off, partly because its commercial use was restricted until late 1992 and partly due to the lack of user-friendly web browsers.

- Peter Thiel

How you see your future is much more important than what happened in your past.

- Zig Ziglar

I look at Facebook as being more conscientious about operator concerns, we are not 100 percent there, but we are finding consensus.

- Jon Fredrik Baksaas

It is confidence in our bodies, minds and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn – which is what life is all about.

- Oprah Winfrey

Everyone is going to binge on a diet, for instance, so plan for it, schedule it, and contain the damage.

- Timothy Ferriss

I’ve always been very happy. I’ve always been easy going and I’ve always been very encouraging, it’s just my personality.

- Joel Olsteen

Cold steel and discipline and the slight capital surplus necessary to move and organise armies constituted the sole defences.

- Winston Churchill

As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.

- Elon Musk

You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.

- John C. Maxwell

It was this desire for a feeling of importance that led an uneducated, poverty-stricken grocery clerk to study some law books he found in the bottom of a barrel of household plunder that he had bought for fifty cents. You have probably heard of this grocery clerk. His name was Lincoln.

- Dale Carnegie

Sometimes, your friend can influence you more than your mother.

- Lee Shau Kee

Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of his imagination

- Napoleon Hill

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

- Winston Churchill

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.

- Bill Gates

My personal opinion is that I’m in the media too much. I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman. I would like to be without any extra visibility.

- Viktor Vekselberg

Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.

- Jerry Vass

You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.

- Oprah Winfrey

Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.

- Zig Ziglar

But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.

- Winston Churchill

Certainly there’s a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.

- Bill Gates

If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.

- Napoleon Hill

It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you’re not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it’s actually space that’s moving.

- Elon Musk

Freedom does not come automatically, it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound

- Rollo May

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..

- Winston Churchill

I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.

- Bill Gates

You will never become a category of one if you run with the pack.

- Seth Godin

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

Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

- Napoleon Hill

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

- Henry Ford

The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.

- Zig Ziglar

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

- Ben Horowitz

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.

- Jeff Bezos

[That was the case Wednesday night, when Cisco executives talked about results for the fiscal second quarter (which closed on Jan. 26). Chambers and chief financial officer Larry Carter spoke only about the next quarter, when revenue growth from the second fiscal quarter is expected to be nil or in the low single digits.] Our visibility is still very limited, … If there’s one lesson we’ve learned over the past year, it’s how quickly things can change.

- John Chambers

The battle is all over except the ‘shouting’ when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

- Napoleon Hill

A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still.

- Dale Carnegie

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.

- Steve Jobs

I loved doing ‘Pennies from Heaven.’ Because you have to understand that I’d been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don’t think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.

- Steve Martin

Rockefeller’s supreme insight was that he could solve the oil industry’s problems by solving the railroad’s problems at the same time, creating a double cartel in oil and rails. One of Rockefeller’s strength in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and then crafted mutually advanteous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper, albeit in away that fortified his own position.

- Ron Chernow

Stones of judgment, discouragement or doubt may be thrown at you. You can’t stop them, but you can make the choice to keep your walls up and not let them affect you.

- Joel Olsteen

What we maybe should’ve realized sooner was that we are running a political campaign and the candidate is Uber. And this political race is happening in every major city in the world. And because this isn’t about a democracy, this is about a product, you can’t win 51 to 49. You have to win 98 to 2.

- Travis Kalanick

Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you.

- Zig Ziglar

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I use the iPhone and iPad every day, and I no longer touch PCs at all.

- Masayoshi Son

So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.

- Steve Ballmer

You do not pay the price of success, you enjoy the price of success.

- Zig Ziglar

I think our main real estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and letting the population build out to us.

- Sam Walton

If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?

- Bill Gates

Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts … genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation … the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality …though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]

- Winston Churchill

Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.

- Steve Martin

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