Notable Quotables

Big companies have always needed and cooperated in areas where it made sense.

- Larry Page

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

- Bill Gates

Passion isn’t project-specific. It’s people-specific.

- Seth Godin

Over the past ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.

- Ben Horowitz

Like it or not, life is a series of competitions. You may be competing for a grade, a spot on a team, a job, or the largest account in town. The higher your self-esteem is, the better you get along with yourself, with others, and the more you’ll accomplish.

- Harvey Mackay

Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.

- Jeff Bezos

Little phrases such as ‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ ‘Would you be so kind as to –?’ ‘Won’t you please?’ ‘Would you mind?’ ‘Thank you’ – little courtesies like these oil the cogs of the monotonous grind of everyday life – and incidentally, they are the hallmark of good breeding.

- Dale Carnegie

We sell tea in Starbucks, but I think the experience is very different. I think coffee is something that is quick – it’s transactional. I think tea is more Zen-like. It requires a different environment.

- Howard Schultz

You can literally force yourself to be courteous, happy and enthusiastic with every person you meet. After you have forced yourself to be so for a short period of time… the habit takes over.

- Zig Ziglar

I think of L.A. as truly the melting pot. It’s basically a mini-country unto itself.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously. The shadow of greed, that is.

- Yoda

But this “spray and pray” approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.

- Peter Thiel

I had already started the learning process by organizing a tour of some of the best companies out there to find out exactly what it was that made them great. I went back to the Partners’ Council and asked them to help me study the best practices of the best companies we could find. We would then use then findings to strengthen our company.

- David Novak

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

- Joel Olsteen

Social and digital media is a bullet train, and that bullet train is not coming home.

- Howard Schultz

I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.

- Jeff Bezos

There is a time to provide advice and offer an opinion, and there is a time not to. Don’t be too quick to offer unsolicited advice. It certainly will not endear you to people.

- Harvey Mackay

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

- Steve Martin

It sounds awful, but a crisis rarely ends without blood on the floor. That’s not easy or pleasant. But sadly, it is often necessary so the company can move forward again.

- Jack Welch

In the short term, the market is a popularity contest. In the long term, the market is a weighing machine.

- Warren Buffett

I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.

- Oprah Winfrey

Selling is the highest paid profession in the world. Our leaders in business, politics, research and the arts are all great sales people or they have great sales people on their payrolls.

- Jerry Vass

It’s not enough to use information for something”—it needs to be immediate and important.

- Timothy Ferriss

We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere… can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.

- Elon Musk

Maintaining a consistent platform also helps improve product support – a significant problem in the software industry.

- Bill Gates

The social network is the paradigm of the modern service application.

- Larry Ellison

I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.

- Reed Hastings

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

I like to live in the past. I don’t think people are going to get much fun in the future.

- Winston Churchill

There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.

- Steve Wozniak

Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.

- Jack Welch

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

- Joel Olsteen

Enemy submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term submarine is to be reserved for Allied under water vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villains who sink our ships, while submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs.

- Winston Churchill

Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.

- Winston Churchill

There is no doubt that as an economy grows in a great way like India has, that you have to step back and change your tax systems, because you start to get more disparities of wealth.

- Bill Gates

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

- Warren Buffett

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

- Thomas Edison

We survive the market volatility and political changes. We cater for the actual need of the people and keep pace with the country.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

- Ben Horowitz

Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.

- Steve Martin

I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It’s hard to memorize objectives, but it’s easy to remember a story.

- Ben Horowitz

We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.

- Bill Gates

I have to be ever vigilant to remain open to other people’s points of view. Just because I’m enthusiastic doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right. I have to always keep the doors open for honest communication or I could enthusiastically lead everyone right over the cliff.

- David Novak

I like football, but I think this is a very personal matter. I don’t see any negatives for some Russian rich man to buy a football club.

- Viktor Vekselberg

Forty years ago, Richard Branson, who ultimately founded Virgin Air, found himself in a similar situation in an airport in the Caribbean. They had just canceled his flight, the only flight that day. Instead of freaking out about how essential the flight was, how badly his day was ruined, how his entire career was now in jeopardy, the young Branson walked across the airport to the charter desk and inquired about the cost of chartering a flight out of Puerto Rico. Then he borrowed a portable blackboard and wrote, “Seats to Virgin Islands, $39.” He went back to his gate, sold enough seats to his fellow passengers to completely cover his costs, and made it home on time.

- Seth Godin

The S.A.L.H. were mostly South Africans, with a high proportion of hardbitten adventurers from all quarters of the world, including a Confederate trooper from the American Civil War.

- Winston Churchill

I’m not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you’re in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places.

- Timothy Ferriss

Being a great leader means sometimes pissing people off.

- Colin Powell

The productivity now at universities is terrible. Tenure is a terrible idea. It keeps them around forever and they don’t have to work hard.

- Jack Welch

I have the courage to surround myself with people who are smarter than me.

- Andrew Carnegie

I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort.

- Sergey Brin

In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It’s a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems. A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.

- Ben Horowitz

Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.

- Ben Horowitz

The oil patch pays good. They’re decent jobs paying between 50 and 70 thousand a year. Fracking has a big impact on the oil consumption in the United States.

- Harold Hamm

I’ve always had that gratitude that I had the opportunity to pursue my potential. So I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver. We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time.

- Sara Blakely

Motivation doesn’t last, neither does shower. That why we need it everyday.

- Zig Ziglar

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.

- Peter Thiel

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.

- Jack Ma

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

- Bishop Desmond TuTu

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.

- Ben Horowitz

…Treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.

- Seth Godin

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

- Seth Godin

The lower and individual’s ability to lead, the lower the lid on his potential.

- John Maxwell

If you pay that price daily by planning and preparing and working to become the right kind of person, then you can legitimately expect to have all that life has to offer.

- Zig Ziglar

Bordeaux would be naive not to recognize that Robert Parker was driving the brand equity. If the next generation doesn’t care about Chateau Pichon-Lalande, then you have a problem.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

We can schedule for it. Thursday, April 3rd, 3:05…start something. We can train for it, plan for it, announce it, and even hire for it. If initiating is as essential to the modern organization as it appears, we better be doing all of that and more.

- Seth Godin

Ask yourself a question: Is my attitude worth catching?

- Zig Ziglar

Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.

- Seth Godin

Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.

- Dave Barry

Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture—and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won’t learn.

- Michael Gerber/ Thomas J. Peters and Robert H

Well, you know, News Corp is the only real media global – that has a global presence that’s involved in TV production, in movies, in publishing, in newspapers, digital media, et cetera. So for a company like that to function, clearly it does not depend only on Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Here is the salient fact which distinguishes the English Revolution from all others: that those who wielded irresistible physical force were throughout convinced that it could give them no security. Nothing is more characteristic of the English people than their instinctive reverence even in rebellion for law and tradition. Deep in the nature of the men who had broken the King’s power was the conviction that law in his name was the sole foundation on which they could build.

- Winston Churchill

I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.

- Bill Gates

Los líderes son vulnerables, no controladores, y nos llevan a un lugar nuevo, no a la seguridad barata, rápida y sumisa.

- Seth Godin

Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.

- Seth Godin

One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you’ve got somebody who’s raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give ’em that shot.

- Jack Welch

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

- Thomas Edison

Indeed, the biggest winners in the world are those who answer yes to the question, “Am I living the life I choose?”

- Jack Welch

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

- Napoleon Hill

I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.

- Timothy Ferriss

You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.

- Seth Godin

One challenge is the Peter Principle. Coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book of that name, the Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain being unable to earn further promotions.

- Ben Horowitz

The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event.

- Elon Musk

We subpoenaed him for the SAP trial and he was on the lam. The HP board sent him to Bolivia to talk to customers. Then they sent him to Mongolia to talk to customers, just out of reach of the federal subpoenas … the board figured out [later]: we should have left Leo in Mongolia.

- Larry Ellison

I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

- George Soros

If you can’t make 40% on your money in Russia, you’re a fool.

- Simon Reuben

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription