Notable Quotables

The level of analysis that is done when you see laws created, whether it’s the city or state or federal level – it’s much more horse-trading than analysis.

- Michael Bloomberg

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

- Peter Drucker

If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.

- Jeff Bezos

The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.

- Wang Jianlin

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

- Jerry Seinfeld

All my friends ask me, ‘Am I number one in the world in [receiving] dividend payments?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, ask Forbes.’

- Lee Shau Kee

The Group is rapidly increasing its activities in Mainland China, where it now has projects ranging from landmark commercial developments in the major cities of Beijing and Shanghai to massive residential schemes in the second-tier cities.

- Lee Shau Kee

That doesn’t mean the opposite ideas are automatically true: you can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

- Peter Thiel

Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.

- Thomas Edison

The bible says no man can take your joy. That means no person can make you live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force you to live in despair. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of wheelchair-bound President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

- Joel Olsteen

The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.

- Seth Godin

Even though I’m a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I’m looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.

- Bill Gates

Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.

- Zig Ziglar

If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.

- Elon Musk

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good, but on a practical level having dealt with being abandoned by your father, being raised by your alcoholic mom and having severe physical disabilities even today, How do you choose to have the right thoughts?

- Oprah Winfrey

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

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

- Jerry Seinfeld

We don’t have the luxury of time. We spend more because of how we live, but it’s important to be with our family and friends.

- Sara Blakely

Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.

- Tadashi Yanai

Don’t wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves.This is precisely why you’re stuck. Starting without seeing the end is difficult, so we often wait until we see the end, scanning relentlessly for the right way, the best way and the perfect way.The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.Step by step, page by page, interaction by interaction. As you start moving, you can’t help but improve, can’t help but incrementally find yourself getting back toward your north star.You might not end up with perfect, but it’s significantly more valuable than being stuck.Don’t just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.

- Seth Godin

Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.

- Dale Carnegie

My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

- Elon Musk

One person seeking glory doesn’t accomplish very much.

- Sam Walton

If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.

- Winston Churchill

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

- Seth Godin

I’m anti-tax, but I’m pro-carbon tax.

- Elon Musk

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‘Boy, those were great old days.’ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

- Joel Olsteen

How we respond to the opportunities and challenges of the outside world now determines how much the outside world values us.

- Seth Godin

I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.

- Dale Carnegie

To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.

- Peter Thiel

Great music and art are earthly wonders, but I think ‘cubist’ songs and paintings are hideous.

- Thomas Edison

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.

- Steve Ballmer

Determine your destiny or somebody else will.

- Jack Welch

The Field of Dreams conceit is especially popular in Silicon Valley, where engineers are biased toward building cool stuff rather than selling it. But customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.

- Peter Thiel

I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.

- Steve Martin

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.

- Siddhartha Gautama

The only antidote is simplicity. The simplicity of leading through truth and trust. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter. In every decision, in every action. Truth is a determined pursuit, a personal and unquenchable fire, burning to know what is really happening inside the company and out.

- Jack Welch

President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.

- Harold Hamm

The economy in Hong Kong remained on a declining path. Occurrence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (‘SARS’) in March this year led to a sharp drop in consumer spending and an increasing unemployment rate. The decline in the economy resulted in downward adjustment in the property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

Well, yes, I’ve fired a lot of people. Generally I like other people to fire, because it’s always a lousy task. But I have fired many people.

- Donald Trump

I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.

- Winston Churchill

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

- Napoleon Hill

In a literal sense, even a private company, of course, cannot do everything that it wants without some discussion with government. As a good corporate citizen, Severstal discussed the idea of a merger with Arcelor with the Russian government.

- Alexei Mordashov

God will always bring the right people into your life, but you have to let the wrong people walk away.

- Joel Olsteen

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

- Dale Carnegie

In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It’d be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.

- Steve Martin

The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.

- Bill Gates

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

- Steve Jobs

Our job as founders as entrepreneurs is to distribute the future that’s already here.

- Jack Dorsey

A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see and who sees before others see.

- Leroy Eimes

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

Vision is perhaps our greatest strength… it has kept us alive to the power and continuity of thought through the centuries, it makes us peer into the future and lends shape to the unknown.

- Li Ka-shing

In the 1970s, Japan moved into the U.S. turf with its televisions, cars, chips, and steel. But if you think about it, the only business Japan destroyed was the U.S. television industry.

- Fujio Mitarai

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

- Winston Churchill

War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:

- Peter Thiel

Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body.

- Peter Drucker

Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.

- Ben Horowitz

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

Life’s too short” is repeated often enough to be a cliche, but this time it’s true. You don’t have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre. It’s not just pointless, it’s painful. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

- Seth Godin

Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature, Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon’s unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.

- Walt Disney

we can not prepare for defeat and expect to live a life in Victory.

- Joel Olsteen

Some things are much easier to see in others than in yourself

- Ben Horowitz

The new information technology… Internet and e-mail… have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.

- Peter Drucker

God wants us to live consistently, He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives.

- Joel Olsteen

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

- John C. Maxwell

What I’m trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there’s inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

- Ray Dalio

The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work if you won’t.

- Zig Ziglar

Artists don’t think outside the box, because outside the box there’s a vacumm. Outside the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you’ll never be able to do the real work of art. You can’t ship if you’re far outside the box. Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done. That’s where the audience is, that’s where the means of production are available, and that’s where you can make impact.

- Seth Godin

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

- Winston Churchill

You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

- Walt Disney

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.

- Zig Ziglar

All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school – my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program.

- Mark Zuckerberg

In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.

- Bill Gates

I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.

- Laurene Powell Jobs

Did you ever stop to think that a dog is the only animal that doesn’t have to work for a living? A hen has to lay eggs, a cow has to give milk, and a canary has to sing. But a dog makes his living by giving you nothing but love.

- Dale Carnegie

We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time

- Sara Blakely

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