Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
- Thomas Edison
If you always think about your dreams or goals, work steadfastly towards them and continue to challenge yourself, you will definitely be able to realise those dreams or goals.
- Tadashi Yanai
The Group has always adhered to prudent financial management principles.
- Lee Shau Kee
To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
- P.T. Barnum
Remember: There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.
- Timothy Ferriss
I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.
- Bill Gates
It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control.
- Oprah Winfrey
The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.
- Napoleon Hill
At its zenith Sears accounted for more than 2 percent of all retail sales in the United States. It pioneered several innovations critical to the success of today’s most admired retailers: for example, supply chain management, store brands, catalogue retailing, and credit card sales. The esteem in which Sears’ management was held shows in this 1964 excerpt from Fortune: “How did Sears do it? In a way, the most arresting aspect of its story is that there was no gimmick. Sears opened no big bag of tricks, shot off no skyrockets. Instead, it looked as though everybody in its organization simply did the right thing, easily and naturally. And their cumulative effect was to create an extraordinary powerhouse of a company.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I’m so optimistic, I’d go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me.
- Zig Ziglar
If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.
- Ray Kroc
Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.
- Bill Gates
The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
- Zig Ziglar
I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.
- Richard Branson
Nowadays, anyone who cannot speak English and is incapable of using the Internet is regarded as backward.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I was hooked and I would make reward and recognition one of my primary focuses as a leader
- David Novak
People everywhere love Windows.
- Bill Gates
Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.
- Zig Ziglar
I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.
- Joel Olsteen
Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.
- Timothy Ferriss
One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But… I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
- Thomas Edison
Hope is the power that gives a person the confidence to step out and try.
- Zig Ziglar
I… had no need for cheering dreams,” he wrote. Facts are better than dreams.
- James C. Collins
One clear-cut result is worth a dozen wise precautions.
- Winston Churchill
Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.
- W. Clement Stone
A great accomplishment shouldn’t be the end of the road, just the starting point for the next leap forward.
- Harvey Mackay
Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
The market’s going to move with tremendous speed. If there is such a thing as a killer app, video is it.
- John Chambers
If you cannot persuade people to do things, you simply will not be a success because you are not an island unto yourself. Everything in life is about persuading people to do what you want them to do.
- David Robinson
The ability to get the job done.
- Jack Welch
Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.
- Bill Gates
We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.
- Seth Godin
Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long.
- Napoleon Hill
You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years
- Sara Blakely
I believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.
- Joel Olsteen
Start where you stand and with what you have
- George Washington Carver
There are seldom, if ever, any hopeless situations, but there are many people who lose hope in the face of some situations.
- Zig Ziglar
In the end, the customer doesn’t know, or care, if you are small or large as an organization. She or he only focuses on the garmenthanging on the rail in the store.
- Giorgio Armani
Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.
- Oprah Winfrey
Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.
- Jerry Seinfeld
There are a lot of things that go into creating success. I don’t like to do just the things I like to do. I like to do things that cause the company to succeed. I don’t spend a lot of time doing my favorite activities.
- Michael Dell
We are interested in any sector with good growth potential.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Satan knows, if you are against YOURSELF you will never fulfill your destiny. :(
- Joel Olsteen
People say the most important thing is building a world-class team.
- Ben Horowitz
What we need to do is always lean into the future, when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.
- Jeff Bezos
If you’re single and you want to get married, put an empty photo album on your table. That’s where you’re going to put your wedding photos. When you see it, you’re moving toward it.
- Joel Olsteen
If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.
- Muhammad Ali
I encourage active skepticism – when people are being skeptical because they’re trying to identify the best course of action. They’re trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.
- Timothy Ferriss
I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy — a little boy!
- Dale Carnegie
Remember the proverb of Solomon: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.
- P.T. Barnum
Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.
- Peter Thiel
Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today’s world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.
- Jack Welch
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director – who were just fun.
- Steve Martin
Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.
- Kyle Chandler
That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.
- Peter Thiel
To integrate the new information into your existing network, you need to do three things: prioritize, organize and follow up on your contacts. You will follow your own inclinations, preferences and criteria for accomplishing each of these tasks, but the end result of your efforts should always be to strengthen, extend and enhance the effectiveness of your network of contacts.
- Ivan Misner
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
The overall dynamic was net positive, unlike Napster’s negative-sum struggle with the U.S. recording industry. As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.
- Peter Thiel
You only have to succeed the last time.
- Phil Knight
The government used to be able to coordinate complex solutions to problems like atomic weaponry and lunar exploration. But today, after 40 years of indefinite creep, the government mainly just provides insurance; our solutions to big problems are Medicare, Social Security, and a dizzying array of other transfer payment programs. It’s no surprise that entitlement spending has eclipsed discretionary spending every year since 1975. To increase discretionary spending we’d need definite plans to solve specific problems. But according to the indefinite logic of entitlement spending, we can make things better just by sending out more checks.
- Peter Thiel
Get mad, then get over it.
- Colin Powell
Media companies focused on things like creating great stories whereas technology companies focused on creating a better way of doing things. We began to think about new ideas and about forming a new company.
- Ben Horowitz
Today, and I’m very strongly against tax increases.
- Donald Trump
The idea is to have relationships where you make money and the other guy makes money, too. That’s how a business keeps its team together.
- Russell Simmons
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
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
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exup
Starbucks represents something beyond a cup of coffee.
- Howard Schultz
China will become the IT (information technology) center of the world. We believe in giving something back and truly becoming a Chinese company.
- John Chambers
And if I were the president, I’d go out there and I’d emphasize the things I have done, and I’d say, ‘Some things haven’t worked, and I’m sorry about that, but I keep trying.’ And I’m – and I think the president is a very viable candidate, and you’re going to have a real horse race here no matter who the Republican nominee is.
- Michael Bloomberg
MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS Some things that you want to encourage will be quantifiable, and some will not. If you report on the quantitative goals and ignore the qualitative ones, you won’t get the qualitative goals, which may be the most important ones. Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers—it’s strictly for amateurs. At HP, the company wanted high earnings now and in the future. By focusing entirely on the numbers, HP got them now by sacrificing the future. Note that there were many numbers as well as more qualitative goals that would have helped: Was our competitive win rate increasing or declining? Was customer satisfaction rising or falling? What did our own engineers think of the products? By managing the organization as though it were a black box, some divisions at HP optimized the present at the expense of their downstream competitiveness. The company rewarded managers for achieving short-term objectives in a manner that was bad for the company. It would have been better to take into account the white box. The white box goes beyond the numbers and gets into how the organization produced the numbers. It penalizes managers who sacrifice the future for the short term and rewards those who invest in the future even if that investment cannot be easily measured. CLOSING THOUGHT It is easy to see that there are many ways for leaders to be misinterpreted. To get things right, you must recognize that anything you measure automatically creates a set of employee behaviors. Once you determine the result you want, you need to test the description of the result against the employee behaviors that the description will likely create. Otherwise, the side-effect behaviors may be worse than the situation you were trying to fix.
- Ben Horowitz
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
- Jeff Bezos
I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.
- Elon Musk
The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.
- Peter Thiel
The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me….
- Thomas Edison
When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Success is not what you have, but who you are.
- Bo Bennett
Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business.
- Dale Carnegie
I’ve never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.
- Joel Olsteen
A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.
- George Soros
Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
- Winston Churchill
Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.
- Howard Schultz
Spare the conquered and confront the proud.
- Winston Churchill
Innovation comes from long-term thinking and iterative execution.
- Reid Hoffman
Going the extra mile is the action of rendering more and better service than that for which you are presently paid. When you go the extra mile, the Law of Compensation comes into play.
- Napoleon Hill
lasting transformations from good to great follow a general pattern of buildup followed by breakthrough.
- James C. Collins
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
- Peter Thiel
Foreign politicians don’t have resources – or limited resources. It’s useless dealing with them.
- Wang Jianlin
We have to realize that our lives could be gone in a moment. There are no guarantees that we will be here at this time next year. Learn to live each day to the fullest. Don’t complain. Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Be grateful for the opportunity to experience each day.
- Joel Olsteen
What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.
- Oprah Winfrey
Diversification and globalization are the keys to the future.
- Fujio Mitarai
Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.
- John C. Maxwell
When you view marketing from the vantage point of the guerrilla, you realize that it’s your opportunity to help your prospects and customers succeed. They want to succeed at earning more money, building their company, losing weight, attracting a mate, becoming more fit, or quitting smoking. You can help them. You can show them how to achieve their goal. Marketing is not about you. It’s about them. I hope you never forget that.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Underneath, you would surely see that the best care passionately about their people—about their growth and success. And you would see that they themselves are comfortable in their own skins. They’re real, filled with candor and integrity, optimism and humanity.
- Jack Welch
Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.
- Sam Walton
I think the currency of leadership is transparency. You’ve got to be truthful. I don’t think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where you’ve got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who you are, and not be afraid of it.
- Howard Schultz
