If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
- Henry Ford
Notable Quotables
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater their power to harm us.
- Voltaire
Just because you don’t announce your plan doesn’t mean you don’t have one.
- Herb Kelleher
As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.
- Zig Ziglar
If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.
- Seth Godin
When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—“Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally”—she’s not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she’s reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.
- Seth Godin
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
- Peter Drucker
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.
- Seth Godin
Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.
- Ben Horowitz
Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m in a different position than most CEO’s. I’m a founder. I’m not a hired CEO. Now, I can be fired by the board, but most CEO’s are hired by the board.
- Howard Schultz
Maintain a pragmatic approach, keep up with the multitude of trials and strive to remain its level of attainment in order for achieving sound performance and scaling new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.
- David Novak
The economy is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
A word, a look, an accent, may affect the destiny not only of individuals, but of nations. He is a bold man who calls anything a trifle.
- Andrew Carnegie
What you need to keep most in the U.S. is the entrepreneurial spirit.
- Alexei Mordashov
Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.
- Zig Ziglar
But there is no reason why technology should be limited to computers. Properly understood, any new and better way of doing things is technology.
- Peter Thiel
Skills are cheap. Passion is priceless.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
- John Buchan
Thee may be some concern about rising inflation, shortage of labour and increased trade protectionism but the economy is generally in good shape.
- Cheng Yu-tung
An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others.
- Napoleon Hill
An individual artist needs only a thousand true fans in her tribe. It’s enough.
- Seth Godin
The clothes you wear influence you; thereby they form a part of your environment. Soiled or shabby clothes depress you and lower your self-confidence, while clean, modest and refined clothes give you a sort of inner feeling of courage that causes you to quicken your step as you walk
- Napoleon Hill
If you’re going to be thinking, you may as well think big.
- Donald Trump
Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.
- Bill Gates
The timing of your decision is just as important as the decision you make.
- John C. Maxwell
In this early period, Rockefeller was a chronic worrier who labored under a great deal of self-imposed stress. Though not versed in the scientific side of refining, he often excercised a direct managerial role in the plant. With fluctuating market conditions, he sometimes needed shipments to New York with great dispatch and personally rushed down to the railroad tracks to motivate the freight handlers. I shall never forget how hungry I was in those days. I stayed out of doors day and night; I ran up and down the tops of freight cars, when necessary; I hurried up the boys.
- Ron Chernow
Sales is a simple conversation where I ask you questions and I relate to your answers.
- Bryan Smith
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
- John C. Maxwell
IM is interesting because you look at your buddy list and, at a glance, see what your friends are listening to, what they’re working on, what they’re doing. The problem was that you were bound to the computer keyboard.
- Jack Dorsey
Too often the investment in people stops there.
- Ben Horowitz
Records are made to be broken. It is in man’s nature to continue to strive to do just that.
- Richard Branson
People shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to get high-quality clothing.
- Tadashi Yanai
Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that ‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’ Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.
- Warren Buffett
Through the wisdom of its government leaders and the entrepreneurship of its private sector, India has rapidly risen to become a major force in the global economy, … Cisco believes that the Internet, and related technologies, will be a key enabler for India to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation.
- John Chambers
Dig your well before you’re thirsty.
- Seth Godin
Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that everything changes except the law of change. He said: You cannot step in the same river twice. The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?
- Dale Carnegie
Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.
- Steve Ballmer
When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.
- Zig Ziglar
If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.
- Elon Musk
I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream – and by tuning into one another’s secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.
- Oprah Winfrey
[On a small business class taught at university by Frank Shallenberger] Shallenberger started by defining the type of person who was an entrepreneur, and I realized he was talking to me.
- Phil Knight
In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.
- Ray Dalio
I don’t think culture is something you can describe.
- Bill Gates
The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. … The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
- Larry Ellison
In many places where coffee is grown, deforestation is a major issue. With Starbucks’ position in the marketplace and the respect and relationships we have, we can – and have, in some cases – been able to educate and influence people.
- Howard Schultz
We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill… it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.
- Li Ka-shing
I definitely believe that the so-called American decline is greatly exaggerated.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure.
- Peter Drucker
The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can’t bit a target that you can’t see. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.
- Zig Ziglar
If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?
- Bill Gates
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.
- Bill Gates
Our improvement and innovative ideas have never been hindered by our proven record, which instead has paved the way for determined, practical development and new directions.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The most successful companies make the core progression—to first dominate a specific niche and then scale to adjacent markets—a part of their founding narrative.
- Peter Thiel
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
“Pick me, pick me” acknowledges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone else to initiate. Even better, “pick me, pick me” moves the blame from you to them. If you don’t get picked, it’s their fault, not yours. If you do get picked, well, they said you were good, right? Not your fault anymore. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
The concept of serviced apartments makes economic sense for tenancies of short to medium term duration – a fact many leading Hong Kong and overseas corporations now appreciate.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Focus on your people – Without employees and customers, your’re going nowwhere.
- David Green
But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
I am someone who tweets about what I have for breakfast, what I have for lunch, what I have for dinner, and for 99.99999 percent of the world, it’s useless. It’s meaningless. But for my mother, she loves it.
- Jack Dorsey
There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?
- John Chambers
My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’
- Richard Branson
Ask yourself a question: Is my attitude worth catching?
- Zig Ziglar
Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.
- Larry Page
Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison
The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.
- Bill Gates
Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.
- Winston Churchill
If I hadn’t given my money away, I’d have had more than anyone else on the planet.
- Bill Gates
I think my greatest moment in business was when the first Southwest airplane arrived after four years of litigation, and I walked up to it and I kissed that baby on the lips and I cried.
- Herb Kelleher
The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.
- Elon Musk
The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places,
- Peter Thiel
This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.
- Winston Churchill
I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.
- Wang Jianlin
Don’t save it all for the end. There is every reason not to.
- Timothy Ferriss
TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.
- Jack Dorsey
The great football coach John Madden was once asked whether he would tolerate a player like Terrell Owens on his team. Owens was both one of the most talented players in the game and one of the biggest jerks. Madden answered, “If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you’ll be so late you’ll miss the game, so you can’t do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you’ll have a player that’s so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.
- Ben Horowitz
You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.
- Mark Zuckerberg
For Roosevelt knew, as all leaders know, that the royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.
- Dale Carnegie
Treasure the love you have received above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished.
- Og Mandino
Rockefeller never clarified why he dropped out of high school around May 1855, just 2 months shy of commencement, excercises on July 16…
- Ron Chernow
If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.
- Bill Gates
There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
- Roger Staubach
Set your target and keep trying until you reach it.
- Napoleon Hill
I should be only paying for things that matter. I shouldn’t be paying for things that don’t matter. And, if Walgreen wants a premium, and they’re not doing anything different, why should I pay them more?
- George Paz
Education comes from within, you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
- Napoleon Hill
You will make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.
- Winston Churchill
Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.
- Jack Ma
We’ve always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways… It’s lasted now about 14 years, and we’re very pleased to have survived it.
- Richard Branson
There are no rules here — we’re trying to accomplish something.
- Thomas Edison
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 man who is bound in the slavery of debt is just as helpless as the slave who is bound by ignorance, or by actual chains.
- Napoleon Hill
If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered – the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.
- Larry Page
The lizard isn’t listening and the lizard doesn’t care.
- Seth Godin
If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 MPG.
- Bill Gates
“What would you do if capital were free?” is a dangerous question to ask an entrepreneur. It’s kind of like asking a fat person, “What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”
- Ben Horowitz
