Notable Quotables

When you import goods, you import poverty and you export jobs to other parts of the globe where such goods are produced.

- Aliko Dangote

A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed.

- Seth Godin

We have to find our way back to a definite future.

- Peter Thiel

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

- Dale Carnegie

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labour ofthinking-if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts thatbolster up what we already think-and ignore all the others! We want only the facts thatjustify our acts-the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justifyour preconceived prejudices!As Andre Maurois put it: Everything that is in agreement with our personal desiresseems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage.Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems?Wouldn’t we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, ifwe went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot ofpeople in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that twoplus two equals five-or maybe five hundred!

- Thomas Edison

My job is to help more people have jobs.

- Jack Ma

Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

- Winston Churchill

Boadicea then turned upon Verulamium (St Albans). Here was another trading centre, to which high civic rank had been accorded. A like total slaughter and obliteration was inflicted. “No less”, according to Tacitus, “than seventy thousand citizens and allies were slain” in these three cities. “For the barbarians would have no capturing, no selling, nor any kind of traffic usual in war; they would have nothing but killing, by sword, cross, gibbet, or fire.” These grim words show us an inexpiable war like that waged between Carthage and her revolted mercenaries two centuries before. Some high modern authorities think these numbers are exaggerated; but there is no reason why London should not have contained thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, and Colchester and St Albans between them about an equal number. If the butcheries in the countryside are added the estimate of Tacitus may well stand. This is probably the most horrible episode which our Island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.

- Winston Churchill

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn’t cool.

- Bill Gates

Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with anyone in the outside world. Every bit of contact. That means a lot of marketing opportunities. It does not mean investing a lot of money.

- Jay Conrad Levinson

If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising.

- Seth Godin

Those whose work and pleasure are one… are… Fortune’s favoured children.

- Winston Churchill

And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.

- Winston Churchill

The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.

- James C. Collins

Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius.

- Peter Thiel

There is always plenty of capital for those who can create practical plans for using it.

- Napoleon Hill

You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.

- Seth Godin

From the start, I wanted PayPal to be tightly knit instead of transactional.

- Peter Thiel

By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.

- Timothy Ferriss

Frank Wells 1888 instruction to his agents: The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all – let them be men, women or children, rich or poor, white or black – it must not be forgotten, that the company is dependent on these people for its business.

- Frank Wells

Think of social media as the Internet. I can’t think of anyone betting against the Internet in 2012.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

We all know now that the 747 became the flagship jumbo jet of the airline industry, but the decision looks much different from the perspective of the late 1960s. Yet—and this is the key point—Boeing was willing to make the bold move in the face of the risks. As in Boeing’s case, the risks do not always come without pain.

- James C. Collins

The good-to-great companies displayed two distinctive forms of disciplined thought. The first, and the topic of this chapter, is that they infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality. (The second, which we will discuss in the next chapter, is that they developed a simple, yet deeply insightful, frame of reference for all decisions.)

- James C. Collins

Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.

- P.T. Barnum

Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash. How’s that for incentive to be effective and efficient?

- Timothy Ferriss

I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.

- Henry Ford

(Physics is) a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

- Elon Musk

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

Nobody wanted to gamble on that first Wal-Mart. I think Bud put in 3 percent, and Don Whitaker – whom I had hired to manage the store from TG&Y store out in Abilene, Texas, and I had to put up 95 percent of the dollars. Helen and I had to sign all the notes along with me, and her statement allowed us to borrow more than I could alone. We pledges houses and property, everything we had.. But in those days we were always borrowed to the hilt. We were about to go into the discount business for real now. And from the time those doggone Wal-Marts opened until almost today, it has been a little challenging.

- Sam Walton

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

- Bill Gates

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.

- Colin Powell

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

- Peter Drucker

Challenges will present us a good opportunity to improve productivity.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Though the external environment is still fraught with uncertainties, mainland China, which has been less affected by the global financial tsunami, is expected to keep growing from strength to strength despite fine tuning of its moderately loose monetary policy on concerns of overheating in the property sector and inflation risk.

- Lee Shau Kee

The timing of your decision is just as important as the decision you make.

- John C. Maxwell

Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.

- Jack Welch

I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.

- Timothy Ferriss

I can’t read a computer screen and never use a calculator. It’s all in my head and by hand.

- Simon Reuben

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

- Winston Churchill

Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.

- Seth Godin

A smart manager will establish a culture of gratitude. Expand the appreciative attitude to suppliers, vendors, delivery people, and of course, customers.

- Harvey Mackay

I DECLARE breakthroughs are coming in my life, sudden bursts of God’s goodness. Not a trickle. Not a stream. But a flood of God’s power. A flood of healing. A flood of wisdom. A flood of favor. I am a breakthrough person and I choose to live breakthrough minded. I am expecting God to overwhelm me with His goodness and amaze me with His favor. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

It helps to have founded and run a company if you’re going to help somebody run a company who is a founder.

- Ben Horowitz

For PayPal to work, we needed to attract a critical mass of at least a million users. Advertising was too ineffective to justify the cost. Prospective deals with big banks kept falling through. So we decided to pay people to sign up. We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend. This got us hundreds of thousands of new customers and an exponential growth rate.

- Peter Thiel

Find a job that you will be happy with and work hard at.

- Lee Shau Kee

A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die without publicizing it, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another….

- Thomas Edison

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

- Winston Churchill

China has set its cultural industries as pillar industries.

- Wang Jianlin

When you give up yourself, that’s when you will feel the true spirit of Christmas. And that’s giving that’s serving others and that’s when you feel fulfilled.

- Joel Olsteen

We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these nonmillionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?

- Thomas J Stanley

I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It’s really a different product category.

- Jeff Bezos

I think Twitter is the future of communications and Square will be the payment network.

- Jack Dorsey

The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.

- Wang Jianlin

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If you ask me whether the future is better than today, I would say yes; but the people must be ready to pay for services and pay their taxes.

- Aliko Dangote

If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.

- Joel Olsteen

The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts.

- James C. Collins

The stark differences between man and machine mean that gains from working with computers are much higher than gains from trade with other people. We don’t trade with computers any more than we trade with livestock or lamps. And that’s the point: computers are tools, not rivals.

- Peter Thiel

Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’.

- Warren Buffett

If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.

- Bill Gates

As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I got into this habit by attempting to contact celebrities and famous businesspeople for advice.

- Timothy Ferriss

In the next two to three years there will probably be only three to five players in this area. The chances to gain or lose market share are exciting.

- John Chambers

If you complain you will remain, if you praise you will be raised.

- Joel Olsteen

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

- Zig Ziglar

In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.

- Dale Carnegie

Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.

- Sergey Brin

You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.

- Oprah Winfrey

It doesn’t hurt to ask Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.

- Seth Godin

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’

- Henry Ford

Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren’t easy questions.

- Bill Gates

Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen.

- Winston Churchill

Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.

- James C. Collins

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

You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don’t let that stop you from blooming. Realize that your environment does not prevent you from being happy. Some people spend all their time trying to pull up all the weeds. Meanwhile, they miss much of their lives. Don’t worry about things you can’t change. You can’t change the traffic in the morning. You can’t fix everybody at work. You can’t make all your family members serve God. But you shouldn’t let that keep you from being happy. Bloom anyway and focus on the things that you can change. You can change your own attitude. You can choose to be happy right where you are.

- Joel Olsteen

We all need a check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitude.

- Zig Ziglar

In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone.

- Peter Thiel

The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

- Michael Bloomberg

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

- Winston Churchill

Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.

- Peter Thiel

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

- Jack London

For a rich and reasonably successful guy, it is impossible not to enjoy your job; otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort doing it? I am a great fan of Norilsk, and I like this kind of challenge.

- Vladimir Potanin

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.

- John C. Maxwell

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