God, I’m not going to look at what I don’t have. I’m looking unto you. I know in my weakness, you show up the strongest.
- Joel Olsteen
Notable Quotables
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
- Winston Churchill
A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.
- Jack Welch
DAY TWENTY I DECLARE that I am calm and peaceful. I will not let people or circumstances upset me. I will rise above every difficulty, knowing that God has given me the power to remain calm. I choose to live my life happy, bloom where I am planted, and let God fight my battles. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
- Elon Musk
You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.
- Richard Branson
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
- Warren Buffett
Momentum is a little fragile, and when people got excited before, they were disappointed, … But this is the most positive guidance we’ve given in eight quarters, going into a seasonally challenging quarter.
- John Chambers
I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we feel, but no one follows me.
- Tadashi Yanai
Our business is about technology, yes. But it’s also about operations and customer relationships.
- Michael Dell
The first complaint we hear from everyone is: ‘Why would I want to join this stupid useless thing and know what my brother’s eating for lunch?’ But that really misses the point because Twitter is fundamentally recipient-controlled – you choose to listen and you choose to leave. But you also choose what to put down and what to share.
- Jack Dorsey
Berkshire’s record would have been terrible if Warren didn’t keep learning.
- Charlie Munger
View your future wealth as current debt.
- Clay Clark
If you look – look at – I mean, look at what’s going on with your gasoline prices. They’re going to go to $5, $6, $7 and we don’t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, ‘Fellas, it’s time. It’s over. You’re not going to do it anymore.’
- Donald Trump
Frequently I’ll be interviewing with somebody or talking and in about 15 minutes they’ll interrupt me mid-stream and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re nothing like I’d thought you’d be.’
- Larry Ellison
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
No matter what’s happening, choose to be happy. Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Find something positive in your life. Thank God for the small things.
- Joel Olsteen
I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years.
- Howard Schultz
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
- Ben Horowitz
At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study.
- Ben Horowitz
Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge.
- Clayton M. Christensen
When I was growing up, I always knew I’d be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence.
- Sergey Brin
Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.
- Joel Olsteen
Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.
- Bill Gates
Simple works, complex fails.
- Timothy Ferriss
The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world.
- Bill Gates
I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
- Andrew Carnegie
When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.
- Howard Schultz
Challenges will present us a good opportunity to improve productivity.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I will always serve my country in any capacity, but I’m very happy with what I’m doing right now.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
It takes the same effort to think small than to think big. But to think big frees you from the insignificant details.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
In a position to be more accommodating. There are some lights at the end of the tunnel. If political leaders in Europe can put things in order, things will be better. These days, much relies on politics.
- Lee Shau Kee
If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.
- Jeff Bezos
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
- Winston Churchill
Not an hour is lost that is spent in the saddle.
- Winston Churchill
Art is what we call…the thing an artist does. It’s not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human. Art is not in the …eye of the beholder. It’s in the soul of the artist.
- Seth Godin
Arrange to meet with the members of your Master Mind group at least twice a week, and more often if possible, until you have jointly perfected the necessary plan or plans for the accumulation of money.
- Napoleon Hill
I have asked thousands of business people to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to class and talk about the results.
- Dale Carnegie
Satan knows, if you are against YOURSELF you will never fulfill your destiny. :(
- Joel Olsteen
The typical project design time for a large company like IBM – and they keep track of this – is a little over four years.
- Bill Gates
For the first time in a very long time, I believe the external factors are slowly starting to be more positive, … This is still a minority view, held by a minority of our customers, but we’ve seen early indications that the recovery could be gaining momentum.
- John Chambers
My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
- Steve Jobs
A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing.
- Phil Knight
Since we happened to be good at shoes, we thought we could be successful with casual shoes. But we got our brains beat out.
- Phil Knight
The sad truth is, if you push hard enough, and if you’re so stubborn that you must have things your way, God will sometimes allow you to undertake a project without His blessing or at the wrong time. The problem with that, of course, is when you start something in your own strength and in your own timing, you’re going to have to finish it and maintain it in your own strength.
- Joel Olsteen
My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.
- Elon Musk
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
- Bill Gates
Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.
- Larry Ellison
The only way to solve the problem of Boko Haram is to create jobs.
- Aliko Dangote
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
- Colin Powell
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
- Peter Drucker
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
In a world of gigantic administrative bureaucracies both public and private, searching for a new path might seem like hoping for a miracle.
- Peter Thiel
There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in.
- Seth Godin
Young people, when they’re left alone, always want to have compassion, and they always want to give. They always want to help people who are less fortunate.
- Russell Simmons
Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
- Winston Churchill
People always underestimate Africa. If you want to follow what’s on ground, you would not want to invest in Nigeria; when you look at it from the patriotism point of view, you will ask yourself: how did those great countries become great?
- Aliko Dangote
Don’t simply settle for what your parents had. You can go further than that. You can do more, have more, be more.
- Joel Olsteen
A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.
- Thomas Edison
Exceptionally hard decisions can deplete your energy to the point at which you finally cave in. If you mentally crumble and degenerate into negative thinking, you’ll magnify the problem to the point where it can haunt you.
- John C. Maxwell
It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.
- Zig Ziglar
Nobody roots for a product.
- Phil Knight
I deal with more practical issues of the Bible.
- Joel Olsteen
We’ve announced an Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, a bunch of low-cost commodity servers running Linux, integrated in our case, with InfiniBand – connected with InfiniBand vs. the traditional Ethernet.
- Larry Ellison
No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.
- Winston Churchill
I felt like Samson with a fresh haircut. But that dream of what the company could be sustained me.
- Ray Kroc
The soul of business is not making money but making people happy.
- Aliko Dangote
You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.
- Seth Godin
The conquest was not achieved without one frightful convulsion of revolt. “In this year A.D. 61”, according to Tacitus, “a severe disaster was sustained in Britain.” Suetonius, the new governor, had engaged himself deeply in the West. He transferred the operational base of the Roman army to Chester. Because it was the centre of Druid resistance he prepared to attack “the populous island of Mona [Anglesey], which had become a refuge for fugitives, and he built a fleet of flat-bottomed vessels suitable for those shallow and shifting seas. The infantry crossed in the boats, the cavalry went over by fords: where the water was too deep the men swam alongside of their horses. The enemy lined the shore, a dense host of armed men, interspersed with women clad in black like the Furies, with their hair hanging down and holding torches in their hands. Round this were Druids.
- Winston Churchill
How you look, talk, and market your business is what should be keeping everyone busy.
- Bryan Smith
When you have an understanding of how someone else lives, the less likely it is that you conflict with them.
- Jack Dorsey
The new information technology… Internet and e-mail… have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
- Peter Drucker
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Manufacture, don’t just trade. There’s money in manufacturing even though it is capital intensive.
- Aliko Dangote
What really motivates people at Facebook is building stuff that they’re proud of.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Companies should not have a singular view of profitability. There needs to be a balance between commerce and social responsibility… The companies that are authentic about it will wind up as the companies that make more money.
- Howard Schultz
[In February 2011] We’ve not done a lot of marketing whatsoever. A lot of it has just been word of mouth.
- Jack Dorsey
The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed.
- Ben Horowitz
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Only knowledge that is used sticks in your mind.
- Dale Carnegie
Every sale has 5 basic obstacles: need, money, hurry, desire, trust.
- Zig Ziglar
To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.
- Bill Gates
Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man.
- Winston Churchill
Our brand at Netflix is really focused on movies and TV shows.
- Reed Hastings
I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.
- Richard Branson
I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players…I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other. Because they’ve never had a chance to do that before. And they don’t want to work with B and C players and so it becomes self-policing and they only want to hire more A players. And so you build up these pockets of A players, and it propagates.
- Steve Jobs
The slower growth in revenues and continued pressure on margins will result in negative earnings comparison for at least the next two quarters, with fiscal 1998 earnings per share likely to be in the 2 to 2.15 range.
- Phil Knight
More people will yell and wave at you to tell you that you forgot to close the gas cap than the amount of people who will stop to tell you that you are going the wrong direction with your life.
- Clay Clark
We have not journeyed all this way because we are made of sugar candy.
- Winston Churchill
These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.
- Winston Churchill
We got so much better so quickly it was hard to believe. We totally stood Kmart off in those small towns of ours. Almost from the beginning, they weren’t very successful at taking our customers away in Jeff City and Poplar Bluff. Once Kmart arrived, we worked even harder at pleasing our customers, and they stayed loyal. This gave us a great surge of confidence in ourselves. But at that time our sales were 5 percent of Kmart’s. (through competition) Wal-Mart has lowered the gross margin in retailing from around 35 percent in the early 60s to only 22 percent today.
- Sam Walton
Names are the sweetest, most important sound in any language.
- Dale Carnegie
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
Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.
- Sam Walton
If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.
- Jeff Bezos
We need to reinvent food at Starbucks. Less could be more.
- Howard Schultz
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
