Notable Quotables

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

- Ben Horowitz

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

- Steve Martin

More than trends, consumers need functionality. Everything needs an element of fashion, but that’s more like a spice.

- Tadashi Yanai

Show a real interest in his problem and helping him solve it.

- Jack Nadel

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

- Dale Carnegie

One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.

- Jeff Bezos

It’s vital that you accept yourself and learn to be happy with who God made you to be. If you want to truly enjoy your life, you must be at peace with yourself.

- Joel Olsteen

The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people. Bringing the right people on board saves you thousands, and your business will run smoothly and efficiently.

- Brian Tracy

Ahhh! Yoda’s little friend you seek!

- Yoda

Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.

- Ray Dalio

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.

- Walt Disney

You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who cannot pay you back. Make a decision that you will live to give. Be on the lookout each day for somebody you can bless. Don’t’ live for yourself; learn to give yourself away, and your life will make a difference.

- John Bunyan

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world?

- Reed Hastings

By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.

- Bill Gates

If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.

- Jeff Bezos

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

- Winston Churchill

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

I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.

- Elon Musk

[On becoming in 1969 a full-time employee of his five year old company] There were nervous moments. Every time I brought a fresh letter of credit home and it said, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Knight guarantee liabilities to the tune of $300,000,’ Penny’d say, ‘We don’t have $300,000.’ I’d say, ‘I don’t care. Just sign the thing.’

- Phil Knight

Stealing Coach Wooden’s sets of three, I have come up with a formula for success no matter what kind of business you happen to be in: 1) Make sure you have the right people around you; 2) Have fun and drive results by recognizing the achievements of others; and 3) Be a passionate learner, and pass on what you know to others. Not only will this make you a success in business, but it will make you a success in life.

- David Novak

I use the iPhone and iPad every day, and I no longer touch PCs at all.

- Masayoshi Son

I’m pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don’t see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I’m petrified of being wrong.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

In the Next Society’s corporation, top management will be the company. Everything else can be outsourced.

- Peter Drucker

There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.

- Jack Welch

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.

- Jeff Bezos

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.

- Winston Churchill

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

Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.

- Rich Karlgaard

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.

- Dale Carnegie

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

- Zig Ziglar

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

It’s lonely at the top, so you had better take someone with you…and it’s lonely at the top, so you had better know why you are there.

- Napoleon Hill

We’ve been trained to prefer being right to learning something, to prefer passing the test to making a difference, and most of all, to prefer fitting in with the right people, the people with economic power. Now it’s your turn to stand up and stand out.

- Seth Godin

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

I find that I have about six bloggable ideas a day. I also find that writing twice as long a post doesn’t increase communication, it usually decreases it. And finally, I found that people get antsy if there are unread posts in their queue.

- Seth Godin

People who are able to lift up others and boost the morale in organization are invaluable, and they are always a tremendous asset to a leader’s inner circle.

- Napoleon Hill

Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it.

- Seth Godin

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

- Winston Churchill

Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.

- Peter Thiel

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.

- Bill Gates

The potential financial reward for building the ‘next Windows’ is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.

- Bill Gates

Starbucks has a role and a meaningful relationship with people that is not only about the coffee.

- Howard Schultz

We’re pleased with the solid revenue and earnings per share results Cisco delivered during its second quarter, but also especially pleased with our strong order momentum. This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data along with our balanced approach to our customer segments, core and advanced technologies, business and technology architecture and key geographic theaters.

- John Chambers

[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.

- Jack Dorsey

It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.

- Henry Ward Beecher

A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.

- John D. Rockefeller

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.

- Napoleon Hill

I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

- John D. Rockefeller

Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.

- Winston Churchill

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

- James Cameron

Experience has taught me,” says Sam Wood, that it is safest to drop, as quickly as possible, people who pretend to be what they aren’t.

- Dale Carnegie

I’ve worked very hard, but my life’s always been fun.

- Reed Hastings

Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends, the best paths are new and untried.

- Peter Thiel

With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.

- Zig Ziglar

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

- Mark Twain

We don’t live in a normal world, we live under a power law.

- Peter Thiel

I would get records by Earl Scruggs… I would tune my banjo down and I’d pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking… And I kind of worked out my own style of playing.

- Steve Martin

Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.

- Zig Ziglar

We saw that a thousand results weren’t necessarily as useful as 10 good ones.

- Sergey Brin

Online I see people committing ‘social media suicide’ all the time by one of two ways. Firstly by responding to all criticism, meaning you’re never going to find time to complete important milestones of your own, and by responding to things that don’t warrant a response.

- Tim Ferris

I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.

- Vagit Alekperov

It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.

- Donald Trump

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‘I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.’

- Jerry Seinfeld

I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet.

- Russell Simmons

I have been very fortunate to be successful in business, and I believe that it is right that people who have this type of wealth should give something back into society.

- Alisher Usmanov

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

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

- Bill Gates

It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.

- Bill Gates

I am a huge bull on this country. We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.

- Warren Buffett

The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.

- Zig Ziglar

My husband is such a healthy eater. Except when it comes to sweets. He never consumes anything except fruit until noon. And then from noon on he might have some brown rice and some tofu, and then, come eight or nine at night, he orders three mud-pie double-chocolate pieces of cake and eats all three of them.

- Sara Blakely

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 learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.

- John Wanamaker

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

I want to be able to speak with errors in my wording, errors in my grammar. When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know ‘No, he couldn’t have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.’

- Steve Wozniak

As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in.

- Howard Schultz

However old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us.

- Cheng Yu-tung

But there seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination or his knowledge.

- Peter Drucker

The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work.

- Seth Godin

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

- Peter Drucker

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