Notable Quotables

Southwest consistently turns a profit because they have an employee ownership program that gives their employees a sense of ownership that is very real. When the company does well financially, the employees do well financially. When the company struggles, the employees struggle.

- Clay Clark

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

- Warren Buffett

Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care … We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end … Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.

- Winston Churchill

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

- Alexander Graham Bell

If a product’s future is unlikely to be remarkable – if you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product – it’s time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.

- Seth Godin

To me, business isn’t about wearing suits or pleasing stockholders. It’s about being true to yourself, your ideas, and focusing on the essentials.

- Richard Branson

We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.

- Jack Welch

This is why successful network businesses rarely get started by MBA types: the initial markets are so small that they often don’t even appear to be business opportunities at all.

- Peter Thiel

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

- Jerry Seinfeld

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

- Seth Godin

The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.

- Anthony Robbins

Decide you must, how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could; but you would destroy all for which they have fought, and suffered.

- Yoda

Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production, using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

- Timothy Ferriss

Cherish you visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.

- Napoleon Hill

Satisfied, loyal and repeat customers are at the heart of Walmart’s spectacular profit margins, and those customers are loyal to us because our associates treat them better than salespeople in other stores do. So, in the whole Wal-Mart scheme of things, the most important contact ever made is between the associated in the store and the customer. I didn’t catch on to that idea for quite a while. In fact, the biggest single regret in my whole business career is that we didn’t include our associates in the initial, managers-only profit-sharing plan when we took the company public in 1970. But there was nobody around preaching that philosophy in those days, and I guess I was just too worried about my own debt, and in too big a hurry to get somewhere fast. Today, some of our company’s critics would like everybody to believe we started our profit-sharing program and other benefits merely as away to stave off union organizing.

- Sam Walton

Leadership must wake up every day with the mission of Finding a Better Way Every Day…There are no modest revolutions…GE was a place where the people got up everyday to searching for a better way.

- Jack Welch

I really believed that I said then, and I still do. But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop. The way I approached managing the business, I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision – usually flying around to take a look at our stores on a regular basis. But from the very beginning, even on my paper routes in college, I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage the stores. That’s been the case since back in Newport….We’re big now. We’re really big. That’s not something I like to focus on. I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not necessarily the biggest…(being big poses opportunities), but being big also poses big dangers. It has ruined many a fine company – including some giant retailers – who started out strong and got bloated or out of touch or were slow to react to the needs of their customers. Here’s the point: the biggest Wal-Mart gets, the more essential it is that we think small. Because that is exactly how we have become a big corporation.

- Sam Walton

I wouldn’t ever say if you’re having tough times then there must be something wrong with you or your attitude. Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith. I encourage people to stay up, stay hopeful, stay faith-filled.

- Joel Olsteen

Do more than you are being paid to do, and you’ll eventually be paid more for what you do.

- Zig Ziglar

Spreading old ways to create wealth around the world will result in devastation, not riches. In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable

- Peter Thiel

In periods of stress and grief, not only does your mind do funny things, you say things that surprise you.

- Phil Knight

You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies – all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.

- Steve Martin

What’s interesting about Twitter and the influencers that someone follows – like, say, Shaquille O’Neal – is that they see someone who is using the exact same tools that they have access to, and I think that inspires this hope to be able to really engage with someone like him.

- Jack Dorsey

Although Hong Kong continued to be affected by the slowdown of the global economy in the past financial year, most of the retail shopping properties owned by the Group are located in new towns where continual growth of residents are maintained and consumer spending power are segregated, thereby providing a good support to stabilise rental of the retail shopping properties located in such new towns.

- Lee Shau Kee

If I hadn’t given my money away, I’d have had more than anyone else on the planet.

- Bill Gates

On behalf of the employees of Cisco, we send our deepest sympathy and condolences to all of those affected by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, … This has been a crushing blow to the residents of the Gulf Coast and we stand by them, ready to help.

- John Chambers

For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

I support health care for people. I want people well taken care of. But I also want health care that we can afford as a country. I have people and friends closing down their businesses because of Obamacare.

- Donald Trump

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been

- Sam Walton

If my mother hadn’t been the most patient person in the world, I might never have gone to school.

- Ben Horowitz

In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.

- Peter Thiel

It’s true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime.

- John C. Maxwell

Long-range planning does not deal with the future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

- Peter Drucker

There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.

- Henry Ford

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.

- Sam Walton

The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

- Thomas Edison

You cannot expect to live a positive life if you hang with negative people.

- Joel Olsteen

Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it’s a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline.

- Harvey Mackay

I was the night foreman of a galvanizing factory, which is hot and smelly and dirty and miserable.

- Ronald Perelman

I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that’s the reason so many liked him and did business in his store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. (on role of managing partner)

- Inez Threet

When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.

- Seth Godin

The problem with New Year’s resolutions – and resolutions to ‘get in better shape’ in general, which are very amorphous – is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn’t work. I don’t care if you’re a world-class CEO – you’ll quit.

- Timothy Ferriss

Great music and art are earthly wonders, but I think ‘cubist’ songs and paintings are hideous.

- Thomas Edison

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.

- Steve Jobs

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

If you are starting a business I believe it has to be your passion.

- David Robinson

The thing about fashion – it’s like ducks going quack, quack quack. It’s being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.

- Sara Blakely

Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.

- Colin Powell

If we can get you a car in five minutes, we can get you anything in five minutes.

- Travis Kalanick

A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.

- Harvey Mackay

I’m not a businessman — I’m a business, man.

- Jay-Z

You were created to give. You were created to make the lives of others better. Someone needs what you have. Someone needs your love. Someone needs your smile. Someone needs your encouragement and your gifts.

- Joel Olsteen

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

Know your numbers’ is a fundamental precept of business.

- Bill Gates

The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on… through each generation. Because we have no social security, the overseas Chinese habit is not to spend a lot and to make a lot of friends.

- Lee Shau Kee

With the right pitch, you’ll get no argument. This is where the salesmanship comes in…It requires of you a substantial degree of self-confidence to pull it off, but your belief in your own project will help you muster that.

- Michael Levine

The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies had a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great. There is an important.

- James C. Collins

We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries – discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .

- Thomas Edison

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

- Napoleon Hill

Facing reality sounds simple, but it isn’t. I found it hard to get people to see a situation for what it is and not for what it was, or what they hoped it would be.

- Jack Welch

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

- Seth Godin

The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.

- Bill Gates

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

- Winston Churchill

Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.

- Yoda

I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

- George Soros

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

- Richard Branson

The word ‘Spanx’ was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.

- Sara Blakely

People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.

- Peter Thiel

Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!

- Thomas Edison

Said another way, the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is. When The Entrepreneur creates the model.

- Michael Gerber

And you know, I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

- Richard Branson

If you look at coffee, tea, food and juice, we think there are inherent opportunities. If you look at health bars or grab-and-go products that are in our stores, we think we can significantly enhance them and make them more widely available.

- Howard Schultz

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.

- Oprah Winfrey

Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above—that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager’s performance.

- Peter Drucker

I attract a crowd, not because I’m an extrovert or I’m over the top or I’m oozing with charisma. It’s because I care.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Live creatively, friends. . . . Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others” (Galatians 6:1, 4).

- Zig Ziglar

I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let’s bring joy back to the experience.

- Sara Blakely

You can make something big when young that will carry you through life. Look at all the big startups like Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They were all started by very young people who stumbled on something of unseen value. You’ll know it when you hit a home run.

- Steve Wozniak

My grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It’s a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we’ve come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company.

- Larry Page

Don’t be intimidated as you design your pitch. The fact is that nobody will come to you at first. You must be the aggressor, or you will not be heard.

- Michael Levine

Luke: What’s in there? Yoda: Only what you take with you.

- Yoda

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

- Walt Disney

I don’t think it’s a big deal to show opera glasses to someone searching for binoculars that you somehow infer is a woman. But you don’t want to pop up ads for H.I.V. drugs on someone’s page, because you inferred they have H.I.V., when their boss is standing there looking at their computer

- Sergey Brin

The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake or proves to be incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed.

- Napoleon Hill

If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it.

- Peter Thiel

I don’t want people in China to have deep pockets but shallow minds.

- Jack Ma

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