You have to get lost in the woods of your own doing and discover a way out. You have to find the right path over the creek, under the rock-whatever mechanism is good for your body’s size and your stride and your cadence and your tolerance for wet or cold or humid weather. That kind of learning comes from having a tolerance for failure, and extracting lessons from your failures.
- Marc Ecko
Notable Quotables
Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.
- Peter Thiel
In a world where wealth is growing, you can get away with printing money. Doubling the debt over the next 20 years is not a problem.
- Peter Thiel
When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary. If there is some point you haven’t thought about, be thankful if it is brought to your attention.
- Dale Carnegie
I influence anybody who is able to get through the chaos of my first impression.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
- Thomas Edison
[In February 2011] We’ve not done a lot of marketing whatsoever. A lot of it has just been word of mouth.
- Jack Dorsey
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
- Niels Bohr
At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization—taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere.
- Peter Thiel
As a businessperson, I don’t have the power to change the government. That is in the hands of the political leaders. However, as a taxpayer, we have the right to be critical of the government and demand change.
- Tadashi Yanai
If you’re only willing to do what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you’re willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy.
- T. Harv Eker
In business, just the opposite is often true; silence means dissent. Have you ever been in a meeting where you sense there is obvious disagreement, but the disagreement never really gets put on the table? This what I call the Slow No’s.
- David Novak
Nobody roots for a product.
- Phil Knight
I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.
- Bill Gates
We saw that a thousand results weren’t necessarily as useful as 10 good ones.
- Sergey Brin
I think one of the great dangers here is going and categorizing anybody from one religion as a terrorist. That’s not true… That would let the terrorists win. That’s what they want us to do.
- Michael Bloomberg
I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.
- Joel Olsteen
There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything and an optimist who says, Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway. Either way, nothing happens.
- Yvon Chouinard
Too often, sales reps simply regurgitate their presentations and expect to land the sale. It doesn’t work.
- Harvey Mackay
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do.
- Joel Olsteen
Resposibility is the price of greatness.
- Winston Churchill
When we launched the WineLibrary website in 1996, I didn’t even own a computer yet. I just understood that there was an opportunity here to market in a different way.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.
- Jeff Bezos
People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they’re not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter.
- Seth Godin
Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.
- James C. Collins
Management always bears in mind to ‘lend a hand’ to Hong Kong and Mainland China while we are working hard for shareholders’ benefits.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.
- Harvey Mackay
I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has.
- Bill Gates
After the decline in the past few years, the worst moment in the economy of Hong Kong is now behind us. The local property market is expected to show a steady upward trend as from this point.
- Lee Shau Kee
If you ask me what I worry about every morning when I wake up, it’s that I don’t understand future mainstream Internet users’ habits.
- Ma Huateng
The 1990’s sure aren’t like the 1980’s.
- Donald Trump
Over the years, Hong Kong has been confronted with various challenges. On every occasion, we were able to rely on our unique qualities – resourcefulness, perseverance, diligence and passion for excellence – to rise above our difficulties.
- Cheng Yu-tung
People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.
- Jerry Seinfeld
A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.
- Elon Musk
If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.
- Zig Ziglar
Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.
- Reed Hastings
It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.
- Reed Hastings
The overall dynamic was net positive, unlike Napster’s negative-sum struggle with the U.S. recording industry. As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.
- Peter Thiel
Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
- Richard Branson
There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.
- Elon Musk
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
- Peter Drucker
Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.
- Peter Drucker
Because we publicists are hired guns, reported don’t often put much stock in our pleas and arguments, at least not a first. I was told by one entertainment reporter from a large metropolitan paper, Publicists don’t believe in what they are selling. They’re just paid pitchmen.
- Michael Levine
We saw strength across our core switching and routing businesses, as well as traction in our advanced technologies. The service provider and public sector segments, in particular, continue to be solid markets for our products.
- John Chambers
The future may be made up of many factors but where it truly lies is in the hearts and minds of men. Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain, but unleashes your passion for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and humanity of mankind.
- Li Ka-shing
Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.
- Dale Carnegie
So the challenge, as you contemplate your next opportunity to be boring or remarkable, is to answer these two questions: (1) “If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impact? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat, or lose important friendships?” If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you’ll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off. And then, once you’ve compared the bad feeling and the benefits, and you’ve sold yourself on taking the remarkable path, answer this one: (2) How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
I really chess-play culture shifts. I’m really good at understanding what worldwide cell-phone use means. That’s what I do. I try to picture it three to four to five steps ahead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
What I’m trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there’s inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.
- Ray Dalio
You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m a pretty conservative guy. But for some reason in business, I have always been pretty driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where we’ve been. On the one hand, in the community, I really am an establishment kind of guy; on the other hand, in the marketplace, I have always been a maverick who enjoys shaking things up and creating a little anarchy. And sometimes the establishments made me mad…
- Sam Walton
Gas consumption is growing everywhere.
- Vagit Alekperov
I think how you start the day many times determines what kind of day you’re going to have.
- Joel Olsteen
Assetts put money in your pocket. Liabilities take money out of your pocket.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I don’t think we like the precedent of it, and so we’re fighting it. I think we’re right.
- Sergey Brin
Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.
- Bill Gates
Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation.
- Travis Kalanick
Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
This morning did you wake up to an alarm clock, or an “opportunity” clock?
- Zig Ziglar
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?
- John Wooden
Complaints are your best learning opportunity
- Bill Gates
Going the extra mile is the action of rendering more and better service than that for which you are presently paid. When you go the extra mile, the Law of Compensation comes into play.
- Napoleon Hill
To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
- P.T. Barnum
I cut the feet out of my control top pantyhose one night, threw them on under my white pants and realized that the toning and shaping was perfect and that the hosiery material is thin enough that I could make shape wear out of it.
- Sara Blakely
Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.
- Bill Gates
[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
Delight in smooth sounding platitudes, refusal to face unpleasant facts … genuine love of peace and pathetic belief that love can be its sole foundation … the utter devotion of the Liberals to sentiment apart from reality …though free from wickedness or evil design, played a definite part in the unleashing upon the world of horrors and miseries [WWII]
- Winston Churchill
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
The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.
- Zig Ziglar
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.
- Gina Rinehart
Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.
- Seth Godin
Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn’t have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want.
- Steve Wozniak
That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove his or her worth, to excel, to win. That is what makes foot-races, and hog-calling, and pie-eating contests. The desire to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance.
- Dale Carnegie
We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
- Jack Welch
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.
- Jeff Bezos
I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.
- Ray Dalio
Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don’t believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you’re likely to have issues.
- Larry Page
I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.
- Elon Musk
Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.
- Michael Gerber
Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.
- Dale Carnegie
You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.
- Elon Musk
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
- Peter Drucker
A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It’s a gasoline car with slightly better mileage.
- Elon Musk
Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.
- Nelson Mandela
The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.
- Steve Young
It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
- Napoleon Hill
There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.
- Winston Churchill
No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I know how to make decisions and stand up to the criticism every day.
- Michael Bloomberg
Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
- Dale Carnegie
Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.
- Zig Ziglar
People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.
- Walt Disney
The ballplayer who loses his head can’t keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.
- Lou Gehrig
We are focusing on the increasing need for mobility and growing demand from our industrial customers. The production volume for vehicles weighing up to six tons is expected to rise to between 100 million and 105 million vehicles. Furthermore, installation of electronics and software will continue to grow substantially, driven by growing demands from end-users and increasingly strict legal requirements for safety and energy consumption. It is partly on this basis that we are aiming for profitable sales of over €50 billion in 2020.
- Elmar Degenhart
