Notable Quotables

Much of our strategic shift is providing production advances over the next 60 days in the Gulf Coast. This effort sets the stage for Gulf Coast growth in 2006, along with production growth in our East, West and Canada regions.

- Dan Dinges

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

- Joel Olsteen

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

- Winston Churchill

Humility is becoming a lost art, but it’s not difficult to practice. It means that you realize that others have been involved in your success.

- Harvey Mackay

I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product.

- Ben Horowitz

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.

- Thomas J Watson

Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.

- Michael Gerber

Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.

- Napoleon Hill

Let’s test the Shakespearean model in the real world. Imagine a production called Gates and Schmidt, based on Romeo and Juliet. Montague is Microsoft. Capulet is Google. Two great families, run by alpha nerds, sure to clash on account of their sameness.

- Peter Thiel

If you think your people are negative, then you had better check your attitude. Who you are is who you attract. This is the LAW of Magnetism.

- John Maxwell

Men sometimes stumble over the truth, but often pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.

- Joel Olsteen

A good deed, said the prophet Mohammed, is one that brings a smile of joy to the face of another.Why will doing a good deed every day produce such astounding efforts on the doer?Because trying to please others will cause us to stop thinking of ourselves: the verything that produces worry and fear and melancholia.

- Dale Carnegie

I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business, basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.

- Jack Welch

Enforce functional training by withholding new employee requisitions. As Andy Grove writes, there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. Therefore, training should be the most basic requirement for all managers in your organization. An effective way to enforce this requirement is by withholding new employee requisitions from managers until they’ve developed a training program for the TBH, “To Be Hired.”

- Ben Horowitz

Don’t make excuses, don’t blame the past. The rest of your life can be the best of your life!

- Joel Olsteen

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

- Walt Disney

I think the definition of a book is changing.

- Jeff Bezos

My new favorite word is ‘awkward.’…The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

- Seth Godin

We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.

- Joel Olsteen

Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.

- Donald Trump

Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

- Bill Gates

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

- Peter Drucker

An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn’t have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.

- Jack Welch

Nevertheless, in the first years of Standard Oil, Rockefeller regularly toured his facilities and was extremely inquisitive and observant, soaking up information and assiduously quizzing plant superintendants. In his pocket, he carried a little red notebook in which he jotted suggestions or improvements and always followed up on them. He knew the terror inspired by the little red book. More than once I have gone to luncheon with a number of our heads of departments and have seen the sweat out of on the foreheads for some of them when that little red notebook was pulled out.

- Ron Chernow

It’s difficult for any single company to develop all the applications and services.

- Ma Huateng

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.

- Vince Lombardi

Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?

- Zig Ziglar

We have to get control of our borders. You can only do that if you make companies obey the law and not hire undocumented or illegals. They can only do that is if they have a Social Security Card that has biometrics so they know whether the person is legal or not.

- Michael Bloomberg

So Bush certainly wasn’t the greatest, and Obama has not done the job. And he’s created a lot of disincentive. He’s created a lot of great dissatisfaction. Regulations and regulatory is going through the roof. It’s almost impossible to get anything done in the country.

- Donald Trump

A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.15 Smile. It increases your face value.

- Dale Carnegie

Nobody spends any money on smallpox unless they worry about a bio-terrorist recreating it.

- Bill Gates

You can’t get too much done in life if you only work on days when you feel good.

- Jerry West

People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.

- Bill Gates

The best—perhaps even the only—way to predict the future is to create it.

- Peter Drucker

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

- Winston Churchill

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.

- Napoleon Hill

How about we agree upon what our common American values are, which is let’s make this a true land of opportunity.

- Laurene Powell Jobs

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

- Seth Godin

You can’t build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.

- Rupert Murdoch

The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.

- Jack Welch

An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.

- Jack Dorsey

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

- Steve Jobs

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

- Jack Nadel

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.

- Timothy Ferriss

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

- Elon Musk

Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The truth is, somebody is always talking about you, so you have to let it go… if it’s not a part of your God-given destiny.

- Joel Olsteen

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.

- Peter Drucker

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

- Donald Trump

Even leaders with the best of intentions can have dumb ideas sometimes, and if you have good people around you, then hopefully they’ll stop you before you’ve done too much damage.

- David Novak

A CEO’s job is to supervise all systems and to indentify weaknesses before the weaknesses turn into system failures. This can happen in many different ways, but it is exceptionally disconcerting when you company is growing rapidly. Your sales are increasing, your product of service is getting attention from the media, and suddenly you can’t deliver. Why? Uusually, it’s because your systems imploded from the increased demand. You didn’t have enough phone lines, or operators answering the phones. You didn’t have enough production capacity or enough hours in the week to meet the demand; or you didn’t have the money to build the product or hire additional help. Whatever the reason, you missed the opportunity to move your business to the next level of success due to failure of one of your systems…At each new level of growth, the CEO must start planning the systems needed to support the next level of growth, from phone lines to lines of credit for production needs. Systems drive both cash flow management and communication. As your systems get better, you or your employees will have to exert less and less effort. Without well-designed and successful operating systems, your business will be labor intensive. Once you have well-designed and successful operating systems, you will have a saleable business asset.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The strongest oak of the forest is not the one that is protected from the storm and hidden from the sun. It’s the one that stands in the open where it is compelled to struggle for its existence against the winds and rains and the scorching sun.

- Napoleon Hill

It’s easy to dream about it … Much harder to execute it ….Work!

- Gary Vaynerchuk

What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.

- Admiral Jim Stockdale

Nobody walks this earth thinking he’s better than I think I am – I think I’m great. At the same time, it’s so obvious to me that I’m nobody.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.

- Oprah Winfrey

The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

- George Orwell

The lawyers I worked with ran a valuable business, and they were impressive individuals one by one. But the relationships between them were oddly thin. They spent all day together, but few of them seemed to have much to say to each other outside the office. Why work with a group of people who don’t even like each other? Many seem to think it’s a sacrifice necessary for making money. But taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: it’s not even rational. Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together.

- Peter Thiel

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

- Oprah Winfrey

I don’t know why you should be proud of something. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. You are what you are.

- Michael Bloomberg

The competitive advantages the marketplace demands is someone more human, connected, and mature. Someone with passion and energy, capable of seeing things as they are and negotiating multiple priorities as she makes useful decisions without angst. Flexible in the face of change, resilient in the face of confusion. All of these attributes are choices, not talents, and all of them are available to you.

- Seth Godin

In general, the apparel industry isn’t about continual process improvement or making the perfect piece of denim; it’s about chasing trends.

- Tadashi Yanai

I’m just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.

- Ray Dalio

Be candid with everyone. Candor is the biggest dirty little secret in business?

- Jack Welch

CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It’s not what they say. It’s what they highlight.

- Rupert Murdoch

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

- Peter Drucker

Effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible.

- Jack Welch

I have the favor of God. I can do all things through Christ. I am blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy.

- Joel Olsteen

With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.

- Seth Godin

I’m a lad of the ‘60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

- Richard Branson

The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.

- Seth Godin

It turned out there was alot to learn about running a store. And, of course, what really drove Sam was that competition across the street – John Dunham over at the Sterling Store. Sam was always over there checking on John. Always. Looking at his prices, looking at his displays, looking at what was going on. He was always looking for a way to do a better job. I don’t remember the details, but I remember some kind of panty-price-war they got into. Later on, long after we left Newport, and John had retired, we would seem him and he would laugh about Sam always being in his store. But I’m sure it aggravate him quite a bit early on. John had never had good competition before Sam. Helen Walton (Sam’s Wife): That Newport store was really the beginning of where Walmart is today. We did everything. We would wash windows, sweep floors, trim windows. We did all the stockroom work checked the freight in. Everything it took to run a store. We had to keep expenses to a minimum. That is where it started, year ago. Our money was made by controlling expenses. That, and Sam always being ingeniious. He never stopped trying to do something different. One thing, though I never forgave him for making me clean out that damned ice cream machine…

- Bud Walton

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

- Russell Simmons

You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy, and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because, unless we do all of these things, it just doesn’t work. And what’s good theater and what’s good politics isn’t necessarily good economic policy.

- Michael Bloomberg

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

- Zig Ziglar

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

- George Soros

When the pressure is on, great leaders are at the their best.

- Napoleon Hill

We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren’t that many things people use twice a day.

- Larry Page

One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.

- Napoleon Hill

Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding.

- Peter Thiel

I think people instinctively know that their job is to give service and that they are part of a community. It had a great impact on me when my father walked the picket lines and I walked with him during the civil rights movement.

- Russell Simmons

The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that’s all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.The only correct answer to ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ is ‘Because it’s lizard brain told it to.’ Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It’s real, and it’s living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.

- Seth Godin

As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.

- Peter Thiel

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

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