Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what’s coming.
- Steve Martin
Notable Quotables
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
Reality is negotiable.
- Timothy Ferriss
At the same time, you have to look for detractors among the group because one bad seed can be like a leak in the dime that leads to a major flood. The best thing you can do when you find someone like that is to fire him as quickly as possible!
- David Novak
Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.
- Steve Jobs
Google’s not a real company. It’s a house of cards.
- Steve Ballmer
I think we are living in a time where the consumer has lots of choices, whether it’s coffee, newspapers or whatever it is. And there is parity in the market place, and as a result of that, the consumer is beginning to make decisions, not just on what things cost and the convenience of it.
- Howard Schultz
I felt like Samson with a fresh haircut. But that dream of what the company could be sustained me.
- Ray Kroc
The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems.
- Napoleon Hill
This is indicative of how quickly CEO caution can put the foot on the brake.
- John Chambers
If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.
- Joel Olsteen
A good book can be both a window to the world and a mirror to one’s self. It is easier to build community and remain true to the brand when you have zealots instead of marketing mercaries.
- Radical Marketing
I always say, ‘To have a big dream requires the same effort as having a small dream. Dream big!’
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
If you have a lot of [visionaries], you’ll have a lot of great ideas, something awesome that people will love; but you never get it done. It doesn’t ship. Nothing happens. If you have too many [execution oriented] people on your team, you’re executing like mad, things are getting built, and you’re shipping like crazy – but you’re building something that nobody wants. If you have a good balance of both in your company, you’re more likely to stay on track. Those people compliment each other.
- Caterina Fake
Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
- Steve Jobs
You may have made some mistakes, and you may not be where you want to be, but that has NOTHING to do with your future.
- Zig Ziglar
May the Force be with you.
- Yoda
If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.
- Simon Sinek
Most GE business leaders now have digital cockpits on their computer screens that update in real time all the important data to help them manager their businesses.
- Jack Welch
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
- Winston Churchill
Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
- Richard Branson
Nothing good ever happens after 9:00 PM.
- Andy Pearson
Failing is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.
- Zig Ziglar
Leaders never outgrow the need to change.
- John C. Maxwell
I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
- Steve Martin
For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.
- James C. Collins
I just think people have a lot of fiction. But, you know, I mean, the real story of Facebook is just that we’ve worked so hard for all this time. I mean, the real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The Franchise Prototype is also the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.
- Michael Gerber
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow.
- Evan Esar
For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.
- Bill Gates
The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.
- Elon Musk
In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.
- Winston Churchill
I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a might oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.
- Og Mandino
Don’t worry that you can’t seem to come up with sure billion dollar winners at first. Just do projects for yourself for fun. You’ll get better and better.
- Steve Wozniak
The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.
- Seth Godin
Hong Kong’s history of success is built on its flexibility in the ever-changing global economy.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.
- Dale Carnegie
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
- Winston Churchill
Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.
- Bill Gates
Forty-five years ago, when I was 18, I came to San Francisco by boat and took two weeks to get here. I had a great impression. I think San Francisco is the welcoming gate for people from Asia.
- Tadashi Yanai
I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
- Thomas Edison
In the next decade, I see Spanx going worldwide. Everywhere. No butt left behind. It’s going to be all over the world and it’s going to be an aspirational brand that transcends categories. There’s so many things we can improve upon and make better.
- Sara Blakely
He listened closely to what people said and filed away as much information as he could, repeating valuable information to himself until it was memorized. There was humility in this eagerness to learn. As he said, It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.
- Ron Chernow
To enjoy life, you don’t need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.
- Timothy Ferriss
Small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now).
- Peter Thiel
Ow, ow, OW! On my ear you are!
- Yoda
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be likened to the raindrop, which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed.
- Og Mandino
Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.
- Napoleon Hill
There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.
- Winston Churchill
Shapewear is the canvas and the clothes are the art.
- Sara Blakely
Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!
- Winston Churchill
There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.
- Richard Branson
Maybe you’ve invested a lot of time, effort, money, emotion, and energy in a relationship; you did your best to make it work out. But for some reason, things got off course. And now you feel as though you have been robbed. When we focus on or disappointments, we stop God from ringing fresh new blessing into our lives.
- Joel Olsteen
Ego stops you from getting things done and getting people to work with you. That’s why I firmly believe that ego and success are not compatible.
- Harvey Mackay
On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’
- Michael Bloomberg
Who am I winning for? Am I winning for Oracle shareholders or is it simply a matter of personal vanity? I’ll admit to it. Mea culpa. An awful lot of it is personal vanity.
- Larry Ellison
Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
- John Wooden
To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.
- John C. Maxwell
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
- Sun Tzu
I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control.
- Timothy Ferriss
The stark differences between man and machine mean that gains from working with computers are much higher than gains from trade with other people. We don’t trade with computers any more than we trade with livestock or lamps. And that’s the point: computers are tools, not rivals.
- Peter Thiel
In early 2009, the property market was still being driven by pessimistic sentiment and a wait-and-see attitude, leading to a further drop in the transaction volume.
- Lee Shau Kee
If you count E-mail, I’m on the Internet all day, every day.
- Bill Gates
Buda dijo: El odio nunca es vencido por el odio sino por el amor, y un malentendido no termina nunca gracias una discusión sino gracias al tacto, la diplomacia, la conciliación, y un sincero deseo de apreciar el punto de vista de los demás.
- Dale Carnegie
It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.
- Jeff Bezos
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.
- Seth Godin
I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like ‘Letterman’ and ‘The View,’ and I’ve heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven’t felt any negativity toward me or my music.
- Steve Martin
Be willing to make the mistakes and realizing that something can happen later – the patience are some of the things I would advise.
- Jack Dorsey
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
- Dale Carnegie
The annals of business are filled with stories of companies that thought they had it made and could milk their enterprises without having to bother about improving their products or services. It’s amazing how fast they found their markets disappearing.
- Harvey Mackay
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.
- Bill Gates
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.
- John C. Maxwell
Always try to learn from other peoples mistakes, not your own – It is much cheaper that way!
- Donald Trump
I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t won that AOL deal
- Sergey Brin
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein
The great football coach John Madden was once asked whether he would tolerate a player like Terrell Owens on his team. Owens was both one of the most talented players in the game and one of the biggest jerks. Madden answered, “If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you’ll be so late you’ll miss the game, so you can’t do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you’ll have a player that’s so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.
- Ben Horowitz
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
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
God is directing every one of your steps.
- Joel Olsteen
If I had to do it over again, I would have done the same but earlier. It is never too early to start something. The sooner you begin, the sooner you get your experience.
- Warren Buffett
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
To be sure, real differences of opinion existed between the groups. Compared to pro-life participants, pro-choice participants had more favorable personal attitudes toward the pro-choice issues and less favorable attitudes toward the pro-life issues, and vice versa.
- John Chambers
An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes—the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions. People are quite flexible, in that they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. An employee of IBM, for example, can quite readily change the way he or she works, in order to work successfully in a small start-up company. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Similarly, values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high-margin products, cannot simultaneously accord priority to low-margin products. The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context.
- Clayton M. Christensen
It’s my view that solar energy may be the ultimate solution for energy for most of the world. I believe, based on what little I know about it, that there is a possibility of a breakthrough.
- Donald Bren
I believe in that Old Chinese Proverb, When the student is willing, the teacher appears. But I would add, It also doesn’t hurt to be a little proactive about it.
- David Novak
The spirit of Southwest Airlines is exuberant, it’s caring, it’s dedicated, it’s diligent, it’s fun, it’s rewarding, it’s a joy.
- Herb Kelleher
95% financing arrangement offered by Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited in a period of sustained low interest have added impetus to secondary trading activities in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
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 do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.
- Walt Disney
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
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
The 1990s have a good image. We tend to remember them as a prosperous, optimistic decade that happened to end with the internet boom and bust. But many of those years were not as cheerful as our nostalgia holds. We’ve long since forgotten the global context for the 18 months of dot-com mania at decade’s end.
- Peter Thiel
Here’s a statistician joke for your next hot date: Person A: What happens when Bill Gates walks into a bar of 55 people? Person B: I don’t know. What? Person A: The average net worth jumps to more than a billion dollars!
- Timothy Ferriss
Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.
- Gary Keller
Don’t Hire People Like Yourself.
- Forrest Ray
Men want to make women happy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
God will not pour fresh, creative ideas and blessing into old attitudes.
- Joel Olsteen
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
- Lawrence Bossidy
