Too often, we have tended to fall into a trap of creating plain hamburgers.
- Tadashi Yanai
Notable Quotables
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.
- Napoleon Hill
The relationships we have with people are extremely important to success on and off the job.
- Zig Ziglar
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
- Warren G. Bennis
Does that mean that we should never hire or promote an inexperienced manager who had not already learned to do what needs to be done in this assignment? The answer: it depends. In a start-up company where there are no processes in place to get things done, then everything that is done must be done by individual people–resources. In this circumstance, it would be risky to draft someone with no experience to do the job–because in the absence of processes that can guide people, experienced people need to lead. But in established companies where much of the guidance to employees is provided by processes, and is less dependent upon managers with detailed, hands-on experience, then it makes sense to hire or promote someone who needs to learn from experience.
- Clayton M. Christensen
TAKE CARE OF THE PEOPLE, THE PRODUCTS, AND THE PROFITS—IN THAT ORDER.
- Ben Horowitz
Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares; just run your company.
- Ben Horowitz
If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.
- Jack Welch
There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
It’s not what I have, but it is who I am.
- Ben Meinhardt
I would prefer not to be involved in party politics.
- George Soros
Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night must fall.
- Yoda
Shaw once remarked: If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.
- Joel Olsteen
The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.
- Seth Godin
If you want to help the poor and our next generation, make investment, reinvestment and businesses welcome.
- Gina Rinehart
Any area of achievement in your life required you to stick with the basics until you became great…it’s not about learning 4,000 moves but about doing just a handful of moves 4,000 times.
- Chet Holmes
I was so mad I ran a personal record.
- Phil Knight
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
- Mark Twain
No alibi will save you from accepting the responsibility.
- Napoleon Hill
I think what we’re lacking in society, not only in the U.S. but also around the world, is to find heroes once again and to celebrate these kind of people.
- Howard Schultz
You will make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.
- Winston Churchill
The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.
- Napoleon Hill
An optimist understands that life can be a bumpy road, but at least it is leading somewhere. They learn from mistakes and failures, and are not afraid to fail again.
- Harvey Mackay
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
- Napoleon Hill
Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.
- Winston Churchill
Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.
- P.T. Barnum
If geek means you’re willing to study things, and if you think science and engineering matter, I plead guilty. If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.
- Bill Gates
I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.
- Elon Musk
I despise research. I think it’s a crutch.
- Howard Schultz
Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.
- Ben Horowitz
I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.
- Larry Ellison
Always remember that your present situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.
- Zig Ziglar
When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.
- Winston Churchill
Because, you know, resilience – if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you’d be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn’t a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
- Jeff Bezos
War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.
- Joel Olsteen
Berkshire’s record would have been terrible if Warren didn’t keep learning.
- Charlie Munger
All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.
- John C. Maxwell
That which becomes acceptable becomes inevitable.
- Michael Levine
A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.
- John C. Maxwell
There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, ‘Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?
- Sara Blakely
In fact, when I look at it today, I realize that so much of what we did in the beginning was really poorly done. But we managed to sell our merchandise as low as we possibly could, and that kept us right-side-up for the first 10 years – that and consistently improving sales in these smaller markets by buildling up our relationship with the customers. The ideas was simple: when customers thought of Wal-Mart, they should think of low prices and satisfaction guaranteed.
- Sam Walton
A man must choose his own way of life, and…it is only by following out one’s own bent that there can be the really harmonious life.
- Winston Churchill
Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.
- Elon Musk
I think faith is incredibly important because you will become overwhelmed with what’s happening and you will have waves of grief, but when you turn to your faith, I believe God will give you waves of grace to get through it.”- Joel Osteen
- Joel Olsteen
Getting over the war was biggest adversity I have ever faced.
- Jack Nadel
The trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.
- Peter Thiel
Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man’s character.
- Thomas Edison
I love making something complex. I love taking everything away, taking all the debris, the conceptual debris from a technology away so that you can just focus on what’s most important.
- Jack Dorsey
The Loire Valley is grossly underestimated. The prices are fair, and the wines are real.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Access to play should be a kid’s inalienable right.
- Phil Knight
On many long journeys have I gone. And waited, too, for others to return from journeys of their own. Some return; some are broken; some come back so different only their names remain.
- Yoda
Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people.
- Dee Hock
An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, “If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea.” Churchill’s response, “Ma’am if you were my wife I would drink it.
- Winston Churchill
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
It’s harder, but we’re still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies, but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you, but, yes, it can still be done. That’s the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur.
- Harold Hamm
Sam hired me in 1970 as a district manager in charge of new store openings. He had eighteen Wal-Marts and some variety stores doing about $31 million a year. I moved my family and as the van was unloading furniture into our rented house, they called from the office and said, Can you set up this new store in Missouri? My wife, who had three babies and a moving van to deal with, helped me find some clothes and I left. I didn’t see her again for two weeks. Then there was a managers’ meeting so I didn’t see her again for two more weeks. It would be safe to say that in those days we all worked a minimum of 16 hours a day.
- Jack Shewmaker
People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell
Sometimes you may have to trade places with someone who is hurting.
- Joel Olsteen
A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.
- John C. Maxwell
My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.
- Elon Musk
You didn’t grow up driving…you figured it out.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I’m so optimistic, I’d go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me.
- Zig Ziglar
If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.
- Elon Musk
You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.
- Zig Ziglar
Mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view. About building a business that works not because of you but without you.
- Michael Gerber
I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons
- Russell Simmons
Always go to the expert.
- Jack Nadel
I fell in love with flora of all types, especially ferns. Loved the sparse structure and repetition of shape – almost fractal.
- Jack Dorsey
the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants.
- Dale Carnegie
I would like to be remembered, if I am remembered at all, as being a catalyst for change in the world, change for good.
- Rupert Murdoch
You have to manage money. Particularly with market economies. You may have a great product, but if your bottom line goes bust, then that’s it.
- Mukesh Ambani
I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.
- Warren Buffett
If you will lie about the little things, before long you’ll lie about bigger things.
- Joel Olsteen
If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible.
- Joel Olsteen
(Wright is) a visionary with a great strategic mind, and he’s a strong business leader with outstanding people skills, … He’s a terrific guy and will be a key force in guiding the company’s future growth.
- Jack Welch
Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
- John C. Maxwell
For those that have fixed exchange-rate regimes, you will need a greater amount of foreign reserves. That’s the case in Belize, it’s the case in the Eastern Caribbean zone and it’s also the case in Barbados. In those cases, the level of reserve coverage is one of credit weakness. Where you have a bit more flexibility in the exchange rate ? for instance, Jamaica ? you would require a smaller amount of international reserves.
- John Chambers
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
- Seth Godin
The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.
- Elon Musk
It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.
- Peter Drucker
Nobody is going to delegate a lot of power to a secretary that they can’t control.
- Michael Bloomberg
Fail openly.
- Jack Dorsey
We fully intend to capitalise on our strengths as this dynamic market continues to flourish.
- Cheng Yu-tung
My own center, my Kingdom Center, which is the highest priced tower in Saudi Arabia, was vacated twice because of terrorist attacks, terrorist threats.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
The bad thing about young people starting a company is that sometimes they do it for the wrong reasons or because they have the wrong skill set, but the good thing is that they don’t have any of the old paradigms baked into them, so they have a lot of the bright new ideas that are harder to come by as you get older.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve already figured out when I’m going to be No. 2 and No. 1.
- Sheldon Adelson
Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.
- Zig Ziglar
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
- Dale Carnegie
Although it’s admirable to be ambitious and hard-working, it’s more desirable to be smart-working.
- John C. Maxwell
The Law of the Garbage Truck,” was this: Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you’ll be happier.
- Joel Olsteen
NO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OR EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK PROCESS Your company now employs twenty-five people and you know that you should formalize the performance management process, but you don’t want to pay the price. You worry that doing so will make it feel like a “big company.” Moreover, you do not want your employees to be offended by the feedback, because you can’t afford to lose anyone right now. And people are happy, so why rock the boat? Why not take on a little management debt? The first noticeable payments will be due when somebody performs below expectations: CEO: “He was good when we hired him; what happened?” Manager: “He’s not doing the things that we need him to do.” CEO: “Did we clearly tell him that?” Manager: “Maybe not clearly . . .” However, the larger payment will be a silent tax. Companies execute well when everybody is on the same page and everybody is constantly improving. In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally across either dimension. Directions with no corrections will seem fuzzy and obtuse. People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of. The ultimate price you will pay for not giving feedback: systematically crappy company performance.
- Ben Horowitz
Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today.
- Peter Thiel
My parents got one bedroom, my three sisters got the other bedroom, and my brother and I made do with a rollaway in the kitchen.
- David Green
If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
- Winston Churchill
Our customers call and e-mai us to say that’s how it feels when a Zappos box arrives. And that’s how we view this company.
- Tony Hsieh
The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.
- John C. Maxwell
