Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
- Lord Chesterfield
Notable Quotables
I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.
- Jeff Bezos
One clear-cut result is worth a dozen wise precautions.
- Winston Churchill
We did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no planning of products. We did no manufacturing there. The garage didn’t serve much purpose, except it was something for us to feel was our home. We had no money. You have to work out of your home when you have no money.
- Steve Wozniak
Give your subconscious a chance to work by turning your brain off from time to time. Don’t focus on work or solving problems constantly.
- Harvey Mackay
The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.
- Bill Gates
MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.
- Winston Churchill
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
- Donald Trump
Brevity is the soul of wit.
- William Shakespeare
My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.
- Winston Churchill
Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want.
- Timothy Ferriss
Superstition of Prejudice.
- Napoleon Hill
A decade and a half ago an ‘Esquire’ magazine reporter, noting our advertising played up the heros as aspects of great atheletes asked the question, who is your hero? My answer was simple. My college track coach and partner, Bill Bowerman. He had won four national championships, coached more sub four minute milers than anyone when he retired. He was the 1972 Olympic coach yet he insisted he was not a track coach. He was a professor of competitive response.
- Phil Knight
Lanai at one time grew 98% of the world’s pineapples. But the world’s pineapples are now grown in two places, Costa Rica and Panama, because no one wants to spend $45 for a pineapple from the United States.
- Larry Ellison
I have stated that a democracy is always two years behind the dictator.
- Winston Churchill
I am easily satisfied with the very best.
- Winston Churchill
Hay una divinidad que forja nuestros fines, por mucho que queramos alterarlos.
- Dale Carnegie
No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.
- Napoleon Hill
Whether you’re 9 or 90, stop trying to fix the things you’re bad at, and focus on the things you’re good at.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
It is unhealthy to marinate in your own press clippings.
- Sam Walton
Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.
- Steve Ballmer
I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.
- Bill Gates
The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.
- Oprah Winfrey
I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, You deserve to be in the pit.” The Catholic said, You need to suffer while you’re in the pit.” The Baptist said, If you’d been saved, you wouldn’t have fallen into the pit.” The charismatic said, Just confess I’m not in the pit.” The mathematician said, Let me calculate how you fell into the pit.” The IRS agent said, Have you paid taxes on that pit?” The optimist said, Things could be worse.” The pessimist said, Things will get worse.
- Joel Olsteen
If you always think about your dreams or goals, work steadfastly towards them and continue to challenge yourself, you will definitely be able to realise those dreams or goals.
- Tadashi Yanai
In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is.
- Ma Huateng
Youths of today aspire to be like me but they want to achieve it overnight. It’s not going to work.
- Aliko Dangote
While technology is still important, the consumer has to lead innovation.
- Phil Knight
The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.
- Jeff Bezos
I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.
- Elon Musk
Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.
- Bill Gates
One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- Bruce Lee
No, I’m not settling here. I’m going to keep pressing forward.
- Joel Olsteen
Everybody has a product to sell.
- Peter Thiel
The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.
- Seth Godin
If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag.
- Zig Ziglar
Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
- Napoleon Hill
IN A NUTSHELL SIX WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU PRINCIPLE 1 Become genuinely interested in other people. PRINCIPLE 2 Smile. PRINCIPLE 3 Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. PRINCIPLE 4 Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. PRINCIPLE 5 Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. PRINCIPLE 6 Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
Worry is interest paid before it’s due.
- Zig Ziglar
It is the people who control the Government, not the Government the people.
- Winston Churchill
I prefer the old theaters because the audience is… trapped.
- Jerry Seinfeld
TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE Principle 1—Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Principle 2—Give honest and sincere appreciation. Principle 3—Arouse in the other person an eager want.
- Dale Carnegie
When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.
- Ray Dalio
It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
- Warren Buffett
Successful storytelling builds brand equity, and businesses with high brand equity don’t need to draw as much attention to themselves and their achievements as those that are still establishing their value to the customer.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I believe Twitter, right now, is just finishing the venture capital phase, getting into a maturity level.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
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
Buoyant consumer confidence will continue to underpin retial spending and hence rental growth for shopping centres. The office market is expected to perform well on the back of tight supply being met by keen demand from companies looking for expansion opportunities.
- Lee Shau Kee
Egotism and Vanity.
- Napoleon Hill
I get more spam than anyone I know.
- Bill Gates
If you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.
- David Nilssen
Put all excuses aside and remember this: YOU are capable.
- Zig Ziglar
How to walk to Cleveland Shipping is an event. There’s life before you ship and then there’s the moment you ship. And then there’s life after you ship. Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, one step at a time, picking your feet up and putting them down. At the end of the day, twenty miles later, you stop at a hotel. And what happens the next morning? Either you quit the project or you start again, walking to Cleveland. In fact, every step is a new beginning. Sure, you’re closer than you were yesterday or last week, but you’re still heading toward Cleveland. Keep starting until you finish.
- Seth Godin
If you’re passionate about something and you work hard, then I think you will be successful.
- Pierre Omidyar
Starbucks is committed to evolving and enhancing our customer experience with innovative and wholesome food offerings.
- Howard Schultz
Berkshire’s record would have been terrible if Warren didn’t keep learning.
- Charlie Munger
The regulatory systems in place disincentive innovation. It’s intense to fight the red tape.
- Travis Kalanick
Just like Mark Snider told the Board of Elections within a couple hours of when he first became aware of it… first of all, Mike and I didn’t even know anything about this till March 16, … Second of all, nobody benefited from this in any way, shape or form whatsoever.
- Michael Ward
It is simply service that measures success.
- George Washington Carver
I already told you that it is 100% outside buyers.
- Lee Shau Kee
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.
- Benjamin Franklin
Strive to make every person feel special. After all, every person you meet is made in the image of God.
- Joel Olsteen
Every crowd has a silver lining.
- P.T. Barnum
A leader is a dealer in hope.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
The power of this new era is simple: if you want to (need to, must!) lead, then you can. It’s easier than ever and we need you. But if this isn’t the right moment, if this isn’t the right cause, then hold off. Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can.
- Seth Godin
The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.
- Bill Gates
Go from me to we. This is the job of every leader.
- Magic Johnson and David Novak
It’s a matter of invitations versus context. Twitter is really good at providing context, like, I’m having coffee at Third Rail Coffee.’ Foursquare is about invitations to places. In this respect Foursquare has started to replace Yelp for me.
- Jack Dorsey
I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.
- Steve Martin
To be willing to do new things you don’t think you’ll like requires you to prefer the unknown. Not just to tolerate it, but to prefer it. One way to achieve that is to set out to experience things you’re sure you won’t like. To have conversations that are frightening. Becoming generous beyond measure, just to see what happens. And most of all, setting out to fail. Failing helps you see how far is too far, failing helps remind you that failing isn’t fatal, and most of all, failing opens you up to succeeding.
- Seth Godin
Let us work together to take Hong Kong to new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Capital isn’t scarce, vision is.
- Sam Walton
Discipline is hard–harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can’t even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.
- Atul Gawande
You’re only as good as the people you hire.
- Ray Kroc
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
Monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.
- Peter Thiel
Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.
- George Soros
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’
- Peter Drucker
If I’m in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what’s possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that’s a valuable thing.
- Ben Horowitz
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
Like biological evolution, ‘survival of the fittest’ during the course of reformation is to adapt to changes in the surrounding environment and make changes accordingly.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I just am a Democrat. I could never, never be a Republican.
- Anne Cox Chambers
America’s leaders need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.
- Howard Schultz
My biggest crisis is that I don’t understand what young people like.
- Ma Huateng
Personal discipline, when it becomes a way of life in our personal, family, and career lives, will enable us to do some incredible things.
- Zig Ziglar
A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.
- Bob Dylan
Frank Wells 1888 instruction to his agents: The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant in their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all – let them be men, women or children, rich or poor, white or black – it must not be forgotten, that the company is dependent on these people for its business.
- Frank Wells
Well, clearly Apple is a role model of the American innovation whereby it produced all these products – iPod, iPhone, iPad – that are really now dominating all the technology arena in the world.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, ‘You guys are doing too much stuff.’ He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.
- Larry Page
You know, if you look back in the 1930s, the money went to infrastructure. The bridges, the municipal buildings, the roads, those were all built with stimulus money spent on infrastructure. This stimulus bill has fundamentally gone, started out with a $500 rebate check, remember. That went to buy flat-screen TVs made in China.
- Michael Bloomberg
My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.
- Jack Dorsey
Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.
- Ben Horowitz
One of my biggest personal holdings is Rotana. That company has a very dominant force in the Middle East. It has around 45% of all the movie industry and around 75% of all the music.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.
- Seth Godin
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions. 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
Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.
- Lisa Stone
By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: ‘John, I’d love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I’ve got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said ‘no’ yesterday. Gotta run!
- Timothy Ferriss