Notable Quotables

People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.

- Peter Thiel

Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’.

- Warren Buffett

Bloodshed, gentlemen, no doubt is lamentable. I have seen some of it–more perhaps than many of those who talk about it with such levity. But there are worse things than bloodshed, even on an extreme scale. . . . The trampling down of law and order which, under the conditions of a civilised state, assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–all this would be worse than bloodshed.

- Winston Churchill

I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace – a connection to what matters.

- Oprah Winfrey

Be ‘hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise,’ and people will cherish your words and treasure them and repeat them over a lifetime – repeat them years after you have forgotten them.

- Dale Carnegie

The CIA will only hire people with impeccable credentials to be a translator. ‘Impeccable credentials’ means you’ve never lived outside the United States.

- Michael Bloomberg

Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.

- Ray Dalio

The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.

- Zig Ziglar

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

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

There’s a time that may come in an organization where leading by influence is not enough. When things are not going the way they need to go, there’s a time when one has to step up… to set the organization back on the right direction.

- Abigail Johnson

The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

- Bill Gates

Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.

- Dale Carnegie

I tell my employees that we’re in the service business, and it’s incidental that we fly airplanes.

- Herb Kelleher

Woody’s Allen’s great line about relationships. A relationship is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies. And that’s true about your company.

- Larry Ellison

Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.

- John C. Maxwell

I believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.

- Joel Olsteen

There’s plenty about God that I don’t understand and can’t explain. But I come back to my core belief that God is good, that He’s for us.

- Joel Olsteen

I am not the smartest, but I surround myself with competent people.

- Henry Ford

The things you’re not doing are the things you should actually be focused on.

- Ben Horowitz

Being nice to people is just 20% of providing good customer service. The important part is designing systems that allow you to do the job right the first time. All the smiles in the world aren’t going to help you if your product or service is not what the customer wants,

- James L. Heskett

you don’t need to understand any of the biology, just as you don’t need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven.

- Timothy Ferriss

Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t consciously agree with that statement, your brain sure does.

- Seth Godin

I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.

- Og Mandino

The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.

- Zig Ziglar

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

But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1.

- Peter Thiel

And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…(Yoda pinches Luke’s shoulder)…not this crude matter. (a sweeping gesture) You must feel the Force around you. (gesturing) Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!

- Yoda

Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.

- Dale Carnegie

Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.

- Napoleon Hill

To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.

- George Soros

This is a strange Christmas Eve,”Churchill told the the crowd of several hundred gathered at the mansion’s garden.”Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and with the most terrible weapons which science can devise the nations advance upon each other.

- Winston Churchill

That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.

- Peter Thiel

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.

- Seth Godin

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.

- Larry Ellison

of preparing for defeat, prepare for victory. Prepare for increase. Prepare for God’s favor. You have to set the tone at the start of each day.

- Joel Olsteen

Underneath, you would surely see that the best care passionately about their people—about their growth and success. And you would see that they themselves are comfortable in their own skins. They’re real, filled with candor and integrity, optimism and humanity.

- Jack Welch

The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

- Dale Carnegie

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

- Bill Gates

It’s hard to make a living when you are in school…

- Michael Dell

If you think something hard is impossible, you’ll never even start trying to achieve it. Belief in secrets is an effective truth.

- Peter Thiel

Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.

- Bill Gates

Do not assume anything Obi-Wan. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.

- Yoda

Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.

- Jack Welch

Occasionally a man stumbles over the truth. Most dust themselves off and continue walking as though nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.

- Jeff Bezos

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

- Winston Churchill

My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.

- Timothy Ferriss

The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.

- Winston Churchill

When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.

- Jack Welch

Respect your parents. What they tell you is true. Hard work, dedication and faith will get you anything. Imagination will drive itself. You can get anything you want, but you have to have faith behind all your ideas. Stick to your goals and have an undying faith.

- Russell Simmons

A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn’t depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

I think there will be 20 years of evolution from linear broadcast to internet television.

- Reed Hastings

Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.

- Seth Godin

Shaw once remarked: If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.

- Dale Carnegie

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

A pay increase of 5 percent is more than justified. It would compensate for losses we’ve had in the past and I’d like to be able to buy the everyday things I’ve put off for years, like a new TV.

- Michael Gerber

The lifeblood of job creation in America is small business, but they can’t get access to credit.

- Howard Schultz

I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.

- Bill Gates

Profitability comes from loyalty, productivity, and having a character base from which to work.

- Zig Ziglar

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

- John C. Maxwell

Take one cup of love, two cups of loyalty, three cups of forgiveness, four quarts of faith and one barrel of laughter. Take love and loyalty and mix them thoroughly with faith; blend with tenderness, kindness and understanding. Add friendship and hope. Sprinkle abundantly with laughter. Bake it with sunshine. Wrap it regularly with lots of hugs. Serve generous helpings daily.

- Zig Ziglar

Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s here in the United States.

- Sara Blakely

Never be bothered by what people say, as long as you know in your heart you are right.

- Dale Carnegie

I am wired like a CEO and care a great deal about the bottom line, but I care about my customers even more than that. That’s always been my competitive advantage.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you.

- Zig Ziglar

An employer has no business with a man’s personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance, and nothing else. Any attempt by an employer to go beyond this is usurpation. It is an immoral as well as illegal intrusion of privacy.

- Peter Drucker

If you want to be a Millionaire, start with a billion dollars and launch a new airline.

- Richard Branson

The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems.

- Napoleon Hill

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

I don’t want to hear the specials. If they’re so special, put ’em on the menu.

- Jerry Seinfeld

You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.

- Sergey Brin

Teaching’s hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.

- Bill Gates

Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

People easily confuse skill with personality.

- Jerry Vass

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.

- Gail Devers

If that doesn’t seem dominant enough, consider the fact that the word “google” is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary—as a verb.

- Peter Thiel

We, too, need to be patient, especially when it comes to reaching new goals.

- George Foreman

The slowdown in futures orders clearly signals that revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 1998 will be below our previous expectations. This is largely a result of the slowdown in the Asia Pacific market, where we now anticipate more moderate revenue growth in fiscal 1998 after increasing 84 percent on a constant dollar basis in fiscal 1997.

- Phil Knight

Tip 29 – A good Accountant is not just a scorekeeper.

- Jack Nadel

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

- Bill Gates

If salespeople don’t probe well for background information, they don’t know how to launch the presentation.

- Jerry Vass

Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else.

- Peter Thiel

I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.

- Steve Wozniak

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.

- Zig Ziglar

Inability to make decisions is one of the principal reasons executives fail. Deficiency in decision-making ranks much higher than lack of specific knowledge or technical know-how as an indicator of leadership failure.

- John C. Maxwell

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

- Joel Olsteen

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

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