As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Notable Quotables
The third way is less common and certainly less of a layup—a culture of integrity, meaning a culture of honesty, transparency, fairness, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. In such cultures, there can be no head fakes or winks. People who break the rules do not leave the company for “personal reasons” or to “spend more time with their families.” They are hanged—publicly—and the reasons are made painfully clear to everyone.
- Jack Welch
There are certain things I will automate, but when it comes to quality control, I want to keep a very close eye.
- Timothy Ferriss
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.
- Henry Ford
Getting things straight in your head is a major achievement because there’s so much clutter out there. You’ve got to push aside the static to really hear the music.
- Stephen Wynn
I was not strong enough to defeat him. Like his master before him, be destroyed, he must.
- Yoda
Success is not measured by what you do compared to what others do, it is measured by what you do with the ability God gave you.
- Zig Ziglar
Google’s done a super good job on search. Apple’s done a great job on the iPod.
- Bill Gates
Several families interviewed for this book recommended the oldest persuasive tool known to man: bribery. Each child is given some amounts of virtual cash, 25-30 cents, for each hour of good behaviour. The same amount is subtracted from their accounts for breaking the rules. All purchases for fun – whether souvenirs, ice cream, or otherwise – come out of their own individual accounts. No balance, no goodies. This often requires more self-control on the part of the parents than the children.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
People don’t want lots and lots of single purpose devices. They do not want to have to learn how to set up something for photos, another thing for music, another thing for video.
- Bill Gates
Some conflicts are simply territorial. For instance, I’ve rarely met a marketing person who wanted to raise prices and I’ve rarely met a finance person who wanted to lower prices.
- David Novak
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
- Winston Churchill
I’m truly passionate about basketball. I’m not as passionate about baseball as I am about basketball, but I watch baseball and I watch football. I love sports in general.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.
- Peter Drucker
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
If you find yourself plagued by a recurrent worry, train yourself to think of something else. Your conscious mind can concentrate on only one thought at a time, and driving the negativity away will free you up to move forward again.
- Harvey Mackay
As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay.
- Ben Horowitz
Exposure from a young age to the realities of the world is a super-big thing.
- Bill Gates
Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP.
- Peter Thiel
When we don’t forgive, we’re not hurting the other person. We’re not hurting the company that did us wrong. We’re not hurting God. We’re only hurting ourselves.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.
- Bill Gates
How we respond to the opportunities and challenges of the outside world now determines how much the outside world values us.
- Seth Godin
We all know now that the 747 became the flagship jumbo jet of the airline industry, but the decision looks much different from the perspective of the late 1960s. Yet—and this is the key point—Boeing was willing to make the bold move in the face of the risks. As in Boeing’s case, the risks do not always come without pain.
- James C. Collins
It’s difficult for any single company to develop all the applications and services.
- Ma Huateng
I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.
- Ronald Perelman
With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks.
- Howard Schultz
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
- Jeff Bezos
Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding entirely new categories of abundance to the world. Creative monopolies aren’t just good for the rest of society, they’re powerful engines for making it better.
- Peter Thiel
You didn’t grow up driving…you figured it out.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The student who elects to risk it all—which is nothing—to establish an online video rental service that delivers $5,000 per month in income from a small niche of Blu-ray aficionados, a two-hour-per-week side project that allows him to work full-time as an animal rights lobbyist.
- Timothy Ferriss
In a world of gigantic administrative bureaucracies both public and private, searching for a new path might seem like hoping for a miracle.
- Peter Thiel
Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.
- Jack Ma
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
- Henry Ford
My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
- Michael Gerber
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.
- Henry Ford
There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?
- Warren Buffett
Save them [Luke and Leia], we must. They are our last hope.
- Yoda
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
- Dale Carnegie
The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
- Jerry Seinfeld
And being as wicked as any man who ever lived, he exploited his advantage to the full.
- Winston Churchill
In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.
- Harry Truman
You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
The three short years I spent at Harvard, where I lived with excellent people, taught me not only that I must know how to choose my partners but also that choosing excellent partners is a skill you can learn. Obviously, when you spend time with the best, you learn how to choose among them.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
It’s no use saying, “We are doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
- Winston Churchill
Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.
- Joel Olsteen
If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.
- Elon Musk
God’s desire is that we excel.
- Joel Olsteen
What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You cannot underestimate people’s ability to spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away. It’s a big reason why so many companies that have dipped a toe in social media waters have failed miserably.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Don’t ally your personal interests with the development of the company.
- Wang Jianlin
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless.
- Warren Buffett
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
- Benjamin Franklin
When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate.
- Seth Godin
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.
- Bill Gates
For PayPal to work, we needed to attract a critical mass of at least a million users. Advertising was too ineffective to justify the cost. Prospective deals with big banks kept falling through. So we decided to pay people to sign up. We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend. This got us hundreds of thousands of new customers and an exponential growth rate.
- Peter Thiel
The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
- Winston Churchill
My worry about the New York Times is that it’s got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we’d love to challenge it.
- Rupert Murdoch
Communications and the exchange of value – they’re both foundational, essential things to our civilization. When you simplify those, when you get down to the essence, you fix so many things.
- Jack Dorsey
Out that expending emotional labor, working without a map, and driving in the dark involve confronting fear and living with the pain of vulnerability. The artist comes to a détente with these emotions and, instead of fighting with them, dances with them. The linchpin connects as a result of the indispensable nature of her contribution. The artist, on the other hand, connects because that’s what art is. The artist touches part of what it means to be truly human and does that work again and again.
- Seth Godin
The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
And if I were the president, I’d go out there and I’d emphasize the things I have done, and I’d say, ‘Some things haven’t worked, and I’m sorry about that, but I keep trying.’ And I’m – and I think the president is a very viable candidate, and you’re going to have a real horse race here no matter who the Republican nominee is.
- Michael Bloomberg
One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But… I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
- Thomas Edison
I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how many times you failed…You only have to be right once…I was an idiot lots of times, and I learned from them all.
- Mark Cuban
Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
- Elon Musk
I think it is a sad day for the company and we are going to miss him. But, typically of him, he has planned his own succession immaculately. We will have a dinner and a nice party for him.
- Simon Wolfson
If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved. The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.
- Ben Horowitz
More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
If people look inward, they would see the opportunities for greatness.
- Aliko Dangote
It is crucial that rappers have the chance to express the truth that is in their heart.
- Russell Simmons
Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee.
- Howard Schultz
I’m a genetic optimist.
- Jeff Bezos
Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.
- John D. Rockefeller
We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
- Jack Welch
I still get real nervous when I go in front of more than two people.
- Phil Knight
Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
- Confucius
Practice is simply preparation for success.
- Zig Ziglar
If he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.
- Peter Thiel
It’s always darkest before the dawn.
- Anonymous
An enterprise shall take care of the people’s livelihood, through thick and thin…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Once you hit the critical mass, you can’t push it much further. Otherwise the meaning gets fuzzy and confused, and before long, the brand is on the way out.
- Phil Knight
Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.
- Seth Godin
I am going to enjoy some other things apart from business.
- Jack Ma
Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn’t an artist, he was a plumber.
- Seth Godin
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to gain mighty triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither gain much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows not victory or defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt
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
I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.
- George Soros
I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.
- Bill Gates
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
Since most people have not been taught how to make mistakes and learn from them, they either avoid making mistakes altogether, which is a bigger mistake, or they make a mistake but fail to find the lesson from the mistakes.
- Robert Kiyosaki
We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.
- Jerry Seinfeld
