Notable Quotables

The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald’s the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had, they didn’t want to be bothered with more risks and more demands.

- Ray Kroc

1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.2. A bad plan is better than no plan.3. Competitive markets destroy profits.4. Sales matters just as much as product.

- Peter Thiel

Figure out what the impact areas are in your business.

- Chet Holmes

A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance. This will give her a chance to cancel the meeting if nothing is pressing.

- Ben Horowitz

Companies such as Echelon are poised to help drive this change with Cisco and extend the power of the Internet from business to the home.

- John Chambers

Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing, right into your product or service. Not slapping on marketing as a last-minute add-on, but understanding that if your offering itself isn’t remarkable, it’s invisible.

- Seth Godin

Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.

- Jerry Vass

We’re not in the fashion business, as the Wall Street Journal wrote the other day. We’re in the sports business, and there’s a big difference.

- Phil Knight

In line with the objective to diversify the business of your Group, Henderson Cyber was established to focus on businesses in the telecommunications and information technology fields.

- Lee Shau Kee

For example, a world without secrets would enjoy a perfect understanding of justice. Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few people recognize early on: in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust. At first, only a small minority of abolitionists knew that slavery was evil; that view has rightly become conventional, but it was still a secret in the early 19th century. To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.

- Peter Thiel

The Bible says, See that none of you repays another evil for evil, but always aim to show kindness and seek to do good to one another and to everybody.

- Joel Olsteen

A person’s life is over in 50, 100 years. But a company lives on through the people it is composed of, and SoftBank group has to survive even after I’m gone.

- Masayoshi Son

In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.

- Elon Musk

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

- P.T. Barnum

My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them.

- Russell Simmons

Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with.

- Timothy Ferriss

Young people in China and Hong Kong are the future of the motherland.

- Cheng Yu-tung

When you view marketing from the vantage point of the guerrilla, you realize that it’s your opportunity to help your prospects and customers succeed. They want to succeed at earning more money, building their company, losing weight, attracting a mate, becoming more fit, or quitting smoking. You can help them. You can show them how to achieve their goal. Marketing is not about you. It’s about them. I hope you never forget that.

- Jay Conrad Levinson

We see no indications in the marketplace that the radical Internet business transformation in practices like customer service, supply-chain management, employee training, empowerment, and e-commerce that is taking place around the world today is slowing — in fact, we believe it is accelerating globally.

- John Chambers

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

Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people’s lives.”

- John C. Maxwell

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 we do not have time to do it right the first time when will we have time to come back and do it right again later?

- Lee Cockerell

I’m trying to throw a big broad net to try to get people interested in God and believe that He’s for them and has a purpose.

- Joel Olsteen

The concept of serviced apartments makes economic sense for tenancies of short to medium term duration – a fact many leading Hong Kong and overseas corporations now appreciate.

- Cheng Yu-tung

We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.

- Seth Godin

The reason the social-networking phenomenon is something that I invested in early and massively – I led the Series A financing for Friendster; I founded a company called Socialnet in 1997; I founded LinkedIn; and I was part of the first round of financing in Facebook – it sounds trivial, but people matter.

- Reid Hoffman

Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.

- Leo Burnett

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code – with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It’s very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

- Elon Musk

Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others…He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds – or on persons devoted to them – have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a ‘dirty little atheist’ he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If Paine had ceased his writings with ‘The Rights of Man’ he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But ‘The Age of Reason’ cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen – a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine.I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty.Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of everything bad.The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty – who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause – can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.

- Thomas Edison

There’s an old saying: To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. That’s the nature of the Law of Connection. Always touch a person’s heart before you ask for a hand.

- Michael Levine

Diversification does not mean that we have lost confidence in the long term prospects of the property market. Just the contrary is true.One year after the hand-over of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, the people in Hong Kong and around the world have witnessed the successful implementation of the ‘One Country, Two System.’

- Cheng Yu-tung

Great leaders, like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, also focused on the long term.

- Reed Hastings

You should give 80% of your time and attention to your best 20% of employees. If you have one hundred customers, the top twenty will provide you with 80% of your business.

- John Maxwell

A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know—if anybody does. He said: About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life—and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centered desires.

- Dale Carnegie

“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.

- Sergey Brin

Direct results always come first. In the care and feeding of an organization, they play the role calories play in the nutrition of the human body.

- Peter Drucker

Another noteworthy aspect is the strong free cash flow of more than €2 billion. This enabled us to reduce net indebtedness to its lowest level since 2006.

- Elmar Degenhart

The first dollar is the most you will get if you don’t love what you are doing.

- Ray Kroc

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

- Steve Jobs

Never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, you will be successful.

- Brian Tracy

No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.

- Harvey Mackay

We’re talking about changing every aspect of our lives.

- John Chambers

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

- Joel Olsteen

The pent-up demand for the good life in China is extraordinary.

- Stephen Wynn

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.

- Thomas J Watson

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

- Andrew Carnegie

I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.

- Walt Disney

One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn’t elect those people. Isn’t it supposed to be different? Aren’t we supposed to like the people that we elected?

- Bill Gates

If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it.

- Peter Thiel

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It’s not politically viable; it’s not morally right; it’s just not going to happen.

- Michael Bloomberg

At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.

- George Paz

If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.

- Seth Godin

Enforce functional training by withholding new employee requisitions. As Andy Grove writes, there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. Therefore, training should be the most basic requirement for all managers in your organization. An effective way to enforce this requirement is by withholding new employee requisitions from managers until they’ve developed a training program for the TBH, “To Be Hired.”

- Ben Horowitz

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

- Joel Olsteen

[On becoming in 1969 a full-time employee of his five year old company] There were nervous moments. Every time I brought a fresh letter of credit home and it said, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Knight guarantee liabilities to the tune of $300,000,’ Penny’d say, ‘We don’t have $300,000.’ I’d say, ‘I don’t care. Just sign the thing.’

- Phil Knight

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

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

- Timothy Ferriss

The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.

- Seth Godin

Some of the biggest failures I’ve ever met, are people that have never failed.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Mike suggested that we might want to turn our stockholders’ meetings into an event, and we went along with him.

- Sam Walton

When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.

- Zig Ziglar

You’re asking somebody who has a wife and is really happily married, ‘So, what’s your next wife going to be like?’ And I’m like, ‘What?

- Travis Kalanick

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

- Thomas Edison

We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.

- John Chambers

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth.

- Stephen Wynn

You have to have a dream, whether big or small. Then plan, focus, work hard and be very determined to achieve your goals.

- Henry Sy

With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain market share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device. But a lot of those users are frustrated. They can’t type. They can’t create documents.

- Bill Gates

I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.

- Oprah Winfrey

I don’t think so, in that Virgin is already a global brand. Brands like Amazon have had to spend hundreds of millions of pounds you know, building their brands, whereas Virgin is already well-known around the world.

- Richard Branson

I was leading a lot of idea and the vision for where the product was going. Ev [Evan Williams] was funding and supporting what we were doing. He put the shelter over our heads. And Biz [Stone] was just an amazingly creative guy.

- Jack Dorsey

Why don’t we have enough teachers of math and science in the public schools? One answer is well, if they knew the subject well, they’d also know enough to work for Google or Goldman Sachs or God knows where.

- James Simons

The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully.

- Napoleon Hill

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

- Winston Churchill

To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.

- Peter Thiel

I have this old ’57 Porsche Speedster, and the way the door closes, I’ll just sit there and listen to the sound of the latch going, ‘cluh-CLICK-click.’ That door! I live for that door. Whatever the opposite of planned obsolescence is, that’s what I’m into.

- Jerry Seinfeld

When I hear Mitt Romney say that he believes that Jesus is the Son of God, that He’s the Christ, raised from the dead, that He’s his savior – that’s good enough for me.

- Joel Olsteen

I’ve always been interested in science – one of my favourite books is James Watson’s ‘Molecular Biology of the Gene.

- Bill Gates

It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.

- Harvey Mackay

Founding Fathers of U.S. set up processes, checks and balances designed to insure that their values lived on long after their passing.

- Jim Collins

A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.

- George Soros

Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.

- Seth Godin

My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.

- Elon Musk

Dell will participate in tablets and all sorts of client devices. Our main business is helping our customers secure, protect their data and access it from any device they want to.

- Michael Dell

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