Notable Quotables

Don’t treat your customers like a bunch of purses and wallets.

- Chris Brogan

The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks.

- Andrew Carnegie

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The fallout from the US sub-prime issue, turbulence on global financial markets and the resulting credit tightening, slow-down in the global economies and increasing inflationary pressure all threaten to pose a drag on the economic growth in Hong Kong.

- Lee Shau Kee

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.

- Napoleon Hill

The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: ‘Does your teacher use class time well?’ and, ‘When you’re confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?

- Bill Gates

Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.

- Warren Buffett

I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.

- Mark Zuckerberg

As an entrepreneur, remove obstacles for your team. If there is anything that is holding the team back, get it out of the way.

- David Nilssen

In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.

- Reed Hastings

Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring.

- Seth Godin

We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.

- Larry Page

The debt limits have to come down. The whole world of debt has to be changed as far as this country is concerned. We have to create jobs and we have to create them rapidly because if we don’t things are just going to head in a direction that’s going to be almost impossible to recover from.

- Donald Trump

Our goal all along was that fans would come in and wouldn’t notice any loss of amenities there for them, and I’m very comfortable that’s going to be the case.

- Ed Clark

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

- Aristotle

Medicare and Medicaid costs are skyrocketing. The cost of compliance with some pretty tough rules has become very costly. If I’m small, I have to spend the same amount of money to comply with Medicare, whether I’m 10 members or if I’m 10 million.

- George Paz

I’m sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn’t on our radar screen. We were just making great software.

- Bill Gates

Southwest consistently turns a profit because they have an employee ownership program that gives their employees a sense of ownership that is very real. When the company does well financially, the employees do well financially. When the company struggles, the employees struggle.

- Clay Clark

Look at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. They have all entered many sectors, and actually, in many of those sectors, they weren’t as early as Tencent.

- Ma Huateng

Show a real interest in his problem and helping him solve it.

- Jack Nadel

Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.

- Ben Horowitz

This first time through has been hectic, but I expect it to be more stream-lined next year.

- Jack Taylor

I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….

- Thomas Edison

I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple. Jesus didn’t go around condemning people.

- Joel Olsteen

Steve Jobs didn’t really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don’t deny that.

- Steve Wozniak

So long as I can stay mentally alert – inquiring, curious – I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don’t want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I’m just not ready to stop, to die.

- Rupert Murdoch

Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.

- Cheng Yu-tung

For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn boat.

- Tony Hsieh

The invaders brought into Britain a principle common to all Germanic tribes, namely, the use of the money power to regulate all the legal relations of men. If there was any equality it was equality within each social grade. If there was liberty it was mainly liberty for the rich. If there were rights they were primarily the rights of property. There was no crime committed which could not be compounded by a money payment.

- Winston Churchill

There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.

- Ray Dalio

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

- John D. Rockefeller

I’m a strange mixture of my mother’s curiosity; my father, who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family, who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility; and my mother’s father, who was always in trouble with gambling debts.

- Rupert Murdoch

I’m just like so many women – I was frustrated, I had these white pants that I had spent a lot of money on, and you get home and you think, ‘What am I really supposed to wear under this?’ So it was a frustrated consumer moment.

- Sara Blakely

Basically, our goal is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful.

- Larry Page

They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.

- Winston Churchill

Get through your fears and the world will open up. Give in to your fears and your world will get smaller every year.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Niklas Zennstroem has a thorough background as a successful entrepreneur with extensive expertise in areas such as IT and online.

- Stefan Persson

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

Satan knows, if you are against YOURSELF you will never fulfill your destiny. :(

- Joel Olsteen

Cold steel and discipline and the slight capital surplus necessary to move and organise armies constituted the sole defences.

- Winston Churchill

Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive. This facility makes it the most versatile and explicit means of communication yet devised for quick mass appreciation.

- Walt Disney

It is always important that we have transparency, that we have shareholder protection. Then again, I think it is important that there are not so many regulations that management can’t make a decision without asking a lawyer whether he can do it.

- Michael Otto

You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.

- Zig Ziglar

You cannot expect to live a positive life if you hang with negative people.

- Joel Olsteen

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

- Warren Buffett

Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy

- Jim Rohn

The most valuable companies in the future won’t ask what problems can be solved with computers alone. Instead, they’ll ask: how can computers help humans solve hard problems?

- Peter Thiel

Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.

- Peter Thiel

Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it? The first and the last of these are too often overlooked—with dire results.

- Peter Drucker

Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurt his sense of importance and arouses resentment.

- Dale Carnegie

To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.

- Peter Thiel

You’ve got to take a big jump to make it. You’ve got to have great big balls.

- Forrest Ray

Games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Great foresight is required to run a multinational corporation. A magnificent blueprint, a loyal team and a well-coordinated organization are the three indispensable factors, and the same applies from ruling a country to maintaining a family.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.

- Steve Martin

Hosting the Oscars is much like making love to a woman. It’s something I only get to do when Billy Crystal is out of town.

- Steve Martin

People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they’re not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter.

- Seth Godin

I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.

- Elon Musk

I’m going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.

- Joel Olsteen

In many places where coffee is grown, deforestation is a major issue. With Starbucks’ position in the marketplace and the respect and relationships we have, we can – and have, in some cases – been able to educate and influence people.

- Howard Schultz

We can never learn too much of His will towards us, too much of His messages and His advice. The Bible is His word and its study gives at once the foundation for our faith and an inspiration to battle onward in the fight against the tempter.

- John D. Rockefeller

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

The Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own.

- Peter Thiel

Once we assembled the entire package, Mike named it Netscape SuiteSpot, as it would be the “suite” that displaced Microsoft’s BackOffice. We lined everything up for a major launch on March 5, 1996, in New York. Then, just two weeks before the launch, Marc, without telling Mike or me, revealed the entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is. We are getting killed killed killed out there. Our current product is radically worse than the competition. We’ve had nothing to say for months. As a result, we’ve lost over $3B in market capitalization. We are now in danger of losing the entire company and it’s all server product management’s fault. Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you, Marc I received this email the same day that Marc appeared barefoot and sitting on a throne on the cover of Time magazine. When I first saw the cover, I felt thrilled. I had never met anyone in my life who had been on the cover of Time. Then I felt sick. I brought both the magazine and the email home to Felicia to get a second opinion. I was very worried. I was twenty-nine years old, had a wife and three children, and needed my job. She looked at the email and the magazine cover and said, “You need to start looking for a job right away.” In the end, I didn’t get fired and over the next two years, SuiteSpot grew from nothing to a $400 million a year business. More shocking, Marc and I eventually became friends; we’ve been friends and business partners ever since. People often ask me how we’ve managed to work effectively across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.

- Ben Horowitz

Cisco will be well placed to continue building our presence in India as a critical part of our research and development efforts and as domestic market for networking products and solutions continues to expand.

- John Chambers

Let your motto then always be ‘Excelsior’, for by living up to it there is no such word as fail.

- P.T. Barnum

When state funding for Irvine public schools began to diminish some time ago, my Irvine Company colleagues helped me to provide private funding support for continuation of basic science, art and music programs that had been eliminated by lack of state funding.

- Donald Bren

If you will focus on meeting other people’s needs, God will always make sure your needs are supplied. God will take care of your problems for you.

- Joel Olsteen

Send out a cheerful, positive greeting, and most of the time you will get back a cheerful, positive greeting. It’s also true that if you send out a negative greeting, you will, in most cases, get back a negative greeting.

- Zig Ziglar

Determine your destiny or somebody else will.

- Jack Welch

This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing.

- Bill Gates

Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company.

- Tadashi Yanai

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

(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

Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that’s what I think keeps me hungry.

- Warren Buffett

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

- Napoleon Hill

You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.

- Gary Keller

The first thing I ever invested in was Twitter. Blaine Cook, former CTO, was leaving the company and asked me if I wanted to buy his stock.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The secret to modern life is finding the measure in time management. I have two kids, career and I travel, and I don’t think my life is any different than most couples. The most valuable commodity now for many people is time and how to parcel that out.

- Hugh Jackman

I’ve seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all.

- Timothy Ferriss

One who starts a business without written plans of any kind, without a pro-forma or any concept of their overall profitability per customer, yet believes that if they work hard enough and give enough money away to those in need that eventually they will not be in need.

- Clay Clark

Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.

- Winston Churchill

I’m constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don’t train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.

- Zig Ziglar

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

- Dale Carnegie

When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges.

- Jack Handee

Remember the proverb of Solomon: “He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand; but the hand of the diligent maketh rich.

- P.T. Barnum

Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.

- Reid Hoffman

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