Notable Quotables

The first thing to recognize is that no startup has time to do optional things.

- Ben Horowitz

If you’re changing the world, you’re working on important things. You’re excited to get up in the morning.

- Larry Page

Don’t grow accustomed to living with less, doing less, and being less to the point that you eventually sit back and accept it.

- Joel Olsteen

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

I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.

- George Soros

It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.

- Seth Godin

You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance.

- Peter Thiel

A valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.

- Peter Thiel

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

Many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.

- Peter Thiel

But there seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence, his imagination or his knowledge.

- Peter Drucker

The beauty of this deal is bringing a clinical expertise. Medco had developed therapeutic resource centers, where they got their pharmacist to have specialties in things like diabetes, heart problems and asthma. Express Scripts took a different approach. We tried to understand why people do what they do with behavioral economics, which is: What drives human behaviors? What drives people to do what they did? By combining those two pieces, we get that much stronger.

- George Paz

[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.

- Jack Dorsey

The record results for the third quarter once again demonstrate the ability of GE’s diverse mix of leading global businesses to deliver top-line growth, increased margins and strong cash generation.

- Jack Welch

The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.

- Michael Bloomberg

We believe the competitive and economic environment will remain very challenging in the year ahead. Whilst we think we have the opportunity to make improvements to some of our ranges, we are still budgeting on the basis of negative like-for-like retail sales for the year.

- Simon Wolfson

I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.

- Jeff Bezos

The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo, the job is to invent the status quo.

- Seth Godin

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

Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.

- Peter Drucker

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

If you have a lot of [visionaries], you’ll have a lot of great ideas, something awesome that people will love; but you never get it done. It doesn’t ship. Nothing happens. If you have too many [execution oriented] people on your team, you’re executing like mad, things are getting built, and you’re shipping like crazy – but you’re building something that nobody wants. If you have a good balance of both in your company, you’re more likely to stay on track. Those people compliment each other.

- Caterina Fake

I DECLARE that God has a great plan for my life. He is directing my steps. And even though I may not always understand how, I know my situation is not a surprise to God. He will work out every detail to my advantage. In His perfect timing, everything will turn out right. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

The market’s going to move with tremendous speed. If there is such a thing as a killer app, video is it.

- John Chambers

God wants us to live consistently, He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives.

- Joel Olsteen

A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your people know what they’re doing.

- Michael Gerber

Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.

- Peter Thiel

The Interros strategy toward various assets generally depends on the stage of their development and level of their maturity.

- Vladimir Potanin

Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.

- Howard Schultz

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

- Dale Carnegie

They have done great things within what you would call established American sports. Freddy has the potential to bring soccer almost for the first time into the public’s consciousness. Soccer in the United States isn’t really part of the culture. What it needs, I think, is a superhero, and he clearly could be it. Now, that’s putting a lot of pressure on him, but the kid’s got all the potential to do that.

- Phil Knight

You reach a point where you don’t work for money.

- Walt Disney

Saudi Arabia has stability. The social contract and the political contract between the king and the rulers and the royal family and the ruled people in Saudi Arabia is very strong and the bondage is so solid.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

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

Well, you have the public not wanting any new spending, you have the Republicans not wanting any new taxes, you have the Democrats not wanting any new spending cuts, you have the markets not wanting any new borrowing, and you have the economists wanting all of the above. And that leads to paralysis.

- Michael Bloomberg

I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.

- Reed Hastings

Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I’d do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.

- Steve Martin

Any version of Windows is going to have lots of great new things that people use and things that are tough.

- Bill Gates

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

- Sam Walton

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

Most often I am only interested in an idea if it’s going to get hundreds of millions of users. That’s the scale that I am always trying to play to.

- Reid Hoffman

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

(after listening to people gripe and complain just smile and remember) Crows can’t hang with eagles.

- Joel Olsteen

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

- Seth Godin

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

- Mark Twain

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

- Andrew Carnegie

Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls– family, health, friends, integrity– are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered

- Gary Keller

In motivating people, you’ve got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example – and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved.

- Rupert Murdoch

a greater way. Take a few minutes every day to dream big dreams; close your eyes, and envision your dreams coming to pass. Envision yourself out of debt. Envision yourself breaking that addiction. Envision your marriage being more fulfilled. Envision yourself rising to new levels in your career. If you can establish that picture in your heart and mind, then God can begin to bring it to pass in your life.

- Joel Olsteen

I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work. And I taught myself how to program so I can understand how the city works.

- Jack Dorsey

Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.

- Jack Welch

There are two paths people can take. They can either play now and pay later, or pay now and play later. Regardless of the choice, one thing is certain. Life will demand a payment.

- John C. Maxwell

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.

- Sid Caesar

This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.

- John Chambers

It’s not what you’ve got. It’s what you use that makes a difference.

- Zig Ziglar

Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.

- Seth Godin

A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.

- Peter Drucker

I built a steel plant from the grassroots, so I learned all the nuts and bolts. When there was a problem, I would be able to guide them, though I am not a technical person.

- Lakshmi Mittal

Word of mouth works now, much more than ever. @-reply every single person.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individuals and businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators.

- Peter Thiel

If the United States has to accept the U.N. resolutions, we have to generalize it across the board. We can’t just pick and choose where we impose and accept the U.N. resolution and don’t accept them. U.N. Resolution 242 is very clear and states very clearly that Israel has to go back to the borders of the pre-war of 1967.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

If a man’s heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can’t win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don’t want to change their minds. They can’t be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.

- Dale Carnegie

In philosophy, politics, and business, too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.

- Peter Thiel

In bad times and good, I have never lost my sense zest for life

- Walt Disney

He has always been like this. His mind works ten times faster than everybody’s else’s. I mean he just gets going and stays two or three jumps ahead, and he’s quick to go with what’s on his mind. If he gets something in his mind that needs to be done – regardless of what else might have been planned – the new idea takes priority, and it has to be done now. Everybody has their angenda already scheduled, and then bang! He just calls a meeting on something. (on CEO leadership and management with speed)

- Loretta Boss Parker

The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.

- Zig Ziglar

Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.

- Napoleon Hill

It’s about stories. If I can tell the story to America, whether it’s Riesling or a boxer from Harlem, it will sell. I know on my gravestone it’s going to be, ‘Storyteller.’

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.

- Bill Gates

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

- Mark Zuckerberg

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

You have no ability, if you’re a financial institution and you’re threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.

- Warren Buffett

We hate bureaucracy and all the nonsense that comes with it.

- Jack Welch

Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.

- Peter Thiel

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

A smart, motivational good manager can work what some outsiders call Wal-Mart magic with folks everywhere. It make take more time. You may have to sift through more people, and you may have to become more skilled with your hiring practices. But I truly believe that people anywhere will eventually respond to the same sorts of motivational techniques we use, if they are treated right and are given the opportunities to be properly trained. If you are good to people, and fair with them, and demanding of them, they will eventually decide you’re on their side.

- Sam Walton

The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there’s no ball, there’s no game. Bullies hate that. So they’ll either behave so they can play with you or they’ll go bully someone else.

- Seth Godin

wouldn’t that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling the time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone?

- James C. Collins

What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs. And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost. That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.

- Michael Gerber

Too often, that solution is nothing more than adding another layer. What you should be doing is going to the source of the problem to fix it, and sometimes that requires shooting the culprit,

- Sam Walton

The bible says no man can take your joy. That means no person can make you live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force you to live in despair. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of wheelchair-bound President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

- Joel Olsteen

This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

- James C. Collins

We’ve all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight. It’s a terrible sin. If you don’t make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn’t count.

- Jack Welch

When you catch a glimpse of your potential, that’s when passion is born.

- Zig Ziglar

Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity.

- P.T. Barnum

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

- Winston Churchill

Bill Gates was in his 20s when he started with $50,000 and became the richest man in the world with $90 billion. It’s a good idea that he did not ask too many people for their ideas on what they thought was possible for his life.

- Robert Kiyosaki

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