In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.
- Phil Knight
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
Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.
- Bill Gates
Improvement is to invent something completely new.
- Peter Thiel
In the short term, the market is a popularity contest. In the long term, the market is a weighing machine.
- Warren Buffett
We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.
- John Chambers
No effort has been spared in ensuring the best designs for all our projects.
- Lee Shau Kee
I always try to acknowledge what someone’s done well before talking about what could be done better. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands
- David Novak
Excepting for reading my numbers on Saturday morning and going to our regular meetings, I don’t have much of a routine for anything else. I always carry my little tape recorder on trips, to record ideas that come up in my conversations with the associates. I usually have my yellow legal pad with me, with a list of ten or fifteen things we need to be working on as a company. My list drives the executives around here crazy, but it’s probably one of my more important contributions.
- Sam Walton
It’s not the situation, but whether we react negative or respond positive to the situation that is important.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.
- John D. Rockefeller
My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.
- Jerry Seinfeld
We saw – we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.
- Larry Ellison
Mind you, I got this reduction without saying a word about what I wanted. I talked all the time about what the other person wanted and how he could get it.
- Dale Carnegie
Lack of Self-Discipline.
- Napoleon Hill
Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect.
- Ben Horowitz
How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That’s a really, really, really large and complex set of skills. A lot of it is on-the-job training, combined with excellent mentorship.
- Ben Horowitz
The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.
- Jeff Bezos
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
We’re totally legal, like totally legal, and the government is telling us to shut down. And you can either do what they say or you can fight for what you believe.
- Travis Kalanick
Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
TV is a great big megaphone,” and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find.
- Peter Thiel
The lower and individual’s ability to lead, the lower the lid on his potential.
- John Maxwell
The secret of your success is found in your daily routine
- John Maxwell
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
- Steve Martin
Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
- Timothy Ferriss
The real estate market in mainland China, however, experienced a dramatic change during the past year. In the second half of 2007, transacted prices in many cities had been repeatedly bid up to all time highs as a result of fierce competition at land auctions. The subsequent upsurge in housing prices, which were beyond the affordability of the general public, resulted in an overheated property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along with it.
- Walt Disney
Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It’s really that easy – and that’s what I do.
- Timothy Ferriss
An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project.
- Ben Horowitz
There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.
- Bill Gates
Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie until you can find a rock.
- Will Rogers
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
- Walt Disney
When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.
- Joel Olsteen
We’re all obsessed with ideas because ideas, not products, are the engine of our new economy.
- Seth Godin
Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn vos Savant
The U.S. couldn’t even get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we all know that the EU is just a passing fad. They’ll be killing each other again in less than a year. I’m sick to death of all these fascist lawsuits.
- Bill Gates
Many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.
- Peter Thiel
At your next sales meeting with 20 people, three will take home the money of 17 others. Is it luck, hard work and a great attitude? Or it is persuasive skill – understanding the transactional dynamics of the sales process?
- Jerry Vass
The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can’t bit a target that you can’t see. If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.
- Zig Ziglar
20% of what you do accounts for 80% of your results
- Brian Tracy
You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure.
- Zig Ziglar
Cherish each hour of this day for it can never return.
- Og Mandino
Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t consciously agree with that statement, your brain sure does.
- Seth Godin
Maui reminded me of San Diego: beautiful, but crowded.
- Larry Ellison
By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.
- Bill Gates
The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.
- Rupert Murdoch
Keep the right perspective Some people would love to have your problems. They would gladly trade places with you. They would love to have the job that frustrates you. They would love to sit in traffic in that car you don’t like. They would love to have your husband, who gets on your nerves. They would love to live in the house you think is too small.
- Joel Olsteen
When you stop planning and preparing . . . you stop winning.
- Zig Ziglar
We know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition.
- Peter Thiel
Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.
- Seth Godin
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
- Henry Ford
If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.
- Bill Gates
When you are full of pride on the inside, it makes you stiff, stubborn, and creates strife with others.
- John C. Maxwell
Be reactionary. React to what the market wants. And the market wants one-on-one real time engagement. Now that we have the tools to engage, I’m going to continue fighting for the end user.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.
- Winston Churchill
I’m a normal guy.
- Jack Ma
I learned that people don’t buy anything from unknown stores.
- Tadashi Yanai
There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‘The government’s corrupt,’ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.
- Bill Gates
I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.
- Rupert Murdoch
Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.
- Elon Musk
If you don’t have ambition, you should not be alive.
- Aliko Dangote
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
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
- Jack London
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
No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a Pleasing Personality.
- Napoleon Hill
Don’t equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don’t let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you’d like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.
- Harvey Mackay
I’ve run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over. I’ve had that happen to me, and I’ve seen it happen to other people. I find it fascinating.
- Steve Martin
Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates’ colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.
- Peter Drucker
lasting transformations from good to great follow a general pattern of buildup followed by breakthrough.
- James C. Collins
My mission is not to forbid French art. If the quality is there, I buy; if the quality isn’t there, I don’t.
- Francois Pinault
I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years – part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.
- Peter Thiel
The employees who share innovative ideas may also be the folks who have some hidden talents that would help incorporate their suggestions.
- Harvey Mackay
Take unorthodox ideas seriously today, and the mainstream sees that as a sign of progress. We can be glad that there are fewer crazy cults now, yet that gain has come at great cost: we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t be impatient. It’s not over until God says it’s over.
- Joel Olsteen
About two-thirds of us work between forty-five and fifty-five hours per week.
- Thomas J Stanley
Do the Right Thing.
- Phil Knight
Certainly, the Windows share of servers is strong.
- Bill Gates
Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.
- Walt Disney
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
From my experience, there are so many regulations for investing in the United States that they become an impediment, a barrier to investing.
- Michael Otto
Allowing your kids to watch TV doesn’t have to mean they have no choice but to see commercials for junk food and alcohol.
- Charles Ergen
We’d like to believe that efficient, useful, cost-effective products and services are the way to succeed. That hard work is its own reward. Most marketers carry around a worldview that describes themselves as innovators, not storytellers.
- Seth Godin
The biggest part of my job now is to quickly develop successors, and around the world I am working to develop new business leaders in the company.
- Tadashi Yanai
I hope you will take good care of your health, this is religious duty, and you can accomplish so much for the world if you keep well and strong.
- John D. Rockefeller
“Pick me, pick me” acknowledges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone else to initiate. Even better, “pick me, pick me” moves the blame from you to them. If you don’t get picked, it’s their fault, not yours. If you do get picked, well, they said you were good, right? Not your fault anymore. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
The first dollar is the most you will get if you don’t love what you are doing.
- Ray Kroc
1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.
- Peter Thiel
Ill Health (though not taking care of one’s body).
- Napoleon Hill
Be careful not to compromise what you want most for what you want now.
- Zig Ziglar
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
It was definitely kind of surprising to see us come out and run the ball because we usually like to pass to start the game and put up some quick points. But tonight, we had real good balance offensively. We ran and passed the ball well, which kept them off balance all night.
- Jack Taylor
God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.
- Joel Olsteen
Flavor is, counterintuitively, less than 10% taste and more than 90% smell.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you truly love what you are doing, why stop?
- Barry Schwartz
The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
- Timothy Ferriss
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems.
- Napoleon Hill
