Notable Quotables

Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure – the law firms, the real estate, all that – that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.

- Elon Musk

The bad thing about young people starting a company is that sometimes they do it for the wrong reasons or because they have the wrong skill set, but the good thing is that they don’t have any of the old paradigms baked into them, so they have a lot of the bright new ideas that are harder to come by as you get older.

- Ben Horowitz

The truth is that finding happiness in what you do every day is so imperative.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

You are at the top when: You have made friends with your past, are focused on the present, and are optimistic about your future.

- Zig Ziglar

Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.

- Peter Drucker

One of the greatest failures to execute is the lack of follow-up. This seems so obvious, yet very few companies place as much emphasis on accountability as they do on figuring what they want to get done. Steve Reinemund, who was president of Pizza Hut when I was head of marketing there, is the best I’ve ever seen on this front. He always carried a three-by-five note card in his shirt pocket. When saw something that needed to be done, he’d pull out the card and write it down. Like everyone else who witnessed this, I quickly realized that I had better write down the same things because he’d surely be on me until they got done. Steve got results everywhere he went, whether it was as president of Pizzas Hut or Frito-Lay or chairman of PepsiCo, because he made a point of following up. People often lose track of what they’ve talked about in meetings of what they promised to do, but when you write it down, you won’t forget it.

- David Novak

Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power.

- Joel Olsteen

The future of the world’s film industry is in China because we have 1.3 billion people.

- Wang Jianlin

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, ‘Goodbye, Daddy!’ and I frowned, and said in reply, ‘Hold your shoulders back!’ Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. ‘What is it you want?’ I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed! It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: ‘He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!’ I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much. Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. ‘To know all is to forgive all.

- Dale Carnegie

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

- Winston Churchill

I never worry because I know who I am and I know Whose I am.

- Zig Ziglar

I have a list of the hardest, most challenging problems that our company needs to solve and I start at the top and work my way down. And I have a list of the coolest most fascinating things that we can invent and I start at the top of the list and I work my way down.

- Travis Kalanick

We can schedule for it. Thursday, April 3rd, 3:05…start something. We can train for it, plan for it, announce it, and even hire for it. If initiating is as essential to the modern organization as it appears, we better be doing all of that and more.

- Seth Godin

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.

- Elon Musk

Selling is problem solving, not hustling. Aggressiveness propels you into the mean streets, but ruin sales.

- Jerry Vass

Complaints are your best learning opportunity

- Bill Gates

We can be certain that cities around the world will compete for the jobs that the next revival of the financial services industry will bring.

- Michael Bloomberg

For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.

- James C. Collins

Being able to quit things that don’t work is integral to being a winner.

- Timothy Ferriss

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: —There spread a cloud of dust along a plainAnd underneath the cloud, or in it, ragedA furious battle, and men yelled, and swordsShocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s bannerWavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.A craven hung along the battle’s edge,And thought, Had I a sword of keener steel —That blue blade that the king’s son bears, — but thisBlunt thing! — he snapt and flung it from his hand,And lowering crept away and left the field.Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead,And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shoutLifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down,And saved a great cause that heroic day.

- Edward Rowland Sill

I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.

- Celine Dion

It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.

- Bill Gates

A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation, a baboon in a zoo is an object of public curiosity, but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.

- Winston Churchill

China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‘us versus them,’ it’s an ‘us and them’ type scenario.

- Bill Gates

If you’re interested in ‘balancing’ work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable.

- Donald Trump

When you are truly interested in other people, you will learn what they are interested in and if they have a need for your product. If they like you, and most people like folks who take an interest in them, they’ll help you find people who do need what you have to sell, even if they don’t.

- Zig Ziglar

At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.

- Seth Godin

That was a great day in my life! Your time is too valuable to worry about pleasing everyone else or making them happy. I know people who spend more time worrying about what others think about them than they do focusing on their own dreams and goals. You’ve got to get free from that.

- Joel Olsteen

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 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 alternative to tourism The linchpin, the engaged one, the graceful actor in an unfolding play—these people don’t seek to only inspect. They’re not traveling in order to tick a checkbox. Instead, they open themselves to the world they bought a ticket to, knowing full well that they will be changed.

- Seth Godin

So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

True joy comes when you inspire, encourage, and guide someone else on a path that benefits him or her.

- Zig Ziglar

Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.

- Seth Godin

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

- Napoleon Hill

If you need 15 minutes in the sun to trigger a melanin response, 15 minutes is your MED for tanning. More than 15 minutes is redundant and will just result in burning and a forced break from the beach. During this forced break from the beach, let’s assume one week, someone else who heeded his natural 15-minute MED will be able to fit in four more tanning sessions. He is four shades darker, whereas you have returned to your pale pre-beach self.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.

- Yoda

A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn’t exactly been one of moderation.

- Donald Trump

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

Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.

- Elon Musk

Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.

- Benjamin Franklin

Success is one thing you can’t pay for. You buy it on the installment plan and make payments every day.

- Zig Ziglar

My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.

- Elon Musk

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

- Mark Zuckerberg

When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

- Dale Carnegie

Would you believe that in 2011 and 2012, Nigeria paid $30 billion in subsidy, money which would have been used to build at least 20 refineries?

- Aliko Dangote

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The special prosecutor basically supported what we had told the Board of Elections all along.

- Michael Ward

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‘Oh nom it’s on the house.’

- Richard Branson

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

- Joel Olsteen

Music, even with these dial-up connections you have to the Internet, is very practical to download.

- Bill Gates

It’s unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.

- Seth Godin

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.

- Jack Ma

I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

- Aristotle

A smart manager will establish a culture of gratitude. Expand the appreciative attitude to suppliers, vendors, delivery people, and of course, customers.

- Harvey Mackay

The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.

- Bill Gates

If you can’t retain the people after an acquisition, it’s not worth it.

- John Chambers

Control, control, you must learn control!

- Yoda

If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something.

- Rupert Murdoch

For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.

- James C. Collins

I personally think that money can do very little. And this has been my experience all across.

- Mukesh Ambani

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

- Thomas Edison

Consumers, we’re too busy to pay attention to advertising, but we’re desperate to find good stuff that solves our problems.

- Seth Godin

In my experience, an effective mission statement basically answers one question: How do we intend to win in this business?

- Jack Welch

A good engineering interview will include some set of difficult problems to solve. It might even require that the candidate write a short program. In addition, it will test the candidate’s knowledge of the tools she uses in great depth.

- Ben Horowitz

If this market transition truly evolves the way that I think it’s most likely to, the worst decision you could make is not to move.

- John Chambers

What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible.

- Joel Olsteen

When you become a leader success is all about growing others.

- Jack Welch

There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

- Oprah Winfrey

I was not strong enough to defeat him. Like his master before him, be destroyed, he must.

- Yoda

One person seeking glory doesn’t accomplish very much.

- Sam Walton

Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question.

- Russell Simmons

I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players…I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other. Because they’ve never had a chance to do that before. And they don’t want to work with B and C players and so it becomes self-policing and they only want to hire more A players. And so you build up these pockets of A players, and it propagates.

- Steve Jobs

I don’t know what would have happened to Wal-Mart if we had laid low and never stirred up the competition. My guess is that we would have remained a strictly regional operator.

- Sam Walton

I always say that the real success of Wine Library wasn’t due to the videos I posted, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.

- Peter Drucker

Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.

- Larry Ellison

I think the advantage of democracy is that it makes us less dependent on a group of leaders.

- Azim Premji

Now that I have called you on your false accusation, you are using additional smear tactics.

- George Soros

Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.”

- Sam Walton

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