The special prosecutor basically supported what we had told the Board of Elections all along.
- Michael Ward
Notable Quotables
If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook. And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone. If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault. That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. ‘I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.’ What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.
- Seth Godin
For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.
- Richard Branson
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it’s the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers. And once they arrive at Goldman, they find that even inside finance, everything is indefinite. It’s still optimistic—you wouldn’t play in the markets if you expected to lose—but the fundamental tenet is that the market is random; you can’t know anything specific or substantive; diversification becomes supremely important.
- Peter Thiel
An attributable HK$9,892 million worth of properties in Hong Kong was sold, an increase of 25% as compared with HK$7,895 million for the year before.
- Lee Shau Kee
I’m not gonna give up, shut up, or let up… as a matter of fact, I’m just getting warmed up.
- Zig Ziglar
We live in an age where everything is based on the short term.
- Howard Schultz
I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.
- Jack Ma
You can succeed at almost anything for which you have unbridled enthusiasm.
- Zig Ziglar
The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There’s an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win.
- Seth Godin
The government used to be able to coordinate complex solutions to problems like atomic weaponry and lunar exploration. But today, after 40 years of indefinite creep, the government mainly just provides insurance; our solutions to big problems are Medicare, Social Security, and a dizzying array of other transfer payment programs. It’s no surprise that entitlement spending has eclipsed discretionary spending every year since 1975. To increase discretionary spending we’d need definite plans to solve specific problems. But according to the indefinite logic of entitlement spending, we can make things better just by sending out more checks.
- Peter Thiel
Often we don’t even realize who we’re meant to be because we’re so busy trying to live out someone else’s ideas. But other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.
- Oprah Winfrey
By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check.
- Ben Horowitz
By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.
- James C. Collins
Becoming a member of the new rich is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.”Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness.”By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
- Timothy Ferriss
Part of company culture is path-dependent – it’s the lessons you learn along the way.
- Jeff Bezos
The screwball. Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.
- Michael Levine
I’m Phil Knight, and I don’t believe in advertising.
- Phil Knight
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and it’s hard to trust somebody that you don’t know.
- Ben Horowitz
A valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.
- Peter Thiel
When you start a company, you’re basically jumping off a cliff. You don’t have any sense of where you’re going to land, what to do when you land, or what you should be doing inmidair. It’s very very scary. But it’s much easier when you have somebody to commiserate with you who knows what you’re going through, and who you know will always be on your side.
- Seth Goldman
There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
- Henry Ford
It is not enough that we do our best, sometimes we must do what is required.
- Winston Churchill
If the employees fundamentally trust the C.E.O., then communications will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust.
- Ben Horowitz
The ability to get the job done.
- Jack Welch
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
The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
A key component of the Soft Sell is asking questions that require the Buyer to think and reach inside for the answer so as to reveal needs the Seller can fulfill with a product or service.
- Jerry Vass
Ow, ow, OW! On my ear you are!
- Yoda
Anyone, even a child, can be taught to develop a positive mental attitude. The method is to repeat positive affirmations such as: Day by day, in every way, through the grace of God, I am getting better and better.
- Napoleon Hill
When somebody challenges you, fight back. Be brutal, be tough.
- Donald Trump
I loved doing ‘Pennies from Heaven.’ Because you have to understand that I’d been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don’t think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
- Steve Martin
I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.
- Bill Gates
It helps to have founded and run a company if you’re going to help somebody run a company who is a founder.
- Ben Horowitz
When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away. It’s them writing a simple message and them knowing that people are going to see it.
- Jack Dorsey
Even though I’m a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I’m looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
When Henry Ford made cheap, reliable cars people said, ‘Nah, what’s wrong with a horse?’ That was a huge bet he made, and it worked.
- Elon Musk
Don’t be intimidated as you design your pitch. The fact is that nobody will come to you at first. You must be the aggressor, or you will not be heard.
- Michael Levine
One of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it’s making cold calls to strangers. Actually, it’s the people who already have strong trust relationships with you, who know you’re dedicated, smart, a team player, who can help you.
- Reid Hoffman
You are going to fire Mark Hurd and hire Leo? What I said at the time was that this was the best idea since the Apple board fired Steve Jobs. Really brilliant.
- Larry Ellison
One of my biggest personal holdings is Rotana. That company has a very dominant force in the Middle East. It has around 45% of all the movie industry and around 75% of all the music.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
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
I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Assume employees are going across a lot of networks. So you have to build in security from the home to any number of networks.
- John Chambers
If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth
- Ray Kroc
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?” This question sounds easy because it’s straightforward. Actually, it’s very hard to answer. It’s intellectually difficult because the knowledge that everyone is taught in school is by definition agreed upon.
- Peter Thiel
That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity. —BERYL MARKHAM, West with the Night1
- James C. Collins
It marks a big step in a man’s development when he comes to realize that other men can be called in to help him do a better job than he can do alone.
- Andrew Carnegie
I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Anytime you look at anything that’s considered artistic, there’s a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can’t exist without it.
- Steve Martin
I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great thing that entrepreneurship is getting easier. When I started, it was just much harder to begin a company.
- Ben Horowitz
As long as people are clear on what they need to do and what’s going on, you’re very likely to succeed. When nobody is clear, then you’re guaranteed to fail.
- Ben Horowitz
I feel that people I trusted – I don’t know who, on what level – have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.
- Rupert Murdoch
I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.
- Joel Olsteen
Even if producing CO2 was good for the environment, given that we’re going to run out of hydrocarbons, we need to find some sustainable means of operating.
- Elon Musk
To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.
- Peter Drucker
I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.
- Larry Ellison
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
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.
- Bill Gates
Starting a new South Indian restaurant is a really hard way to make money. If you lose sight of competitive reality and focus on trivial differentiating factors—maybe you think your naan is superior because of your great-grandmother’s recipe—your business is unlikely to survive.
- Peter Thiel
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Los líderes son vulnerables, no controladores, y nos llevan a un lugar nuevo, no a la seguridad barata, rápida y sumisa.
- Seth Godin
You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying. Success is achieved and maintained by those who keep trying with a positive mental attitude.
- Napoleon Hill
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
- Winston Churchill
Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.
- Clayton M. Christensen
By June this year, the [Henderson] Group had sold approximately 9,500 residential units totally around HK$21 billion in aggregate value.
- Lee Shau Kee
The economy in Hong Kong remained on a declining path. Occurrence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (‘SARS’) in March this year led to a sharp drop in consumer spending and an increasing unemployment rate. The decline in the economy resulted in downward adjustment in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.”
- James C. Collins
There is no decision that we can make that doesn’t come with some sort of balance or sacrifice
- Simon Sinek
Life is not a dress rehearsal.
- Clay Clark
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
- Thomas Edison
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
- John Wooden
Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
- Steve Ballmer
If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive.
- Dale Carnegie
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.
- Jack Welch
When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.
- Dale Carnegie
Service for the Right Reasons: To Save the Whales, or Kill Them and Feed the Children? Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.
- Oscar Wilde
Don’t water your weeds.
- Harvey Mackay
I get calls from everybody asking if I know of any drivers, anybody they can hire.
- Jack Taylor
I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.
- Elon Musk
What this industry is about is back to the basics in the new Internet economy; and the basics are profitability, cash flow, productivity and market-share gains.
- John Chambers
In absorbing companies, Rockefeller was secretive and asked them to continue operating under their original names and not divulge their Standard Oil Ownership. They were instructed to retain their original stationary, keep secret accounts, and not allude on paper to their Cleveland connection.
- Ron Chernow
When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.
- Walt Disney
Even if you do something that others might consider wrong, you should at least be willing to talk about it and tell your parents what you’re doing because you believe it’s right.
- Steve Wozniak
I think when I was young, let’s call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That’s really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.
- Steve Martin
Marketing is the name we use to describe the promise a company makes, the story it tells, the authentic way it delivers on that promise.
- Seth Godin
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.
- John Chambers
Nobody wanted to believe Jack Ma.
- Jack Ma
Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.
- Jack Dorsey
Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.
- Peter Thiel
As a company it is always better for us to work with more customers than fewer customers. The more people that we serve, the more money that we will make.
- Napoleon Hill
I’ve been blessed to find people who are smarter than I am, and they help me to execute the vision I have.
- Russell Simmons
Use money to make money.
- Lee Shau Kee
Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius.
- Peter Thiel
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.
- Tom Landry
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
There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won’t stand for that.
- Steve Martin
