Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.
- Arthur Golden
Notable Quotables
My God, these guys don’t even know what the return-on-investment will be on this thing.
- James C. Collins
I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I’d have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.
- Sara Blakely
Chinese people, young people, they don’t go shopping a lot in department stores. All department store guys hate me. They say business is bad because of Jack.
- Jack Ma
My ultimate dream is for the Irvine Ranch to be known and celebrated as much for the outstanding communities we’ve planned and built as it is for what is not developed. The beneficiary being the 50,000 acres of undeveloped land that is now permanently preserved and conserved as Open Space and parklands.
- Donald Bren
It is a very big exaggeration to say I am a friend of Mr. Putin.
- Alexei Mordashov
Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.
- Peter Drucker
Over the past 30 years, the nation has gradually opened up under such reform policies, which have presented enormous challenges and unlimited opportunities for the people and benefited the development of the nation all these years.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It’s vital that you accept yourself and learn to be happy with who God made you to be. If you want to truly enjoy your life, you must be at peace with yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
The word ‘Spanx’ was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.
- Sara Blakely
Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question.
- Russell Simmons
Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent benefit.
- Napoleon Hill
We’ve only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?
- Jack Welch
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
When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.
- Larry Ellison
Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Build on what you know so that you don’t repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company’s life.
- Harvey Mackay
I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.
- Elon Musk
Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away.
- Napoleon Hill
The future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed.
- William Gibson
We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.
- Steve Jobs
If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.
- Dale Carnegie
Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.
- Zig Ziglar
We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
I get more spam than anyone I know.
- Bill Gates
I know why logs spit. I know what it is to be consumed.
- Winston Churchill
You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.
- Seth Godin
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
Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.
- James C. Collins
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
Uncontrolled Desire For Something For Nothing.
- Napoleon Hill
History recalls the remarkable resilience of the territory’s people.
- Cheng Yu-tung
On my grandfather’s tombstone, you will find his favorite Marx quote: “Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
- Ben Horowitz
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I can’t stress enough the essential nature of really hearing what someone has to say even if it is totally contradictory to your own beliefs, and I wish this was a lesson I only had to learn once.
- David Novak
I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.
- Elon Musk
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
He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.
- Andrew Carnegie
The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP.
- Peter Thiel
The ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
I think Ronald Reagan was one of the great presidents, period, not just recently. I thought he had the demeanor. I thought he had the bearing. I thought he had the thought process.
- Donald Trump
I feel a lot of people listen to what I have to say.
- Donald Trump
God didn’t make a mistake when He made you. You need to see yourself as God sees you.
- Joel Olsteen
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill
The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.
- Bill Gates
A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.
- Yoda
Real leaders don’t care [about receiving credit]. If it’s about your mission, about spreading the faith, about seeing something happen, not only do you not care about credit, you actually want other people to take credit…There’s no record of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Gandhi whining about credit. Credit isn’t the point. Change is.
- Seth Godin
An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others.
- Napoleon Hill
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
- Peter Drucker
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
There’s a way to do it better – find it.
- Thomas Edison
I always follow 4E’s wrapped in a ‘P’.
- Jack Welch
If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s not enough to do good things. You have to let people know what you’re doing.
- Phil Knight
Facing a market which awaited exploration and development, the Group decided to become a pioneer in its economic reform by taking up the responsibility to engage in the development of the Mainland.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.
- Peter Thiel
I think that any wealth creates a sense of trusteeship… it is characteristic of the new generation which has created wealth to have some amount of responsibility for it.
- Azim Premji
You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
- Winston Churchill
At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.
- George Paz
Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.
- Joel Olsteen
I don’t want anybody to not recognize how appreciative I am of the volume of e-mails I get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
- Oprah Winfrey
A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.
- Winston Churchill
Establish a core value that drives the business and helps promote it in perpetuity.
- Ben Horowitz
The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.
- Bill Gates
Every entrepreneur should plan to be the last mover in her particular market. That starts with asking yourself: what will the world look like 10 and 20 years from now, and how will my business fit in?
- Peter Thiel
This office is smaller than the last one I had. I’m not trying to impress people. I want to be close to them.
- Stephen Wynn
The expensive act of planning on late When you’re late, there’s not a lot of room for choice or decision or initiative. When you’re late, the path is well lit, and the choices are clear. Run! Run down the path you’ve run down before. Late is a tool for people unable to find the guts to stand for their acts. Late gives us cover; it permits us to trample forward, without creativity or panache. “Can’t you see I’m late!” we shout, as we do what we have to do, without even pausing to think about what we could do instead. Late might be useful, except that late is incredibly expensive. This strategy, the one we choose so we can avoid the fear of choice, costs us in so many ways. It degrades quality, misses airplanes, charges overtime, and shuts down those around us. It’s also exhausting. The alternative to planning on late is to initiate before it’s required, to ship before deadline, to put the idea out there before the crisis hits. This act of bravery actually gives you influence, leverage, and control in a way that planning on late never can.
- Seth Godin
Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they’re on the same side.
- Zig Ziglar
Does it make sense to go to college, or should I instead be a plumber?
- Michael Bloomberg
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
A good book can be both a window to the world and a mirror to one’s self. It is easier to build community and remain true to the brand when you have zealots instead of marketing mercaries.
- Radical Marketing
A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere.
- Zig Ziglar
In order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going. America can’t have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations – can’t have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It’s got to have a vision.
- Jack Welch
Nike was the great goddess of victory.
- Phil Knight
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
I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.
- Steve Jobs
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
Many people say the privatisation was unfair: that is true – it was unfair. That is a fact: some people became rich and others did not. Unfair does not mean illegal, but it was inevitably unfair.
- Vladimir Potanin
Believe in your idea, trust your instincts, and don’t be afraid to fail. It took me two years from the time I had the idea for Spanx until the time I had a product in hand ready to sell into stores. I must have heard the word “no” a thousand times. If you believe in your idea 100%, don’t let anyone stop you! Not being afraid to fail is a key part of the success of Spanx.
- Sara Blakely
My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It’s their work that I’m supporting. So it’s not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.
- George Soros
For every ailment under the sun, There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it.
- Dale Carnegie
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
- Winston Churchill
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
- Peter Drucker
Your faith will help you overcome your obstacles.
- Joel Olsteen
One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you’ve got somebody who’s raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give ’em that shot.
- Jack Welch
I encourage all my key people to bring their mobiles when they travel.
- Raymond Kwok
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
- Winston Churchill
The people who skip the hard questions are in the majority, but they are not in demand.
- Seth Godin
While there’s always room for improvement, … we were very pleased with our results in what is a seasonally-challenging quarter.
- John Chambers
Computing is kind of a mess. Your computer doesn’t know where you are. It doesn’t know what you’re doing. It doesn’t know what you know.
- Larry Page
At the margin, they’ll be biased to claim value in the near term, not help you create more in the future. That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided,
- Peter Thiel
Fatigue makes fools of us all. It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions. It’s the best-conditioned athlete, not the most talented, who generally wins when the going gets tough.
- Harvey Mackay
I believe in that Old Chinese Proverb, When the student is willing, the teacher appears. But I would add, It also doesn’t hurt to be a little proactive about it.
- David Novak
When I was 17 or 18 I wanted to become a wine expert, and my parents wouldn’t let me drink. So I was devastated. All I could do was read, and I read and I read. And I’d read something like, you know, ‘Subtle hints of cassis.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Management always bears in mind to ‘lend a hand’ to Hong Kong and Mainland China while we are working hard for shareholders’ benefits.
- Cheng Yu-tung
We’ll continue to expand our footprint… Oracle’s Fusion cloud applications for HCM, CRM and ERP all have a new simplified user interface and an integrated social network that makes our enterprise applications as easy-to-use and familiar as Facebook, while enabling better collaboration and teamwork among your employees and your customers.
- Larry Ellison
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
You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.
- John Maxwell
