Notable Quotables

This is just going to be a great event and we have an outstanding speaker.

- Jack Taylor

Creating ideas that spread and connecting the disconnected are the two pillars of our new society, and both of them require the posture of the artist.

- Seth Godin

No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, … We have just completed a very successful management transition and I’ve never been more confident about the company’s future.

- Jack Welch

We know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition.

- Peter Thiel

I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.

- Bill Gates

If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.

- Timothy Ferriss

Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.

- Timothy Ferriss

I try to keep in touch with the details… I also look at the product daily. That doesn’t mean you interfere, but it’s important occasionally to show the ability to be involved. It shows you understand what’s happening.

- Rupert Murdoch

Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they’re on the same side.

- Zig Ziglar

The quality of our integration will be judged, not by the ultimate costs in hitting our targets, but instead by the level of service we give to our clients throughout the process. That’s kind of my 8-to-5 job. My 5-to-8 job is what’s the next move? Where else in health care do we see inefficiencies, that we see a splintered system with tremendous cost overruns?

- George Paz

Who’s your Jedi master? WHO’S your Jedi Master?

- Yoda

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

These are all commodity-focused issues. The old conceit of a retailer was that if you offered the right products at a fair price in a convenient location, you’d do fine if you watched your expenses. Today, the issues are totally different.

- Seth Godin

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

I’d always try to remind managers at every level that they had to share my passion for developing people.

- Jack Welch

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.

- Winston Churchill

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

- Thomas Carlyle

Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.

- Ben Horowitz

Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.” Everyone around the table nodded assent. “Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.

- Peter Drucker

When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.

- Bill Gates

Even though about 60% of our product is bought by people who don’t use it for the actual sport, everything we did was aimed at the top.

- Phil Knight

If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.

- Jack Welch

The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

- Thomas Edison

Anyone would fight for things that matter, true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter

- Peter Thiel

I think it is a sad day for the company and we are going to miss him. But, typically of him, he has planned his own succession immaculately. We will have a dinner and a nice party for him.

- Simon Wolfson

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

- Ray Kroc

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

There’s never been a doctor who served many patients who, despite their best efforts, did not lose some of them to death. But they understood that was part of life itself.

- Zig Ziglar

In life and in business, you need to be good-hearted and trustworthy, and to have integrity. This is the way to build long-term relationships. It is also important to be optimistic and to look at challenges as opportunities.

- Henry Sy

When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.

- Joel Olsteen

That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove his or her worth, to excel, to win. That is what makes foot-races, and hog-calling, and pie-eating contests. The desire to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance.

- Dale Carnegie

Le Reve’ may be one of the three best pictures Pablo Picasso ever painted.

- Stephen Wynn

[On stopping working and focussing 100% on his company Nike] I was still teaching accounting, but the next year, I told Penny [married in 1968] if we sell $300,000 worth of product, I’m going to go full-time. She was pregnant and a little anxious. We hit $290,000. I said, that ‘s close enough.

- Phil Knight

Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands

- David Novak

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

- Antoine de Saint-Exup

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

- Walt Disney

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.

- Warren Buffett

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

- Winston Churchill

The productivity now at universities is terrible. Tenure is a terrible idea. It keeps them around forever and they don’t have to work hard.

- Jack Welch

A half-billion-dollar subsidy was unthinkable in the mid-2000s. It’s unthinkable today. There was only one moment where that was possible, and Tesla played it perfectly.

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We have to find our way back to a definite future.

- Peter Thiel

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

- Winston Churchill

Take the first step in faith, you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

My wife thinks she’s better than me at puzzles. I haven’t given in on that one yet.

- Bill Gates

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

- Winston Churchill

I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the site, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the site.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.

- Seth Godin

I am someone who tweets about what I have for breakfast, what I have for lunch, what I have for dinner, and for 99.99999 percent of the world, it’s useless. It’s meaningless. But for my mother, she loves it.

- Jack Dorsey

Learn to slow down. Get lost intentionally. Observe how you judge both yourself and those around you.

- Timothy Ferriss

I don’t think we’re going to run out of important things to do, compared with the resources that we have. There are many, many problems in the world that need solving.

- Larry Page

Why not invest your assets in the companies you really like? As Mae West said, ‘Too much of a good thing can be wonderful’.

- Warren Buffett

I’m a constant learner. You need to be a constant student because things change and you have to change and grow. And I emphasize the word ‘grow.’

- Zig Ziglar

We shall see how the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger, how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull’s-eye of disaster.

- Winston Churchill

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

- Brian Tracy

A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

- Winston Churchill

A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

- Peter Thiel

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people – and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

- Mark Zuckerberg

In business, if you don’t kick and hug, you don’t love.

- Clay Clark

I’m much more concerned about America than the Democratic Party.

- Howard Schultz

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

There’s always been a lot of information about your activities. Every phone number you dial, every credit-card charge you make. It’s long since passed that a typical person doesn’t leave footprints.

- Bill Gates

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.

- Steve Jobs

What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question, and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at the very least handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open as they will. Read on from the first sentence that turns the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

- Winston Churchill

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

- Henry Ford

Problem-solving becomes a very important part of our makeup as we grow into maturity or move up the corporate ladder.

- Zig Ziglar

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

- Jerry Vass

The Asian brand, which I admire for having become a global success, is Samsung. In comparison, we’re just starting, but I believe that we at Uniqlo will be the next Asian brand to do well globally.

- Tadashi Yanai

We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend.

- Peter Thiel

I’m a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

- Carl Icahn

Successful heretics create their own religions….You can recognize the need for faith in your idea, you can find the tribe you need to support you, and yes, you can create a new religion around your faith. Steve Jobs did it on purpose at Apple and Phil Knight is famous for doing it at Nike.

- Seth Godin

Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more.

- Sam Walton

When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don’t know what you are going to do.

- Larry Ellison

We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.

- Bill Gates

My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.

- Jack Welch

I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.

- Steve Martin

We are making these changes at a time when we are beginning to see signs that our business is stabilizing.

- John Chambers

When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: Try to bear lightly what needs must be. Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and resignation that touched the hem of divinity.

- Dale Carnegie

My God, these guys don’t even know what the return-on-investment will be on this thing.

- James C. Collins

I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.

- Michael Bloomberg

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn’t even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

- Sara Blakely

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 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

Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.

- Bill Gates

Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.

- Walt Disney

Not every Apple product makes a big enough difference to me to get instantly, although many do.

- Steve Wozniak

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