Notable Quotables

Nothing in life has happened to you. It’s happened for you. Every disappointment. Every wrong. Even every closed door has helped make you into who you are.

- Joel Olsteen

For a rich and reasonably successful guy, it is impossible not to enjoy your job; otherwise, why would you spend so much time and effort doing it? I am a great fan of Norilsk, and I like this kind of challenge.

- Vladimir Potanin

K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.

- Bill Gates

The CIA will only hire people with impeccable credentials to be a translator. ‘Impeccable credentials’ means you’ve never lived outside the United States.

- Michael Bloomberg

One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‘We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.

- Bill Gates

Making it good at scale means admitting that it must be different and embracing the changes that you’ll need to make to keep things from falling apart.

- Ben Horowitz

Maintain a pragmatic approach, keep up with the multitude of trials and strive to remain its level of attainment in order for achieving sound performance and scaling new heights.

- Cheng Yu-tung

And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that’s there.

- Steve Ballmer

A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.

- Thomas Edison

We will be one of the most productive residential developers in China in the next few years.

- Lee Shau Kee

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

- Joel Olsteen

We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.

- Larry Page

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

- Steve Jobs

But at the Lychgate we may all pass our own conduct and our own judgments under a searching review. It is not given to human beings, happily for them, for otherwise life would be intolerable, to foresee or to predict to any large extent the unfolding course of events. In one phase men seem to have been right, in another they seem to have been wrong. Then again, a few years later, when the perspective of time has lengthened, all stands in a different setting. There is a new proportion. There is another scale of values. History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

- Winston Churchill

There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction that goes with knowing your time, talent and abilities are not being properly used.

- Zig Ziglar

So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.

- Thomas Edison

What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs. And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost. That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.

- Michael Gerber

Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …

- Dale Carnegie

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

- Bill Gates

If you’re going to have to swallow a frog, you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!

- Zig Ziglar

Once we finished Christmas Rappin’ we began shopping it around town. There was interest, but no one was biting. The industry’s attitude was that Rapper’s Delight despite its U.S. sales and international appeal was an unrepeatable fluke. We identified Polygram which had a great roster of funk and R&B acts (Kool and the Gang, the Gap Band, Parliament) as the best place for Kurtis, so we made up a gang of test pressings and took them to clubs all over the city. Response in the street from DJs and club goers was great. So to hype up PolyGram we placed fake orders for the record into their system by telling retailers and wholesalers to order the 12 inch through PolyGram. PolyGram didn’t own it yet, but we created an appetite for Christmas Rappin that led them to buy it…So in the fall of 1979 Kurtis Blow signed with Mercury Records a division of Polygram Records, making him the first rapper on a major label…Christmas eve 1979 was the first time that I heard Christmas Rappin’ on the radio; I was upstairs at my family’s house. Frankie Crocker the biggest radio DJ in New York played it on WBLS.

- Russell Simmons

There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.

- Winston Churchill

When we put $4 billion into the U.S. economy, they were OK with this. When we preserved jobs in Dearborn, or preserved jobs in Columbus, or preserved jobs in Pennsylvania, everyone was happy.

- Alexei Mordashov

In a battle between two ideas, the best one doesn’t necessarily win. No, the idea that wins is the one with the most fearless heretic behind it.

- Seth Godin

This has been a very positive test for Kawasaki.

- Yoda

I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It’s got the market. It’s got consumer confidence and it’s got banks throwing – I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.

- Jack Welch

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

- Henry Ford

Learn to speak God’s favor over every area of your life. Remember, the more favor-minded you are, the more of God’s favor you’re going to experience.

- Joel Olsteen

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

You’ve got to eat while you dream. You’ve got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.

- Jack Welch

Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.

- Ben Horowitz

If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.

- Joel Olsteen

Buda dijo: El odio nunca es vencido por el odio sino por el amor, y un malentendido no termina nunca gracias una discusión sino gracias al tacto, la diplomacia, la conciliación, y un sincero deseo de apreciar el punto de vista de los demás.

- Dale Carnegie

Don’t waste your energy trying to convince people to understand you. Your time is too valuable to try to prove yourself to people.

- Joel Olsteen

At Tencent, we may be businessmen, but we are still chasing our IT, our science. We are still striving to create something really cool, trying to create things we couldn’t even imagine without our new technologies. I am still clinging to this enthusiasm.

- Ma Huateng

Meeting sports athletes that are the best in the world is a thrill to this day.

- Phil Knight

For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’

- Peter Drucker

What we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.

- Brian Tracy

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It’s the thing that people create.

- Jeff Bezos

I’m not speaking defeat into my future. I’m not speaking failure over my life. I will turn it around and speak favor into my future. I will declare, I’m blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy. This will be a great year.” When you do that, you are blessing your future.

- Joel Olsteen

Young people in China and Hong Kong are the future of the motherland.

- Cheng Yu-tung

the world belongs to the man or woman who got up today and did something

- Jim Stovall

If geek means you’re willing to study things, and if you think science and engineering matter, I plead guilty. If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.

- Bill Gates

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

- Winston Churchill

Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.

- James C. Collins

Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.

- Dale Carnegie

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 you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.

- Seth Godin

I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.

- Steve Martin

Even god doesn’t propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?

- Dale Carnegie

We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.

- Seth Godin

Step up to the front, select what you want, create your plan, put your plan into action, and follow through with Persistence. Capitalist America will not rest.

- Napoleon Hill

People are the key to success or extraordinary success.

- Azim Premji

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

I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.

- Ronald Perelman

Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.

- Og Mandino

Do extremely difficult work.That seems obvious, right? If you do something that’s valued but scarce because it’s difficult, you’re more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do.The implication is stunning, though: When designing a project or developing a skill, seek out the most difficult parts to master and contribute. If it’s easy, it’s not for you.

- Seth Godin

Actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles.

- Peter Thiel

We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.

- Phil Knight

The ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

- Jack Welch

Over the long run, the price of gold approximates the total amount of money in circulation divided by the size of the gold stock. If the market price of gold moves a long way from this level, it may indicate a buying or selling opportunity.

- Ray Dalio

War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:

- Peter Thiel

Motivation needs to be a part of your own life for you to be effective in conveying it to other people.

- Zig Ziglar

We always try to look three to five years out in the decisions we make and there’s no question that the Cisco brand, our opportunity in the commercial market and the evolution of our leaders are going to take us to the next level.

- John Chambers

The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

- Bill Gates

A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

- Peter Drucker

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

- John D. Rockefeller

The single reason for a salesperson’s existence is to get the Buyer’s commitment. Just how poor are salespeople at their jobs? In a study of professional sales people (those who sell full time), 50% failed to ask for the buyer’s commitment to buy.

- Jerry Vass

If you ask me whether the future is better than today, I would say yes; but the people must be ready to pay for services and pay their taxes.

- Aliko Dangote

Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!

- Timothy Ferriss

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

- John C. Maxwell

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

- Joel Olsteen

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

- Bill Gates

To be sure, real differences of opinion existed between the groups. Compared to pro-life participants, pro-choice participants had more favorable personal attitudes toward the pro-choice issues and less favorable attitudes toward the pro-life issues, and vice versa.

- John Chambers

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

- Richard Branson

Research what they did, how they did it and how you can do it better.

- Jack Nadel

Good leaders know that one secret to success is to staff their weaknesses.

- John Maxwell

No matter how dark and gloomy it looks in your life right now, if you’ll release the weight of those burdens, you will see the sun break forth.

- Joel Olsteen

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

- Dale Carnegie

The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive. When I was managing thousands of people at Hewlett-Packard after the sale of Opsware, there was an incredible number of incoming demands on my time. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Little companies wanted to partner with me or sell themselves to me, people in my organization needed approvals, other business units needed my help, customers wanted my attention, and so forth. As a result, I spent most of my time optimizing and tuning the existing business. Most of the work that I did was “incoming.” In fact, most skilled big company executives will tell you that if you have more than three new initiatives in a quarter, you are trying to do too much. As a result, big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup executive, nothing happens unless you make it happen. In the early days of a company, you have to take eight to ten new initiatives a day or the company will stand still. There is no inertia that’s putting the company in motion. Without massive input from you, the company will stay at rest.

- Ben Horowitz

The first sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.

- Dale Carnegie

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

- Jeff Bezos

If you want to help the poor and our next generation, make investment, reinvestment and businesses welcome.

- Gina Rinehart

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

We’re living in what I like to call the ‘Thank You Economy,’ because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way – and do it authentically – are going to have a prayer of competing.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The spirit of Southwest Airlines is exuberant, it’s caring, it’s dedicated, it’s diligent, it’s fun, it’s rewarding, it’s a joy.

- Herb Kelleher

We were pretty schizophrenic. We were going to take on the world, but we couldn’t make payroll.

- Phil Knight

People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.

- Bill Gates

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

- Ben Horowitz

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