Notable Quotables

Ah, horrible war, amazing medley of the glorious and the squalid, the pitiful and the sublime, if modern men of light and leading saw your face closer, simple folk would see it hardly ever.

- Winston Churchill

In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally.

- Ben Horowitz

When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened

- Winston Churchill

Always remember that nothing kills great ideas more than people with small ideas and limited imaginations.

- Robert Kiyosaki

I wish I could do a lot of things different. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I’d go, ‘Okay, I’ll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.’ Really. But I’ve made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?

- Steve Martin

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Velocity and drive comes from your desire to achieve.

- Jim Cathcart

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

- Dale Carnegie

It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.

- Winston Churchill

I’m considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family – father, mother, children – is fundamental to our civilisation.

- Rupert Murdoch

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’

- Martin Luther King Jr.

This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.

- Clayton M. Christensen

A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.

- Winston Churchill

If Google Books is successful, others will follow.

- Sergey Brin

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

- Wang Jianlin

The lower and individual’s ability to lead, the lower the lid on his potential.

- John Maxwell

If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value

- Warren Buffett

People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.

- Peter Drucker

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

- Zig Ziglar

Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.

- Bill Cosby

We saw that a thousand results weren’t necessarily as useful as 10 good ones.

- Sergey Brin

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

- Abraham Lincoln

As an immigrant, I chose to live in America because it is one of the freest and most vibrant nations in the world. And as an immigrant, I feel an obligation to speak up for immigration policies that will keep America the most economically robust, creative and freedom-loving nation in the world.

- Rupert Murdoch

End-user buyers re-emerged in the market at a time when local commercial banks were keen to offer preferential terms for home mortgage loan business.

- Lee Shau Kee

It’s ironic that no matter where I go, I meet people from Brooklyn. I’m proud of that heritage. It’s where I’m from, who I am.

- Howard Schultz

Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production, using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

- Timothy Ferriss

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

- John C. Maxwell

Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society – and especially in the economy – as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is “creative destruction.

- Peter Drucker

A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.

- Bill Gates

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

- Jeff Bezos

This society cannot go forward, the way we have been going forward, where the gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. It’s not politically viable; it’s not morally right; it’s just not going to happen.

- Michael Bloomberg

I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument— and that is to avoid it. Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.

- Dale Carnegie

Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.

- Oprah Winfrey

The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

- Henry Kissinger

It’s insane to me to ask anybody to be what they’re not. Know what you know the best, love the most. That’s always going to be the answer to the thing that you have the best shot at winning at.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Success is dependent upon the glands – sweat glands.

- Zig Ziglar

Look, the whole world wants to modernize, and when you look to what they mean by modernizing, they mean Americanize. Would a modern Greek prefer to live in Orange County than Piraeus? Yes. Absolutely.

- Rupert Murdoch

Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war. Stir up the mighty men. Let all the warriors draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong.

- Joel 3:9

Never Cease to Proclaim in Fearless Tones the Great Principles of Freedom

- Winston Churchill

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared, but only men of character are trusted.

- Zig Ziglar

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.

- Thomas Edison

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

- Dale Carnegie

When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.

- Bill Gates

Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.

- Jeff Bezos

I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.

- Sara Blakely

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

- Bill Gates

This is an addictive pastime. You take no real risk, touch the world, and it responds. Repeat.

- Seth Godin

One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.

- Ben Horowitz

You’d believe that a patient with hypertension, if you know you have hypertension or diabetes, you would take your drug every day. The compliance rate is more like 30% or 40%. Which means that 60% of patients don’t take their drugs, and they actually go into these crises, end up in the hospital.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

When you look at a company that’s already succeeded or is at the very top of its game, it isn’t necessarily when it’s executing well. It tends to be peacetime – you’ve defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple.

- Ben Horowitz

Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines, the one who actually talk to the customer, are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble within it, you must listen to what your associates are telling you.

- Sam Walton

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

- Winston Churchill

I was only the servant of my country and had I, at any moment, failed to express her unflinching resolve to fight and conquer, I should at once have been rightly cast aside.

- Winston Churchill

Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn’t you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn’t most of them turn out all right after all?

- Dale Carnegie

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

- Winston Churchill

First and foremost, there is a difference between being perceived as an expert and being one. In the context of business, the former is what sells product and the latter, relative to your minimal customer base,” is what creates good products and prevents returns.

- Timothy Ferriss

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.

- Jack Welch

Control, control, you must learn control!

- Yoda

What you study is more important than how you study. Students are subordinate to materials, much like novice cooks are subordinate to recipes. If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn’t matter how much (or how well) you study. It doesn’t matter how good your teacher is. One must find the highest-frequency material. Material beats method.

- Timothy Ferriss

I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.

- Timothy Ferriss

Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.

- Seth Godin

I have ways of making money that you know nothing about…(if you’re firm won’t sell) you will stand alone, Your firm can never make any more money in Cleveland. No use trying to do business in competition with Standard Oil Company. If you do (continue to fight) it will end in your being wiped out.

- John D. Rockefeller

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

- Joel Olsteen

From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.

- Peter Thiel

Most salespeople won’t stop talking long enough to let the Buyer make a decision.

- Jerry Vass

God knows your value; He sees your potential. You may not understand everything you are going through right now. But hold your head up high, knowing that God is in control and he has a great plan and purpose for your life. Your dreams may not have turned out exactly as you’d hoped, but the bible says that God’s ways are better and higher than our ways, even when everybody else rejects you, remember, God stands before you with His arms open wide. He always accepts you. He always confirms your value. God sees your two good moves! You are His prized possession. No matter what you go through in life, no matter how many disappointments you suffer, your value in God’s eyes always remains the same. You will always be the apple of His eye. He will never give up on you, so don’t give up on yourself.

- Joel Olsteen

Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you’ll create credit… So you reach a certain point that that you can’t do that anymore… There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?

- Ray Dalio

I just think that – when a country needs more income and we do, we’re only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that – that – when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.

- Warren Buffett

I want to help people to help themselves, which is much more valuable for both sides than just making a donation. By training the child of a farmer you compound the value of that dollar spent on training since that child will now help their parents. This is the multiplier effect. There’s no point in just feeding them or just giving them money.

- Lee Shau Kee

In the game of life, before you get anything out, you must put something in!

- Zig Ziglar

One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.

- Ben Horowitz

People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.

- Zig Ziglar

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

- Winston Churchill

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

- Bill Gates

The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively. Forget “minimum viable products”—ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others’ successes.

- Peter Thiel

In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.

- Jack Welch

We hate bureaucracy and all the nonsense that comes with it.

- Jack Welch

At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important.

- Jack Welch

Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

- Peter Drucker

I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen.

- Russell Simmons

Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.

- Winston Churchill

You’ve got to be before you can do and do before you can have.

- Zig Ziglar

In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

- Clayton M. Christensen

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