If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
- Walt Disney
Very important people have told me that they prefer good listeners to good talkers, but the ability to listen seems rarer than almost any other good trait.
- Dale Carnegie
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I cut the feet off of a pair of panty hose and it allowed me to wear a pair of great strappy sandals. I didn’t see lines but the hose rolled up at my feet – and that’s how Spanx born.
- Sara Blakely
All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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
You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth. People who feel like they’re being listened to feel accepted and appreciated. They feel like they’re being taken seriously and what they say really matters.
- Harvey Mackay
Honesty and integrity are absolutely essential for success in life – all areas of life. The really good news is that anyone can develop both honesty and integrity.
- Zig Ziglar
Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
- Peter Drucker
MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once.
- Peter Thiel
The uncertainty and importance of the present reduce the past and future to comparative insignificance, and clear the mind of minor worries. And when all is over, memories remain which few men do not hold precious.
- Winston Churchill
Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.
- John C. Maxwell
We saw – we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.
- Larry Ellison
True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated. It must be earned. The only thing that a title can buy is a little time.
- Napoleon Hill
You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.
- Zig Ziglar
The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.
- Timothy Ferriss
I don’t want anybody to not recognize how appreciative I am of the volume of e-mails I get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
People have been indoctrinated so completely by their jobs that they don’t want to know how something works, they’re willing to accept that perhaps the laws of nature don’t work as they expect, and by the way, can I have the remote?
- Seth Godin
Do not swallow anything Satan is trying to ram down your throat. Jesus comes first.
- Joel Olsteen
The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events – Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima – so it’s more visible.
- Bill Gates
Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.
- Phil Knight
I think how you start the day many times determines what kind of day you’re going to have.
- Joel Olsteen
The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves
- Ray Kroc
Where did your art go while you were tweeting?
- Seth Godin
And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.
- Andrew Carnegie
Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.
- Elon Musk
We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.
- Winston Churchill
Self-driving cars are the natural extension of active safety and obviously something we should do.
- Elon Musk
Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands
- David Novak
We all know now that the 747 became the flagship jumbo jet of the airline industry, but the decision looks much different from the perspective of the late 1960s. Yet—and this is the key point—Boeing was willing to make the bold move in the face of the risks. As in Boeing’s case, the risks do not always come without pain.
- James C. Collins
Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
- Dale Carnegie
Recovery continues to gain momentum on a global basis.
- John Chambers
I don’t yell at people, I don’t mistreat people. I don’t talk down to people, so no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it.
- Oprah Winfrey
We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective.
- Peter Thiel
It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming.
- Timothy Ferriss
Most companies that are great at something – like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores – do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business.
- Reed Hastings
Success is not measured by what you do compared to what others do, it is measured by what you do with the ability God gave you.
- Zig Ziglar
Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.
- Steve Martin
Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
- Seth Godin
If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.
- James C. Collins
MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.
- Winston Churchill
There’s a finite market for DVD-by-mail, and the growth over the next 10 years will be in streaming.
- Reed Hastings
True success is when you reach back and bring somebody along with you.
- Joel Olsteen
The reason that I have Global Grind is to communicate ideas to people who might otherwise not be listening.
- Russell Simmons
Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.
- Steven Spielberg
Ally yourself with a group of as many people as you may need for the creation and carrying out of your plan or plans for the accumulation of money…Compliance with this instruction is absolutely essential. Do not neglect it.
- Napoleon Hill
The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.
- Michael Bloomberg
I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
- Winston Churchill
Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.
- Jack Welch
The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.
- Peter Thiel
I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.
- Winston Churchill
I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time America was run like a business.
- Donald Trump
We live well below our means. We wear inexpensive suits and drive American-made cars. Only a minority of us drive the current-model-year automobile. Only a minority ever lease our motor vehicles.
- Thomas J Stanley
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
- Elon Musk
That’s your opportunity–to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.
- Seth Godin
We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.
- Bill Gates
When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out—this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break. Zig Ziglar taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my e-mail for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain will soon be trained to use that escape hatch again and again.
- Seth Godin
Failure is an event not a person.
- Zig Ziglar
In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The era of cornucopian hope was relabeled as an era of crazed greed and declared to be definitely over.
- Peter Thiel
There’s plenty of room at the top but not enough room to sit down.
- Zig Ziglar
Jesus was saying that you can’t have a larger life with restricted attitudes.
- Joel Olsteen
We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’
- Warren Buffett
There’s always a wine bully. The one person who did read the ‘Wine Spectator,’ who tells you what to drink and why the ’97 is better than the ’98. I want to punch the wine bully in the face. I want to make sure this generation of wine drinkers isn’t elitist and snotty. I want it to be about family and bringing people together.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?
- John Chambers
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.
- Peter Drucker
It takes the same effort to think small than to think big. But to think big frees you from the insignificant details.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
Be friendly, but not so friendly, it’s creepy.
- Michael Levine
When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.
- Joel Olsteen
I’ve been very lucky. I come from a very close family.
- Richard Branson
Creative leaders inherently know when rules need to be challenged, and they can see when a more flexible approach should be taken.
- John C. Maxwell
I am a self-made brat.
- Stephen Wynn
Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.
- Michael Gerber
IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.
- Jack Welch
There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‘I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.’
- Jerry Seinfeld
Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
- Elon Musk
My little girls are the most beautiful women in the world. I am a lucky, lucky man. I will spend every day making sure that they know this.
- Russell Simmons
I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it’s hard to get them out on the air.
- Steve Martin
If we can get you a car in five minutes, we can get you anything in five minutes.
- Travis Kalanick
I see this as my humanitarian legacy. We’re prepared to pay billions.
- Sheldon Adelson
It is a fine game to play – the game of politics – and it is well worth waiting for a good hand before really plunging.
- Winston Churchill
Value is achieved primarily through frontline employees who are satisfied, loyal, and productive, in part because of the high degree of capability they possess to deliver results to customers
- Service Profit Chain
Youths of today aspire to be like me but they want to achieve it overnight. It’s not going to work.
- Aliko Dangote
It seems like a good cause. I’ve been watching it on TV and, it makes me want to help.
- Ed Clark
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
The Loire Valley is grossly underestimated. The prices are fair, and the wines are real.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
By faith you need to walk like a king, talk like a king, think like a king, dress like a king, smile like a king. Don’t go by what you see. Go by what you know. There is royalty in your DNA. You have the blood of a winner. You were created to reign in life.
- Joel Olsteen
There would be no advantage to be gained by sowing a field of wheat if the harvest did not return more than was sown.
- Napoleon Hill
The most important thing about education is appetite.
- Winston Churchill
I’m not losing any sleep over Dunkin Donuts.
- Howard Schultz
We can consider 140 characters to be the full story, but it’s not. It’s just a caption. A headline for something broader.
- Jack Dorsey
If you wake up deciding what you want to give versus what you’re going to get, you become a more successful person. In other words, if you want to make money, you have to help someone else make money.
- Russell Simmons
Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public.
- P.T. Barnum
The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more things you’ll have to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries – discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .
- Thomas Edison
If you’re looking for an abdominal exercise well-suited to power development without bulk, look no further than the Janda sit-up.
- Timothy Ferriss
