I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
- Steve Martin
Notable Quotables
Working to fulfill someone else’s needs or dreams almost always catches up with you.
- Jack Welch
Wild Turkey whiskey and Philip Morris cigarettes are essential to the maintenance of human life!
- Herb Kelleher
If you wish to build a powerful personal network, branch out. Build a diverse network of professional contacts that includes people that don’t look like you, sound like you, speak like you or have your background, education or history. The only thing they should have in common with you and the other people in your network is that they should be really good at what they do. Create a personal network like that, and you’ll have a network that can help you succeed at anything.
- Ivan Misner
Only engage in mutually beneficial relationships.
- Clay Clark
Our underwear used to just be cotton, but we wanted to see if we could create something out of synthetics.
- Tadashi Yanai
Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.
- Yoda
For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn boat.
- Tony Hsieh
Starbucks has changed the rules of engagement for the music industry.
- Howard Schultz
My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.
- Steve Jobs
Change means opportunity for those with the experience and confidence to look to the future.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
- Thomas Edison
Trust your gut.
- Sara Blakely
It’s not Pinterest where people are putting up pins. You’re changing the way cities work, and that’s fundamentally a third rail. We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an as—hole named Taxi.
- Travis Kalanick
There’s a lot of thought in art. People get to talk about important things. There’s a lot of sex, you know, in art. There’s a lot of naked women and men, and there’s intrigue, there’s fakery. It’s a real microcosm of the larger world.
- Steve Martin
Strip malls are history.
- Jeff Bezos
I don’t blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.(…) You can say that and be 100 percent sincere, because if you were the other person you, of course, would feel just as he does (…) Suppose you had inherited the same body and temperament and mind (…) Suppose you had had his environment and experiences. You would then be precisely what he was – and where he was. For it is those things -and only those things – that made him what he was. (…) You deserve very little credit for being what you are – and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.
- Dale Carnegie
We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don’t decide for you.
- Larry Ellison
Although it’s admirable to be ambitious and hard-working, it’s more desirable to be smart-working.
- John C. Maxwell
The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty.
- Francois Pinault
Nowhere are the benefits of closer economic ties more pronounced than in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The two places have their own advantages. One has the manpower, natural resources and manufacturing might, while the other has the management skills and marketing know-how.
- Cheng Yu-tung
What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.
- Peter Thiel
In motivating people, you’ve got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example – and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved.
- Rupert Murdoch
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.
- Mario Andretti
Before you can be sure of your ability to transmute DESIRE into its equivalent, you will require SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE of the service, merchandise or profession which you intend to offer in return for fortune.
- Napoleon Hill
A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa.
- Dale Carnegie
Well, we’re about 24 million subscribers today, and that’s up from about 15 million a year ago, so it’s a very high rate of growth, and that’s what’s exciting about the business – more and more people are getting smart TVs, they’re watching Netflix on their iPads.
- Reed Hastings
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
- Peter Drucker
Two things about Sam Walton distinguish him from almost everyone else I know. First he gets up everyday bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I’ve ever know. And once he sees he’s wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction. (qualities of great leaders)
- David Glass
God can take what was meant for my harm and turn it around and use it to my advantage.
- Joel Olsteen
The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.
- Ben Horowitz
You have to have a dream, whether big or small. Then plan, focus, work hard and be very determined to achieve your goals.
- Henry Sy
Pick the best people, face the reality (the way it is), speak with candor to everything, never lose sight of the relationship with the constituency.
- Jack Welch
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
- Peter Drucker
The Internet will help achieve friction free capitalism” by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.
- Bill Gates
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.
- Elon Musk
People development should be a daily event, integrated into every aspect of your regular goings-on.
- Jack Welch
The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.
- Bill Gates
You can’t explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don’t have to. It’s that simple.
- Phil Knight
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
- Brian Tracy
The most impressive person I’ve ever met? Elaine Wynn is no slouch. She’s a much better person than me. But I’ve got her. Finders keepers, losers weepers. And it’s been forty-seven years.
- Stephen Wynn
It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.
- Walt Disney
No one’s going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful, although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.
- Rupert Murdoch
I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.
- Steve Martin
You can’t just let nature run wild.
- Walt Disney
The reason that I have Global Grind is to communicate ideas to people who might otherwise not be listening.
- Russell Simmons
How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.
- John C. Maxwell
Change is the price of progress.
- Napoleon Hill
The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.
- Jack Welch
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
Success is one thing you can’t pay for. You buy it on the installment plan and make payments every day.
- Zig Ziglar
From a global CEO and government leader perspective, we remain in a `show- me’ economy.
- John Chambers
The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.
- Larry Ellison
Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring.
- Seth Godin
“Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.”
- Sam Walton
The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with.
- Timothy Ferriss
Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
- Napoleon Hill
The Chinese people have always been determined to forge ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
When you write a program for Android, you use the Oracle Java tools for everything, and at the very end, you push a button and say, ‘Convert this to Android format.’
- Larry Ellison
In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.
- Bill Gates
I am a man of simple tastes easily satisfied with the best.
- Winston Churchill
the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
- Dale Carnegie
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
- Dale Carnegie
I started thinking about joy. Everything in our society is so purposeful. Let’s bring joy back to the experience.
- Sara Blakely
Mentorship is a pain free way to learn.
- Paul Pressey
By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.
- Dale Carnegie
Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls– family, health, friends, integrity– are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered
- Gary Keller
A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.
- Jeff Bezos
Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.
- Walt Disney
The earnings from Hong Kong and China Gas and rental property portfolio serve as a solid base for the Group’s sustainable growth.
- Lee Shau Kee
I do everything on my phone as a lot of people do.
- Mark Zuckerberg
When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.
- Zig Ziglar
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
Your business plan is fluid, not concrete. Once you a build plan, the market place validates what works and what does not. Be flexible and evolve your business strategy.
- David Nilssen
You are looking at an economy that most CEOs are going to believe will be a good economy for 2006. Most CEOs are saying they are going to spend both on hiring of people and on technology.
- John Chambers
There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track… We and the consumer were one and the same.
- Phil Knight
What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labor, but a third team, one that straddled elements of both? I think there’s a huge opportunity for a third kind of participant, a linchpin, and now there is an opportunity to change all the rules that we’ve lived with all our lives. There is a shortage of this third kind of worker, and that shortage means that the market needs you desperately. The con game is ending, at least for people passionate enough to do something about it.
- Seth Godin
I think how you start the day many times determines what kind of day you’re going to have.
- Joel Olsteen
Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.
- Ben Horowitz
My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more.
- Peter Thiel
If you pay that price daily by planning and preparing and working to become the right kind of person, then you can legitimately expect to have all that life has to offer.
- Zig Ziglar
If your thinking is limited, then your life is going to be limited.
- Joel Olsteen
Run your business in harmony with God’s laws.
- David Green
The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.
- Oprah Winfrey
No one knows more about the way you think than you do.
- Seth Godin
Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt.
- Zig Ziglar
Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
Do or do not. There is no try.
- Yoda
People who are using it to sell things on Craigslist to holding garage sales – campaigns – the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign both used Square to raise funds.
- Jack Dorsey
I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding, they learn by some other way—by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!
- Richard P. Feynman
Great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.
- Seth Godin
Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.
- Ron Chernow
Hold on to that new, enlarge vision of victory that God has given you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. Dare to boldly declare that you are standing strong against the forces of darkness.
- Joel Olsteen
Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
- Malcolm X
We thought this [downturn] would last for two quarters, … Now we are saying that it will last for at least – at least ? three quarters.
- John Chambers
The part of uranium that’s fissile – when you hit it with a neutron, it splits in two – is about 0.7%. The reactors we have today are burning that 0.7%.
- Bill Gates
…Treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.
- Seth Godin
