Notable Quotables

Well, I am a Republican, and I would run as a Republican. And I have a lot of confidence in the Republican Party. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the president. I think what’s happening to this country is unbelievably bad. We’re no longer a respected country.

- Donald Trump

A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.

- Jack Ma

Sometimes you do have to fight. Where that’s true, you should fight and win. There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.

- Peter Thiel

The Internet is the easiest thing to get into. To be an Internet retailer, you just get that URL.

- Bill Gates

We have set the course for the future and are very happy about a successful generational change at the top of the company.

- Stefan Quandt

I have no interest in going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids. I’m just not that kind of dude.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you sell business-to-business, get a letter off to your client within an hour or two of your meeting…Start with something personal from the meeting and include a compliment.

- Chet Holmes

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

- Oscar Wilde

Eventually we’ll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system.

- Bill Gates

In his rigidgly compartmentalized life, each hour was tightly budgeted, whether for business, religion, family or exercise. Perhaps those daily rituals helped him deal with the underlying tensions that might otherwise have become ungovernable, for although he tried to project to an air of unhurried calm, he was under terrific strain the surface, was constantly on edge. In one of his few admissions of weakness he recalled, for years on end I never had a solid night’s sleep, worrying about how it was to come out…I tossed about in bed night after night worrying over the outcome…All the fortune that I have made has not served to compensate for the anxiety of that period.

- Ron Chernow

Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.

- Peter Drucker

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

- Steve Martin

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

- Bill Gates

The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them.

- Zig Ziglar

Heretics are the new leaders. The ones who challenge the status quo, who get out in front of their tribes, who create movements.

- Seth Godin

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

- Peter Drucker

If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook. And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone. If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault. That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. ‘I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.’ What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.

- Seth Godin

It used to be the case, like you’d switch jobs, and then maybe you wouldn’t keep in touch with all the people that you knew from that old job, just because it was too hard. But one of the things that Facebook does is it makes it really easy to just stay in touch with all these people.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Document in writing every agreement or important conversation with suppliers and customers.

- Jack Nadel

I want to get involved in things that makes a difference in peoples lives and lifts them up. I don’t want to be a part of anything that’s not inspiring or helpful to the community that I’m serving.

- Russell Simmons

At Uniqlo, we’re thinking ahead. We’re thinking about how to create new, innovative products… and sell that to everyone.

- Tadashi Yanai

It’s never paid to bet against America. We come through things, but its not always a smooth ride.

- Warren Buffett

The freedom of the new kind of work (which most of us do, most of the time) is that the tasks are vague and difficult to measure. We can waste an hour surfing the ’Net because no one knows if surfing the ’Net is going to help us make progress or connections. This freedom is great, because it means no one is looking over your shoulder; no one is using a stopwatch on you. This freedom is a pox, because it’s an opening for the resistance. Freedom like this makes it easy to hide, easy to find excuses, easy to do very little.

- Seth Godin

When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you.

- Zig Ziglar

The breadth and maturity of our own businesses is allowing us to weather the prevailing storms.

- Cheng Yu-tung

How much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes?

- Peter Thiel

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.

- Dale Carnegie

Being too humble can cost you. Not talking about your accomplishments can hit you in the pocketbook. It’s those who visibly take credit for accomplishments who are rewarded with promotions and gem assignments, writes Klaus. As our economy has resulted in less job stability, self-promotion has become more important. Even if you aren’t an entrepreneur, says Klaus, you need to think like one and start talking up your most valuable product: you.

- Peggy Klaus

If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth

- Ray Kroc

I encourage all my key people to bring their mobiles when they travel.

- Raymond Kwok

To be a champion, you have to learn to handle stress and pressure. But if you’ve prepared mentally and physically, you don’t have to worry.

- Harvey Mackay

If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.

- John C. Maxwell

My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.

- Timothy Ferriss

A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate

- Seth Godin

Let us accept the natural order in which we move. Let us reconcile ourselves to the mysterious rhythm of our destinies, such as they must be in this world of space and time. Let us treasure our joys but not bewail our sorrows. The glory of light cannot exist without its shadows. Life is a whole, and good and ill must be accepted together. The journey has been enjoyable and well worth making – once.

- Winston Churchill

As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there’s always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

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

Without passion, you don’t have energy; without energy, you have nothing. Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.

- Donald Trump

You should give 80% of your time and attention to your best 20% of employees. If you have one hundred customers, the top twenty will provide you with 80% of your business.

- John Maxwell

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ we will fall, but ‘when.’ There are no exceptions.

- John C. Maxwell

Every sale has 5 basic obstacles: need, money, hurry, desire, trust.

- Zig Ziglar

I read Google News and use NetNewsWire to keep up with general and tech news.

- Steve Wozniak

Motivation is the fuel, necessary to keep the human engine running.

- Zig Ziglar

Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

- Steve Jobs

If this market transition truly evolves the way that I think it’s most likely to, the worst decision you could make is not to move.

- John Chambers

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

- Bill Gates

I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.

- Howard Schultz

People suck at following advice. Even the most effective people in the world are terrible at it. There are two reasons: 1. Most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a nice-to-have, not a must-have. There has been no Harajuku Moment. 2. There are no reminders. No consistent tracking = no awareness = no behavioral change. Consistent tracking, even if you have no knowledge of fat-loss or exercise, will often beat advice from world-class trainers.

- Timothy Ferriss

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves

- Ray Kroc

I think of L.A. as truly the melting pot. It’s basically a mini-country unto itself.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Outside of your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have is with yourself. I don’t mean that we are to spend all our time focused on me, me, me to the exclusion of others. Instead, I mean that we must be healthy internally—emotionally and spiritually—in order to create healthy relationships with others. Motivational pep talks and techniques for achieving success are useless if a person is weighed down by guilt, shame, depression, rejection, bitterness, or crushed self-esteem. Countless marriages land on the rocks of divorce because unhealthy people marry thinking that marriage, or their spouse, will make them whole. Wrong. If you’re not a healthy single person you won’t be a healthy married person. Part of God’s purpose for every human life is wholeness and health. I love the words of Jesus in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” God knows we are the walking wounded in this world and He wants the opportunity to remove everything that limits us and heal every wound from which we suffer. Some wonder why God doesn’t just “fix” us automatically so we can get on with life. It’s because He wants our wounds to be our tutors to lead us to Him. Pain is a wonderful motivator and teacher! When the great Russian intellectual Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was released from the horrible Siberian work camp to which he was sent by Joseph Stalin, he said, “Thank you, prison!” It was the pain and suffering he endured that caused his eyes to be opened to the reality of the God of his childhood, to embrace his God anew in a personal way. When we are able to say thank you to the pain we have endured, we know we are ready to fulfill our purpose in life. When we resist the pain life brings us, all of our energy goes into resistance and we have none left for the pursuit of our purpose. It is the better part of wisdom to let pain do its work and shape us as it will. We will be wiser, deeper, and more productive in the long run. There is a great promise in the New Testament that says God comes to us to comfort us so we can turn around and comfort those who are hurting with the comfort we have received from Him (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Make yourself available to God and to those who suffer. A large part of our own healing comes when we reach out with compassion to others.

- Zig Ziglar

I spend a lot of time reading.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft

- Bill Gates

Really, truly, try to figure out what your palate is all about. If you’ve determined that you don’t like dirty old stinky wine – old-world flavors – you probably like new-world fruit bombs. Stick to Shirazes and California Cabernets or Zinfandels.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you’ve experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God’s word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.

- Joel Olsteen

I’m a creative guy. And I only do businesses as a result of like I’ve – I’m try to find what my gifts are and give them immediately. As soon as I get them and I understand, I give them back.

- Russell Simmons

In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.

- Winston Churchill

You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.

- Jeff Bezos

The engineer’s grail is a product great enough that “it sells itself.

- Peter Thiel

Our underwear used to just be cotton, but we wanted to see if we could create something out of synthetics.

- Tadashi Yanai

There is no man living who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can do.

- Henry Ford

Every company must deal decisively with people who don’t perform satisfactorily….Great people, not great strategies are what made it all work (GE).

- Jack Welch

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.

- Bill Gates

A lot of people quit looking for work as soon as they find a job.

- Zig Ziglar

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.

- Warren Buffett

Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures

- Sam Walton

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.

- Dale Carnegie

I think when companies are struggling, they don’t want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren’t interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it’s like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That’s slanted the whole thing quite a bit.

- Ben Horowitz

The truth is that finding happiness in what you do every day is so imperative.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I tend to approach things from a physics framework. And physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.

- Elon Musk

Comparing Apple to Netflix is like comparing apples to oranges, especially if the oranges made so many mistakes that people stopped eating oranges and just went back to Blockbuster.

- Reed Hastings

Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

- Bill Gates

Unleash the power of people. No involvement means no committment.

- David Novak

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

- Winston Churchill

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Plan and execute your first failure so that you no longer have to fear it.

- John C. Maxwell

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Measure, coach and reward the right things. Measure the vitally important. Reward the doers.

- David Novak

[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.

- Yoda

Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.

- Steve Ballmer

Experience has proven that the best educated people are often those who are known as self-made, or self-educated. It takes more than a college degree to make one a person of education. Any person who is educated is one who has learned to get whatever he wants in life without violating the rights of others. Education consists no so much of knowledge, but of knowledge effectively and peristently applied. Men are paid nor merely for tha they know, but more particulary for what they do with that which they know.

- Napoleon Hill

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription