Notable Quotables

Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.

- Ray Dalio

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

- Jack London

Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.

- Bill Gates

The market is fast-moving, fast-growing. Things that are true today may not be true tomorrow.

- Robin Li

Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… The ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

- Steve Jobs

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.

- P.T. Barnum

To be sure, the fundamental task of management remains the same: to make people capable of joint performance through common goals, common values, the right structure, and the training and development they need to perform and to respond to change.

- Peter Drucker

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known

- Walt Disney

Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.

- Dale Carnegie

For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them” (Matthew 25:29).

- Peter Thiel

We had gotten people’s attention. So a lot of American shoe distributors were going to Japan and telling Onitsuka, ‘Well, if this two-bit outfit up in the woods in Oregon can do this kind of business, wait till you get somebody that’s really in the business.

- Phil Knight

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

- Winston Churchill

Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.

- Seth Godin

You will make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.

- Winston Churchill

Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.

- Wang Jianlin

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

- Napoleon Hill

If you will remain at rest and hold your peace, then the battle is not yours, but the battle is the Lord’s.

- Joel Olsteen

I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons

- Russell Simmons

You can follow your favorite company or organization. You can also mix that in with your family and your social network and talk about all these interests in real time. That’s the value, not the brand ‘Twitter.’ Twitter just provides the venue for it.

- Jack Dorsey

I’m certainly well taken care of in terms of food and clothes.

- Bill Gates

Great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future.

- Peter Thiel

I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Today I will be a successful sales professional, and I will learn something today that will make me even more professional tomorrow.

- Zig Ziglar

It is impossible to divide the interest of a country and a company that works on its soil.

- Vagit Alekperov

We believe that the business system only is the key to success. It’s no miracle, only day-to-day work in the appropriate way.

- Alexei Mordashov

I’ve always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.

- Hakeem Olajuwon

The flexibility of Hong Kong businessmen should soon twist a way to success again.

- Cheng Yu-tung

In a dark place we find ourselves, and a little more knowledge lights our way.

- Yoda

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

- Winston Churchill

The question you should be asking isn’t, What do I want? or What are my goals? but What would excite me?

- Timothy Ferriss

If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.

- Jeff Bezos

It was not her sex appeal but the obvious relish with which she devoured the hamburger that made my pulse begin to hammer with excitement.

- Ray Kroc

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.

- Russell Simmons

You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.

- Seth Godin

Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.

- Bill Gates

I don’t think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You’re always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it’ll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it’s always meant to be something. So, to me, there’s no practicing; there’s only editing and publishing or not publishing.

- Steve Martin

It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.

- Timothy Ferriss

The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

- Bill Gates

The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.

- John C. Maxwell

Most of my job and most of what I do is to mentor people. There are a lot of people I work with that I don’t have investments in.

- Ben Horowitz

I think it’d be crazy not to have the plan encompass the entire reservoir. If we have (the smaller map), we’ve got a bunch of other folks telling us what they want to see happen in our community.

- Jack Taylor

It’s just not right that so many things don’t work when they should. I don’t think that will change for a long time.

- Steve Wozniak

Say ‘Hello’ in tones that bespeak how pleased you are to have the person call.

- Dale Carnegie

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

- Dale Carnegie

I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.

- Larry Ellison

It is unhealthy to marinate in your own press clippings.

- Sam Walton

China will become the IT (information technology) center of the world. We believe in giving something back and truly becoming a Chinese company.

- John Chambers

There’s no reason why the future should happen only at Stanford, or in college, or in Silicon Valley.

- Peter Thiel

The U.S. has done a great job improving productivity. We’re making a lot more steel in Dearborn with fewer people. The unions have accepted much better work rules.

- Alexei Mordashov

Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.

- P.T. Barnum

Comprehensive after-sale property management service is as important as building quality.

- Lee Shau Kee

Animation offers a medium of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

- Walt Disney

But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.

- Peter Thiel

In a world where wealth is growing, you can get away with printing money. Doubling the debt over the next 20 years is not a problem.

- Peter Thiel

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

- Bill Gates

I DECLARE God is going before me making crooked places straight. He has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities and solutions to problems I haven’t had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment, can stop His plan. What he promised will come to pass.

- Joel Olsteen

This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.

- Bill Gates

To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

- Bill Gates

We can schedule for it. Thursday, April 3rd, 3:05…start something. We can train for it, plan for it, announce it, and even hire for it. If initiating is as essential to the modern organization as it appears, we better be doing all of that and more.

- Seth Godin

If your temper is aroused and you tell ’em a thing or two, you will have a fine time unloading your feelings. But what about the other fellow? Will he share your pleasure? Will your belligerent tones, your hostile attitude, make it easy for him to agree with you? If you come at me with your fists doubled, said Wood row Wilson, I think I can promise you that mine will double as fast as yours; but if you come to me and say, ‘Let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if we differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ from one another, just what the points at issue are,’ we will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only have the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together.

- Dale Carnegie

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.

- Bill Gates

People don’t want lots and lots of single purpose devices. They do not want to have to learn how to set up something for photos, another thing for music, another thing for video.

- Bill Gates

Cultural industries will be the next engine for growth after real estate, and Wanda will make cultural industries our long-term focus.

- Wang Jianlin

As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.

- Peter Thiel

Mitt – what I speak to Mitt Romney about is jobs. What I speak to Mitt Romney about is China, because he’s got a great view on China and how they’re trying to destroy our country by taking our jobs and making our product and manipulating their currency, so that it makes it almost impossible for our companies to compete.

- Donald Trump

What you need to keep most in the U.S. is the entrepreneurial spirit.

- Alexei Mordashov

Dont count the things you do, do the things that count.

- Zig Ziglar

I move onward, the only direction Can’t be scared to fail in search of perfection.

- Jay-Z

It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

- John Wooden

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

- Steve Martin

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.

- Winston Churchill

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.

- Maya Angelou

I care about our employees more than anybody in my company. I care about my kids, too, but that doesn’t mean I give them everything that they want.

- Charles Ergen

The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?

- Mark Zuckerberg

Opportunity is walking through your life every day in the form of people you meet.

- Zig Ziglar

My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.

- Howard Schultz

It’s unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

When screening engineers from other companies, its smart to value engineers from great companies more than those from mediocre companies.

- Ben Horowitz

Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!

- Og Mandino

If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

- Bill Gates

China and India will, separately and together, unleash an explosion of demand.

- Mukesh Ambani

I didn’t invent the hamburger. I just took it more seriously than anyone else…We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.

- Ray Kroc

I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.

- Zig Ziglar

I want to own the New York Jets, that’s what I want. And I absolutely believe I am going to own the Jets.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Over the past 30 years, the nation has gradually opened up under such reform policies, which have presented enormous challenges and unlimited opportunities for the people and benefited the development of the nation all these years.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you’re not called to do it, you’re dividing the audience you’re trying to reach.

- Joel Olsteen

Leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum.

- Peter Thiel

Founding Fathers of U.S. set up processes, checks and balances designed to insure that their values lived on long after their passing.

- Jim Collins

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