Every entrepreneur should plan to be the last mover in her particular market. That starts with asking yourself: what will the world look like 10 and 20 years from now, and how will my business fit in?
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
You 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.
- Winston Churchill
I didn’t used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.
- Bill Gates
Often, out of our greatest rejection comes our greatest direction.
- Joel Olsteen
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.
- Dave Barry
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
- John C. Maxwell
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
Our favorite holding period is forever.
- Warren Buffett
It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculate a Web site’s importance.
- Larry Page
If you want people to know how much you care, show them how much you remember. Learn their names and use them often. It’s an important skill to develop.
- Harvey Mackay
If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you.
- Peter Thiel
Today, we’ve begun to make the extraordinary historic films of the National Archives available to the world for the first time online. Students and researchers whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 — the historic first landing on the Moon.
- Sergey Brin
Common Core is a big win for education.
- Bill Gates
“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.
- Sergey Brin
The spread of online information isn’t just good for charities. It’s also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.
- Bill Gates
If you’re a Wal-Mart of a Meijer you can draw the shoppers without using signs to advertise your specials, … But when you’re a little guy, you really depend on those signs.
- Michael Ward
Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
- Winston Churchill
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.
- Steve Martin
A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
- John C. Maxwell
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
- Warren Buffett
The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.
- Mark Zuckerberg
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
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
- Steve Martin
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
- Thomas Edison
Lack of a well-defined purpose in life.
- Napoleon Hill
Often we don’t even realize who we’re meant to be because we’re so busy trying to live out someone else’s ideas. But other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.
- Oprah Winfrey
Economic recovery in the United States has been taking place at a slow pace at a time of uncertainty in the Middle East. However, Mainland China was able to show steady sustained growth. Hong Kong, being right at the southern gateway of Mainland China, is able to benefit from its growth.
- Lee Shau Kee
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.
- Winston Churchill
Your thoughts about your circumstances have you down. On the other hand, you can be in one of the biggest battles of your life, and still be filled with joy and peace and victory – if you simply learn how to choose the right thought. It’s time to think about what you’re thinking about.
- Joel Olsteen
I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian – or just being in show business, is really more accurate.
- Steve Martin
You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
- Bill Gates
When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.
- Jack Welch
Challenges will present us a good opportunity to improve productivity.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.
- Bill Gates
The most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest.
- Bill Gates
We’ve shown the world that New York can never be defeated, because of its dynamic and diverse population and because it embodies the spirit of enterprise and the love of liberty. And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.
- Michael Bloomberg
We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.
- Bill Gates
Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.
- Jack Welch
Always keep your eyes open for people with potential.
- Napoleon Hill
I believe that if you show people the problems and you show them the solutions they will be moved to act.
- Bill Gates
When you do things the right way, you have nothing to lose because you have nothing to fear.
- Zig Ziglar
In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.
- Elon Musk
All a bliss state like California does is spoil you.
- Phil Knight
With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.
- Steve Martin
Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.
- Oprah Winfrey
An enterprise shall take care of the people’s livelihood, through thick and thin…
- Cheng Yu-tung
I can go into restaurants and a whole table will get up and clap if they recognize me, because they love Fox News. Other places – or even the same place – people will turn the other way.
- Rupert Murdoch
Even though about 60% of our product is bought by people who don’t use it for the actual sport, everything we did was aimed at the top.
- Phil Knight
In order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going. America can’t have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations – can’t have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It’s got to have a vision.
- Jack Welch
The problem with common sense is that it’s not really that common. – David Novak CEO of Yum! Brands
- David Novak
When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.
- Howard Schultz
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
- Harvey Mackay
If you learn late, you pass it on to people so they can learn early. It’s a step process.
- Russell Simmons
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
- John D. Rockefeller
Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.
- Apostle Paul
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
- Winston Churchill
A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
- Jerry Seinfeld
If David our CEO, devotes so much of his time to this, then all this stuff about teamwork and learning how to be a great leader must be pretty important.
- David Novak
God accepts you. God approves you. And He has something better in store.
- Joel Olsteen
It is clothes. It is parts. Therefore, you combine the parts differently to create your own unique expression.
- Tadashi Yanai
You can take pride in yourself without comparing yourself to anybody else. If you run your race and be the best that you can be, then you can feel good about yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
Worrying about the past or the future isn’t productive. When you start chastising yourself for past mistakes, or seeing disaster around every corner, stop and take a breath and ask yourself what you can do right now to succeed.
- Harvey Mackay
When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome.
- Winston Churchill
Winning isn’t everything but wanting to win is.
- Zig Ziglar
The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.
- Bill Gates
Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.
- Winston Churchill
Those people behind the mosque have to respect, have to appreciate and have to defer to the people of New York. The wound is still there. Just because the wound is healing you can’t say, ‘Let’s just go back to where we were pre-9/11.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I am so busy doing nothing… that the idea of doing anything – which as you know, always leads to something – cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.
- Bill Gates
Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
- Confucius
Movies always are open to being remade because times change so much, and the tempo of movies changes. I think of it like a James Bond. They can have different actors play the same role… I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘We want to remake ‘The Jerk’ with so and so.’ And I say, ‘Fine.’ It just doesn’t bother me. It’s an honor actually.
- Steve Martin
Autonomy was shopped to us. We looked at the price and thought it was absurdly high.
- Larry Ellison
You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
- Peter Drucker
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
- Bill Gates
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The most stable companies have strong leaders at every level of the organization. The only way to develop such widespread leadership is to make developing leaders a part of your culture. That is a strong part of Coca-Cola’s legacy.
- John Maxwell
I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet.
- Russell Simmons
In the game of life, money is just how we keep score.
- Clay Clark
Certainly, other people can pray for you, they can believe for you, they can quote the scripture to you, but you must exercise faith for yourself. If you are always depending on somebody else to keep you happy, somebody else to encourage you or to get you out of trouble, you will live in perpetual weakness and disappointment. You must make a decision that you are going to be a believer. Take charge of your life and decide, No matter what comes against me, I believe in God. I’m going to have a positive outlook for my life! Other people’s faith can indeed bolster yours. But your own faith will bring you a miracle much faster than anybody else’s. What you believe has a much greater impact on your life than what anybody else believes.
- Joel Olsteen
I DECLARE it is not too late to accomplish everything God has placed in my heart. I have not missed my window of opportunity. God has moments of favor in my future. He is preparing me right now because He is about to release a special grace to help me accomplish that dream. This is my time. This is my moment. I receive it.
- Joel Olsteen
To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.
- Seth Godin
If you find yourself plagued by a recurrent worry, train yourself to think of something else. Your conscious mind can concentrate on only one thought at a time, and driving the negativity away will free you up to move forward again.
- Harvey Mackay
Measles will always show you if someone isn’t doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.
- Bill Gates
The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.
- Bill Gates
Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy.
- Seth Godin
We asked ourselves what we wanted this company to stand for. We didn’t want to just sell shoes. I wasn’t even into shoes – but I was pasionate about customer service.
- Tony Hsieh
Everybody has equal opportunity, and I think that is true for everything.
- Mukesh Ambani
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
- Dale Carnegie
My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.
- Winston Churchill
Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It’s the image, not what you sing.
- Rod Stewart
I’m a big supporter of President Obama.
- Russell Simmons
It’s disappointing, but it’s still a really good book. I’m glad Kenny did it, and I’m glad it’s going to get out. … I still endorse the book. I think everybody should buy it. I think he did a great job on a very complicated topic.
- Phil Knight
For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better.
- Seth Godin
Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.
- Seth Godin
