Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Notable Quotables
The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.
- Peter Drucker
Some conflicts are simply territorial. For instance, I’ve rarely met a marketing person who wanted to raise prices and I’ve rarely met a finance person who wanted to lower prices.
- David Novak
You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.
- Elon Musk
My education was interrupted only by my schooling.
- Winston Churchill
As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay.
- Ben Horowitz
I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.
- Elon Musk
Up until the time I was 14 years old, I was sure that I was going to be a big-league baseball player. But that dream came to a rude awakening when I got cut from my high school baseball team.
- Phil Knight
For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.
- Lee Shau Kee
We have an ideal location for a couple of organic wineries on the island. But the reintroduction of commercial agriculture to Lanai is 100% dependent upon increasing the available water on the island. So we’re going to use solar energy to convert seawater to fresh water.
- Larry Ellison
I use the iPhone and iPad every day, and I no longer touch PCs at all.
- Masayoshi Son
When screening engineers from other companies, its smart to value engineers from great companies more than those from mediocre companies.
- Ben Horowitz
Anyone that makes me a quarter of a billion dollars, I like.
- Carl Icahn
You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.
- Dale Carnegie
Everybody was writing about computers and electronics, but all I really knew about was running. It’s what I’ve chosen to do with my life.
- Phil Knight
China’s open-door policy, the favourable local exchange rates, the growing affluence and changing lifestyles in South Asian countries and burgeoning economic activities in the Asia-Pacific Rim are all conducive factors to the continuing tourism boom.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.
- Howard Schultz
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m blessed to be a blessing to someone else.
- Joel Olsteen
In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.
- Bill Gates
The Internet revolution will determine which companies survive and which get left behind, … Increasingly, the Internet is recognized as the key driver in our global economy.
- John Chambers
Have you ever heard of Gmail? Ever used it? If so, it’s not because Gmail ran a lot of TV ads (they didn’t). It’s because the manifesto of free email got to you.
- Seth Godin
If you don’t agree with the core principles, which are the premise of that compromise, then you have to have what I call principled confrontation. And so that is the thing that we do that I think can rub some people the wrong way.
- Travis Kalanick
Always deliver more than expected.
- Larry Page
So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.
- Steve Ballmer
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Edison
I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.
- Warren Buffett
This could easily end up one of the driest winters ever, unless things switch around.
- Ed Clark
When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.
- Larry Ellison
Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.
- Jack Welch
Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
The knowledge worker is not poverty-prone. He is in danger of alienation, to use the fashionable word for boredom, frustration, and silent despair.
- Peter Drucker
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
- Arnold Glasow
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.
- Henry Ford
Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I’d do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.
- Steve Martin
Gratitude is the single greatest treasure I will take with me from this experience.
- Oprah Winfrey
It’s no surprise that these fields all attract disproportionate numbers of high-achieving Ivy League optionality chasers; what could be a more appropriate reward for two decades of résumé-building than a seemingly elite, process-oriented career that promises to “keep options open”?
- Peter Thiel
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill
There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.
- Jeff Bezos
Increasingly, the Chinese will own a lot more of the world because they will be converting their dollar reserves and U.S. government bonds into real assets.
- George Soros
When I was growing up my dad would encourage my brother and me to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, so what did you guys fail at this week? If we didn’t have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he’d high-five me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn’t the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, I didn’t try that because I was scared, that is failure.
- Sara Blakely
Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.
- Peter Thiel
No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The most “successful” companies seemed to embrace a sort of anti-business model where they lost money as they grew.
- Peter Thiel
I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. But I’d love to, right?
- Jack Ma
If I prophesy my future I want to prophesy something good. I’m not saying what I feel. I’m not saying what it looks like in the real world. No, I’m saying what God says about me.
- Joel Olsteen
If you are starting a business I believe it has to be your passion.
- David Robinson
Don’t simply settle for what your parents had. You can go further than that. You can do more, have more, be more.
- Joel Olsteen
Management will endeavour to actively encourage staff to broaden their experiences and job knowledge for extensive application in the process of improving the Group’s operational and competitive performance. Combined with our strengths in both entrepreneurial spirit and managerial professionalism, this would result in the creation of a leading edge honed in a relentless drive for operational excellence in the Group’s future pursuits.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.
- Bill Gates
Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It’s just always all in the way you use it. So there’s no – you can’t really blame anything on the technology. It’s just the way people use it, and it always has been.
- Steve Martin
Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Peter Drucker
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Dale Carnegie
Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.
- John C. Maxwell
And I keep saying, whether you like the president or not, everybody has to pull together and help the president because, as the president goes, so goes the country, as the country goes, so goes your job, your ability to feed your family, your government.
- Michael Bloomberg
Practice what you preach
- Tony Hsieh
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
Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
- Bill Gates
I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it.
- Winston Churchill
Reality is negotiable.
- Timothy Ferriss
It truly levels the playing field and puts all the emphasis on the content. And all the emphasis on the merit of the idea.
- Jack Dorsey
What is measured improves.
- Peter Drucker
We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners.
- Phil Knight
Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.
- Zig Ziglar
[On someone with a new idea.] The first thing is to draw it out, program it, play with it and get other people playing with it so you can get feedback right away… Once you get that feedback you know if it’s something you should pursue and give more of your attention to, or if it’s something you should put on the shelf for another da
- Jack Dorsey
To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
- W. Clement Stone
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
Maintain ‘baseball cards’ and/or ‘believability matrixes’ for your people. Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once.
- Peter Thiel
What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
- Steve Martin
What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.
- Steve Jobs
If failure is not an option, then neither is success.
- Seth Godin
Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.
- Peter Thiel
Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.
- Bill Gates
The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.
- Winston Churchill
I like the fact that I can meet anyone now and have a conversation.
- Larry Page
Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.
- Reed Hastings
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
- Winston Churchill
I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Difference between TV and the internet was how far you sat from the screen. TV was an 8 foot activity, and you were a consumer. The internet was a 16 inch activity, and you participated. I think the sitting down thing is similar. You’re not going to buy an armoir while standing on the subway.
- Seth Godin
Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th.
- Peter Thiel
Over three hundred years ago Galileo said: You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
- Dale Carnegie
But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1.
- Peter Thiel
A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.
- Joel Olsteen
I worry about another leg down in the economies causing social disruption because deleveragings can be very painful – it depends on how they’re managed.
- Ray Dalio
Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself.
- Peter Thiel
People that call old leads, drive old cars.
- Jason Bailey
In the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we’ve done, and they will say ‘do not despair, do not yield…march straightforward.
- Winston Churchill
[On becoming in 1969 a full-time employee of his five year old company] There were nervous moments. Every time I brought a fresh letter of credit home and it said, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Knight guarantee liabilities to the tune of $300,000,’ Penny’d say, ‘We don’t have $300,000.’ I’d say, ‘I don’t care. Just sign the thing.’
- Phil Knight
You’ve got to be before you can do and do before you can have.
- Zig Ziglar
99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns. We are going to live through a devastating social media bubble.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.
- Thomas J Stanley
The responsibility of the leader is to define reality and create hope.
- David Novak
I’m trying to change the culture in New York City, that’s hard enough!
- Michael Bloomberg
Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money
- Warren Buffett
Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.
- Peter Thiel
