I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
- Warren Buffett
Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don’t have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I don’t want any more concentration camps for animals that are cruelly treated, force-fed to fatten themselves up for our consumption.
- Stephen Wynn
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
I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.
- Joel Olsteen
Making money from money is like aerobatics.
- Alisher Usmanov
I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.
- Warren Buffett
Extolling the virtues of conservation of energy, Churchill advised, “Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down.
- Winston Churchill
The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.
- Andrew Carnegie
I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.
- Steve Wozniak
Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.
- John C. Maxwell
If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.
- Peter Thiel
Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.
- Winston Churchill
I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.
- Howard Schultz
By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.
- Bill Gates
In a position to be more accommodating. There are some lights at the end of the tunnel. If political leaders in Europe can put things in order, things will be better. These days, much relies on politics.
- Lee Shau Kee
I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.
- Oprah Winfrey
China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.
- Bill Gates
The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.
- Howard Schultz
But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.
- Dale Carnegie
It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.
- Bill Gates
Watered-down feedback can be worse than no feedback at all because it’s deceptive and confusing to the recipient.
- Ben Horowitz
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison
If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.
- Jeff Bezos
It is expected that Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation will materialise in the near future and the country will see further growth in its economy unfolding at a faster pace.
- Lee Shau Kee
Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart.
- Joel Olsteen
When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.
- Bill Gates
I hate the photo shoots. I hate all that stuff.
- Reed Hastings
Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.
- Drew Houston
We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.
- John Chambers
Alibaba is an ecosystem that helps small business to grow.
- Jack Ma
Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes and the rest of us have to be other people.
- Zig Ziglar
The level of analysis that is done when you see laws created, whether it’s the city or state or federal level – it’s much more horse-trading than analysis.
- Michael Bloomberg
It’s absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others.
- Zig Ziglar
Let’s make it easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can.
- Jack Dorsey
Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.
- Donald Trump
Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn vos Savant
My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.
- Bill Gates
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.
- Winston Churchill
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
- Napoleon Hill
China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‘us versus them,’ it’s an ‘us and them’ type scenario.
- Bill Gates
I believe in being an innovator.
- Walt Disney
If it’s a good idea, someone has already probably thought about it first.
- Jack Nadel
My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.
- Sara Blakely
Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.
- Jeff Bezos
Mormonism is a little different, but I still see them as brothers in Christ.
- Joel Olsteen
Would you believe that in 2011 and 2012, Nigeria paid $30 billion in subsidy, money which would have been used to build at least 20 refineries?
- Aliko Dangote
You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.
- Elon Musk
It takes a leader to create momentum. Followers catch it. And managers are able to continue it once it has begun. But creating it requires someone who can motivate others, not who needs to be motivated. Harry Truman once said, If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But for leaders, that statement should be changed to, If you can’t make some heat, get out of the kitchen.
- John Maxwell
Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.
- Rich Karlgaard
These two chefs will play an important role in managing the company’s growing appetites.
- Sergey Brin
I never hid my thoughts or feelings. During a business meeting I could get so emotionally charged and involved that I’d stammer out what others might consider to be outrageous things like, My six year old could do better than that! Or Don’t Walter Cronkite me!
- Solutions
I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
- Stephen R. Covey
I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation…I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire.
- Oprah Winfrey
It’s ironic that no matter where I go, I meet people from Brooklyn. I’m proud of that heritage. It’s where I’m from, who I am.
- Howard Schultz
A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist.
- Seth Godin
Don’t kill competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you – the entrepreneur – on your toes.
- Aliko Dangote
I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.
- George Soros
Companies such as Echelon are poised to help drive this change with Cisco and extend the power of the Internet from business to the home.
- John Chambers
The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.
- John C. Maxwell
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
- Warren Buffett
To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.
- Aliko Dangote
There will be no government that will be against business, so you can go ahead and invest.
- Aliko Dangote
I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.
- Bill Gates
I’ve seen executives improve their performance and skill sets, I’ve never seen one lose the support of the organization and then regain it.
- Ben Horowitz
Every dream I’ve ever had in life has come true ten times over.
- Steve Wozniak
Teams only succeed when the players have a unified vision, no matter how much talent or potential there is.
- John Maxwell
No one has any idea what’s next… the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it’s delaying the recovery.
- Stephen Wynn
I aim to be pretty – I gave up dressing to be sexy in the eighties.
- Sara Blakely
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.
- Abraham Lincoln
Only 17 percent of us or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private highschool. But 55 percent of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools.
- Thomas J Stanley
If you pay people peanuts, you will get monkeys.
- Andy Pearson
m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.
- Elon Musk
I’ve taken those pharmacists and asked them to reach out to doctors. Doctors still misprescribe very often. They leave gaps with care. People with asthma, they don’t take their inhalers, they wait until they’re sick, and by then, it’s too late. Now we’re already running up the bills and going to emergency rooms. We’re using our pharmacist to do the things they were educated to do, not to count pills. That’s not where the value is.
- George Paz
The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.
- Peter Drucker
I know when one door closes God will open up another door. What was meant for my harm God will use to my advantage. I’m not only coming out, I will come out better off than I was before.
- Joel Olsteen
Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?
- Ray Kroc
If there is to be a low-cost Uber, Uber will be the low-cost Uber.
- Travis Kalanick
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
- Winston Churchill
Excellence isn’t achieved without inspiration and perspiration. You’ve got to have both.
- George Foreman
To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I am prepared to try anything once.
- Richard Branson
In fact, technology has been the story of human progress from as long back as we know. In 100 years people will look back on now and say, ‘That was the Internet Age.’ And computers will be seen as a mere ingredient to the Internet Age.
- Reed Hastings
This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!
- Winston Churchill
At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You simply cannot manage people to better performance if you do not give candid, consistent feedback through a system that is loaded with integrity
- Jack Welch
Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
- Winston Churchill
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
- Benjamin Franklin
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
- Dale Carnegie
Kickstarter isn’t a profit center, it’s an organizer and an instigator.
- Seth Godin
Cleantech shows the result: hundreds of undifferentiated products all in the name of one overbroad goal.
- Peter Thiel
Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.
- Timothy Ferriss
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge….
- Thomas Edison
Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.
- Howard Schultz
Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand.
- Ben Horowitz
