MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
It is no achievement to walk a tightrope laid flat on the floor.
- Ray Kroc
This generation… they have a different attitude. Instead of sitting and watching something, they want to be a part of it – they’re very hedonistic and sensual.
- Stephen Wynn
Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that’s really powerful.
- Reid Hoffman
As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.
- Seth Godin
Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.
- Timothy Ferriss
The regulatory systems in place disincentive innovation. It’s intense to fight the red tape.
- Travis Kalanick
If you don’t have ambition, you should not be alive.
- Aliko Dangote
About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.
- Reed Hastings
Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
- Thomas J Stanley
Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.
- Joel Olsteen
No, I’m not settling here. I’m going to keep pressing forward.
- Joel Olsteen
What you study is more important than how you study. Students are subordinate to materials, much like novice cooks are subordinate to recipes. If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn’t matter how much (or how well) you study. It doesn’t matter how good your teacher is. One must find the highest-frequency material. Material beats method.
- Timothy Ferriss
My strength is programming. I also think my biggest strength is simplification. That’s what I love doing.
- Jack Dorsey
Don’t sling mud at others or soon you will find yourself in a deeper hole than when you started.
- Clay Clark
All bibles are man-made.
- Thomas Edison
Think and grow rich.
- Napoleon Hill
We must remember that our children are very much what we make them.
- Dale Carnegie
My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….
- Thomas Edison
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
When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.
- Dale Carnegie
Everybody in the world is seeking happiness—and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.
- Dale Carnegie
I know how to make decisions and stand up to the criticism every day.
- Michael Bloomberg
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
- Steve Jobs
[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.
- Jack Dorsey
The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves
- Ray Kroc
I don’t make deals for the money. I’ve got enough, much more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it.
- Donald Trump
With communication technology in general, there’s a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world’s entire population using one communication technology, that’s a big deal. It’s beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it’s a fad have probably not been paying that much attention.
- Ben Horowitz
To succeed in this world, you have to change all the time.
- Sam Walton
Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.
- Howard Schultz
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
I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
- Thomas Edison
One of my lifelong practices is to pay my obligations on time, especially my suppliers. Even in my early years as retailer, I didn’t delay my payments to suppliers, because I tell my kids that we have to be considerate to suppliers and think of their own hinyong or how they have to protect their sense of trustworthiness with others.
- Henry Sy
China is a government-oriented economy. No one can say he can run his business entirely without government connections. Anybody who says that he or she can do things alone… is a hypocrite.
- Wang Jianlin
I cut the feet out of my control top pantyhose one night, threw them on under my white pants and realized that the toning and shaping was perfect and that the hosiery material is thin enough that I could make shape wear out of it.
- Sara Blakely
We thought this [downturn] would last for two quarters, … Now we are saying that it will last for at least – at least ? three quarters.
- John Chambers
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
- Winston Churchill
Anyone would fight for things that matter, true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter
- Peter Thiel
The breadth and maturity of our own businesses is allowing us to weather the prevailing storms.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The bad thing about young people starting a company is that sometimes they do it for the wrong reasons or because they have the wrong skill set, but the good thing is that they don’t have any of the old paradigms baked into them, so they have a lot of the bright new ideas that are harder to come by as you get older.
- Ben Horowitz
Don’t find fault, find a remedy.
- Henry Ford
Remember: There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.
- Timothy Ferriss
Make good decisions based on facts.
- David Novak
The higher the level of leadership people want to reach, the greater the sacrifices they will have to make?
- John Maxwell
Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
- Winston Churchill
People who smile tend to manage, teach and sell more effectively, and to raise happier children.
- Dale Carnegie
Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.
- Zig Ziglar
The Cul-de-Sac ( French for “dead end” ) … is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes.
- Seth Godin
Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.
- Nelson Mandela
People who couldn’t fit into this informal and entreprenual environment left or were asked to leave. I cut my losses quickly on bad hires that didn’t perform.
- Jack Welch
What material success does is provide you with the ability to concentrate on other things that really matter. And that is being able to make a difference, not only in your own life, but in other people’s lives.
- Oprah Winfrey
Internet TV and the move to the digital approach is quite revolutionary. TV has historically has been a broadcast medium with everybody picking from a very finite number of channels.
- Bill Gates
When my partners and I meet with entrepreneurs, the two key characteristics that we look for are brilliance and courage. In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.
- Ben Horowitz
Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?
- Rupert Murdoch
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.
- Zig Ziglar
Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.
- Bill Gates
I don’t know what would have happened if we hadn’t won that AOL deal
- Sergey Brin
The service leaders hire one out of 50 applicants, sometimes one out of 100, but they’re very, very careful. You can’t afford not to be extremely choosy when you hire.
- Harvey Mackay
It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
- Ronald Reagan
Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool.
- Phil Knight
You can’t worry about the mistakes, because you’re going to make a lot of them. You’ve got to be thinking about your next move.
- Ben Horowitz
When I was little, I wanted to be an astronomer, but that didn’t happen.
- Ma Huateng
I’m going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.
- Joel Olsteen
Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.
- Jack Ma
A friend is a person before whom I may think aloud.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What we want to watch is whether this is a short-term bump or not.
- John Chambers
The future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed.
- William Gibson
I encourage active skepticism – when people are being skeptical because they’re trying to identify the best course of action. They’re trying to identify the next step for themselves or other people.
- Timothy Ferriss
People really criticize professional athletes going into the Olympics. People don’t like change. A bunch of people don’t like the Olympics now because we’ve added skateboarding… We’re modernizing the sport.
- Larry Ellison
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
Good and great are seldom in the same man.
- Winston Churchill
Unhappy Barnes & Noble filed a lawsuit three days before Amazon’s IPO, claiming that Amazon was unfairly calling itself a “bookstore” when really it was a “book broker”.
- Peter Thiel
You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like – they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge?
- Winston Churchill
I do think – as self-serving as it sounds – that I was the right person, given the very, very strong headwind we had from the economy and our own issues, to come back and rewrite the future of the company.
- Howard Schultz
In boxing, you get hit, it’s painful, then you sit on the stool when the adrenaline is gone and you feel that pain. And then you fight the next round.
- Ben Horowitz
The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.
- Napoleon Hill
More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.
- Peter Drucker
Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?
- Elon Musk
Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.
- Ben Horowitz
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
- Bill Gates
Let me remind everyone in this room that we are not changing guidance.
- John Chambers
I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.
- Steve Martin
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
The Group is well positioned to meet the challenges ahead and will as ever continue to pursue higher growth.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Any jerk can have short-term earnings. You squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and the company sinks five years later.
- Jack Welch
We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don’t decide for you.
- Larry Ellison
There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.
- Mark Zuckerberg
This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
- Winston Churchill
Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.
- Steve Martin
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
I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.
- Reid Hoffman
Of course people are getting smarter nowadays, they are letting lawyers instead of their conscience be their guides.
- Will Rogers
The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
- Thich Nhat Hanh
The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.
- Seth Godin
There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
- Peter Thiel
Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability…. We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
- Thomas Edison
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
You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
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
