Notable Quotables

Passion isn’t project-specific. It’s people-specific.

- Seth Godin

Blackjack is very scientific. There’s always a right answer and a wrong answer. Do you take a card, increase your bet, bet big or bet small. There’s absolutely a right and wrong answer.

- Charles Ergen

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

- Warren Buffett

The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake or proves to be incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed.

- Napoleon Hill

India has the potential to be our biggest market in Asia, bigger than China, in as much as two to five years.

- John Chambers

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

- Bill Gates

When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

- Dale Carnegie

The first sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.

- Dale Carnegie

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

- Bill Gates

Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.

- Zig Ziglar

Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be likened to the raindrop, which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed.

- Og Mandino

For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.”

- John C. Maxwell

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

The student who elects to risk it all—which is nothing—to establish an online video rental service that delivers $5,000 per month in income from a small niche of Blu-ray aficionados, a two-hour-per-week side project that allows him to work full-time as an animal rights lobbyist.

- Timothy Ferriss

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want that on my business card.

- Bill Gates

Hewlett Packard Chairman Built Company by Design, Calculator by Chance.

- James C. Collins

Continually get the word out about how you’re handling the situation.

- David Novak

I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted ‘Mary had a little lamb’, etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.

- Thomas Edison

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author’s world.

- Jeff Bezos

Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.

- John C. Maxwell

Today, and I’m very strongly against tax increases.

- Donald Trump

I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream – and by tuning into one another’s secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.

- Oprah Winfrey

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

- Richard Branson

[On stopping working and focussing 100% on his company Nike] I was still teaching accounting, but the next year, I told Penny [married in 1968] if we sell $300,000 worth of product, I’m going to go full-time. She was pregnant and a little anxious. We hit $290,000. I said, that ‘s close enough.

- Phil Knight

If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.

- Sara Blakely

Tip #17 – Perceived value is what sells. Real value is what repeats.

- Jack Nadel

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

- Winston Churchill

It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word ‘pessimist’ was not in our vocabulary at that time. It’s a modern ‘invention’ which I believe we should ‘dis-invent.’

- Zig Ziglar

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

- P.T. Barnum

After my death, I want to be remembered as Africa’s greatest industrialist.

- Aliko Dangote

It’s different when you’re trying to turn something around, especially something that you built, at a time when so many constituents – the media, Wall Street, competitors, ex-employees – are all saying that Starbucks’s best days are behind it, and that Schultz is never going to be able to bring it back.

- Howard Schultz

There are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.

- Mark Twain

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

Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.

- James C. Collins

It is a well known fact that Henry Ford began his business career under the handicap of poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance. It is an equally well known fact that, within the inconceivably short period of ten years, Mr. Ford mastered these three handicaps, and that within twenty-five years he made himself one of the richest men in America. Connect with this fact, the additional knowledge that Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticeable, from the time he became a personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, and you will begin to understand what the influence of one mind upon another can accomplish.

- Napoleon Hill

Competition can make people hallucinate opportunities where none exist.

- Peter Thiel

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

- Albert Einstein

I haven’t failed,I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

- Zig Ziglar

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

The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.

- Timothy Ferriss

I would like to be remembered, if I am remembered at all, as being a catalyst for change in the world, change for good.

- Rupert Murdoch

In Hong Kong, the property business has always been very competitive, so we have to think of ways to get an edge over our competitors.

- Raymond Kwok

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

If you want a successful business, your people must feel that you are working for them—not that they are working for you.

- Sam Walton

As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.

- Winston Churchill

This Sunday School has been of help to me, greater perhaps than any other force in my Christian life, and I can ask no better things for you than that you, and all that shall come after you in this great band of workers for Christ, shall receive the same measure of blessedness which I have been permitted to have.

- John D. Rockefeller

Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.

- James C. Collins

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

- Winston Churchill

Good communication is a give-and-take proposition. Don’t think of your pitch as a short speech, after which you get a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

- Michael Levine

It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.

- Mark Cuban

A record isn’t like a movie – you can get it together pretty fast.

- Steve Martin

In those days he was wiser than he is now, he used to frequently take my advice.

- Winston Churchill

I hope you will take good care of your health, this is religious duty, and you can accomplish so much for the world if you keep well and strong.

- John D. Rockefeller

You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.

- Zig Ziglar

If someone’s criticism is completely unfounded on data, then I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.”

- Timothy Ferriss

When you simplify… When you get down to the essence, you fix so many things.

- Jack Dorsey

I have a list of the hardest, most challenging problems that our company needs to solve and I start at the top and work my way down. And I have a list of the coolest most fascinating things that we can invent and I start at the top of the list and I work my way down.

- Travis Kalanick

If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.

- Sam Walton

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

It’s hard to make a living when you are in school…

- Michael Dell

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.

- Stephen R. Covey

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

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

- Thomas Edison

Life’s most soothing things are a child’s goodnight and sweet music….

- Thomas Edison

Steve Jobs had very strong feelings about what makes a company great, what makes products great. He more or less chose Tim Cook to be in that role, in that position.

- Steve Wozniak

I can’t stress enough the essential nature of really hearing what someone has to say even if it is totally contradictory to your own beliefs, and I wish this was a lesson I only had to learn once.

- David Novak

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

- Cheng Yu-tung

Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.

- Seth Godin

The future may be made up of many factors but where it truly lies is in the hearts and minds of men. Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain, but unleashes your passion for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and humanity of mankind.

- Li Ka-shing

Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions. It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

- Dale Carnegie

You were created to give. You were created to make the lives of others better. Someone needs what you have. Someone needs your love. Someone needs your smile. Someone needs your encouragement and your gifts.

- Joel Olsteen

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

As the economy shifts, large (and small) organizations are discovering that this brainwashing thing was a huge error. You can’t snooze your way to greatness. You can’t optimize your way to surprising growth. You can’t organize your way into blamelessness.

- Seth Godin

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

- Winston Churchill

Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.

- Michael Levine

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.

- Peter Drucker

If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.

- Bill Gates

It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.

- Winston Churchill

The music industry is a strange combination of having real and intangible assets: pop bands are brand names in themselves, and at a given stage in their careers Their name alone can practically guarantee hit records.

- Richard Branson

If you are starting a business I believe it has to be your passion.

- David Robinson

For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn boat.

- Tony Hsieh

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