Notable Quotables

Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.

- John C. Maxwell

A remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

- Winston Churchill

If I complain about a traffic jam, I have no one to blame but myself.

- Stephen Wynn

Improvement is to invent something completely new.

- Peter Thiel

Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.

- Howard Schultz

I definitely think there’s some way to understand how people emotionally feel about somebody, but I don’t think data collects it. They’re not going to click your bit.ly link or click your TweetMeme retweet every time.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.

- Elon Musk

An attributable HK$9,892 million worth of properties in Hong Kong was sold, an increase of 25% as compared with HK$7,895 million for the year before.

- Lee Shau Kee

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

- Henry Ford

The craftsman and the artist say, “Here, I made this.” The workingman is asked to follow instructions.

- Seth Godin

Many people say the privatisation was unfair: that is true – it was unfair. That is a fact: some people became rich and others did not. Unfair does not mean illegal, but it was inevitably unfair.

- Vladimir Potanin

Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible.

- Donald Trump

You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

- Jeff Bezos

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

- Joel Olsteen

We got to know a lot of investors and know what they like and don’t like. Through many co-investments opportunities, we have built trust among these investors. So when it came to investing in Xiaomi, things were a lot easier.

- Lei Jun

Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people’s lives.”

- John C. Maxwell

An extreme representative of this view is Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was a child prodigy who enrolled at Harvard at 16. He went on to get a PhD in math and become a professor at UC Berkeley. But you’ve only ever heard of him because of the 17-year terror campaign he waged with pipe bombs against professors, technologists, and businesspeople. In late 1995, the authorities didn’t know who or where the Unabomber was. The biggest clue was a 35,000-word manifesto that Kaczynski had written and anonymously mailed to the press. The FBI asked some prominent newspapers to publish it, hoping for a break in the case. It worked: Kaczynski’s brother recognized his writing style and turned him in. You might expect that writing style to have shown obvious signs of insanity, but the manifesto is eerily cogent. Kaczynski claimed that in order to be happy, every individual “needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.” He divided human goals into three groups: 1. Goals that can be satisfied with minimal effort; 2. Goals that can be satisfied with serious effort; and 3. Goals that cannot be satisfied, no matter how much effort one makes. This is the classic trichotomy of the easy, the hard, and the impossible. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done. So Kaczynski’s idea was to destroy existing institutions, get rid of all technology, and let people start over and work on hard problems anew. Kaczynski’s methods were crazy, but his loss of faith in the technological frontier is all around us. Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.

- Peter Thiel

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.

- Sergey Brin

Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.

- Reid Hoffman

Medicare and Medicaid costs are skyrocketing. The cost of compliance with some pretty tough rules has become very costly. If I’m small, I have to spend the same amount of money to comply with Medicare, whether I’m 10 members or if I’m 10 million.

- George Paz

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 took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying.

- Sara Blakely

Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.

- Michael Dell

I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I’m afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States.

- Stephen Wynn

Great companies that build an enduring brand have an emotional relationship with customers that has no barrier. And that emotional relationship is on the most important characteristic, which is trust.

- Howard Schultz

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I was taken by the power that savoring a simple cup of coffee can have to connect people and create community.

- Howard Schultz

In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can.

- Peter Thiel

We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.

- Larry Page

The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.

- Seth Godin

As a general thing, I have not ‘duped the world’ nor attempted to do so… I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told.

- P.T. Barnum

The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The internet was supposed to homogenize everyone by connecting us all. Instead what it’s allowed is silos of interest.

- Seth Godin

Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining – it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn’t solve any problems.

- Zig Ziglar

The Internet is the easiest thing to get into. To be an Internet retailer, you just get that URL.

- Bill Gates

When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world

- George Washington Carver

[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

Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.

- Oscar Wilde

You can also make a 10x improvement through superior integrated design.

- Peter Thiel

What makes a startup employee instantly distinguishable to outsiders is the branded T-shirt or hoodie that makes him look the same as his co-workers. The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.

- Peter Thiel

More than trends, consumers need functionality. Everything needs an element of fashion, but that’s more like a spice.

- Tadashi Yanai

In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.

- Ben Horowitz

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

- Steve Jobs

Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only to set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.

- P.T. Barnum

I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

- Bill Gates

A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one. This is not what young people do today, because everyone around them has long since lost faith in a definite world. No one gets into Stanford by excelling at just one thing, unless that thing happens to involve throwing or catching a leather ball.

- Peter Thiel

Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

- Peter Thiel

If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

- Bill Gates

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

I am an expert in Higher Level Math. You + God= Enough

- Zig Ziglar

Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.

- Timothy Ferriss

I believe that when you think of the negative, and you get up discouraged – ‘There’s nothing good in my future’ – I really believe it almost ties the hands of God. God works where there’s an attitude of faith. I believe faith is all about hope.

- Joel Olsteen

A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.

- Timothy Ferriss

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

- Dale Carnegie

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

- Warren Buffett

‘You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.’

- Joel Olsteen

It sounds awful, but a crisis rarely ends without blood on the floor. That’s not easy or pleasant. But sadly, it is often necessary so the company can move forward again.

- Jack Welch

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

- Bill Gates

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.

- Herb Kelleher

Quite or be exceptional. Average is for losers.

- Seth Godin

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.

- Bill Gates

If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online, you’re going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there’s no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I’m fine with the consequences.

- Timothy Ferriss

Much about success is just the result of simply the ability to follow up, follow through, and finish what we started.

- Zig Ziglar

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

- Winston Churchill

The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.

- Dale Carnegie

Dreamline Questions:What are you good at?What could you be the best at?What makes you happy?What excites you?What makes you feel accomplished and good about yourself?What are you most proud of having accomplished in your life? Can you repeat this or further develop it?What do you enjoy sharing or experiencing with other people?

- Timothy Ferriss

With the intensity of the first three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, fans have been treated to exciting finishes each race. Fans can expect nothing less than the same for the John Deere 200.

- Ed Clark

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men who has the greatest difficulties in life and provides the greatest injury to others.

- Dale Carnegie

Despite incessant dissappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o’ clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds of appointed firms. This grimly determined trek went on each day, six days per week for six consecutive weeks, until late in the afternoon. The streets were so hot and hard that he grew footsore from pacing them. His perseverance surely owed something to his desire to end his reliance upon his fickle father. At one point, Bill (his father) suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made a cold chill run down his spine, Rockefeller later said. Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down discouragement. I was working every day at my business –the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this everyday. He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking. With almost thirty thousand inhabitants, Cleveland was a boom town that would have thrilled any young man avid for business experience. It had drawn many transplants from New England who had brought along the Puritan mores and Yankee trading culture of their old hometowns. While the streets were largely unpaved and the town lacked a sewage system, Cleveland was expanding rapidly, with immigrants pouring in from Germany and England as well as the Eastern seaboard. The plenty if the Midwest passed through the commercial crossroads of the Western Reserve: coal from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, iron ore from around Lake Superior, salt from Michigan, grain and corn from the plains states. As a port on Lake Erie and the Ohio Canal, Clevelend was a natural hub for transportation networks. When the Cleveland Colombus and Cincinatti Railroad arrived in 1951, it created excellent opportunities for transport by both water and rail, and nobody would more brilliantly exploit these options than John D. Rockefeller. For all the thriving waterfront commerce, the job prospects were momentarily bleak. No one wanted a boy, and very few showed any overwhelming anxiety to talk with me on the subject, said Rockefeller. When he exhausted his list he simply started over from the top and visited several firms two or three times. Another boy might have been crestfallen, but Rockefeller was the sort of stubborn person who only grew more determined with rejection.Then, on the morning of September 26th 1855, he walked into the offices of Hewitt & Tuttle, commission merchants and produce shippers on Mervin Street. He was interviewed by Henry B. Tuttle, the junior partner, who needed help with his books and asked him to return after lunch. Ecstatic, Rockefeller walked with restraint from the office, but when he got downstairs and rounded the corner he skipped down the street in pure joy. Even as an elderly man, he a saw the moment as endowed with high drama: All my future seemed to hinge on that day: and I often tremble when I ask myself the question: What if I had not got the job?In a fever of anxiety, Rockefeller awaited until the noonday meal was over, then returned to the office, where he was interviewed by senior partner Iasacc L. Newton. Owner of a good deal of Cleveland real estate and a mighty capitalist indeed. After scutinizing the boy’s penmanship, he clared we’ll give you a chance. They were evidently in urgent need of an assistant bookkeeper, since they told Rockefeller to hang up his coat and go straight to work without any mention of wages. In those days, it wasn’t unusual for an adolescent to serve an unpaid apprenticeship, and it was three months before John received his first humble retroactive pay. For the rest of his life he would honor September 26th as JOB DAY and celebrate it with more genuine brio than his birthday. One is tempted to say that his real life began on that day, that he was born again in business as he would be in the Erie Street Baptist Mission Church. All the latent dynamism that had been dormant during his country youth would now quicken into robust, startling life in the business world. He was finally liberated from Big Bill (his father), the endless flight from town to town, the whole crazy upside-down world of his boyhood.

- Ron Chernow

If you want to take the island, you have to burn the boats.

- David Nilssen

The torch relay is an excellent embodiment of all that the Olympic Games have come to symbolise – a celebration of the human spirit. Personally to me, it represents striving to be the best in whatever we do, never giving up despite the odds, and a commitment to health and fitness.

- Lakshmi Mittal

In 2008, people who invested in hedge funds needed capital badly, but many of the funds would not return their money. However, I gave money back to any investor who requested it. It was the bottom of the market and a pretty tough time.

- Carl Icahn

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

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

This includes daily newspapers, local TV shows and talk shows; local all-news or talk-radio programs, weekly entertainment guides; local bureaus of the wire services;public access and other local cable TV stations, city magazines, business newsletters and ethnic publications.

- Michael Levine

Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.

- Zig Ziglar

The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.

- Seth Godin

There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track… We and the consumer were one and the same.

- Phil Knight

Focus on your people – Without employees and customers, your’re going nowwhere.

- David Green

When I have spare time, I catch up on things I’ve had to postpone due to lack of time.

- Steve Wozniak

Success is dependent upon the glands – sweat glands.

- Zig Ziglar

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.What makes someone an artist? I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

- Seth Godin

When you reach out to hurting people, that’s when God is going to make sure your needs are supplied. When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.”

- Joel Olsteen

Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.

- Peter Thiel

One who works their tail off because they hate working for other people so much, but who has no concept of what they are doing and who justifies their poverty when anyone more successful gives them advice by saying their business is different.

- Clay Clark

Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.

- 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

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription