I never lie, so if somebody asked me a question, I told them.
- Michael Bloomberg
Notable Quotables
You are safer here tonight than you would be on the streets of any other city in the world.
- Michael Bloomberg
Other people’s successes are good news – for them and for you. Good for you because they show you a way to go.
- Stephen Wynn
God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you’ve experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God’s word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen.
- Joel Olsteen
Confidence in our own independence of mind. But advertising doesn’t exist to make you buy a product right away, it exists to embed subtle impressions that will drive sales later. Anyone who can’t acknowledge its likely effect on himself is doubly deceived.
- Peter Thiel
Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was… just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But…it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since [1945]…. And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.
- James C. Collins
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
- Ben Horowitz
Follow the GOLDEN RULE. Do unto others as you would have them do onto you.
- David Robinson
It’s easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.
- Seth Godin
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
- David Ogilvy
Be the one to stand out in the crowd.
- Joel Olsteen
If I am gone tommorrow am I happy with my life?
- Stacy Thorn
How much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes?
- Peter Thiel
Any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march.
- Howard Schultz
Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
Speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.
- Proverbs 31:8
Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.
- Larry Ellison
I think that God gives you your own will and choices. I don’t believe that we’re supposed to drag ourselves through life defeated and not see God’s blessings. But you have to make the right choices and follow that still, small voice within you. Because I think that’s how God leads us.
- Joel Olsteen
My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I’ve given.
- Russell Simmons
I came over from Wal-Mart to help set up Sam’s. Since we were patterned after PRICE CLUBS, sometimes we copied them without exactly knowing what we were doing. We were bringing a West Coast idea to the Midwest, and we didn’t know how it would be received. I remember one idea that didn’t transfer too well. Price Club had a huge stack of wine in front of its stores. We bought the same amound for our stores in the Midwest and we learned the hard way that Midwesterners aren’t exactly wine drinkers. (on competition)
- Ron Loveles
I don’t think anyone is ever writing so that you can throw it away. You’re always writing it to be something. Later, you decide whether it’ll ever see the light of day. But at the moment of its writing, it’s always meant to be something. So, to me, there’s no practicing; there’s only editing and publishing or not publishing.
- Steve Martin
We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison
You cannot underestimate people’s ability to spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away. It’s a big reason why so many companies that have dipped a toe in social media waters have failed miserably.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I don’t like accidental success. It’s what Bill Gates calls ‘random,’ a term he uses with the opposite of respect.
- Masayoshi Son
Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
- Zig Ziglar
Only the Dark Lord of the Sith knows of our weakness. If informed the senate is, multiply our adversaries will.
- Yoda
I don’t know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me.
- Steve Ballmer
I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.
- Ronald Perelman
In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare.
- Winston Churchill
I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take.
- Sergey Brin
Making money from money is like aerobatics.
- Alisher Usmanov
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
- Oprah Winfrey
There’s pros and cons of a big church. Cons is I don’t get to know everybody, I don’t get to go to their ballgame, I don’t get to marry everybody, but the pros are you get all this community, 800 ushers come in to serve, getting there at 7 in the morning on their day off and coming in on Saturday to make all those wafers.
- Joel Olsteen
Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation.
- Peter Thiel
Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
- Seth Godin
I had a terrible time hiring rich people. It sounds funny, but the problem is when things go wrong they can ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You don’t ever want anybody asking that question. You want them to say, ‘I know why I’m doing it, I need the money, let’s go’ or whatever it is that draws them.
- Ben Horowitz
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
What has habit been doing to me?
- Dale Carnegie
Many residents have grown more cynical about government, … Sure, I want my constituents to feel good about me as their legislator, but we have to do something to restore the public’s faith in government.
- Michael Gerber
10,000 years of fitful advance from primitive agriculture to medieval windmills and 16th-century astrolabes, the modern world suddenly experienced relentless technological progress from the advent of the steam engine in the 1760s all the way up to about 1970.
- Peter Thiel
School districts in the US don’t adopt technology very quickly.
- Reed Hastings
Apart from consolidating our position as a major property developer in Hong Kong, we have also been diversifying into other activities such as hotel businesses, construction and engineering, container terminal services and television industry…
- Cheng Yu-tung
We must hang together or we will hang together.
- Benjamin Franklin
It’s very beautiful over there.
- Thomas Edison
If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.
- Dale Carnegie
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I’ve learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that’s what kids are playing. That’s what people are talking about.
- Bill Gates
The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.
- Bruce Lee
Measure, coach and reward the right things. Measure the vitally important. Reward the doers.
- David Novak
Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.
- Bill Gates
People don’t believe what you tell them.They rarely believe what you show them.They often believe what their friends tell them.They always believe what they tell themselves.
- Seth Godin
When those in power use shame to bully the weak into compliance, they are stealing from us. They tell us that they will expose our secrets (not good enough, not hardworking enough, not from the right family, made a huge mistake once) and will use the truth to exile us from our tribe. This shame, the shame that lives deep within each of us, is used as a threat. And when those in power use it, they take away part of our humanity.
- Seth Godin
To me, we’re marketing hope.
- Joel Olsteen
You must have a vision and not just a vision but you must have a plan that would make you fulfil that vision.
- Aliko Dangote
India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.
- Bill Gates
When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
- Walt Disney
War will find us whether we are ready or not.
- Winston Churchill
I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.
- Walt Disney
I don’t know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.
- Jeff Bezos
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
You can’t sit there and worry about everything.
- Michael Bloomberg
What kind of business world are we living in?
- Jack Ma
Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.
- Seth Godin
What’s your vision for the future of your follicles?
- Clay Clark
Two metrics set the limits for effective distribution. The total net profit that you earn on average over the course of your relationship with a customer (Customer Lifetime Value, or CLV) must exceed the amount you spend on average to acquire a new customer (Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC). In general, the higher the price of your product, the more you have to spend to make a sale—and the more it makes sense to spend it.
- Peter Thiel
Expect more than others think possible.
- Howard Schultz
I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.
- Oprah Winfrey
They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people have their say” so that they could buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.
- James C. Collins
If you’re going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.
- Seth Godin
What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Hard times may have held you down, but they will not last forever. When all is said and done, you will be better off than before.
- Joel Olsteen
I think it’s too early to tell.
- John Chambers
We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticising a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to the other person’s pride. Whereas a few minutes’ thought, a considerate word or two, a genuine understanding of the other person’s attitude, would go so far toward alleviating the sting!
- Dale Carnegie
I’ve traveled around the world, and what’s so revealing is that, despite the differences in culture, politics, language, how people dress, there is a universal feeling that we all want the same thing. We deeply want to be respected and appreciated for our differences.
- Howard Schultz
On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It’s very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
- Jeff Bezos
To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
- P.T. Barnum
Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
- John F. Kennedy
I was leading a lot of idea and the vision for where the product was going. Ev [Evan Williams] was funding and supporting what we were doing. He put the shelter over our heads. And Biz [Stone] was just an amazingly creative guy.
- Jack Dorsey
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.
- Napoleon Hill
Teaching Fire a LessonFire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry at fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time is certainly not time well spent.Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s not human. But human beings are similar, in that they’re not going to change any time soon either.
- Seth Godin
Every day were saying, ‘How can we keep this customer happy?’ How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this, because if we don’t, somebody else will.
- Bill Gates
A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.
- Bill Gates
I never worry about action, but only about inaction.
- Winston Churchill
I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.
- Joel Olsteen
The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission.
- Peter Drucker
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
The challenge of the retail business is the human condition.
- Howard Schultz
Cherish your visions and dreams as they are the children of your soul. The blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
- Napoleon Hill
There’s nothing – I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have.
- Elon Musk
America is built around this premise that you can do it, and there are an awful lot of people who are unlikely to have done it who did.
- Michael Bloomberg
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
- Og Mandino
Put all of your eggs in one basket, watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
You know, if you look back in the 1930s, the money went to infrastructure. The bridges, the municipal buildings, the roads, those were all built with stimulus money spent on infrastructure. This stimulus bill has fundamentally gone, started out with a $500 rebate check, remember. That went to buy flat-screen TVs made in China.
- Michael Bloomberg
The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.
- Bill Gates
You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.
- Zig Ziglar
No matter what happens, always be yourself.
- Dale Carnegie
Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
To build a successful business, you must start small and dream big.
- Aliko Dangote
People can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable, but if they don’t really believe in it, then they are not going to really work hard.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.
- Winston Churchill





