Notable Quotables

Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.

- Dale Carnegie

Especially in technology, we need revolutionary change, not incremental change.

- Larry Page

Life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot “diversify” herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.

- Peter Thiel

When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.

- Steve Martin

I’m going to retain a lot of Microsoft’s stock.

- Bill Gates

Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.

- Steve Ballmer

To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge the imagination without distraction.

- Thomas Edison

People are using Windows PCs more than they watch TV now.

- Bill Gates

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.

- Bill Gates

The era of cornucopian hope was relabeled as an era of crazed greed and declared to be definitely over.

- Peter Thiel

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 worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.

- George Soros

Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.

- Warren Buffett

Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute.

- Zig Ziglar

Tip 49 – The trip to success should be as much fun as arriving at the destination.

- Jack Nadel

For any Silicon Valley company, the most important thing is the company. And any great founders need to get out of the way of the company. We presented a spark with an idea.

- Jack Dorsey

No matter how senior you get in an organization, no matter how well you’re perceived to be doing, your job is never done. Every day, you get up and the world is changing; your customers are expecting more from you. Your competitors are putting pressure on you by doing more and trying to beat you here and beat you there.

- Abigail Johnson

[In January 2011] There are so many features Twitter could build. There’s so many features that Square can build. But there is only one or two going to bring us to the next level.

- Jack Dorsey

It will be disastrous when a leader or manager shows up with one attitude one day and treats people with a different attitude the next day.

- Zig Ziglar

And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…(Yoda pinches Luke’s shoulder)…not this crude matter. (a sweeping gesture) You must feel the Force around you. (gesturing) Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!

- Yoda

Don’t equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don’t let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you’d like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.

- Harvey Mackay

I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that’s a big deal. And if you’re going to be a leader – if you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.

- Jack Welch

At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn’t matter as much to us. We care about great work.

- Reed Hastings

about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering—to personality and the ability to lead people.

- Dale Carnegie

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

There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.

- Zig Ziglar

The Dip creates scarcity, scarcity creates value.

- Seth Godin

I am a tightwad. That’s one of the main reasons I completed a long questionnaire for a crispy $1 bill. Why else would I spend two or three hours being personally interviewed by these authors? They paid me $100, $200, or $250. Oh, they made me another offer–to donate in my name the money I earned for my interview to my favorite charity. But I told them, I am my favorite charity.

- Thomas J Stanley

Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.

- Bill Gates

We may get knocked down on the outside, but the key to living in victory is to learn how to get up on the inside.

- Joel Olsteen

Challenges will present us a good opportunity to improve productivity.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who’ve never made any money in business.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

- Winston Churchill

If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

George W. Bush stated, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation. That’s when I knew Bush was headed for trouble. With all due respect for the office, I completely disagree with him. In my view, it’s the leader’s responsibility to explain his or her actions every step of the way. And the higher up you are, the more important it is.

- David Novak

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

- Warren Buffett

The plot is certainly sensational, but it hardly represents what actually happened. It is difficult to believe that the European emigrants by whom America has been populated took away with them all the virtues and left behind them all the vices of the races from which they had sprung; or that a few generations of residence on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean is sufficient to create an order of beings definitely superior in morals, in culture, and in humanity to their prototypes in Europe. The American.

- Winston Churchill

It is not your aptitude but your ATTITUDE that decides your altitude in life.

- Zig Ziglar

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 onset of global financial turmoil in the second half of 2008 and the resultant wait-and-see attitude adopted by some homebuyers put the property market into the doldrums, with a general decline in both transaction volume and transacted prices.

- Lee Shau Kee

And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America.

- Stephen Wynn

EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.

- Peter Thiel

I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Fatigue makes fools of us all. It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions. It’s the best-conditioned athlete, not the most talented, who generally wins when the going gets tough.

- Harvey Mackay

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

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

If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!

- Michael Gerber

In the middle of that process four power plants just tripped off all at once in unison.

- Ed Clark

Quality is a cornerstone of the [Henderson] Group underpinning all our activities.

- Lee Shau Kee

To enjoy peace, a nation must win the confidence and support of its people.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The Costa Rican government is prioritizing laying fiber optic over paving roads. Costa Rica is trying to become one of the Internet societies. This is happening throughout the world.

- Reed Hastings

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

- John C. Maxwell

There’s plenty of room at the top but not enough room to sit down.

- Zig Ziglar

The Internet offers opportunities that are more unique than ever before. With TV, I know I’m making 22 minutes; I know there’s a commercial in the middle. With the Internet, no one knows anything. No rules.

- Jerry Seinfeld

God will never ask you for something without first depositing it within you. If you will dare to take a step of faith, you will discover gifts inside that you never before realized were there.

- Joel Olsteen

Long-range planning does not deal with the future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

- Peter Drucker

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

- Bill Gates

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

- Warren Buffett

Being a CEO is the nuts! A whole jumble of thoughts come to mind: Over the top. Wild. Fun. Outrageous. Crazy. Passion. Perpetual Motion. The give and take. Meetings into the night. Incredible friendships. Fine wine. Celebrations. Great golf courses. Big decisions in the real game. Crises and pressure. Lots of swings. A few home runs. The thrill of winning and the pain of losing. It’s as good as it gets. You get paid a lot, but the real payoff is the fun…

- Jack Welch

The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.

- Azim Premji

Wild Turkey whiskey and Philip Morris cigarettes are essential to the maintenance of human life!

- Herb Kelleher

At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization—taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere.

- Peter Thiel

The bible says no man can take your joy. That means no person can make you live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force you to live in despair. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of wheelchair-bound President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

- Joel Olsteen

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

- Winston Churchill

I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.

- Warren Buffett

We have to get control of our borders. You can only do that if you make companies obey the law and not hire undocumented or illegals. They can only do that is if they have a Social Security Card that has biometrics so they know whether the person is legal or not.

- Michael Bloomberg

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

You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.

- Zig Ziglar

I don’t think we’re going to run out of important things to do, compared with the resources that we have. There are many, many problems in the world that need solving.

- Larry Page

I do a little thing about the way people shake the sweetener packet. You know, like they’re all excited. I want to get all the granules down to one end. I love all these rituals.

- Jerry Seinfeld

You will know (the good from the bad) when you are calm, at peace. Passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.

- Yoda

In the 1950s, people welcomed big plans and asked whether they would work. Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris. You can still visit the Bay Model in that Sausalito warehouse, but today it’s just a tourist attraction: big plans for the future have become archaic curiosities.

- Peter Thiel

In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is.

- Ma Huateng

Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.

- James C. Collins

Pay attention, don’t let life go by you. Fall in love with the back of your cereal box.

- Jerry Seinfeld

If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

- Elon Musk

If you learn a profession well and work hard, your future is secure and you will inevitably rise to the top, drive a fast car, and find beautiful people of the opposite sex pursuing you relentlessly. Like so many romantic promises, this is an illusion. What your parents and professors don’t tell you is that the closer you get to the top, the better you must know how to sell because everyone at the top sells better. If you are going to the top of your profession you must sell well, too.

- Jerry Vass

Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship.

- Ben Horowitz

The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.

- George Soros

Cleantech shows the result: hundreds of undifferentiated products all in the name of one overbroad goal.

- Peter Thiel

I was fascinated with jeans, because you can impress your life upon the jeans you wear. The way you sit imprints on the jeans.

- Jack Dorsey

Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?

- Winston Churchill

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

- Bill Gates

Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.

- John D. Rockefeller

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