When plans appear into your mind, they will probably flash into your mind through the sixth sense, in the form of an inspiration. This inspiration may be considered a direct telegram, or message from infinite intelligence. Treat it with respect, and act upon it as soon as you receive it. Failure to do this is fatal to your succeess.
- Napoleon Hill
Notable Quotables
Doing the right thing is more important than doing the thing right.
- Peter Drucker
The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.
- Ben Horowitz
Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..
- Winston Churchill
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
When you live your life in different ways, it makes people around you become uncomfortable. So deal with it. They don’t know what you are going to do.
- Larry Ellison
Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.
- John C. Maxwell
It’s no use saying, “We are doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
- Winston Churchill
The most terrifying phrase in the English language is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’
- Ronald Reagan
When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky – poor parents! – I would be home before it got dark.
- Larry Ellison
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.
- Thomas Edison
The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.
- Rupert Murdoch
When evaluating the results, we should not overlook the fact that there was, in some cases, very weak growth in Europe, Russia, and South America. There were also significant exchange rate fluctuations. In addition, the mild winter at the end of 2014 had a negative impact on the winter tire business in Europe. The driving force behind the sales development once again came from China and North America. In light of this, it is remarkable that profit after taxes of just under €2.4 billion or €11.88 per share could be achieved.
- Elmar Degenhart
Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.
- John C. Maxwell
But there’s so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That’s where we are. We don’t get our hair caught in it, but that’s the level of primitiveness of where we are. We’re in 1908.
- Jeff Bezos
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation.
- Soren Kierkegaard
Let’s think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it’s okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea… well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.”
- Elon Musk
Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.
- Jack Taylor
People in general, and knowledge workers in particular, grow according to the demands they make on themselves. They grow according to what they consider to be achievement and attainment. If they demand little of themselves, they will remain stunted. If they demand a good deal of themselves, they will grow to giant stature—without any more effort than is expended by the nonachievers.
- Peter Drucker
The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‘Oh nom it’s on the house.’
- Richard Branson
It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don’t feel like an oligarch.
- Vladimir Potanin
We’ve grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.
- Steve Ballmer
What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.
- Admiral Jim Stockdale
You know, there is always times where you feel discouraged and things coming against you, but I don’t know if I ever wanted to throw in the towel.
- Joel Olsteen
The commercial segment produced the best results.
- John Chambers
We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.
- Steve Jobs
To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
- W. Clement Stone
It’s harder, but we’re still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies, but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you, but, yes, it can still be done. That’s the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur.
- Harold Hamm
Our schools teach the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learns not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
Often the best way to develop workers – when you are sure they have the character and think they have the ability – is to take them to a deep place, throw them in and make them sink or swim.
- John D. Rockefeller
I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.
- Howard Schultz
He climbs highest who helps another up.
- Zig Ziglar
The relationships we have with people are extremely important to success on and off the job.
- Zig Ziglar
Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.
- Bill Gates
Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately.
- Andrew Carnegie
About three million computers get sold every year in China, but people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
- Bill Gates
If we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes, we will never invest in things that are radical.
- Jeff Clavier
The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.
- Winston Churchill
No one is guaranteed a job in this.
- Jack Welch
Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.
- Bill Gates
Faith is easy. I think people complicate it.
- Joel Olsteen
Maybe you once were excited about that person God supernaturally brought into your life as a marriage partner, but now all the excitement has worn off. Don’t’ allow that sense of a miracle to slip away. Don’t get so familiar with each other that you take one another for granted.
- Joel Olsteen
The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.
- Seth Godin
On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.
- Bill Gates
Disruptive companies often pick fights they can’t win.
- Peter Thiel
The key to realizing a dream is to focus not on success but significance – and then even the small steps and little victories along your path will take on greater meaning.
- Oprah Winfrey
You read these management books that say, ‘These are the hard things about running a company.’ But those aren’t really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt.
- Ben Horowitz
When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, ‘Let’s get a better board’ can be helpful.
- Ben Horowitz
Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
- Winston Churchill
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
- Warren Buffett
It’s clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them.
- Seth Godin
Form the habit of systematic saving by putting aside a definite percentage of your income. Money in the bank gives one a very safe foundation of courage…
- Napoleon Hill
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.
- Ben Horowitz
We have a very wide range of content, but the brand-newest movies, what’s happening with those is a $30 pay-per-view option – not from Netflix but from DirecTV and others – of movies that are in the theater.
- Reed Hastings
I don’t have all the answers.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they’re simpler for customers.
- Jeff Bezos
Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
- Timothy Ferriss
A business is a complex system of inter-operating systems.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Where is the love that will overlook a person’s faults?
- Joel Olsteen
Hong Kong has gone through many ups and downs in the past. Unavoidably, one needs to go through the lowest point before reaching the peak again.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Fear itself is quite fear-inducing. Most intelligent people in the world dress it up as something else: optimistic denial.
- Timothy Ferriss
IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I’m far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read ‘Tech Crunch,’ ‘Ad Age.’ I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors.
- Dale Carnegie
Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity. The things that we were forced to learn and do, because we started out underfinanced and undercapitalized in these remote small communities, contributed mightily to the way we’ve grown as a company. Had we been capitalized, or had we been the offshoot of a large corporation the way I wanted to be, we might not ever have tried…
- Sam Walton
So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work – what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business?
- Ray Dalio
A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.
- John C. Maxwell
My education was interrupted only by my schooling.
- Winston Churchill
Surround yourself with the right people
- Tony Hsieh
Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.
- Yoda
Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.
- Joel Olsteen
Hong Kong has gone through countless difficult moments in the past. Our belief in our abilities and our determination to work for a better future have helped us overcome all obstacles.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Hong Kong has, throughout it’s history, experienced periods of uncertainties… I believe that the virtues of Hong Kong people – diligent, flexible and entrepreneurial – will once again overcome the obstacles before us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
- Bill Cosby
Poor people ride the bus, because they value money more than time.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Social media requires that business leaders start thinking like small-town shop owners. This means taking the long view and avoiding short-term benchmarks to gauge progress. It means allowing the personality, heart and soul of the people who run all levels of the business to show.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected. I try to live by that on a daily basis.
- Jack Dorsey
To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That’s what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games – nothing like saving the world.
- Elon Musk
I think that people will always want music; I think that the form that they will get it in, or distributed to them from, and the price they pay for it is what’s up in question.
- Ronald Perelman
If you pay people peanuts, you will get monkeys.
- Andy Pearson
So you need two professions: the one you have studied all this time, and your other profession the profession of persuasion that allows you to make good use of all those years of education, practice and dues-paying.
- Jerry Vass
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
A goal without real consequences is wishful thinking. Good follow-through doesn’t depend on the right intentions. It depends on the right incentives.
- Timothy Ferriss
I couldn’t figure out what to wear under my clothes. The body shapers were too thick at the time.
- Sara Blakely
I’m not panicking, and I’m not scared, I’ve been through the Gulf War, the Asia crisis, and the Russian crisis.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Your attitude towards failure determines your altitude after failure.
- John C. Maxwell
Do you ever worry’ asked Dale Carnegie, I replied: ‘No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?’
- Henry Ford
Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself.
- Peter Thiel
When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.
- George Soros
To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.
- Peter Thiel
I’m bored with it all.
- Winston Churchill
People tend to over-weigh risks on a personal level. It’s one thing if you’ve got a mortgage to pay and kids to support, so that if you were to deviate from your job, well, how are you going to feed your family and pay the rent? That’s understandable, but let’s say you’re young and you’re just coming out of college, what are your risks? You’re not going to starve, certainly not in any kind of modern economy. It’s so easy to earn enough money just to live somewhere and eat food. Very easy to do. So I don’t know what they’re afraid of. Mostly afraid of failure, I think, but people should be less risk averse, when there’s not much at risk.
- Elon Musk
Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
Like biological evolution, ‘survival of the fittest’ during the course of reformation is to adapt to changes in the surrounding environment and make changes accordingly.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I try to keep in touch with the details… I also look at the product daily. That doesn’t mean you interfere, but it’s important occasionally to show the ability to be involved. It shows you understand what’s happening.
- Rupert Murdoch
Monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.
- Peter Thiel
Brevity is the soul of wit.
- William Shakespeare
The Roman world, like an aged man, wished to dwell in peace and tranquillity and to enjoy in philosophic detachment the good gifts which life has to bestow upon the more fortunate classes. But new ideas disturbed the internal conservatism, and outside the carefully guarded frontiers vast masses of hungry, savage men surged and schemed. The essence of the Roman peace was toleration of all religions and the acceptance of a universal system of government. Every generation after the middle of the second century saw an increasing weakening of the system and a gathering movement towards a uniform religion. Christianity asked again all the questions which the Roman world deemed answered for ever, and some that it had never thought of.
- Winston Churchill
Most people believe that results matter. The idea that results matter is one that you have to keep letting go of. And most of the time, I believe it.
- Russell Simmons
