It is no achievement to walk a tightrope laid flat on the floor.
- Ray Kroc
Notable Quotables
No effort has been spared in ensuring the best designs for all our projects.
- Lee Shau Kee
My new favorite word is ‘awkward.’…The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
- Seth Godin
Never surrender opportunity for security.
- Branch Rickey
The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic.
- Bill Gates
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
One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.
- Seth Godin
We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.
- Thomas Edison
Checklists seem able to defend anyone, even the experienced, against failure in many more tasks than we realized.
- Atul Gawande
All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.
- Jeff Bezos
You’re not better than anybody else, but you’re not less than anybody else. You’re a child of the Most High God.
- Joel Olsteen
A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.
- Dale Carnegie
The Chinese people have always been determined to forge ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I’m a job creator.
- Stephen Wynn
I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
A company will be most successful if the senior managers optimize for the company’s success (think of this as a global optimization) as opposed to their own personal success (local optimization).
- Ben Horowitz
I’m killing two birds at once, so to speak. Animal-based food kills people. This way, by going vegan… we get healthy and save animals. I’m being selfish, too, because if I can get my employees healthier, we cut down on sick days and gain more productivity.
- Stephen Wynn
Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.
- Ray Dalio
What is closest to my heart is our education program.
- Henry Sy
If you cannot save money, then the seeds of greatness are not in you.
- Brian Tracy
Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment.
- James C. Collins
Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.
- Og Mandino
The Franchise Prototype is also the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.
- Michael Gerber
Money isn’t everything , but it’s right up there with oxygen.
- Zig Ziglar
And you know, I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.
- Richard Branson
It didn’t matter how bleak the situation or how stultifying their mediocrity, they all maintained unwavering faith that they would not just survive, but prevail as a great company. And yet, at the same time, they became relentlessly disciplined at confronting the most brutal facts of their current reality.
- James C. Collins
Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.
- Thomas Edison
It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.
- Timothy Ferriss
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.
- Joel Olsteen
I think there’s a lot to be said about just enjoying your work. It can be very contrived when people say their work is for the good of mankind.
- Ben Horowitz
The first dollar is the most you will get if you don’t love what you are doing.
- Ray Kroc
Doing the Unrealistic Is Easier Than Doing the Realistic
- Timothy Ferriss
Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we’ve had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you’re really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.
- Steve Ballmer
If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you’ve got to let it go.
- Sara Blakely
We thought we ought to put that in because it’s the truth but the (like-for-like) number even with those factors taken into account is still very disappointing.
- Simon Wolfson
Not every Apple product makes a big enough difference to me to get instantly, although many do.
- Steve Wozniak
First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
- Professor Harry A. Overstreet
Thinking about what might happen if we ran completely out of money—laying off all the employees that I’d so carefully selected and hired, losing all my investors’ money, jeopardizing all the customers who trusted us with their business—made it difficult to concentrate on the possibilities. Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke: Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.
- Ben Horowitz
For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.
- Elon Musk
I’ve become an animal rights activist.
- Stephen Wynn
The industrial age is ending, and a new one is beginning. It produces art instead of stuff and it rewards gracefulness.
- Seth Godin
Many salespeople feel that selling is warfare: the buyer is the enemy and words are ammunition…The seller’s advances are turned aside because they are so predictable, amateurish and easily deflected.
- Jerry Vass
Steve Jobs didn’t really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don’t deny that.
- Steve Wozniak
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
If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.
- Elon Musk
In general, the apparel industry isn’t about continual process improvement or making the perfect piece of denim; it’s about chasing trends.
- Tadashi Yanai
The guerrilla is obsessed with benefits. Whenever offering a product or service, she focuses on how it will benefit the consumer and builds everything—the product, the delivery, the marketing—around that benefit.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
When SAP, and, specifically Hasso Plattner, said they’re going to build this in-memory database and compete with Oracle, I said. God, get me the name of that pharmacist, they must be on drugs.
- Larry Ellison
The essential thing to know about the Dip is that it’s there. Knowing that you’re facing a Dip is the first step in getting through it.
- Seth Godin
The trouble with energy farming is that the energy isn’t always where you want to use it, and it isn’t always when you want to use it.
- Bill Gates
You need to live every day like it could be your last.
- Joel Olsteen
The organizational architecture is really that a centipede walks on hundred legs and one or two don’t count. So if I lose one or two legs, the process will go on, the organization will go on, the growth will go on.
- Mukesh Ambani
Maintain a pragmatic approach, keep up with the multitude of trials and strive to remain its level of attainment in order for achieving sound performance and scaling new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Stealing Coach Wooden’s sets of three, I have come up with a formula for success no matter what kind of business you happen to be in: 1) Make sure you have the right people around you; 2) Have fun and drive results by recognizing the achievements of others; and 3) Be a passionate learner, and pass on what you know to others. Not only will this make you a success in business, but it will make you a success in life.
- David Novak
What we want to watch is whether this is a short-term bump or not.
- John Chambers
I’ve never been one to dwell on reverses.
- Sam Walton
Performance of the local property leasing market showed gradual improvement, particularly with demand rising substantially for the leasing of grade A as well as grad B office properties, and part of these properties registered an increase of over 50% as compared to the level as at the end of last year.
- Lee Shau Kee
I like to get people fired up, fill them with zeal for McDonald’s, and watch the results in their work.
- Ray Kroc
We have to find our way back to a definite future.
- Peter Thiel
Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.
- John C. Maxwell
If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will.
- Donald Trump
The main thing that’s missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics.
- Bill Gates
The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.
- John D. Rockefeller
Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence. I challenge you to look at whatever you read or watched today and tell me that it wasn’t at least two of the four. I read the front-page headlines through.
- Timothy Ferriss
We appreciate size, but only if it is robust growth. Just to be big is not a target.
- Alexei Mordashov
Lightening is something which, again, we would rather avoid.
- Richard Branson
Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.
- Drew Houston
I believe you should have a world where you’ve got to license something at a fair price. There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone. I wish Apple would use them and could use them, and I don’t know if Samsung would stop us.
- Steve Wozniak
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
- Henry Ford
PATIENCE YOU MUST HAVE my young padawan.
- Yoda
A company can seize extra-ordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations.
- Marcel Herrmann Telles
I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.
- Steve Martin
I think I’m less afraid of failure than some others.
- Russell Simmons
We are beginning to see the benefits of global consolidation.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Find a need and fill it.
- Jack Nadel
When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.
- Zig Ziglar
I love comedy. That’s what got me into the arts. I don’t even know how to categorize myself anymore.
- Steve Martin
The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
- Bill Gates
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 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
Life’s too short to fight the forces of change. Life’s too short to hate what you do all day. Life’s way too short to make mediocre stuff.
- Seth Godin
If your offering itself isn’t remarkable, then it’s invisible — no matter how much you spend on well-crafted advertising.
- Seth Godin
The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.
- Elon Musk
Apple has always leveraged technologies that the PC industry has driven to critical mass – the bus structures, the graphics cards, the peripherals, the connection networks, things like that – so they’re kind of in the PC ecosystem and kind of not.
- Bill Gates
Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production, using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.
- Timothy Ferriss
The new information technology… Internet and e-mail… have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.
- Peter Drucker
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.
- Elon Musk
your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
- Dale Carnegie
The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.
- Timothy Ferriss
I am a self-made brat.
- Stephen Wynn
Money is fun to make, fun to spend and fun to give away.
- Sara Blakely
Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.
- Bill Gates
There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.
- Thomas Edison
Go from me to we. This is the job of every leader.
- Magic Johnson and David Novak
There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt.
- P.T. Barnum
Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.
- Michael Dell
The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
