The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
- Elon Musk
That’s your opportunity–to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.
- Seth Godin
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
Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.
- Zig Ziglar
It is going to be a little, if you will, laboratory for sustainability in businesses of small scale
- Larry Ellison
Computing shows up in many different ways. You have computing that you wear, computing that you carry. What you think of as the traditional PC market has a long tail of usage, particularly in the commercial world, but also in consumer.
- Michael Dell
If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.
- Peter Thiel
Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.
- Caterina Fake
is his or hers. PRINCIPLE 8 Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. PRINCIPLE 9 Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. PRINCIPLE 10 Appeal to the nobler motives. PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas. PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.
- Dale Carnegie
We’ve been able to go deep rather than broad.
- Jack Dorsey
What this implies at a deeper level is that many of what are now widely accepted principles of good management are, in fact, only situationally appropriate. There are times at which it is right not to listen to customers, right to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins, and right to aggressively pursue small, rather than substantial, markets.
- Clayton M. Christensen
What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It’s about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it’s something that people have wanted forever.
- Seth Godin
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
- Sergey Brin
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.
- Bill Gates
I’m just always looking forwards. I spend very little time, looking backwards.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Money doesn’t change you, it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.
- Timothy Ferriss
You need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?
- Ben Horowitz
The third way is less common and certainly less of a layup—a culture of integrity, meaning a culture of honesty, transparency, fairness, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. In such cultures, there can be no head fakes or winks. People who break the rules do not leave the company for “personal reasons” or to “spend more time with their families.” They are hanged—publicly—and the reasons are made painfully clear to everyone.
- Jack Welch
You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance.
- Peter Thiel
For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.
- Bill Gates
THE MOST CONTENTIOUS question in business is whether success comes from luck or skill.
- Peter Thiel
Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.
- Dale Carnegie
Measles will always show you if someone isn’t doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.
- Bill Gates
What we know about the destination resort business is clearly established. But it’s all about one thing, and one thing only. All of the razzmatazz and jazz we hear about facilities and everything else doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. It’s customer experience that determines the longevity and endurance of these enterprises.
- Stephen Wynn
Don’t use your words to describe the situation. Use your words to change the situation.
- Joel Olsteen
A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
It helps to have founded and run a company if you’re going to help somebody run a company who is a founder.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m a job creator.
- Stephen Wynn
I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of – of American capitalism.
- Warren Buffett
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
Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.
- Ben Horowitz
Creative leaders inherently know when rules need to be challenged, and they can see when a more flexible approach should be taken.
- John C. Maxwell
Live creatively, friends. . . . Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others” (Galatians 6:1, 4).
- Zig Ziglar
Well, in war, you can only be killed once. But in politics, many times.
- Winston Churchill
Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.
- Zig Ziglar
Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.
- Bill Gates
Blackjack is very scientific. There’s always a right answer and a wrong answer. Do you take a card, increase your bet, bet big or bet small. There’s absolutely a right and wrong answer.
- Charles Ergen
One of [Bill] Bowerman’s more legendary innovations is the Waffle outsole, which he discovered by pouring rubber into a waffle iron.
- Phil Knight
KNOWLEDGE will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical PLANS OF ACTION, to the DEFINITE END of ac- cumulation of money. Lack of understanding of this fact has been the source of confusion to millions of people who falsely believe that knowledge is power. It is nothing of the sort! Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
- Napoleon Hill
The laws of business physics have been broken in terms of how many customers you can acquire and how fast. No one in history has ever acquired 450 million customers in the same amount of time that WhatsApp did
- Ben Horowitz
I was not strong enough to defeat him. Like his master before him, be destroyed, he must.
- Yoda
Giving feels good, but it’s also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot ofcompanies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we’re doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won’t mention an advertisement; they’ll say a friend told them our story.
- Blake Mycoskie
The clothes you wear influence you; thereby they form a part of your environment. Soiled or shabby clothes depress you and lower your self-confidence, while clean, modest and refined clothes give you a sort of inner feeling of courage that causes you to quicken your step as you walk
- Napoleon Hill
There may be times when you just have to love people from a distance.
- Joel Olsteen
I predict at least one of the rookie drivers will win a race this year. With this strong of a group, two or three of them will likely win.
- Ed Clark
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
If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the where withal to do what it takes to make your product work.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings and put compensation as a carrier behind it you almost don’t have to manage them.
- Jack Welch
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
Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.
- P.T. Barnum
I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.
- Winston Churchill
Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.
- Peter Drucker
These are all commodity-focused issues. The old conceit of a retailer was that if you offered the right products at a fair price in a convenient location, you’d do fine if you watched your expenses. Today, the issues are totally different.
- Seth Godin
In the face of challenging economic and market conditions of the past 12 months, our diversified portfolio of multiple earnings streams has served us well.
- Cheng Yu-tung
It is clothes. It is parts. Therefore, you combine the parts differently to create your own unique expression.
- Tadashi Yanai
No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Network effects businesses must start with especially small markets.
- Peter Thiel
Trust your gut.
- Sara Blakely
Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
- George Washington Carver
Success is not final…Failure is not fatal…it’s the courage to continue that counts.
- Winston Churchill
I will not talk to God about how big my problems are. I will talk to my problems about how big my God is. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
Recovery continues to gain momentum on a global basis.
- John Chambers
If I could drink only one wine, it would be Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
No matter what happens, always be yourself.
- Dale Carnegie
Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?
- Rupert Murdoch
I enjoy myself a lot but I derive my joy from working. I believe in hard work and one of my business success secret is hard work.
- Aliko Dangote
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it’s the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers. And once they arrive at Goldman, they find that even inside finance, everything is indefinite. It’s still optimistic—you wouldn’t play in the markets if you expected to lose—but the fundamental tenet is that the market is random; you can’t know anything specific or substantive; diversification becomes supremely important.
- Peter Thiel
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Effort is grossly underrated.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.
- Steven Spielberg
Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.
- Jack Welch
If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.
- Bill Gates
I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.
- Bill Gates
Most of the fans have ideas about their perfect phone. But many of them can’t do it because building a phone is tough. So they would give us feedback about the features that they think should be included in our next model. And if we incorporated that in our new phone, they will share the good news with their friends.
- Lei Jun
The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
- Bill Gates
Motivation doesn’t last, neither does shower. That why we need it everyday.
- Zig Ziglar
We have a number of difficulties facing our nation, but I believe fatherlessness is right at the top of the list.
- Tony Dungy
95% financing arrangement offered by Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited in a period of sustained low interest have added impetus to secondary trading activities in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
- Walt Disney
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
Friend, there’s no greater investment in life than in being a people builder. Relationships are more important than our accomplishments.
- Joel Olsteen
Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.
- Peter Thiel
Connectors understand the necessity of creating value for others. If you want to be in the middle of the action, you must seek ways to enhance the lives of those surrounding you. The best connectors I know are extremely generous with introductions where they make sense. One of my favorite questions is, What are you most excited about right now? From that answer, I know who I can hook that person up with.
- Forbes
I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, ‘That’s the company that honoured me, even though I don’t have an education’. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience.
- Howard Schultz
A company needs lots of smart, super-engaged employees who can identify its particular weaknesses and help it improve them.
- Ben Horowitz
Throw it all up on the wall and see what sticks.
- Timothy Ferriss
I mean we all need a second chance sometimes.
- Joel Olsteen
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
- Napoleon Hill
Always keep your eyes open for people with potential.
- Napoleon Hill
Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.
- Jack Taylor
But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.
- Peter Thiel
We want the brand to stand for the same thing all over the world
- Phil Knight
I’m the No. 1 developer in New York, I’m the biggest in Atlantic City, and maybe we’ll keep it that way.
- Donald Trump
The bottom line is that you need to do follow-up or you will be mediocre.
- Chet Holmes
Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticable from the time he became a personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, and you will begin to understand what the influence of one mind upon another can accomplish.
- Napoleon Hill
Diversification and globalization are the keys to the future.
- Fujio Mitarai
Never again clutter your days or nights with so many menial and unimportant things that you have no time to accept a real challenge when it comes along. This applies to play as well as work. A day merely survived is no cause for celebration. You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine. No more busy work. No more hiding from success. Leave time, leave space, to grow. Now. Now! Not tomorrow!
- Og Mandino
