Often, it is in trying times that the greatest endeavours are realised.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Notable Quotables
The man who cannot control himself, can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.
- Napoleon Hill
The typical project design time for a large company like IBM – and they keep track of this – is a little over four years.
- Bill Gates
Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.
- Michael Dell
I am not the smartest, but I surround myself with competent people.
- Henry Ford
I usually describe myself as an engineer. That’s basically what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.
- Elon Musk
Well I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.
- Richard Branson
My friend didn’t understand what it means to be in the world, to be present and aware.
- Seth Godin
A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.
- Peter Thiel
Success is not what you have, but who you are.
- Bo Bennett
Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future.
- Peter Thiel
Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society – and especially in the economy – as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is “creative destruction.
- Peter Drucker
Cleantech shows the result: hundreds of undifferentiated products all in the name of one overbroad goal.
- Peter Thiel
There is no sale without the story, no knockout without the setup.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
- Peter Drucker
If you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.
- Zig Ziglar
Abundance and scarcity In a society where value is created by the manufacture of goods or the allocation of limited resources, it’s not a surprise that organizations seek scarcity. We hesitate to share, because if I give you this, then I don’t have it any more. We erect barriers and create rules to make it difficult for some people to have access to these limited resources. While we don’t set out to become miserly, it’s an economic instinct, because what’s yours is no long mine. Even though we give lip service to sharing when kids show up for kindergarten classes, most of school is organized around the same ideas. We rank students, we cut players from the roster, we grade on a curve. Success, we teach, is scarce. Our new economy, though, is based on abundance, the abundance that comes from ideas and access. If I benefit when everyone knows my idea, then the more people I give the idea to, the better we all do. If I benefit when I earn a reputation leading, connecting and creating positive change, then I’ll benefit if I can offer these insights to anyone who can benefit from them. With an abundance mindset, we intentionally create goods that can be shared. It’s not based on our traditional factory-based economy, but it works now (in fact, it’s just about all that works)… engaging with the mesh, building communities that benefit from sharing resources instead of destroying them is a strategy that scales. With an abundance mindset, we create ideas and services that do better when people share.
- Seth Godin
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
- Bill Cosby
The person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power.
- Dale Carnegie
Expectations are a form of first-class truth: If people believe it, it’s true.
- Bill Gates
A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
- Peter Thiel
A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.
- Peter Drucker
Contrary to popular belief, the price of real estate does go down on occasion.
- Robert Kiyosaki
When we bought it, Spiegel was in a difficult situation; it made a loss at that time. We invested in it and then it turned around, and then we bought Eddie Bauer and Newport News.
- Michael Otto
Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.
- Seth Godin
Everybody says they want to be free. Take the train off the tracks and it’s free-but it can’t go anywhere.
- Zig Ziglar
If you know you have to wait anyway, why not make a decision to enjoy your life while you’re waiting? Why not be happy while God is in the process of changing things? After all, there’s nothing we can really do to make it happen any faster. We might as well relax and enjoy our lives, knowing that at the appointed time God is going to bring his plan to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
- Dale Carnegie
Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s the power of the brand. We’ve never formally advertised.
- Sara Blakely
I definitely believe that the so-called American decline is greatly exaggerated.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.
- Peter Drucker
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
- Winston Churchill
E – Executions, how to get things done
- Jack Welch
Less than 3% of newly published authors make enough in royalties and advances to be happy to live on.
- Seth Godin
When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.
- Zig Ziglar
In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren’t management books out there that could help me.
- Ben Horowitz
Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!
- Winston Churchill
Legacy is greater than currency.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.
- Elon Musk
Cooperativeness in conversation is achieved when you show that you consider the other person’s ideas and feelings as important as your own.
- Dale Carnegie
Dont count the things you do, do the things that count.
- Zig Ziglar
In the next two to three years there will probably be only three to five players in this area. The chances to gain or lose market share are exciting.
- John Chambers
I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work.
- Jack Dorsey
A Good Mentor… Is Direct Yet Supportive. It’s no use if a mentor softens his language to make you feel good aboutyourself. A good mentor is direct yet supportive. Even difficult messages can be delivered in a supportive way. The best mentors offer practical, timely advice and encourage you to take action.
- Rod Ebrahimi
People ask me all the time, ‘How can I become a successful entrepreneur?’ And I have to be honest: It’s one of my least favorite questions, because if you’re waiting for someone else’s advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you’re not one.
- Michael Dell
Today I will be a successful sales professional, and I will learn something today that will make me even more professional tomorrow.
- Zig Ziglar
One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- Bruce Lee
Although DJ Clay may never sleep, all of his dreams come true!
- Blake Fraley
When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.
- Winston Churchill
Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.
- Winston Churchill
Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained. A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless.
- Yoda
The public is upset. If they haven’t lost their job, they know somebody that has. If they haven’t lost their house, they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something’s wrong, it’s government’s job to fix it, it must be government that’s responsible for causing it.
- Michael Bloomberg
I think it’s too early to tell.
- John Chambers
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
- Peter Drucker
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
I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.
- Andrew Carnegie
It says in Romans 5:17, We are to reign in life as kings.” When God looks at us He doesn’t see us defeated, barely getting by, or just taking the leftover positions. Not at all. God sees you as a king. He sees you as a queen. You have His royal blood flowing through your veins. You and I are supposed to reign in life. Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power. You don’t have a two-year term like a mayor, a four-year term like a president. Your term is to reign every single day, to be victorious, to rise to new levels, to accomplish great things.
- Joel Olsteen
Profitability comes from loyalty, productivity, and having a character base from which to work.
- Zig Ziglar
You can literally force yourself to be courteous, happy and enthusiastic with every person you meet. After you have forced yourself to be so for a short period of time… the habit takes over.
- Zig Ziglar
I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we feel, but no one follows me.
- Tadashi Yanai
Wal-Mart became Wal-Mart by ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things.
- Sam Walton
I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know anything about the speaker so there’s nothing that makes me want to get up early and go to it. I might catch it on TV.
- John Chambers
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.
- Winston Churchill
How many companies have you encountered that articulate a clear ideology at the start of the company, yet cannot articulate a clear idea of what products to make?
- James C. Collins
If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.
- Jerry Seinfeld
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
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
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
Every noteworthy achievement met with some sort of temporary setback before success came.
- Napoleon Hill
If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.
- Joel Olsteen
Know what your brand stands for an exaggerate it in everything you do.
- David Novak
The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.
- Peter Drucker
I think faith is incredibly important because you will become overwhelmed with what’s happening and you will have waves of grief, but when you turn to your faith, I believe God will give you waves of grace to get through it.”- Joel Osteen
- Joel Olsteen
Success must never be measured by how much money you have.
- Zig Ziglar
With every obstacle that has happened to me in my life, my brain immediately says, ‘Where is the hidden blessing?’ In starting a business and growing a business, every day is learning how to manage obstacles.
- Sara Blakely
In 1928, Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming found that a mysterious antibacterial fungus had grown on a petri dish he’d forgotten to cover in his laboratory: he discovered penicillin by accident. Scientists have sought to harness the power of chance ever since. Modern drug discovery aims to amplify Fleming’s serendipitous circumstances a millionfold: pharmaceutical companies search through combinations of molecular compounds at random, hoping to find a hit.
- Peter Thiel
If there is to be a low-cost Uber, Uber will be the low-cost Uber.
- Travis Kalanick
Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.
- Timothy Ferriss
Bolsheviks create their own difficulties which they successfully overcame later.
- Winston Churchill
I was myself so smitten in public opinion that it was the almost universal view that my political life was at last ended.
- Winston Churchill
After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.
- John D. Rockefeller
Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.
- Seth Godin
People ask me what’s the most important function when you’re starting an organization or setting up the kind of culture and values that are going to endure. The discipline I believe so strongly in is H.R., and its the last discipline that gets funded.
- Howard Schultz
The timing of your decision is just as important as the decision you make.
- John C. Maxwell
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 think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.
- Steve Wozniak
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
Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.
- Steve Ballmer
I was an executive running a pretty substantial group before becoming CEO, and I had no idea what it was like. When something goes wrong, people say, ‘It’s all your fault.’ Your reaction is, ‘It’s not my fault.’ But what do you mean? I was the founder, I hired everybody in the company, I was managing it.
- Ben Horowitz
We must … balance the fact that innovation inside the network is just as important as innovation in services and devices connected to the Internet. Broadband Internet access service providers should remain free to engage in pro-competitive network management techniques to alleviate congestion, ameliorate capacity constraints, and enable new services.
- John Chambers
I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn’t even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.
- Sara Blakely
Even leaders with the best of intentions can have dumb ideas sometimes, and if you have good people around you, then hopefully they’ll stop you before you’ve done too much damage.
- David Novak
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
- Harvey Mackay
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
We want to do a lot of stuff, we’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.
- Jerry Seinfeld
There may be times when you just have to love people from a distance.
- Joel Olsteen
If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
In the States, there’s ESPN3, and each country has different options, and other than premiere league football, there tends to be very little global content. And movie and TV rights are pretty broad content.
- Reed Hastings
