Notable Quotables

Today, all arrows point toward the biotech, nanotech, and information technology industries, and the convergence among them.

- Jack Welch

I was born in a family with a strong military background, so I chose to be a soldier.

- Wang Jianlin

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

- Jeff Bezos

Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurt his sense of importance and arouses resentment.

- Dale Carnegie

The problems forced us to take a hard look at what we were doing, what was going wrong, what we were good at, and where we wanted to go.

- Phil Knight

The truth is that finding happiness in what you do every day is so imperative.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

- Bill Gates

Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.

- Peter Thiel

I had been trained by him. I knew him. I loved him. I simply never took it personally. If I had anything to say about it, he was not going to leave.

- Phil Knight

If you are a leader, you should never forget that everyone needs encouragement. And everyone who receives it – young or old, successful or less-than-successful, unknown or famous – is changed by it.

- John C. Maxwell

I’d learned enough about circuitry in high school electronics to know how to drive a TV and get it to draw – shapes of characters and things.

- Steve Wozniak

Canon is basically a very aggressive company. Our company works on competitive principles. It does not treat people equally, but it does treat them fairly.

- Fujio Mitarai

Teaching’s hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.

- Bill Gates

I’m constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don’t train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.

- 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

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.

- P.T. Barnum

The goal is to be able to live your life the way Michael Jordan played basketball, or Marvin Gaye sang a song. To be able to feel the way you feel when you laugh at a joke, but to feel that way all the time.

- Russell Simmons

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

- Napoleon Hill

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.

- Harvey Mackay

We think we’re going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java.

- Larry Ellison

Those people behind the mosque have to respect, have to appreciate and have to defer to the people of New York. The wound is still there. Just because the wound is healing you can’t say, ‘Let’s just go back to where we were pre-9/11.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.

- Timothy Ferriss

Look we gave this thing a good run. We both know it’s not working out. Let’s wrap this thing up.

- Jack Welch

Actually, King Abdullah, under his supervision and guidance, has established a dialogue in Saudi Arabia whereby all the population, whether Shiite or Sunnis from north, south, west or east, they can get together and exchange their views.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.

- Peter Thiel

If you think your people are negative, then you had better check your attitude. Who you are is who you attract. This is the LAW of Magnetism.

- John Maxwell

I believe the scripture says that being gay is a sin.

- Joel Olsteen

This first time through has been hectic, but I expect it to be more stream-lined next year.

- Jack Taylor

The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.

- Sergey Brin

If I were to retire, I would keep my family’s interest in the company the same and say, Don’t sell.

- Sheldon Adelson

Nothing in life has happened to you. It’s happened for you. Every disappointment. Every wrong. Even every closed door has helped make you into who you are.

- Joel Olsteen

When people write checks, they are depleting an asset. And when people are using credit cards, they are increasing their liabilities. In other words, credit cards make it so much easier to get deeper and deeper into debt by increasing your monthly liabilties.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.

- Timothy Ferriss

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.

- Warren Buffett

I have plenty of money to do what I want to do, and I have the relationships.

- Timothy Ferriss

Like technical debt, management debt comes in too many different forms to elaborate entirely, but a few salient examples will help explain the concept. Here are three of the more popular types among startups: 1. Putting two in the box 2. Overcompensating a key employee, because she gets another job offer 3. No performance management or employee feedback process

- Ben Horowitz

At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.

- George Paz

It’s [the internet] like the flu – it just spreads like crazy.

- Jack Welch

The people’s ability to achieve is determined by their leader’s ability to empower.

- Napoleon Hill

Newport Center has become a Mediterranean town. The climate here is the same as the Mediterranean’s, and so is the architecture. This center exudes a radiance, an energy. It will become a special way of life for everyone.

- Donald Bren

Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

- Winston Churchill

Those two priceless abilities: first, the ability to think. Second, the ability to do things in the order of their importance.

- Dale Carnegie

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.

- Elon Musk

If you look at coffee, tea, food and juice, we think there are inherent opportunities. If you look at health bars or grab-and-go products that are in our stores, we think we can significantly enhance them and make them more widely available.

- Howard Schultz

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

- William Arthur Ward

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

- Jeff Bezos

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into 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. At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, ‘Goodbye, Daddy!’ and I frowned, and said in reply, ‘Hold your shoulders back!’ Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive – and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father! Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. ‘What is it you want?’ I snapped. You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs. Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding – this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years. And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed! It is a feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: ‘He is nothing but a boy – a little boy!’ I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much. Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. ‘To know all is to forgive all.

- Dale Carnegie

Worrying about the past or the future isn’t productive. When you start chastising yourself for past mistakes, or seeing disaster around every corner, stop and take a breath and ask yourself what you can do right now to succeed.

- Harvey Mackay

When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience, we’re stamping out the artist that lives within.

- Seth Godin

The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world.

- Marc Benioff

It is a well known fact that Henry Ford began his business career under the handicap of poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance. It is an equally well known fact that, within the inconceivably short period of ten years, Mr. Ford mastered these three handicaps, and that within twenty-five years he made himself one of the richest men in America. Connect with this fact, the additional knowledge that Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticeable, 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

I am not a person who pursues luxury. I am not like those people who, once they have money, compulsively squander it or show it off.

- Wang Jianlin

If GE’s strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century.

- Jack Welch

Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.

- Seth Godin

We subpoenaed him for the SAP trial and he was on the lam. The HP board sent him to Bolivia to talk to customers. Then they sent him to Mongolia to talk to customers, just out of reach of the federal subpoenas … the board figured out [later]: we should have left Leo in Mongolia.

- Larry Ellison

I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.

- Larry Page

We’re totally legal, like totally legal, and the government is telling us to shut down. And you can either do what they say or you can fight for what you believe.

- Travis Kalanick

You need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?

- Ben Horowitz

There are some people that can get things done, and it seems there are others who just can’t. That’s why we move heaven and earth to retain our stars and the main reason we manage out our lowest performers – the bottom 10% at least – each year.

- David Novak

People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things – to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today.

- Zig Ziglar

As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now.

- Joel Olsteen

Sooner or later, you will see a China-based company that really has a global impact, and I think Baidu has a chance to become one of those companies. We should be able to compete on a global basis.

- Robin Li

The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?

- Mark Zuckerberg

Beverages have to be created. And they’re created by looking at what trend is in, say, the fashion industry – what color’s hot right now.

- Howard Schultz

You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.

- Peter Thiel

Consumers are spontaneous and if you can catch their attention, that’s going to increase the chance that they will look at your product.

- Jack Taylor

When you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.

- Zig Ziglar

How about we agree upon what our common American values are, which is let’s make this a true land of opportunity.

- Laurene Powell Jobs

Take unorthodox ideas seriously today, and the mainstream sees that as a sign of progress. We can be glad that there are fewer crazy cults now, yet that gain has come at great cost: we have given up our sense of wonder at secrets left to be discovered.

- Peter Thiel

Nobody enjoys the ‘little show about nothing’ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.

- Dale Carnegie

The Mastermind principle consists of an alliance of two or more minds working in perfect harmony for the attainment of a common definite objective. Success does not come without the cooperation of others.

- Napoleon Hill

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

I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.

- Thomas Edison

History recalls the remarkable resilience of the territory’s people.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.

- Donald Trump

My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.

- Mukesh Ambani

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

- Winston Churchill

Every noteworthy achievement met with some sort of temporary setback before success came.

- Napoleon Hill

I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen.

- Steve Wozniak

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

- Thomas Edison

I’m in the shoe business. Look at these things. They’re called Tigers. I faked out the company. I’m the US distributor. Come with me.

- Phil Knight

If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.

- Jack Ma

At its zenith Sears accounted for more than 2 percent of all retail sales in the United States. It pioneered several innovations critical to the success of today’s most admired retailers: for example, supply chain management, store brands, catalogue retailing, and credit card sales. The esteem in which Sears’ management was held shows in this 1964 excerpt from Fortune: “How did Sears do it? In a way, the most arresting aspect of its story is that there was no gimmick. Sears opened no big bag of tricks, shot off no skyrockets. Instead, it looked as though everybody in its organization simply did the right thing, easily and naturally. And their cumulative effect was to create an extraordinary powerhouse of a company.

- Clayton M. Christensen

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.

- Herb Kelleher

It’s absolutely a necessary and inevitable evolution in retailing (of Wal-Mart putting small stores out of business), as inevitable as the replacement of the buggy by the car, and the dissappearance of the buggy whip makers. The small stores (and DJs) were destined to dissappear, at least in the numbers they once existed., because the whole thing is driven by customers, who are free to choose where to shop.

- Sam Walton

I’ve already figured out when I’m going to be No. 2 and No. 1.

- Sheldon Adelson

The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.

- Jack Welch

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