I run a bunch of charities and I say this line to people: ‘I am somebody who has always been helped.’ A little thing like that can make people believe it.
- Russell Simmons
Notable Quotables
People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.
- John C. Maxwell
One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
Men sometimes stumble over the truth, but often pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
It is clothes. It is parts. Therefore, you combine the parts differently to create your own unique expression.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Execution begins with a vision and your people saying, I understand it. I’m excited about it. I can help make it happen.
- David Novak
Be grateful for what you have and stop complaining – it bores everybody else, does you no good, and doesn’t solve any problems.
- Zig Ziglar
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
- Napoleon Hill
No one’s going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful, although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.
- Rupert Murdoch
God created every one of us to be successful. Before the foundation of the world, He laid out an exact plan for our lives. And in this plan He has moments of favor that will come across our path. These moments are not ordinary. They are destiny-altering moments.
- Joel Olsteen
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.
- Oprah Winfrey
You can be passionate about anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I’d always try to remind managers at every level that they had to share my passion for developing people.
- Jack Welch
Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.
- Michael Gerber
You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we’ve come up with doing that is through companies.
- Larry Page
If parents pass enthusiasm along to their children, they will leave them an estate of incalculable value….
- Thomas Edison
Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.
- Bill Gates
Every sale has 5 basic obstacles: need, money, hurry, desire, trust.
- Zig Ziglar
That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.
- Peter Thiel
The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results.
- Peter Drucker
War will find us whether we are ready or not.
- Winston Churchill
I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players…I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other. Because they’ve never had a chance to do that before. And they don’t want to work with B and C players and so it becomes self-policing and they only want to hire more A players. And so you build up these pockets of A players, and it propagates.
- Steve Jobs
If you don’t have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don’t take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It’s crazy.
- Jack Welch
Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good
- Ron Chernow
It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don’t feel like an oligarch.
- Vladimir Potanin
All that hullabaloo about somebody’s net worth is just stupid, and it’s made my life a lot more complex and difficult.
- Sam Walton
There’s a fascinating statistic: One out of every four people in America has visited New York since 9/11. It is astounding. Now, I don’t know how you count it; it’s some people coming multiple times.
- Michael Bloomberg
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong questionl
- Peter Drucker
I care about our employees more than anybody in my company. I care about my kids, too, but that doesn’t mean I give them everything that they want.
- Charles Ergen
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
We sell tea in Starbucks, but I think the experience is very different. I think coffee is something that is quick – it’s transactional. I think tea is more Zen-like. It requires a different environment.
- Howard Schultz
Energy innovation is not a nationalistic game.
- Bill Gates
Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.
- Ray Kroc
I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.
- Walt Disney
The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants.
- Michael Dell
When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
- Ben Horowitz
Simply changing one three-letter word can often spell the difference between failure and success in changing people without giving offense or arousing resentment. Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise followed by the word but” and ending with a critical statement. For example, in trying to change a child’s careless attitude toward studies, we might say, We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term. But if you had worked harder on your algebra, the results would have been better.” In this case, Johnnie might feel encouraged until he heard the word but.” He might then question the sincerity of the original praise. To him, the praise seemed only to be a contrived lead-in to a critical inference of failure. Credibility would be strained, and we probably would not achieve our objectives of changing Johnnie’s attitude toward his studies. This could be easily overcome by changing the word but” to and.” We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term, and by continuing the same conscientious efforts next term, your algebra grade can be up with all the others.
- Dale Carnegie
Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.
- Joel Olsteen
In 80% of the world, energy will be bought where it is economic. You have to help the rest of the world get energy at a reasonable price.
- Bill Gates
What most people want in a leader is something that’s very difficult to find: we want someone who listens…The secret, Reagan’s secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said – they’re less focused on whether or not you do what they said.
- Seth Godin
A smart manager will establish a culture of gratitude. Expand the appreciative attitude to suppliers, vendors, delivery people, and of course, customers.
- Harvey Mackay
People are chasing cash, not happiness. When you chase money, you’re going to lose. You’re just going to. Even if you get the money, you’re not going to be happy.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
We remain confident about the market opportunity ahead of us over the next three to five years.
- John Chambers
Remain close to government and away from politics. It means deal more with the authorities. And less with individuals.
- Wang Jianlin
If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.
- Bill Gates
Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.
- Ben Horowitz
While we remain cautious about the implications of a brief pause in the current 10-year expansion of the U.S. economy, we believe that Cisco has never been better positioned to help our customers solve their two most important business issues: Increasing productivity and creating new sources of revenue.
- John Chambers
Some things you can only learn in the struggle. When it’s easy, when everything is going your way, that doesn’t take any faith.
- Joel Olsteen
I got my story, my dream, from America. The hero I had is Forrest Gump… I like that guy. I’ve been watching that movie about 10 times. Every time I get frustrated, I watch the movie. I watched the movie before I came here again to New York. I watched the movie again telling me that no matter whatever changed, you are you.
- Jack Ma
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep form meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
I want get across to not just the church world. I want to get outside those walls to everyday people.
- Joel Olsteen
When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.
- Rupert Murdoch
If the United States has to accept the U.N. resolutions, we have to generalize it across the board. We can’t just pick and choose where we impose and accept the U.N. resolution and don’t accept them. U.N. Resolution 242 is very clear and states very clearly that Israel has to go back to the borders of the pre-war of 1967.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Intemperance.
- Napoleon Hill
We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.
- Henry Ford
Nobody wants to buy a $60,000 electric Civic. But people will pay $90,000 for an electric sports car.
- Elon Musk
You will either look back in life and say, I wish I had, or, I’m glad I did.
- Zig Ziglar
In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.
- Winston Churchill
Monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.
- Peter Thiel
We are pleased to report the 33rd consecutive quarter of revenue and earnings growth. We are especially pleased with the balanced growth rate across almost all countries in both Europe and the Americas.
- John Chambers
A successful manager told me that stopped wearing a watch. She found that the work was so immersive, anchoring it to whatever hour it happened to be was pointless. The watch reminded her of the rigors of appointments and the status quo, while her goal was to be there, right here, right now, in the moment, and to do the work in front of her. The watch had no role in doing that right, so, for now, it’s gone.
- Seth Godin
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
Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts.
- Winston Churchill
Delegating doesn’t mean passing off work you don’t enjoy, but letting your employees stretch their skills and judgment.
- Harvey Mackay
Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.
- Yoda
I’m getting better. I’m improving. My health is coming back,” those words began to create a new image on the inside. Before long, they started seeing themselves strong, healthy, and whole.
- Joel Olsteen
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
People use so much more health care when they live longer.
- Michael Bloomberg
People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.
- Mark Zuckerberg
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
- Jeff Bezos
We should be able to significantly improve health-care outcomes. The government is needing that. When you look at ACOs [accountable care organizations] and look at what the Obama administration is talking about, in trying to improve quality, that’s exactly what Express Scripts does.
- George Paz
Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn’t.
- Ben Horowitz
Corporations that navigate through these rough times will prosper as the region inevitably enters a new era of prosperity.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.
- Bill Gates
My belief and goal is that every professional in the world should be on a service liked LinkedIn.
- Reid Hoffman
If we can get you a car in five minutes, we can get you anything in five minutes.
- Travis Kalanick
Culture manages when management is not there.
- Joe Jordan
Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.
- Bill Gates
You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.
- Elon Musk
You’re only as good as the people you hire.
- Ray Kroc
We can’t have democracy if we’re having to protect you and our users from the government over stuff we’ve never had a conversation about. We need to know what the parameters are, what kind of surveillance the government is going to do, and how and why.
- Larry Page
Over the long run, the price of gold approximates the total amount of money in circulation divided by the size of the gold stock. If the market price of gold moves a long way from this level, it may indicate a buying or selling opportunity.
- Ray Dalio
What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.
- Michael Bloomberg
I’m Phil Knight, and I don’t believe in advertising.
- Phil Knight
Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future..
- Yoda
A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.
- John C. Maxwell
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
In Silicon Valley, you get this feeling that you have to be out here. But it’s not the only place to be. If I were starting now, I would have stayed in Boston. [Silicon Valley] is a little short-term focused and that bothers me.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
- Jack Welch
We fully intend to capitalise on our strengths as this dynamic market continues to flourish.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Dios ve el valor que usted tiene, y sabe en lo que le está convirtiendo. A veces nos miramos a nosotros mismos y pensamos: Tengo muchas imperfecciones. Tengo mal genio. Tengo un problema con mi boca. No soy tan disciplinado”. Vemos el barro, pero Dios ve la hermosa taza. La buena noticia es que usted no es un producto terminado. Dios sigue obrando, y si trabaja usted con Dios y le permite eliminar esas impurezas, Él hará más con su vida de lo que usted nunca soñó.
- Joel Olsteen
I believe God gives you the grace to do what you need to do.
- Joel Olsteen
The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
- Zig Ziglar
The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.
- Elon Musk
For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.
- James C. Collins
The CIA will only hire people with impeccable credentials to be a translator. ‘Impeccable credentials’ means you’ve never lived outside the United States.
- Michael Bloomberg
