Notable Quotables

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

It was a big momentum deal, so when the bottom comes out from under it, you have to go back to the well and start the whole thing.

- Travis Kalanick

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

When there is no job related stress, you are more aware of your mate and children, if you are a parent.

- Zig Ziglar

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.

- Zig Ziglar

Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.

- Og Mandino

Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ is my go-to song to pump myself up if I’m having a tough time or if I get really nervous right before a speech.

- Sara Blakely

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge….

- Thomas Edison

Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.

- Elon Musk

The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks.

- Andrew Carnegie

As kids, we all worked for the company in one way or another. I got to work behind the candy counter or run the popcorn stand when I was five years old. The business was part of life, and it was always included in the dinner conversation. We learned a lot about the debt it took to open new stores, and I worried about it. I remember confiding to my girlfriend one time – crying and saying, I don’t know what we’re going to do. My daddy owes so much, and he won’t quit opening.

- Alice Walton

Put all excuses aside and remember this: YOU are capable.

- Zig Ziglar

The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.

- Jeff Bezos

If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.

- Bill Gates

For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.

- Peter Thiel

In a position to be more accommodating. There are some lights at the end of the tunnel. If political leaders in Europe can put things in order, things will be better. These days, much relies on politics.

- Lee Shau Kee

It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word ‘pessimist’ was not in our vocabulary at that time. It’s a modern ‘invention’ which I believe we should ‘dis-invent.’

- Zig Ziglar

To do anything truly worth doing, I must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in with gusto and scramble through as well as I can.

- Og Mandino

People are fond of using the its not what you know, its who you know adage as an excuse for inaction, as if all successful people are born with powerful friends. Nonsense.

- Timothy Ferriss

Failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. This way, it is about answering to yourself.

- Sara Blakely

I’d work in the store all day, then take off around closing and drive that windy road over the Mississippi River, and then into Tennessee with an old homemade trailer I had hitched to my car. I’d stuff that car and trailer with whatever I could get good deals on – usually on soft lines, ladies panties and nylons, men’s shirts and I’d bring them back, price them low and just blow that stuff out of the store.

- Sam Walton

If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

- Joel Olsteen

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

- Peter Drucker

Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.

- Jack Welch

Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It’s fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.

- Bill Gates

One of the great things about Lanai is that the weather is always fabulous. Always 82 degrees and sunny. The problem is that, like California now, Lanai needs more water.

- Larry Ellison

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

- Oprah Winfrey

The local property market witnessed a slowdown following the 9-11 incident in the United States, under an environment of high unemployment and sustained deflation in Hong Kong. On the whole, property prices showed a slight decline as compared with the price levels recorded in the previous financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

Our business is about technology, yes. But it’s also about operations and customer relationships.

- Michael Dell

GE’s businesses turned in a terrific first quarter. Our products and services are being well received in unusually robust global markets.

- Jack Welch

Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.

- Donald Trump

My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.

- Richard Branson

SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.

- Elon Musk

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. But I take my task with buoyancy and hope. Come, then, let us go forward with our united strenght.

- Winston Churchill

Life isn’t fair. It’s true, and you still have to deal with it. Whining about it rarely levels the playing field, but learning to rise above it is the ultimate reward.

- Harvey Mackay

One of the things that I’m really proud of is that I have really good timing. It’s very easy for me to see what’s coming up and it’s no coincidence that I went headfirst into wine and then headfirst into new media – none at all.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

You can build a successful career, regardless of your field of endeavor, by the dozens of little things you do on and off the job.

- Zig Ziglar

We are in the process of creating a group that has a broader business mix, better quality income streams and a stronger balance sheet. In doing so, our risk profile is spread out and we can better explore the growth potential across our five core businesses – property, hotels, infrastructure, services and telecommunications.

- Cheng Yu-tung

In the Soviet Union I was the head of all oil production. And you know in the Soviet Union, you didn’t get that job unless you were really worth it.

- Vagit Alekperov

When you supervise something, it is one thing. When you are in the middle of something, there is a different pace of life.

- Vladimir Potanin

No company has a culture, every company is a culture.

- Peter Thiel

This the real world, homie, school finished They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.

- Kanye West

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s no mystery in business success. If you do each day’s task successfully and stay faithfully within these natural operations of commercial laws which I talk so much about and keep your head clear, you will come out all right.

- John D. Rockefeller

In order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going. America can’t have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations – can’t have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It’s got to have a vision.

- Jack Welch

If that doesn’t seem dominant enough, consider the fact that the word “google” is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary—as a verb.

- Peter Thiel

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

- Winston Churchill

Contrary to popular belief, the price of real estate does go down on occasion.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Even if you do something that others might consider wrong, you should at least be willing to talk about it and tell your parents what you’re doing because you believe it’s right.

- Steve Wozniak

We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

- Joel Olsteen

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

- Winston Churchill

Law of Clarity – If you can’t explain what you sell to a ten-year old child then you don’t know what you sell.

- Jerry Vass

California, in a sense, is almost Starbucks’ largest country, with almost 3,000 stores

- Howard Schultz

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 everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

- Henry Ford

Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.

- Bill Gates

Poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure.

- Peter Thiel

What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

How you see your future is much more important than what happened in your past.

- Zig Ziglar

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

- Winston Churchill

It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.

- Winston Churchill

Learning is not done to you, it is something you choose to do.

- Seth Godin

Most men go to their graves with their dreams still inside them.

- Zig Ziglar

To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.

- Winston Churchill

The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks.

- Napoleon Hill

Growing up I always felt like I was living on the other side of the tracks. I knew the people on the other side had more resources, more money, happier families.

- Howard Schultz

When you have one million dollars, you’re a lucky person. When you have 10 million dollars, you’ve got trouble, a lot of headaches. When you have more than one billion dollars, or a hundred million dollars, that’s a responsibility you have – it’s the trust of people on you, because people believe you can spend money better than the others.

- Jack Ma

One who works the same reactive 40 hours per week and takes the same amount of sick days and holidays off as his or her employees, yet expects to make significantly more than everyone else simply because they have the title of owner and are thus making the loan payments and the lease payments.

- Clay Clark

I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.

- Donald Trump

My big focus is China and OPEC and all of these countries that are just absolutely destroying the United States.

- Donald Trump

New customers are silver…loyal customers are gold.

- Anonymous

How has being realistic” or responsible” kept you from the life you want? How has doing what you should” resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else?

- Timothy Ferriss

Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.

- Bill Gates

Put time limits on each item. Set an agenda for your meeting and your trips to Disney World.

- David Robinson

You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.

- Bill Gates

I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.

- Bill Gates

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.

- Jack Ma

Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.

- Winston Churchill

You know what, Steve Jobs is real nice to me. He lets me be an employee and that’s one of the biggest honors of my life.

- Steve Wozniak

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.

- Walt Disney

I’ve seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all.

- Timothy Ferriss

My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.

- Bill Gates

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