When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.
- Oprah Winfrey
Notable Quotables
We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.
- Thomas Edison
Success is about being where we are supposed to be and doing what we need to be doing.
- David Robinson
The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.
- Bill Gates
People always underestimate Africa. If you want to follow what’s on ground, you would not want to invest in Nigeria; when you look at it from the patriotism point of view, you will ask yourself: how did those great countries become great?
- Aliko Dangote
The thing about fashion – it’s like ducks going quack, quack quack. It’s being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.
- Sara Blakely
I wouldn’t ever say if you’re having tough times then there must be something wrong with you or your attitude. Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith. I encourage people to stay up, stay hopeful, stay faith-filled.
- Joel Olsteen
You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you’re an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party… My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
- Albert Einstein
I think Les Moonves is the most highly overrated person in television.
- Donald Trump
Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day.
- Joel Olsteen
Hay dos errores que podemos cometer en el camino hacia la verdad. No recorrer todo el camino, y no empezar.
- Siddhartha Gautama
If it’s not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that’s when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you.
- Joel Olsteen
We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.” It’s a simple saying, but it’s deep. “Taking care of the people” is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it, the other two won’t matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work.
- Ben Horowitz
The service leaders hire one out of 50 applicants, sometimes one out of 100, but they’re very, very careful. You can’t afford not to be extremely choosy when you hire.
- Harvey Mackay
I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.
- Joel Olsteen
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
- Warren Buffett
When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.
- Peter Thiel
Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it.
- Rick Warren
We need to reinvent food at Starbucks. Less could be more.
- Howard Schultz
Canoeing was hard and scary, and the wind could blow you across the lake if you did it wrong. After a year of not doing it right, I could talk to people and get them to sit up straight, take different kinds of chances, to breathe differently, to engage in the moment in the boat. And I changed them, and I changed me in the process.
- Seth Godin
I read Google News and use NetNewsWire to keep up with general and tech news.
- Steve Wozniak
I was raised with ‘Laurel and Hardy’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it’s the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you’re performing in your bedroom for yourself.
- Steve Martin
A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.
- Peter Drucker
Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.
- Peter Thiel
Vince McMahon is one of the greatest storytellers of all time, but WWE’s not striving for the kind of innovation it’s capable of.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
tends to rivet our attention on the Icarus companies.
- James C. Collins
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.
- Bill Gates
I have no interest in going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids. I’m just not that kind of dude.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
What is not started will never get finished
- Johann Wolf gang von Goethe
Use money to make money.
- Lee Shau Kee
Great foresight is required to run a multinational corporation. A magnificent blueprint, a loyal team and a well-coordinated organization are the three indispensable factors, and the same applies from ruling a country to maintaining a family.
- Cheng Yu-tung
No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.
- Brian Tracy
it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.
- Dale Carnegie
Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.
- Elon Musk
Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligent and honest purpose as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
- Thomas Edison
[On exporting sports shoes from Japan to the US]The best hope for exports lay with Onitsuka Company. So I made a cold call on them.
- Phil Knight
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
- Steve Jobs
I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.
- Bill Gates
Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.
- Seth Godin
The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.
- P.T. Barnum
We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life. And it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001.
- Michael Bloomberg
Today I will be a successful sales professional, and I will learn something today that will make me even more professional tomorrow.
- Zig Ziglar
Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.
- Dale Carnegie
It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.
- Winston Churchill
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Life is a classroom — only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m not in business to make money for the other guy. I’m in the business to make money for myself.
- Sheldon Adelson
I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, You deserve to be in the pit.” The Catholic said, You need to suffer while you’re in the pit.” The Baptist said, If you’d been saved, you wouldn’t have fallen into the pit.” The charismatic said, Just confess I’m not in the pit.” The mathematician said, Let me calculate how you fell into the pit.” The IRS agent said, Have you paid taxes on that pit?” The optimist said, Things could be worse.” The pessimist said, Things will get worse.
- Joel Olsteen
Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?
- Brian Tracy
I get calls from everybody asking if I know of any drivers, anybody they can hire.
- Jack Taylor
The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.
- Bill Gates
As long as people are clear on what they need to do and what’s going on, you’re very likely to succeed. When nobody is clear, then you’re guaranteed to fail.
- Ben Horowitz
After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.
- Cheng Yu-tung
the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability,” said John D., than for any other under the sun.
- Dale Carnegie
Growth demands a temporary surrender of security. It may mean giving up familiar but limiting patterns, safe but unrewarding work, values no longer believed in, and relationships that have lost their meaning.
- John C. Maxwell
In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.
- Winston Churchill
I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn’t get off the ground.
- Herb Kelleher
All salesmen are actors: their priority is persuasion, not sincerity. That’s why the word “salesman” can be a slur and the used car dealer is our archetype of shadiness. But we only react negatively to awkward, obvious salesmen—that is, the bad ones.
- Peter Thiel
Computing is kind of a mess. Your computer doesn’t know where you are. It doesn’t know what you’re doing. It doesn’t know what you know.
- Larry Page
You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.
- Joel Olsteen
One thing I resent is the slur that I just support political candidates because of the business.
- Rupert Murdoch
Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.
- Peter Drucker
Go from me to we. This is the job of every leader.
- Magic Johnson and David Novak
With the intensity of the first three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, fans have been treated to exciting finishes each race. Fans can expect nothing less than the same for the John Deere 200.
- Ed Clark
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
Let us accept the natural order in which we move. Let us reconcile ourselves to the mysterious rhythm of our destinies, such as they must be in this world of space and time. Let us treasure our joys but not bewail our sorrows. The glory of light cannot exist without its shadows. Life is a whole, and good and ill must be accepted together. The journey has been enjoyable and well worth making – once.
- Winston Churchill
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
- Seth Godin
Peter Drucker once observed that the drive for mergers and acquisitions comes less from sound reasoning and more from the fact that doing deals is a much more exciting way to spend your day than doing actual work.
- James C. Collins
FATHER FORGETS W. Livingston Larned 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.
- Dale Carnegie
The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.
- John C. Maxwell
If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.
- Winston Churchill
Many businesses forget that a crucial part of cash flow is managing your own bill paying. Make sure you pay your bills promptly. Ask for extended terms up front. After you have paid timely for two or three months, ask for additional extensions on your payable terms. A supplier will usually extend credit for 30 to 90 days to a good customer.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.
- Seth Godin
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali
The constraint of 140 characters is easy to approach and consume, without a great deal of barriers to entry. One message and suddenly the whole world has access to that Tweet.
- Jack Dorsey
Regardless of what position people originally took, once the decision is made, everyone supports it. That’s why it is critical that no one hold anything back during the discussion.
- Patrick M. Lencioni
Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.
- Zig Ziglar
Do not swallow anything Satan is trying to ram down your throat. Jesus comes first.
- Joel Olsteen
I encourage all my key people to bring their mobiles when they travel.
- Raymond Kwok
We’ve announced an Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance, a bunch of low-cost commodity servers running Linux, integrated in our case, with InfiniBand – connected with InfiniBand vs. the traditional Ethernet.
- Larry Ellison
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
- Aristotle
Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.
- Jeff Bezos
I was a great student at a great school, Wharton School of Finance.
- Donald Trump
Our goal all along was that fans would come in and wouldn’t notice any loss of amenities there for them, and I’m very comfortable that’s going to be the case.
- Ed Clark
I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.
- Bill Gates
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
The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.
- Winston Churchill
Maybe you once were excited about that person God supernaturally brought into your life as a marriage partner, but now all the excitement has worn off. Don’t’ allow that sense of a miracle to slip away. Don’t get so familiar with each other that you take one another for granted.
- Joel Olsteen
I’ve found reporters, editors, and producers to be an engaging lot overall, naturally curious and ever on the prowl for good stories.
- Michael Levine
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
One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.2. A bad plan is better than no plan.3. Competitive markets destroy profits.4. Sales matters just as much as product.
- Peter Thiel
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
I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Applause is a receipt, not a bill.
- Dale Carnegie
I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.
- Michael Bloomberg
Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.
- Zig Ziglar
Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle and a victory.
- Mahatma Gandhi
I used to believe that a good product sold itself.
- Phil Knight
