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
Notable Quotables
Perhaps your challenge isn’t finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.
- Seth Godin
Never let a good crisis go to waste.
- Winston Churchill
Today is life – the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
- Dale Carnegie
You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.
- Peter Thiel
There are several styles of pitching, but all have two principles in common: they appeal personally to the individual being contacted, even if he or she is a stranger and they rely on logic to make a case.
- Michael Levine
Mobile is a lot closer to TV than it is to desktop.
- Mark Zuckerberg
In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.
- Bill Gates
I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great thing that entrepreneurship is getting easier. When I started, it was just much harder to begin a company.
- Ben Horowitz
I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one’s children. It’s not constructive for them.
- Bill Gates
To model yourself after Steve Jobs is like, ‘I’d like to paint like Picasso, what should I do? Should I use more red?’
- Larry Ellison
Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
- Steve Jobs
Every time I find myself stressed out, it’s because I do things primarily driven by growth.
- Timothy Ferriss
I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.
- Winston Churchill
I try to live what I teach. A lot of things come against us in life, but we should try to find something to be grateful for, and see each day as a gift.
- Joel Olsteen
[In June 2011] We’re focused on building a product and a business. Going public is an instrument and tool to help sustain the company. In the future, there may be an IPO, but I don’t know what the timing is.
- Jack Dorsey
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
Egotism and Vanity.
- Napoleon Hill
This is an addictive pastime. You take no real risk, touch the world, and it responds. Repeat.
- Seth Godin
I didn’t used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.
- Bill Gates
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
- Jack Welch
The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.
- Phil Knight
Unhappy Barnes & Noble filed a lawsuit three days before Amazon’s IPO, claiming that Amazon was unfairly calling itself a “bookstore” when really it was a “book broker”.
- Peter Thiel
The spirit of Southwest Airlines is exuberant, it’s caring, it’s dedicated, it’s diligent, it’s fun, it’s rewarding, it’s a joy.
- Herb Kelleher
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
- Napoleon Hill
I said a long time ago that Foursquare can make cities better. You have these augmented realities like Foursquare and Twitter and Facebook that provide these virtual nodes and instant feedback from anywhere, adding annotation around a physical places.
- Jack Dorsey
I notice a difference from the moment I meditate.
- Ray Dalio
The best teacher is very interactive.
- Bill Gates
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
- Andrew Carnegie
I knew, of course, that I had nothing to worry about—personally, at least. But.
- Dale Carnegie
Nobody walks this earth thinking he’s better than I think I am – I think I’m great. At the same time, it’s so obvious to me that I’m nobody.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
I want the services to look and sound like the Grammys. It’s not showy, but we represent God, and it should be first class.
- Joel Olsteen
Do it. Try it. Fix it.
- Sam Walton
Xiaomi looks a bit like Apple but is really more like Amazon with some elements of Google.
- Lei Jun
If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.
- Bill Gates
I think you have a danger of regulating, putting regulations in place which will mean there will be no press in 10 years to regulate.
- Rupert Murdoch
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people’s lives.”
- John C. Maxwell
The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn’t have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want.
- Steve Wozniak
I’m telling you, you can’t compare Saudi Arabia to other countries.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I’ve got the greatest job in the world. There’s no other job in government where cause and effect is so tightly coupled where you can make a difference every day in so many different ways and in so many different people’s lives. It’s a great challenge.
- Michael Bloomberg
Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
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
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill
Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.
- Zig Ziglar
I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. I do not read management or economics.
- Peter Drucker
I don’t feel under-taxed in any way at all.
- Jack Welch
One incident preserved by General Ismay in an apocryphal and somewhat lively form may be allowed to lighten the narrative. His orderly, a Royal Marine, was shown the sights of Moscow by one of the Intourist guides. “This,” said the Russian, “is the Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel. Here is Churchill Street, formerly Hitler Street. Here is the Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station. Will you have a cigarette, comrade?” The Marine replied, “Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!” This tale, though jocular, illustrates none the less the strange atmosphere of these meetings.
- Winston Churchill
You don’t want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.
- Jeff Bezos
At the time of any given decision, the CEO will generally have less than 10 percent of the information typically present in the post hoc Harvard Business School case study.
- Ben Horowitz
t’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
- Warren Buffett
I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work. And I taught myself how to program so I can understand how the city works.
- Jack Dorsey
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors.
- Dale Carnegie
When you cease to dream you cease to live.
- Malcolm Forbes
Keep in mind, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that one does not exist. You simply haven’t discovered it yet.
- Joel Olsteen
If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth.
- Peter Thiel
But innovation and change make inordinate time demands on the executive. All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done.
- Peter Drucker
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
- Wayne Gretzky
The 1990s have a good image. We tend to remember them as a prosperous, optimistic decade that happened to end with the internet boom and bust. But many of those years were not as cheerful as our nostalgia holds. We’ve long since forgotten the global context for the 18 months of dot-com mania at decade’s end.
- Peter Thiel
Play like you’re ten points behind in the final quarter. I’ve always heard this defined as operational cadence – creating a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of doing business that drives the relentless pursuit of results. Whatever I’ve learned about creating a sense of urgency started when I worked for Howard Davis at Tracy Locke. He really knew how to push people. Everything had to be done yesterday. And I was one of the people who go pushed. Howard was a master of intimidation. Everyone knew if you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to find another way to get it, and if your weren’t part of the solution then you were part of the problem. The clients loved Howard because they knew he’d kill for them (and none of us wanted to be killed). It wasn’t always comfortable, but it taught me the value of constantly putting pressure on myself and the people who work for me. In corporate America, pressure is a way of life, so rather that resist it or merely accept it, you have to learn to use it as a personal motivator.
- David Novak
Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.
- Dale Carnegie
Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.
- Dale Carnegie
Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business—the creation of new value—cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.
- Peter Thiel
We need to understand the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment is what you do to someone, discipline is what you do for someone.
- Zig Ziglar
If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
- Winston Churchill
Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
- Napoleon Hill
Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
- Dale Carnegie
What I love about New York is just the electricity I feel right away.
- Jack Dorsey
The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.
- Ray Dalio
Most people have ‘one way’ brains—they acquire information and do nothing. Guerillas have ‘two way’ brains—they obtain relevant information and act on it.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
We’re responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software.. that’s something we brought to computing. And so it’s a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don’t get in the way of that dream.
- Bill Gates
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
- Warren Buffett
Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It’s something you have to learn. It’s a very lonely job.
- Ben Horowitz
The epidemic So many people are frozen in the face of uncertainty and paralyzed at the thought of shipping work that matters that one might think that the fear is hardwired into us. It is. Scientists can identify precisely where your lizard brain lives. This is your prehistoric early brain, the same brain that’s in the lizard or the deer. Filled with fear, intent on reproduction. Steven Pressfield gives the voice of the lizard brain a name: he calls it the resistance. And the resistance is talking to you as you read this, urging you to compromise, to not be an troublemaker, to avoid rash moves. For many of us, the resistance is always chattering away, frequently sabotaging our best opportunities and ruining our best chance to do great work. Naming it helps you befriend it, and befriending it helps you ignore it.
- Seth Godin
They have destroyed your weapons,but these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.
- Winston Churchill
For 20-plus years I looked at thousands of storyboard for corporate and product ads, and I never allowed one advertisement on the air that I didn’t like.
- Jack Welch
At the same time, we invested more than €4 billion, in property, plant and equipment, software, and research and development. The capital expenditure ratio is again expected to be around 6 percent in the current fiscal year.
- Elmar Degenhart
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.
- Mario Andretti
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
- Yoda
Encourage yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
- Dale Carnegie
A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.
- Herb Kelleher
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.
- Winston Churchill
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
- Steve Jobs
Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11.
- Michael Bloomberg
The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.
- Peter Thiel
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
- Bill Gates
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
Some libertarians say, ‘Well, if people work harder, they can make more money.’ But, you know, my mother is a nurse and I am a venture capitalist. I think no matter how great a nurse she is, she wouldn’t earn a one-thousandth of what I can make, if that.
- Ben Horowitz
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.
- Walt Disney
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed.
- Ben Horowitz
I don’t go down the road of condemning.
- Joel Olsteen
To find the right things, we’ll need to go to the garden.
- Timothy Ferriss
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
- Thomas Edison
By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.
- Bill Gates
Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur.
- Zig Ziglar
