Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture—and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won’t learn.
- Michael Gerber/ Thomas J. Peters and Robert H
Notable Quotables
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Peter Drucker
As a group, we feel that our daughters are financially handicapped in comparison to our sons. Men seem to make much more money even within the same occupational categories. That is why most of us would not hesitate to share some of our wealth with our daughters. Our sons, and men in general, have the deck of economic cards stacked in their favor. They should not need subsidies from their parents.
- Thomas J Stanley
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
- Napoleon Hill
I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
- Winston Churchill
A man should never neglect his family business.
- Walt Disney
As I get, I give. Giving as you get is critical. It has everything to do with being happy for yourself, and making others happy is the cause of making yourself happy, and it’s the cycle of giving and getting.
- Russell Simmons
Other people and things can stop you temporarily. You’re the only one who can do it permanently.
- Zig Ziglar
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
For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.
- Winston Churchill
It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
- Warren Buffett
These two chefs will play an important role in managing the company’s growing appetites.
- Sergey Brin
Remember, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Luke… Luke… do not… do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor or suffer your father’s fate you will. Luke, when gone am I… the last of the Jedi will you be. Luke, the Force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned, Luke. There is… another… Sky… walker.
- Yoda
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.
- Joel Olsteen
The Cul-de-Sac ( French for “dead end” ) … is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes.
- Seth Godin
For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.
- Napoleon Hill
Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.
- John C. Maxwell
Specifically, the following things that cause no trouble when you are small become big challenges as you grow: Communication Common knowledge Decision making.
- Ben Horowitz
We have the necessary foundations that will enable us to weather the current storm and enter into a new era of growth.
- Cheng Yu-tung
People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I have no sense of nostalgia. Tomorrow is what interests me.
- Francois Pinault
One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‘We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.
- Bill Gates
At least three time per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active? Charney captured the essence of this with less-abstract wording: Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important? He eliminated all of the activities he used as crutches and began to focus on demonstrating results instead of showing dedication. Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat.
- Timothy Ferriss
Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.
- Mark Twain
It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
- Dale Carnegie
There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.
- Oprah Winfrey
As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.
- Thomas Edison
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
With the right pitch, you’ll get no argument. This is where the salesmanship comes in…It requires of you a substantial degree of self-confidence to pull it off, but your belief in your own project will help you muster that.
- Michael Levine
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
Only by believing in and looking for secrets could you see beyond the convention to an opportunity hidden in plain sight.
- Peter Thiel
You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.
- Zig Ziglar
I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862)
- Timothy Ferriss
I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.
- Bill Gates
You can market your ass off, but if your product sucks, you’re dead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I’ve seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage — leverage being borrowed money. You really don’t need leverage in this world much. If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing.
- Warren Buffett
No matter what you do, your job is to tell your story.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
the only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants.
- Dale Carnegie
There is no sure path to success, but the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone.
- Timothy Ferriss
In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.
- Jack Welch
He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.
- Thomas Edison
The young athlete who aspires to greatness, generally speaking, learns a number of things from several different coaches. The first one taught him the fundamentals; the second one instilled discipline in him and taught him more of the techniques that must be mastered to excel.
- Zig Ziglar
Discontent is the first necessity of progress.
- Thomas Edison
We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.
- Oprah Winfrey
The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.
- Bill Gates
Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.
- Og Mandino
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
Not every Apple product makes a big enough difference to me to get instantly, although many do.
- Steve Wozniak
Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.
- Mary Kay Ash
PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.
- Dale Carnegie
We think that athletes are human beings and have foibles just like human beings do…
- Phil Knight
Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.
- John C. Maxwell
Hay dos errores que podemos cometer en el camino hacia la verdad. No recorrer todo el camino, y no empezar.
- Siddhartha Gautama
Positive thinking won’t allow you to do anything, but it will allow you to do everything better than negative thinking will.
- Zig Ziglar
The general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.
- Bill Gates
Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.
- Zig Ziglar
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
- Seth Godin
When you do things the right way, you have nothing to lose because you have nothing to fear.
- Zig Ziglar
If you look – look at – I mean, look at what’s going on with your gasoline prices. They’re going to go to $5, $6, $7 and we don’t have anybody in Washington that calls OPEC and says, ‘Fellas, it’s time. It’s over. You’re not going to do it anymore.’
- Donald Trump
Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
- Bill Gates
Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.
- P.T. Barnum
We were old sinners – but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore.
- Joel Olsteen
There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?
- John Chambers
Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual . . . Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude – the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.
- Dale Carnegie
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
The abundance mindset makes it easier to be graceful.
- Seth Godin
The oil patch pays good. They’re decent jobs paying between 50 and 70 thousand a year. Fracking has a big impact on the oil consumption in the United States.
- Harold Hamm
Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.
- Jerry Seinfeld
We see no indications in the marketplace that the radical Internet business transformation in practices like customer service, supply-chain management, employee training, empowerment, and e-commerce that is taking place around the world today is slowing — in fact, we believe it is accelerating globally.
- John Chambers
I always follow 4E’s wrapped in a ‘P’.
- Jack Welch
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
- Peter Drucker
I always try to acknowledge what someone’s done well before talking about what could be done better. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands
- David Novak
By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s really a full-time job to manage our lives.
- Sara Blakely
I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of – of American capitalism.
- Warren Buffett
Don’t save it all for the end. There is every reason not to.
- Timothy Ferriss
In the middle of that process four power plants just tripped off all at once in unison.
- Ed Clark
The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?
- Mark Zuckerberg
I didn’t invent the hamburger. I just took it more seriously than anyone else…We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.
- Ray Kroc
You’re not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.
- Jeff Bezos
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.
- Steve Martin
China and India will, separately and together, unleash an explosion of demand.
- Mukesh Ambani
The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on… through each generation. Because we have no social security, the overseas Chinese habit is not to spend a lot and to make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.
- Peter Drucker
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
- Winston Churchill
One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That’s why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.
- Ben Horowitz
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
I do not believe that people want to work hard enough and they want to find the quick Twitter, SEO. Anybody who’s obsessed with SEO has lost already, period. I believe that firmly.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
- Oprah Winfrey
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
- James C. Collins
I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.
- Bill Gates
Enemy submarines are to be called U-Boats. The term submarine is to be reserved for Allied under water vessels. U-Boats are those dastardly villains who sink our ships, while submarines are those gallant and noble craft which sink theirs.
- Winston Churchill
I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don’t laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that’s not real laughter.
- Steve Martin
Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th.
- Peter Thiel
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. That would be you.
- Seth Godin
Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
- Jeff Bezos
