The thing that’s confusing for investors is that founders don’t know how to be CEO. I didn’t know how to do the job when I was a CEO. Founder CEOs don’t know how to be CEOs, but it doesn’t mean they can’t learn. The question is… can the founder learn that job and can they tolerate all mistakes they will make doing it?
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these nonmillionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?
- Thomas J Stanley
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
- John D. Rockefeller
Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
- Thomas J Stanley
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 New Rich ( NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.
- Timothy Ferriss
I took up an offer for me to lose 30 pounds in 30 days. It worked. I lost 30 days!
- Zig Ziglar
You didn’t grow up driving…you figured it out.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.
- Ben Horowitz
If you sell business-to-business, get a letter off to your client within an hour or two of your meeting…Start with something personal from the meeting and include a compliment.
- Chet Holmes
We must … balance the fact that innovation inside the network is just as important as innovation in services and devices connected to the Internet. Broadband Internet access service providers should remain free to engage in pro-competitive network management techniques to alleviate congestion, ameliorate capacity constraints, and enable new services.
- John Chambers
Canon is basically a very aggressive company. Our company works on competitive principles. It does not treat people equally, but it does treat them fairly.
- Fujio Mitarai
Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.
- Winston Churchill
Cuando usted se enfrente a obstáculos de tamaño gigante en su propia vida—desengaños, reveses, cosas que no funcionan—, no se desaliente, pues esa adversidad podría ser precisamente lo que Dios utilizará para ascenderle. Eso podría ser donde usted vea a Dios acelerar el tiempo, y logrará algo que debería haberle tomado toda la vida. Al.
- Joel Olsteen
The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”
- Ben Horowitz
Starting a new South Indian restaurant is a really hard way to make money. If you lose sight of competitive reality and focus on trivial differentiating factors—maybe you think your naan is superior because of your great-grandmother’s recipe—your business is unlikely to survive.
- Peter Thiel
A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.
- Winston Churchill
In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It’s a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems. A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.
- Ben Horowitz
The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi
Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.
- John C. Maxwell
To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.
- Peter Thiel
People think, ‘Jack, you do too much.’
- Jack Ma
You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.
- Og Mandino
Don’t romance Wall Street. You don’t want investors who are only concerned about the quarter, or who are working on their exit strategy from day one. You want shareholders to own you forever. If we have no trading at all, I consider that a tremendous accomplishment.
- Warren Buffett
Salvation and Christ’s love is a gift. You don’t earn it. You’ve got to receive that gift.
- Joel Olsteen
The growth of the company and the license that Starbucks has is to participate in other food and beverage opportunities. We have a global business… and in many parts of the world, tea is much, much bigger than coffee, and we’re going to bring tea and bring our capability and our understanding of what we’ve done for coffee to tea.
- Howard Schultz
If you are unduly nervous, turn it around make your vulnerability an asset.
- Michael Levine
There is no substitute for hard work. There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money.
- Henry Sy
We hate bureaucracy and all the nonsense that comes with it.
- Jack Welch
One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.
- Dale Carnegie
I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.
- Steve Martin
I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.
- Elon Musk
If into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find.
- Yoda
Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.
- Zig Ziglar
Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
- Napoleon Hill
Culture manages when management is not there.
- Joe Jordan
The other buzzword that epitomizes a bias toward substitution is “big data.” Today’s companies have an insatiable appetite for data, mistakenly believing that more data always creates more value. But big data is usually dumb data. Computers can find patterns that elude humans, but they don’t know how to compare patterns from different sources or how to interpret complex behaviors. Actionable insights can only come from a human analyst (or the kind of generalized artificial intelligence that exists only in science fiction).
- Peter Thiel
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can’t – you can’t put a wall up around here. We tried that in the ’30s. It didn’t work.
- Jack Welch
Today’s stock price is X, tommorrow’s is up to you.
- Sam Walton
My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.
- Joel Olsteen
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Zig Ziglar
Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.
- John F. Kennedy
We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy–sun, wind and tide. I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
- Thomas Edison
I support health care for people. I want people well taken care of. But I also want health care that we can afford as a country. I have people and friends closing down their businesses because of Obamacare.
- Donald Trump
A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.
- Elon Musk
I am amazed that CNN can’t get its act together.
- Rupert Murdoch
Once you hit the critical mass, you can’t push it much further. Otherwise the meaning gets fuzzy and confused, and before long, the brand is on the way out.
- Phil Knight
Money doesn’t make people happy. People make people happy.
- Stephen Wynn
Your job should make you want to get out of bed
- Tony Hsieh
The son has not caught me in bed for 50 years.
- Thomas Jefferson
India has rapidly risen to become a major force in the global economy.
- John Chambers
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
- Confucius
To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.
- Jerry Seinfeld
In 2008, Box had a good way for companies to store their data safely and accessibly in the cloud. But people didn’t know they needed such a thing—cloud computing hadn’t caught on yet. That summer, Blake was hired as Box’s third salesperson to help change that. Starting with small groups of users who had the most acute file sharing problems, Box’s sales reps built relationships with more and more users in each client company. In 2009, Blake sold a small Box account to the Stanford Sleep Clinic, where researchers needed an easy, secure way to store experimental data logs. Today the university offers a Stanford-branded Box account to every one of its students and faculty members, and Stanford Hospital runs on Box. If it had started off by trying to sell the president of the university on an enterprise-wide solution, Box would have sold nothing. A complex sales approach would have made Box a forgotten startup failure; instead, personal sales made it a multibillion-dollar business.
- Peter Thiel
You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.
- Jack Welch
If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
- Jack Ma
I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Flavor is, counterintuitively, less than 10% taste and more than 90% smell.
- Timothy Ferriss
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
- Warren Buffett
Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all.
- Winston Churchill
My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them.
- Russell Simmons
For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.
- Winston Churchill
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
You can’t buy a good reputation, you must earn it.
- Harvey Mackay
It is confidence in our bodies, minds and spirits that allows us to keep looking for new adventures, new directions to grow in, and new lessons to learn – which is what life is all about.
- Oprah Winfrey
New World Group believes that the desire to change and surmount the status quo will be the key to advancement and progression.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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
The economy in Hong Kong remained on a declining path. Occurrence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (‘SARS’) in March this year led to a sharp drop in consumer spending and an increasing unemployment rate. The decline in the economy resulted in downward adjustment in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
You don’t have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn’t know you possessed.
- Napoleon Hill
If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.
- Elon Musk
The potential financial reward for building the ‘next Windows’ is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.
- Bill Gates
Marriot does not own the hotels, they market and run the real estate, they run the business
- John Kluken
I’m going to give away a lot more than half my money. I’d be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I’m giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.
- Ray Dalio
We gradually came to the realization that we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese people.
- Sergey Brin
It says in Romans 5:17, We are to reign in life as kings.” When God looks at us He doesn’t see us defeated, barely getting by, or just taking the leftover positions. Not at all. God sees you as a king. He sees you as a queen. You have His royal blood flowing through your veins. You and I are supposed to reign in life. Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power. You don’t have a two-year term like a mayor, a four-year term like a president. Your term is to reign every single day, to be victorious, to rise to new levels, to accomplish great things.
- Joel Olsteen
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship…the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
- Peter Drucker
This is why successful network businesses rarely get started by MBA types: the initial markets are so small that they often don’t even appear to be business opportunities at all.
- Peter Thiel
When we are harassed and reach the limit of our own strength, many of us then turn in desperation to God-There are no atheists in foxholes. But why wait till we are desperate? Why not renew our strength every day? Why wait even until Sunday? For years I have had the habit of dropping into empty churches on weekday afternoons. When I feel that I am too rushed and hurried to spare a few minutes to think about spiritual things, I say to myself: Wait a minute, Dale Carnegie, wait a minute. Why all the feverish hurry and rush, little man? You need to pause and acquire a little perspective. At such times, I frequently drop into the first church that I find open. Although I am a Protestant, I frequently, on weekday afternoons, drop into St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, and remind myself that I’ll be dead in another thirty years, but that the great spiritual truths that all churches teach are eternal. I close my eyes and pray. I find that doing this calms my nerves, rests my body, clarifies my perspective, and helps me revalue my values. May I recommend this practice to you?
- Dale Carnegie
Thomas Edison had only three months of schooling during his entire life. He did not lack education, neither did he die poor. Henry Ford had less than a sixth grade schooling but he has managed to do pretty well for himself financially.
- Napoleon Hill
Sweden is famous for many things – but not fashion.
- Stefan Persson
Encourage yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A lie cannot live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
- Bill Gates
Building a better you is the first step to building a better America.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Every well built house started in the form of a definite purpose plus a definite plan in the nature of a set of blueprints.
- Napoleon Hill
Definite planning even went beyond the surface of this planet: NASA’s Apollo Program began in 1961 and put 12 men on the moon before it finished in 1972.
- Peter Thiel
It’s not always easy to get over some of those bumps in the road, those disillusionments and disappointments. It’s going to take a strong will. Sometimes, it may take courage. Sometimes nothing but faith in God and say, I refuse to be trapped in the past. I’m not going to let the past destroy my future. I’m pressing on. I’m straining forward, knowing that God has great things in store for me.
- Joel Olsteen
Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night must fall.
- Yoda
Practice, practice, PRACTICE in speaking before an audience will tend to remove all fear of audiences, just as practice in swimming will lead to confidence and facility in the water. You must learn to speak by speaking.
- Dale Carnegie
The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
- Elon Musk
On this basis, we intend to increase the dividend for the third time in a row. We are proposing a distribution of €3.25 per share, corresponding to a dividend payout ratio of 27.4 percent, which is again up slightly on the previous year’s level.
- Elmar Degenhart
I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace – a connection to what matters.
- Oprah Winfrey
Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.
- Timothy Ferriss
The outpouring of support from millions of people in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti has been impressive.
- Bill Gates
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
The thought of my mortality – I think about it a lot. I find it motivating. It can be any time that your number’s up.
- Sara Blakely
