Talent is a gift, but character is a choice.
- John C. Maxwell
Notable Quotables
Our business practices are no different than those of our competitors, but we are bigger, and thus more visible, so we get more flack.
- Phil Knight
The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.
- Bill Gates
The great football coach John Madden was once asked whether he would tolerate a player like Terrell Owens on his team. Owens was both one of the most talented players in the game and one of the biggest jerks. Madden answered, “If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you’ll be so late you’ll miss the game, so you can’t do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you’ll have a player that’s so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.
- Ben Horowitz
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
- Ben Horowitz
You either trust someone day one until they prove you wrong, or you say, ‘I don’t trust you until you show me I can trust you.’ I’m the latter.
- Charles Ergen
You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
Money is not the motivating force. It’s nice to have money, but I don’t live high. What I enjoy is running the business.
- Rupert Murdoch
when praise is specific, it comes across as sincere—not something the other person may be saying just to make one feel good.
- Dale Carnegie
Differentiation (rating and evaluating people) Develops Great Organizations. Differentiation is hard, anybody who finds it easy doesn’t belong in the organization, and anyone who can’t do it falls in the same category…It is important for companies to continually remove the bottom 10 percent of their employees anually.
- Jack Welch
The Group also continues to be bullish for the long-term prospects for the property market in mainland China…
- Lee Shau Kee
Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.
- General George S. Patton
Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.
- Bill Gates
We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity.
- George Soros
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
I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.
- Seth Godin
All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current.
- Ben Horowitz
The man who cannot control himself, can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.
- Napoleon Hill
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications, teamwork, self-development, and development of others.
- Peter Drucker
I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
- Winston Churchill
Frequently I’ll be interviewing with somebody or talking and in about 15 minutes they’ll interrupt me mid-stream and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re nothing like I’d thought you’d be.’
- Larry Ellison
A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.
- James C. Collins
I believe it’s important that we use names of endearment that reflect a special feeling for the individual involved.
- Zig Ziglar
Plant a seed of greatness in your children. Speak a word of encourgement to someone who needs to hear it. Inspire someone to be a better person. One day you’ll reap a harvest, and your world will become a better place to live.
- George Foreman
We thought this [downturn] would last for two quarters, … Now we are saying that it will last for at least – at least ? three quarters.
- John Chambers
I would counsel people to go to college, because it’s one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.
- Bill Gates
All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
- Walt Disney
I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.
- Herb Kelleher
With every experience, you alone are painting your own canvas, thought by thought, choice by choice.
- Oprah Winfrey
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?
- Marshall Bruce Mathers III
I own my business. My business doesn’t own me.
- Cherie Ve Ard
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.
- Sergey Brin
Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence – more plow horse than show horse.
- James C. Collins
I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.
- George Soros
Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticable from the time he became a personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, and you will begin to understand what the influence of one mind upon another can accomplish.
- Napoleon Hill
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
What you are will show in what you do.
- Thomas Edison
What most people want in a leader is something that’s very difficult to find: we want someone who listens…The secret, Reagan’s secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said – they’re less focused on whether or not you do what they said.
- Seth Godin
If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.
- Elon Musk
Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.
- P.T. Barnum
John, never lend money to your friends; it will spoil your friendships.
- John D. Rockefeller
The torch relay is an excellent embodiment of all that the Olympic Games have come to symbolise – a celebration of the human spirit. Personally to me, it represents striving to be the best in whatever we do, never giving up despite the odds, and a commitment to health and fitness.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Now that we have run out of money we have to think.
- Winston Churchill
The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there. Ironically, it’s those who seek out discomfort that are able to make a difference and find their footing.
- Seth Godin
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.
- Winston Churchill
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
- Warren Buffett
When I was little, I wanted to be an astronomer, but that didn’t happen.
- Ma Huateng
E – Energize Others
- Jack Welch
The most obvious market segment in email-based payments was the millions of emigrants still using Western Union to wire money to their families back home. Our product made that effortless, but the transactions were too infrequent.
- Peter Thiel
I wanted to be an artist. They see the world in a very different way.
- Jack Dorsey
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
Consider this: you are today what you believed about yourself yesterday. And you will be tomorrow what you believe about yourself right now.
- Joel Olsteen
How do leaders serve their people? They may pay good wages and treat employees with respect.
- John C. Maxwell
Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
- Dale Carnegie
I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine’s books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man…Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters – seldom in any school of writing.Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object….we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:’The world is my country; to do good my religion.’Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in ‘The Rights of Man’, and that genius busy at his favorite task – liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, ‘The Rights of Man’ yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke’s effort in his ‘Reflections’.Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.’Tom Paine is quite right,’ said Pitt, the Prime Minister, ‘but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.’Here we see the progressive quality of Paine’s genius at its best. ‘The Rights of Man’ amplified and reasserted what already had been said in ‘Common Sense’, with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre’s enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of ‘The Age of Reason’ and now turned his time to the latter part.Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events ‘The Age of Reason’ appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle – a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.
- Thomas Edison
It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you’re not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it’s actually space that’s moving.
- Elon Musk
Document in writing every agreement or important conversation with suppliers and customers.
- Jack Nadel
The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I’m wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.
- Ray Dalio
We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.
- Phil Knight
It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control.
- Oprah Winfrey
At the end of the day, I guess my feeling is that it was sort of a failure to communicate.
- Phil Knight
However old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
You must focus on WIN. What’s important now.
- Lee Cockerell
I don’t think there’s a… boundary between digital media and print media. Every magazine is doing an online version.
- Bill Gates
Measles will always show you if someone isn’t doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.
- Bill Gates
I had a TV set and a typewriter and that made me think a computer should be laid out like a typewriter with a video screen.
- Steve Wozniak
You must not ever think that anything is common sense.
- Clay Clark
Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.
- Jeff Bezos
I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.
- Seth Godin
You can’t jump to vegan if you’re not. Some people are absolute. Some people are able to be gradual.
- Russell Simmons
America, for me, is the country where, if you have something great to offer, you’ll be valued highly.
- Tadashi Yanai
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
- Thomas Edison
It is expected that Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation will materialise in the near future and the country will see further growth in its economy unfolding at a faster pace.
- Lee Shau Kee
Everybody was writing about computers and electronics, but all I really knew about was running. It’s what I’ve chosen to do with my life.
- Phil Knight
innovation without discipline leads to disaster.
- James C. Collins
In creating an ideavirus, the advertiser creates an environment in which the idea can replicate and spread. It’s the virus that does the work, not the marketer.
- Seth Godin
If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.
- Jack Welch
We will invest 1.1 billion dollars in India, of which 150 million dollars would be for providing leasing and financial solutions to the company’s customers and partners.
- John Chambers
You were designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
- Zig Ziglar
But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
- Dale Carnegie
You create your own universe as you go along.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t know what can be so dangerous about giving people hope. Causing people to have better relationships. I’m not leading them to some false God or something like that.
- Joel Olsteen
I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.
- Larry Ellison
Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.
- Sam Walton
By my count, more business leaders have failed and derailed because of arrogance than any other character flaw.
- Harvey Mackay
Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.
- Henry Ford
I’d never worked in fashion or retail. I just needed an undergarment that didn’t exist.
- Sara Blakely
The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people. Bringing the right people on board saves you thousands, and your business will run smoothly and efficiently.
- Brian Tracy
They did not die because of sickness or anything but because of hunger. I remember that and how people suffered.
- Lui Che Woo
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
- Robert J. Sawyer
Take calculated risks. Act boldly and thoughtfully. Be an agile company.
- Ray Kroc
Here’s the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don’t you hate that? I love that there’s no map.
- Seth Godin
Great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future.
- Peter Thiel
I like the fact that I can meet anyone now and have a conversation.
- Larry Page
I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It’s got the market. It’s got consumer confidence and it’s got banks throwing – I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
- Jack Welch
