I cut the feet out of my control top pantyhose to wear under these white pants and that was the ah-ha moment that started Spanx. My own butt was my own inspiration!
- Sara Blakely
Notable Quotables
Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.
- Richard Branson
I think there will be PCs at every price point.
- Bill Gates
Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.
- Jack Dorsey
The slowdown in futures orders clearly signals that revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 1998 will be below our previous expectations. This is largely a result of the slowdown in the Asia Pacific market, where we now anticipate more moderate revenue growth in fiscal 1998 after increasing 84 percent on a constant dollar basis in fiscal 1997.
- Phil Knight
I’m an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.
- Bill Gates
You can’t get too much done in life if you only work on days when you feel good.
- Jerry West
I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.
- Bill Gates
I want to get involved in things that makes a difference in peoples lives and lifts them up. I don’t want to be a part of anything that’s not inspiring or helpful to the community that I’m serving.
- Russell Simmons
Happiness does not depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.
- Dale Carnegie
The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.
- Seth Godin
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
You’ve probably heard about “first mover advantage”: if you’re the first entrant into a market, you can capture significant market share while competitors scramble to get started. But moving first is a tactic, not a goal. What really matters is generating cash flows in the future, so being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits. The way to do that is to dominate a small niche and scale up from there, toward your ambitious long-term vision. In this one particular at least, business is like chess. Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else.
- Peter Thiel
The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.
- Bill Gates
Hosting the Oscars is much like making love to a woman. It’s something I only get to do when Billy Crystal is out of town.
- Steve Martin
Shareholder activism works when activists understand something about the characteristics of the business that the board doesn’t.
- Ben Horowitz
I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.
- Walt Disney
Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.
- Winston Churchill
I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.
- Timothy Ferriss
Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.
- Bill Gates
In a climate of tight budgets, reduced workforces and stiff competition, internal training can be a great substitute for costly offsite workshops and conferences.
- Harvey Mackay
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my BlackBerry next to me.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I Always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but i am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter
- Walt Disney
We will go forward… we will never go back.
- Michael Bloomberg
Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.
- George Soros
In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.
- Jeff Bezos
By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.
- Dale Carnegie
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
- Maya Angelou
SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over.
- Timothy Ferriss
When I started Oracle, what I wanted to do was to create an environment where I would enjoy working. That was my primary goal. Sure, I wanted to make a living. I certainly never expected to become rich, certainly not this rich. I mean, rich does not even describe this. This is surreal. And it has nothing to do with money. I mean, you buy clothes with money, and cars. But I really wanted to work with people I enjoyed working with, who I admired and liked.
- Larry Ellison
A Timid Trapeze Artist Is a Dead Trapeze Artist.
- Seth Godin
Your best days are still out in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
- Napoleon Hill
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
- Peter Drucker
Thee may be some concern about rising inflation, shortage of labour and increased trade protectionism but the economy is generally in good shape.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation.
- Travis Kalanick
Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?
- Rupert Murdoch
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
- Steve Jobs
For the year ended 31 December 2011, the Group sold 325 residential units in Hong Kong, generating attributable sales revenue of HK$8,308 million, a marked increase when compared with HK$4,842 million for the previous financial year.
- Lee Shau Kee
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.
- Peter Thiel
The six people who had the biggest impact on my life were all women. Had I been sexist, my life would have been far less fulfilling.
- Zig Ziglar
The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.
- Seth Godin
Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.
- Howard Schultz
The future may be made up of many factors but where it truly lies is in the hearts and minds of men. Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain, but unleashes your passion for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and humanity of mankind.
- Li Ka-shing
People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.
- Bill Gates
I don’t know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.
- James C. Collins
What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.
- Napoleon Hill
Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future.
- Zig Ziglar
God can do in a split second what might otherwise take you many years.
- Joel Olsteen
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
- Oprah Winfrey
Anytime you look at anything that’s considered artistic, there’s a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can’t exist without it.
- Steve Martin
If I had to do it over again, I would have done the same but earlier. It is never too early to start something. The sooner you begin, the sooner you get your experience.
- Warren Buffett
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
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
Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.
- Bill Gates
Future public education will require involvement and collaboration among various local, civic, private and nonprofit entities, a concept I like to refer to as ‘community entrepreneurship.’
- Donald Bren
By June this year, the [Henderson] Group had sold approximately 9,500 residential units totally around HK$21 billion in aggregate value.
- Lee Shau Kee
True success is when you reach back and bring somebody along with you.
- Joel Olsteen
Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.
- Seth Godin
It’s a matter of invitations versus context. Twitter is really good at providing context, like, I’m having coffee at Third Rail Coffee.’ Foursquare is about invitations to places. In this respect Foursquare has started to replace Yelp for me.
- Jack Dorsey
Southwest consistently turns a profit because they have an employee ownership program that gives their employees a sense of ownership that is very real. When the company does well financially, the employees do well financially. When the company struggles, the employees struggle.
- Clay Clark
Because we publicists are hired guns, reported don’t often put much stock in our pleas and arguments, at least not a first. I was told by one entertainment reporter from a large metropolitan paper, Publicists don’t believe in what they are selling. They’re just paid pitchmen.
- Michael Levine
Another noteworthy aspect is the strong free cash flow of more than €2 billion. This enabled us to reduce net indebtedness to its lowest level since 2006.
- Elmar Degenhart
Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.
- Bill Gates
When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.
- Howard Schultz
Differentiate yourself! Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
I would love to do a deal with Walgreen. If they’re willing to come to the table, and offer rates in line with everybody else, then I’m happy to entertain those conversations.
- George Paz
I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.
- Thomas Edison
I’m a little unusual: I’m a six-person-or-less extrovert.
- Reid Hoffman
THE MOST CONTENTIOUS question in business is whether success comes from luck or skill.
- Peter Thiel
Well, it’s very clear that the Arab population is rising because they’d like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.
- Timothy Ferriss
Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
- Zig Ziglar
The only discipline that lasts is self-discipline.
- Bum Phillips
Seeing is not always believing.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Anger is a waste of energy. Steam which is used to blow off a safety valve would be better used to drive an engine.
- Winston Churchill
Dreams grow if you grow.
- Zig Ziglar
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
We live in a day that nobody’s lived in before: where you can touch more people. The message I’ll speak tonight and the message that I speak at home, people in India will hear. It’s just an amazing day.
- Joel Olsteen
I am surprised by how not-adopted the video reply has been. What keeps other people from doing it, I think, is that they think a video comes across as ‘I’m cool, look at how many e-mails I get.’ That perception doesn’t scare me, because I know who I am.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don’t actually improve their lives.
- Jeff Bezos
[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold
- Phil Knight
When an employee asks why the company does things a certain way, and you can explain the logical reason, then the employee knows what she’s doing is valid.
- Harvey Mackay
The Internet will help achieve friction free capitalism” by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.
- Bill Gates
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
Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.
- Michael Dell
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want that on my business card.
- Bill Gates
You know, in Saudi Arabia, there is a body of 40 people – 34 people exactly, that once the succession comes, they will meet and they will elect a king in there.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along with it.
- Walt Disney
[On Twitter and Japan] We’ve had massive success in Japan… In Japan, it’s not 140 characters, it’s 140 words. So you could write a little mini-novel. This is a whole story in the universe.
- Jack Dorsey
Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.
- Seth Godin
The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.
- John Buchan
For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.
- Timothy Ferriss
The computer is a moron.
- Peter Drucker
I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t go and continue to use every advantage that I can to promote New York’s cause.
- Michael Bloomberg
What kind of business world are we living in?
- Jack Ma
