When a man has accumulated a sum of money, accumulated it within the law, the Government has no right to share in its earnings.
- John D. Rockefeller
Notable Quotables
Long-range planning does not deal with the future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.
- Peter Drucker
I don’t like accidental success. It’s what Bill Gates calls ‘random,’ a term he uses with the opposite of respect.
- Masayoshi Son
Fibre optic is becoming like electricity. If you look at how electricity spread around the globe 100 years ago, that’s what’s happening now.
- Reed Hastings
Think global, but start local.
- Jack Nadel
He had realized something while arcing in slow circles toward the earth—risks weren’t that scary once you took them. His.
- Timothy Ferriss
People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
It’s no use saying, “We are doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
- Winston Churchill
Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
- Zig Ziglar
I’ve operated and launched newspapers all over the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
Accountability breeds response-ability.
- Stephen R. Covey
The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.
- Bill Gates
If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.
- Napoleon Hill
If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.
- Dale Carnegie
With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain market share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device. But a lot of those users are frustrated. They can’t type. They can’t create documents.
- Bill Gates
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.
- Bill Gates
If you will focus on meeting other people’s needs, God will always make sure your needs are supplied. God will take care of your problems for you.
- Joel Olsteen
Walking in circles Dr. Jan Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, studied what happens to us when we have no map, no compass, no way to determine landmarks. I’m not talking about a metaphor—he researched what happens to people lost in the woods or stumbling around the Sahara, with no north star, no setting sun to guide them. It turns out we walk in circles. Try as we might to walk in a straight line, to get out of the forest or the desert, we end up back where we started. Our instincts aren’t enough. In the words of Dr. Souman, “Don’t trust your senses because even though you might think you are walking in a straight line when you’re not.” Human nature is to need a map. If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow.
- Seth Godin
The opportunity of a lifetime is to pick yourself. Quit waiting to get picked; quit waiting for someone to give you permission; quit waiting for someone to say you are officially qualified and pick yourself. It doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur or a freelancer, but it does mean you stand up and say, ‘I have something to say. I know how to do something. I’m doing it. If you want me to do it with you, raise your hand.
- Seth Godin
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.
- Bill Gates
In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.
- Ben Horowitz
When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.
- Joel Olsteen
Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.
- Zig Ziglar
Fatigue makes fools of us all. It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions. It’s the best-conditioned athlete, not the most talented, who generally wins when the going gets tough.
- Harvey Mackay
It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.
- Larry Ellison
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
For example, a world without secrets would enjoy a perfect understanding of justice. Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few people recognize early on: in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust. At first, only a small minority of abolitionists knew that slavery was evil; that view has rightly become conventional, but it was still a secret in the early 19th century. To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.
- Peter Thiel
Apart from consolidating our position as a major property developer in Hong Kong, we have also been diversifying into other activities such as hotel businesses, construction and engineering, container terminal services and television industry…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Artists, actors, people like that, they live in a very strange bubble of their own. They’re mollycoddled; they’re highly privileged.
- Stephen Wynn
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
- Warren Buffett
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
[On the three keys to Twitter’s success.] The first lesson: Draw. The most important thing you can do with an idea: get it out of your head. Second lesson: Luck. Be able to recognize when luck is happening around you. Third lesson: iteration. Originally Twitter asked ‘What’s your status?’ Bonus fourth lesson: know when to stop. Sometimes put the idea away, that idea will often emerge later.
- Jack Dorsey
In any new business, someone has to have a vision. You are as good as the people around you. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Identify your core community and go from there. Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. In my experience it often takes as long as five years to make a business work. Partners can fail you. Staff may not execute properly. You could be too far ahead of the market. SO you have to be willing to hand in there and make it happen. From the founding of Phat Farm in 1992 until 1997, I lost money. By my account, I experienced $10 million in losses. But today Phat Farm is visible, it is imitated and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars. It took time, but good ideas often do need time to take off. Being an entrepreneur requires instinct, fortitude and the ability to accept that the world does not run on your schedule. Sometimes you just have to believe.
- Russell Simmons
You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
- Sam Walton
Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.
- Michael Gerber
Your best days are not behind you. They’re in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
What we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Brian Tracy
Your best days are still out in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
The Franchise Prototype is also the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.
- Michael Gerber
The safest plan, and the one most sure of success for the young man starting in life, is to select the vocation which is most congenial to his tastes.
- P.T. Barnum
My mom was on the United Way group that decides how to allocate the money and looks at all the different charities and makes the very hard decisions about where that pool of funds is going to go.
- Bill Gates
Time has its role to play in one’s behaviour and how one conducts himself in society. With the passage of time, we master our lives better and become more refined and polished, step by step.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
New customers are silver…loyal customers are gold.
- Anonymous
So now, having learned from machines, organizations are applying the same logic to people. Letting people in the organization use their best judgment turns out to be faster and cheaper—but only if you hire the right people and reward them for having the right attitude.
- Seth Godin
Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.
- Peter Drucker
And in urology, it could be drugs or devices for bladder and prostate problems.
- David Pyott
You will have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I’m far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read ‘Tech Crunch,’ ‘Ad Age.’ I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
- Mark Twain
People use so much more health care when they live longer.
- Michael Bloomberg
I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.
- Joel Olsteen
The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.
- Seth Godin
It’s pretty chilly by southern California standards.
- Ed Clark
If you aim at nothing you will hit every time.
- Zig Ziglar
Dinner would have been splendid…if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess.
- Winston Churchill
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
What gets measured gets managed.
- Peter Drucker
I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It’s seeing what other people don’t see And pursuing that vision.
- Howard Schultz
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
- Winston Churchill
Well we know that people in Austrailia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it’s fun to be able to deliver it.
- Richard Branson
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffett
What we want to watch is whether this is a short-term bump or not.
- John Chambers
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
- Ben Horowitz
Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.
- John C. Maxwell
Form the habit of systematic saving by putting aside a definite percentage of your income. Money in the bank gives one a very safe foundation of courage…
- Napoleon Hill
In 1984, the Sino-British talks on the future of Hong Kong triggered a confidence crisis. Daunted by the uncertainties over the colony’s future, most developers shied away from construction projects that took considerable time to complete. In that year the Group recognized what the community needed and actively responded to the government’s call for a landmark convention and exhibition venue of international standard to be built in Hong Kong. The Group turned out to be the only developer willing to take financial and operating risks on a long-term basis, thereby laying a solid foundation for Hong Kong to host international conventions and exhibitions. Coupled with its excellent services, Hong Kong soon secured world-wide recognition as an ideal spot of conferences and exhibitions.
- Cheng Yu-tung
So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.
- Richard Branson
Failure to deliver on committments is, in the end, unacceptable.
- Jack Welch
When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it’s the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers. And once they arrive at Goldman, they find that even inside finance, everything is indefinite. It’s still optimistic—you wouldn’t play in the markets if you expected to lose—but the fundamental tenet is that the market is random; you can’t know anything specific or substantive; diversification becomes supremely important.
- Peter Thiel
Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.
- Steve Jobs
The way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions.
- Principle of the Bushido
I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
- Steve Martin
Our minds were freewheeling. We rushed to get things done.
- Sam Walton
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
- Thomas Edison
Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go.
- Winston Churchill
When I’m bored or tired of being blonde, I’ll throw on a wig. It’s a lot less of a permanent way to change your look, and I have about 10 – all different colors, shapes, bobs, long hair, short, feathered.
- Sara Blakely
On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’
- Michael Bloomberg
Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.
- Elon Musk
innovation without discipline leads to disaster.
- James C. Collins
People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.
- John C. Maxwell
It’s hard to tell with these Internet startups if they’re really interested in building companies or if they’re just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don’t really want to build a company, they won’t luck into it. That’s because it’s so hard that if you don’t have a passion, you’ll give up.
- Steve Jobs
Following a period of drastic market fluctuations in Asia during the summer months of the previous year, economies in the region gradually improved and stabilised during the financial year.
- Lee Shau Kee
Your faith will help you overcome your obstacles.
- Joel Olsteen
When I cut the feet out of my pantyhose that one time, I saw it as my sign. I had been visualizing being self employed prior to this happening. It was my mental preparation meeting the opportunity in that moment.
- Sara Blakely
[On only having 4-6 hours for sleep in guiding two companies in June 2011.] Most people have major positions at companies and they’re also raising families. They have two year olds. I have it easy.
- Jack Dorsey
Profit in business comes from repeat customers; customers that boast about your product and service, and that bring friends with them.
- W. Clement Stone
Hong Kong has remained a strong financial centre. It has a solid business environment and geographically, it is well located, being next to China. During this time, there is no city that can match it.
- Lee Shau Kee
There is only one success- to be able to spend your life in your own way.
- Christopher Morley
I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.
- Rupert Murdoch
Poker is a game where you don’t have to have the best hand to win. Poker is really reading other people and reading human emotion, which certainly comes into play in business.
- Charles Ergen
I think the thing we see is that as people are using video games more, they tend to watch passive TV a bit less. And so using the PC for the Internet, playing video games, is starting to cut into the rather unbelievable amount of time people spend watching TV.
- Bill Gates
In America, when you bring an idea to market, you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China – execution is.
- Ma Huateng
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
- Henry Ford
I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.
- John D. Rockefeller
We have the best flat land, you can grow anything in the cheapest possible way; turning Nigeria around is not really that difficult. Nigeria is really the best place to invest, it is one of the places to make money; all over the world it (Nigeria) is the best kept secret actually in terms of investment.
- Aliko Dangote
