Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above—that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager’s performance.
- Peter Drucker
Notable Quotables
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
We cannot start over, but we can begin now, and make a new beginning.
- Zig Ziglar
A company is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies.
- Larry Ellison
The time has come to act.
- Theodore Roosevelt
There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.
- Henry Ford
Weed out the bad fits right away
- Tony Hsieh
I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them-nine-tenths of them never happened.
- Andrew Carnegie
Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.
- Dale Carnegie
Cisco Systems Capital will be investing in companies working on networking technology.
- John Chambers
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein
America’s leaders need to put their feet in the shoes of working Americans.
- Howard Schultz
There is only one success- to be able to spend your life in your own way.
- Christopher Morley
Don’t manage – lead change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
It’s unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
- Henry Ford
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- Warren Buffett
The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.
- P.T. Barnum
We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.
- Walt Disney
Never blindside an employee by firing them without warning.
- Clay Clark
The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
- Peter Thiel
Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
- Warren Buffett
We will intensify our efforts to build out our infrastructure overseas and to develop products that are tailored to individual markets
- Sergey Brin
We think that athletes are human beings and have foibles just like human beings do…
- Phil Knight
Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.
- Winston Churchill
An employer has no business with a man’s personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance, and nothing else. Any attempt by an employer to go beyond this is usurpation. It is an immoral as well as illegal intrusion of privacy.
- Peter Drucker
The lesson for business is that we need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme; we need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism.
- Peter Thiel
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We hav before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I answer in one word: Victory…victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is not survival. Letter to Hitler
- Winston Churchill
If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.
- John C. Maxwell
Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.
- Bill Gates
Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
- Bill Gates
People say that what we are seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think this is what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.
- Joseph Campbell
Your first projects aren’t the greatest things in the world, and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere, but that is how you learn – you put so much effort into making something right if it is for yourself.
- Steve Wozniak
Facing a market which awaited exploration and development, the Group decided to become a pioneer in its economic reform by taking up the responsibility to engage in the development of the Mainland.
- Cheng Yu-tung
By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.
- Bill Gates
Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Certainly, the Windows share of servers is strong.
- Bill Gates
Mentorship is a pain free way to learn.
- Paul Pressey
Motivation needs to be a part of your own life for you to be effective in conveying it to other people.
- Zig Ziglar
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.
- Winston Churchill
Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.
- John C. Maxwell
Sometimes, your friend can influence you more than your mother.
- Lee Shau Kee
Maintain ‘baseball cards’ and/or ‘believability matrixes’ for your people. Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I think Twitter is the future of communications and Square will be the payment network.
- Jack Dorsey
I try to look on all the great things God’s done, and not focus on the negative. It’s a perspective.
- Joel Olsteen
Speeches will not distribute the future.
- Jack Dorsey
The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.
- Bill Gates
The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.
- James Simons
I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I have to be ever vigilant to remain open to other people’s points of view. Just because I’m enthusiastic doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right. I have to always keep the doors open for honest communication or I could enthusiastically lead everyone right over the cliff.
- David Novak
Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
- Bill Gates
Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.
- Bill Gates
Keep doing the right. God is building character in you, and you are passing that test. Remember, the greater the struggle, the greater the reward.
- Joel Olsteen
the Mach3—leaving hundreds of millions of people to a more painful daily battle with stubble.19
- James C. Collins
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
If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.
- Bill Gates
What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
- Steve Martin
Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.
- Timothy Ferriss
Thus far then have we travelled along the terrible road we chose at the call of duty. The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this: A year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate to all eyes but our own. To-day we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: ‘We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls.
- Winston Churchill
The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
- Henry Ford
The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.
- Michael Bloomberg
That doesn’t mean the opposite ideas are automatically true: you can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
- Peter Thiel
There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.
- Seth Godin
The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.
- Larry Ellison
To be always intending to make a new and better life but never to find time to set about it is as to put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to the next until you’re dead.
- Og Mandino
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard
Most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more.
- Peter Thiel
Mormonism is a little different, but I still see them as brothers in Christ.
- Joel Olsteen
How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.
- Winston Churchill
The polar opposite business cliché warns that “the best product doesn’t always win.
- Peter Thiel
I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say what is and what is definitely not possible.
- Henry Ford
[On his son Matt dying in 2004 in a scuba diving accident] It aged me much faster than anything you can imagine…
- Phil Knight
You have to learn to follow your heart. You can’t let other people pressure you into being something that you’re not. If you want God’s favor in your life, you must be the person He made you to be, not the person your boss wants you to be, not even the person your parents or your husband wants you to be. You can’t let outside expectations keep you from following your own heart.
- Joel Olsteen
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
To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone
- Sergey Brin
First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
- Dale Carnegie
The Habit of Indiscriminate Spending.
- Napoleon Hill
You cannot play with fire.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Sales is what you do in person, one on one. Marketing is sales done via a system. Most (Self-Employed) S quadrant businesspeople are very good at one-on-one sales. For them to make the transition to the B quadrant, they need to learn how to sell through a system which is called marketing.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.
- Winston Churchill
No vision is worth the paper it’s printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards.
- Jack Welch
When the Internet first came, I thought it was just the beacon of freedom. People could communicate with anyone, anywhere, and nobody could stop it.
- Steve Wozniak
It is a hard thing to let go of mistakes we’ve made and sins. God wants us to do that because He knows the guilt and the condemnation will keep us from becoming who He has created us to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give him one of yours.
- Zig Ziglar
You can’t build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.
- Rupert Murdoch
The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
- Bill Gates
Success is not final…Failure is not fatal…it’s the courage to continue that counts.
- Winston Churchill
Knowledge will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed through practical plans of action…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
Often the best way to develop workers – when you are sure they have the character and think they have the ability – is to take them to a deep place, throw them in and make them sink or swim.
- John D. Rockefeller
Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
- Napoleon Hill
In business, money is either an important thing or it is everything.
- Peter Thiel
Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.
- Harvey Mackay
I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we feel, but no one follows me.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
- Reed Hastings
We are focusing on the increasing need for mobility and growing demand from our industrial customers. The production volume for vehicles weighing up to six tons is expected to rise to between 100 million and 105 million vehicles. Furthermore, installation of electronics and software will continue to grow substantially, driven by growing demands from end-users and increasingly strict legal requirements for safety and energy consumption. It is partly on this basis that we are aiming for profitable sales of over €50 billion in 2020.
- Elmar Degenhart
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
- Anatole France
So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.
- Reed Hastings
A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see and who sees before others see.
- Leroy Eimes
