Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.
- Jeff Bezos
Notable Quotables
What I love about New York is just the electricity I feel right away.
- Jack Dorsey
Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?
- Winston Churchill
Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.
- Seth Godin
If my job would have been to sell someone something they didn’t need, I would not have been very good at it.
- Pat McGovern
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
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.
- Seth Godin
You have to BE before you can DO, and DO before you can HAVE.
- Zig Ziglar
The oil patch pays good. They’re decent jobs paying between 50 and 70 thousand a year. Fracking has a big impact on the oil consumption in the United States.
- Harold Hamm
True success is when you reach back and bring somebody along with you.
- Joel Olsteen
So great leaders don’t try to please everyone. Great leaders don’t water down their message in order to make the tribe a bit bigger. Instead, they realize that a motivated, connected tribe in the midst of a movement is far more powerful than a larger group could ever be.
- Seth Godin
I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good, but on a practical level having dealt with being abandoned by your father, being raised by your alcoholic mom and having severe physical disabilities even today, How do you choose to have the right thoughts?
- Oprah Winfrey
The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
- Napoleon Hill
Today, getting people to hear your story on social media, and then act on it, requires using a platform’s native language, paying attention to context, understanding the nuances and subtle differences that make each platform unique, and adapting your content to match.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A lot of advertising has gotten worse. I think it’s kind of lost its nerve, to be honest with you. I feel like the advertising of the ’60s, they were nervier. You know why? Because there was less at stake.
- Jerry Seinfeld
But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.
- Winston Churchill
Progress really is possible.
- Michael Bloomberg
The only antidote is simplicity. The simplicity of leading through truth and trust. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter. In every decision, in every action. Truth is a determined pursuit, a personal and unquenchable fire, burning to know what is really happening inside the company and out.
- Jack Welch
We could definitely make a flying car – but that’s not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.
- Elon Musk
Well, it’s the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?
- Russell Simmons
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.
- Ben Horowitz
The minute there’s a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.
- Seth Godin
Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.
- Rich Karlgaard
God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel You have everything.
- Joel Olsteen
Accessible design is good design.
- Steve Ballmer
The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
- Warren Buffett
Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. To know all is to forgive all.
- Dale Carnegie
There are GMO skeptics more in Europe maybe than in other places, but not exclusively.
- Bill Gates
Whatever you accept your employees will expect.
- Clifton Taulbert
Chinese people today have strong demand for culture, but we need effective supply, and China needs innovative cultural products.
- Wang Jianlin
Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.What makes someone an artist? I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.
- Seth Godin
My two primary areas of focus have been open-space conservation and education, and I expect those to remain my priorities in the future. The Irvine open space and parklands provide serenity and balance to our unique Orange County lifestyle.
- Donald Bren
The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
- Jerry Seinfeld
I do think – as self-serving as it sounds – that I was the right person, given the very, very strong headwind we had from the economy and our own issues, to come back and rewrite the future of the company.
- Howard Schultz
[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
The doctors actually told my family there was a five percent chance of me living.
- Ed Clark
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
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
To have a great idea, have a lot of them.
- Thomas Edison
This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us the latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.
- Mark Zuckerberg
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
I wish I could do a lot of things different. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I’d go, ‘Okay, I’ll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.’ Really. But I’ve made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?
- Steve Martin
You shouldn’t do things differently just because they’re different. They need to be… better.
- Elon Musk
Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.
- John F. Kennedy
The first Apple was just a culmination of my whole life.
- Steve Wozniak
When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—“Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally”—she’s not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she’s reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.
- Seth Godin
You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.
- Lee Iacocca
Shaw once remarked: If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.
- Dale Carnegie
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.
- Jim Collins
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
In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
- Warren Buffett
Our investment in more than 100 projects in China’s property, infrastructure and other sectors makes us one of the country’s largest investors.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.
- Timothy Ferriss
Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.
- Peter Thiel
Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.
- Thomas Edison
The unsuccessful person is burdened by learning, and prefers to walk down familiar paths. Their distaste for learning stunts their growth and limits their influence.
- John C. Maxwell
People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.
- Zig Ziglar
It was always a challenge for me to prove that a Russian financial investor can be as successful in the West as back at home in Russia.
- Alisher Usmanov
I’ve found that many of the greatest ideas surface in bars because that’s where many people cultivate inspiration.
- Herb Kelleher
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
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
I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.
- Joel Olsteen
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 first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
- Peter Thiel
God created every one of us to be successful. Before the foundation of the world, He laid out an exact plan for our lives. And in this plan He has moments of favor that will come across our path. These moments are not ordinary. They are destiny-altering moments.
- Joel Olsteen
That’s the true spirit of Christmas, people being helped by people other than me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.
- Thomas Edison
They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.
- Thomas Edison
If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.
- Tony Robbins
The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping.
- Dale Carnegie
There is only one excuse for a speaker’s asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them.
- Dale Carnegie
Sure I am this day we are masters of our fate, that the task which has been set before us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our own cause and an unconquerable will to win, victory will not be denied us.
- Winston Churchill
I went online with winelibrary.com in July of 1997. That was my first professional online play
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Jobs and businesses are just vehicles to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
- Clay Clark
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
- Andrew Carnegie
I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.
- Zig Ziglar
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
- Warren Buffett
I see tremendous imbalance in the world. A very uneven playing field, which has gotten tilted very badly. I consider it unstable. At the same time, I don’t exactly see what is going to reverse it.
- George Soros
If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The more people I serve, the richer I become.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Thoughts mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire are powerful things.
- Napoleon Hill
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …
- Dale Carnegie
I know a lot of people are upset by our decision but it is something we have deliberated for a number of years.
- Sergey Brin
Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. Pick people who are interested in what you’re interested in.
- Russell Simmons
He had realized something while arcing in slow circles toward the earth—risks weren’t that scary once you took them. His.
- Timothy Ferriss
What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?
- Sam Walton
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.
- Winston Churchill
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
We thought we ought to put that in because it’s the truth but the (like-for-like) number even with those factors taken into account is still very disappointing.
- Simon Wolfson
I like the idea that one thing leads to another. You can tweet something completely innocuous, and then find yourself going off on a tangent that’s inspired by a response.
- Steve Martin
Too many people are living below their privileges. It’s because their vision has been clouded by past mistakes, disappointments, or how they were raised. They don’t feel like royalty. They don’t think they could be successful and really accomplish what God has put in their hearts. But I believe today, as I’m speaking faith into you, something is happening on the inside.
- Joel Olsteen
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
If you are unduly nervous, turn it around make your vulnerability an asset.
- Michael Levine
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
- Warren Buffett
Do you ever worry’ asked Dale Carnegie, I replied: ‘No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?’
- Henry Ford
I have the best job I could possibly have.
- Michael Bloomberg
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter Drucker
I think there is probably no better person to aspire to emulate than Steve Jobs and what he has done at Apple in terms of his leadership, his innovation, not settling for mediocrity.
- Howard Schultz
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
- Winston Churchill
