Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
My whole life had been designing computers I could never build.
- Steve Wozniak
Converting a decision into action requires answering several distinct questions: Who has to know of this decision? What action has to be taken? Who is to take it? And what does the action have to be so that the people who have to do it can do it? The first and the last of these are too often overlooked—with dire results.
- Peter Drucker
Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.
- Bill Cosby
You have no ability, if you’re a financial institution and you’re threatened with criminal prosecution, you have no ability to negotiate.
- Warren Buffett
In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.
- Bill Gates
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
- Mark Twain
Google’s search algorithms, for example, return results better than anyone else’s. Proprietary technologies for extremely short page load times and highly accurate query autocompletion add to the core search product’s robustness and defensibility.
- Peter Thiel
If you want to be obsessed to be your best, you must get ride of the negative things that are weighing you down.
- George Foreman
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
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
- Lawrence Bossidy
The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.
- Jeff Bezos
We always try to look three to five years out in the decisions we make and there’s no question that the Cisco brand, our opportunity in the commercial market and the evolution of our leaders are going to take us to the next level.
- John Chambers
The first dollar is the most you will get if you don’t love what you are doing.
- Ray Kroc
I have asked thousands of business people to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to class and talk about the results.
- Dale Carnegie
I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.
- Andrew Carnegie
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
- Seth Godin
On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It’s very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
- Jeff Bezos
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
We wouldn’t survive if people didn’t trust us.
- Sergey Brin
I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.
- Elon Musk
[On January 30, 1964] With a hearty ichi ban Blue Ribbon Sports got off the ground on Monday with an order for 300 pairs of shoes.
- Phil Knight
The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t spend any time thinking about my place in history, ever. If people say I changed things, it’s nice, and I take it – but if I could give it to a charity it would be useful. I really believe now that my only job in life is to achieve a state of comfort and happiness.
- Russell Simmons
I’m a creative guy. And I only do businesses as a result of like I’ve – I’m try to find what my gifts are and give them immediately. As soon as I get them and I understand, I give them back.
- Russell Simmons
Extolling the virtues of conservation of energy, Churchill advised, “Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down.
- Winston Churchill
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.
- Bill Gates
Our lives change in two ways :through the people we meet and the books we read.
- Harvey Mackay
I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.
- Joel Olsteen
If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.
- Jerry Seinfeld
If values do not affect daily life, they are not values.
- Marty St. George
For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.
- Bill Gates
If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.
- Sam Walton
This book, then, is a product of the last fifteen years, as well as a product of the fifteen years that preceded them. It was almost exactly eight years before The E-Myth was published that I founded our company, E-Myth Worldwide, which has provided the fuel and experience for the point of view I have shared with those of you who have read The E-Myth, and with those.
- Michael Gerber
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
No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.
- Napoleon Hill
China is the new horizon.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Leading, not following We’ve been trained to follow. In fact, the very nature of training has following built right into it. We follow instructions. We follow the rules. We follow the leader. The challenge in a six-billion person world is that we don’t have a shortage of followers. Followers are easy to find, and the tools for compliance are more powerful (but less useful) than ever. Now the economy is demanding leaders. Human beings who can engage in what it really means to be a person—to forge connections, to see a path and to make a difference.
- Seth Godin
confusion is the main cause of worry.
- Dale Carnegie
Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‘Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.’
- Joel Olsteen
The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it’s enormously useful in life.
- Larry Ellison
Be a coach, not a cheerleader
- Stacy Thorn
As Google CEO Larry Page put it in his 2014 TED talk: “The main thing that has caused companies to fail, in my view, is that they missed the future.
- Jack Welch
Wal-Mart’s leaders had obviously made a point of educating and informing everyone at all levels about all aspects of the company, and that shows a real respect for their people.
- David Novak
If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think. Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are easier to achieve for yet another reason.
- Timothy Ferriss
We are not in the business of iron ore. Whatever captive iron ore sources we have, we use it to make steel.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Whether changes happen depends on people’s mind and view.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
I swore I would never get involved in another startup ever again in my entire life.
- Larry Ellison
Uber is efficiency with elegance on top. That’s why I buy an iPhone instead of an average cell phone, why I go to a nice restaurant and pay a little bit more. It’s for the experience.
- Travis Kalanick
What you get by achieving your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
- Zig Ziglar
P – Passion, you care about the team, passion and players
- Jack Welch
Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money, non-monopolists can’t.
- Peter Thiel
I come back to the same thing: We’ve got the greatest pipeline in the company’s history in the next 12 months, and we’ve had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we’re predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year ’06.
- Steve Ballmer
Businesses often forget the culture, and ultimately, they suffer for it because you can’t deliever good service from unhappy employees.
- Tony Hsieh
The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.
- Seth Godin
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.
- James C. Collins
I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.
- Ben Horowitz
A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still.
- Dale Carnegie
Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
- Steve Ballmer
Much to learn you still have…my old padawan… This is just the beginning!
- Yoda
I think there are more politicians in favor of electric cars than against. There are still some that are against, and I think the reasoning for that varies depending on the person, but in some cases, they just don’t believe in climate change – they think oil will last forever.
- Elon Musk
The Overseas Chinese habit is to save a lot and make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it.
- Ray Kroc
I believe people have to follow their dreams – I did.
- Larry Ellison
1. What is our mission?2. Who is our customer?3. What does the customer value?4. What are our results?5. What is our plan?
- Peter Drucker
I love the presentation from the more flamboyant guy, who excitedly presents his plans.
- Jack Welch
Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you’d rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And after you’ve done that, to do it again the next day.
- Seth Godin
Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.
- Brene Brown
American Dream – and it says that you should graduate from high school, graduate from college, get married, find a job with good benefits, have sex with your spouse two times per week, buy a home with a mortgage, get a pet, go on vacation two times per year, have two kids, invest in mutual funds and IRAs, recycle when possible, and aim to retire early in your mid-fifties to early sixties, if you are lucky. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s kind of hard to be passionate about that American Dream.
- Clay Clark
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
- Jack Welch
If you are going to run a successful business you are going to have to be committed to your customers 100% of the time. If customers consistently tell you that they don’t like a certain product or service you offer or an employee that you have working for you, you must be willing to act based upon their feedback if you find it to be factual.
- Clay Clark
Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.
- Winston Churchill
I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I’m not an expert on how you get out of those things.
- Bill Gates
In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.
- Bill Gates
Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.
- Viktor E. Frankl
When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.
- Howard Schultz
Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: Wouldn’t you like to have that? Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?
- Dale Carnegie
If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution. Bubble-era advertising was obviously wasteful, so the only sustainable growth is viral growth.
- Peter Thiel
Success always demands a greater effort.
- Winston Churchill
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
On scores of occassions, when I have faced emergencies, some of them so grave that my life was in jeopardy, I have been miraculously guided past these difficulties through the influence of my Invisible Counselors. My original purpose in conducting Council meetings with imaginary beings, was soley that of impressing my own subconscious mind, through the principle of auto-suggestion, with certain characteristcs which I desired to acquire. In more recent years, my experimentation has taken on a different trend. I now go to my imaginary counselors with every difficult problem which confronts me and my clients. The results are often astonishing, although I do not depend entirerely on this form of counsel.
- Napoleon Hill
Gratitude is the single greatest treasure I will take with me from this experience.
- Oprah Winfrey
About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.
- Reed Hastings
Hope is the engine of your attitude, and your attitude determines your altitude.
- Zig Ziglar
Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.
- Henry Ford
If you’re going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don’t work.
- Seth Godin
Five percent of the people think;ten percent of the people think they think;and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
- Thomas Edison
If you don’t have peace, it isn’t because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.
- John C. Maxwell
10% of Americans hold 73% of the country’s wealth.
- Robert Kiyosaki
It took Flickr two years to reach the milestone of 100 million uploaded pictures. It took Instagram eight months
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.
- Joel Olsteen
Yesterday ended last night. Today is a brand new day and it’s yours.
- Zig Ziglar
We should remember it wasn’t so long ago that confidence in New York was in short supply.
- Michael Bloomberg
We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference.
- Steve Ballmer
Why don’t we have enough teachers of math and science in the public schools? One answer is well, if they knew the subject well, they’d also know enough to work for Google or Goldman Sachs or God knows where.
- James Simons
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
Vision without execution is just hallucination.
- Henry Ford
