If I hadn’t given my money away, I’d have had more than anyone else on the planet.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
You cannot expect victory and plan for defeat.
- Joel Olsteen
Frankly speaking, I decided to become a businessman at the moment when I understood that it is possible, because I grew up in a country where it was not possible. There existed even a special article in the penal code of the Soviet Union which punished entrepreneurial activity.
- Vladimir Potanin
Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It’s fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.
- Bill Gates
Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.
- Steve Ballmer
Juggling is about throwing, not catching That’s why it’s so difficult to learn how to juggle. We’re conditioned to make the catch, to hurdle whatever is in our way to save the day, to—no matter what—not drop the ball. If you spend your time and energy and focus on catching, it’s inevitable that your throws will suffer. You’ll get plenty of positive feedback for the catches you make, but you’ll always be behind, because the throws you manage to make will be ever less useful. Paradoxically, if you get better at throwing, the catches take care of themselves. The only way to get better at throwing, though, is to throw.
- Seth Godin
The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event.
- Elon Musk
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
- Winston Churchill
Our mail product, Hotmail, is the market leader globally.
- Steve Ballmer
We think we’re going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java.
- Larry Ellison
If you’re not seeing God move in your life right now, one of two possibilities must be considered. Either your requests are not God’s best and will probably not be answered the way you’d like or it must not be the right time. If God were to answer that prayer the way you are hoping, it could interfere with his ideal plan for you.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m optimistic about the country. I’m optimistic about the American people.
- Howard Schultz
Ultimately, the goal of any public relations campaign is to either reorient or solidify the perception of a product, client, policy or event. From there nature takes its course. If the public perceives the product as good, the movie stars as sexy, the pet rock as indispensable, then the public will fork over its money. One will succeed in a P.R. campaign only if the perception fostered truly resonates with the public. People respect wisdom but obey pain.
- Michael Levine
We believe our growth rate indicates that Cisco continues to gain market share against our traditional competitors in most product sectors.
- John Chambers
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.
- Steve Jobs
1. Why is it foolish to launch a new business with millions of dollars in TV ads?2. Are the market leaders in every industry more vulnerable to sudden successes by the competition than ever before?3. Should book publishers issue the paperback edition of a book before the hardcover?4. What’s the single most important asset a company can create—and what is the simple thing that can kill it?5. Every ad needs to do one of two things to succeed…yet most ads do neither. What’s the right strategy?6. Does the Net create a dynamic that fundamentally changes the way everything is marketed?7. How can every business…big and small…use ideavirus marketing to succeed?
- Seth Godin
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
- Peter Drucker
Alibaba is an ecosystem that helps small business to grow.
- Jack Ma
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
Those two priceless abilities: first, the ability to think. Second, the ability to do things in the order of their importance.
- Dale Carnegie
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
- Warren Buffett
It’s clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them.
- Seth Godin
Rule No.1: Never lose money.Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
- Warren Buffett
They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people have their say” so that they could buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.
- James C. Collins
[In June 2011] We’re focused on building a product and a business. Going public is an instrument and tool to help sustain the company. In the future, there may be an IPO, but I don’t know what the timing is.
- Jack Dorsey
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
The time is always right to do what is right.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Whatever your critics say about you has no bearing on your worth. You are a child of the Most High God. The Creator of the universe breathed life into you. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. You’ve been crowned with favor. God has already equipped and empowered you with everything you need. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to play up to people, trying to win over all your critics, or trying to prove to someone that you’re important.
- Joel Olsteen
Discipline is hard–harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can’t even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.
- Atul Gawande
I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.
- Jack Ma
Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that’s where charisma comes from, from the leading.
- Seth Godin
The torch relay is an excellent embodiment of all that the Olympic Games have come to symbolise – a celebration of the human spirit. Personally to me, it represents striving to be the best in whatever we do, never giving up despite the odds, and a commitment to health and fitness.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
- Ben Horowitz
[Less than a week after founding the forerunner to Nike] I forgot to make it part of the original agreement, but I think it ought to be made explicit: There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.
- Phil Knight
She came up with what is now the Swoosh for $35 which is a pretty good bargain.
- Phil Knight
Selling is essentially a transfer of feelings.
- Zig Ziglar
Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
- Joel Olsteen
You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.
- Bill Gates
I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take.
- Sergey Brin
Facing reality sounds simple, but it isn’t. I found it hard to get people to see a situation for what it is and not for what it was, or what they hoped it would be.
- Jack Welch
Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.
- Seth Godin
Within the first year of launching my company, Spanx, I decided to go over to England and cold-call Harrods, Harvey Nichols, and Selfridges the same way I had cold-called Neiman Marcus, Saks, Nordstrom, and Bloomingdale’s here in the United States.
- Sara Blakely
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience.
- Dale Carnegie
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
Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that’s what I think keeps me hungry.
- Warren Buffett
I hate the photo shoots. I hate all that stuff.
- Reed Hastings
If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Failure is part of discovering the problem you need to be working on. If, as an entrepreneur, you are afraid to fail or to admit the failure of your efforts, then you completely lose any chance at being able to adapt and succeed at finding the problem that needs solving.
- Caterina Fake
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
This the real world, homie, school finished They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.
- Kanye West
This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
- Bill Gates
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Marriot does not own the hotels, they market and run the real estate, they run the business
- John Kluken
In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
- David Ogilvy
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
RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.
- Jack Welch
The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy.
- Michael Bloomberg
In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.
- Lee Shau Kee
It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.
- Winston Churchill
I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing….
- Thomas Edison
We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. We need marketers who can lead, salespeople able to risk making a human connection, passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point. Every organization needs a linchpin, the one person who can bring it together and make a difference. Some organizations haven’t realized this yet, or haven’t articulated it, but we need artists.
- Seth Godin
Is it really necessary to work like a slave to live like a millionaire?
- Timothy Ferriss
Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.
- Howard Schultz
Hmm. In the end, cowards are those who follow the dark side.
- Yoda
What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It’s about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it’s something that people have wanted forever.
- Seth Godin
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
- Sun Tzu
I fell in love with flora of all types, especially ferns. Loved the sparse structure and repetition of shape – almost fractal.
- Jack Dorsey
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Seneca
The binders, the charts, the grids may seem formidable, but the meetings themselves are built around informality, trust, emotion and humor.
- Jack Welch
Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
Don’t treat your customers like a bunch of purses and wallets.
- Chris Brogan
It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, first to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented; how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous…
- Winston Churchill
Service is the key to everything in life.
- Russell Simmons
On average, our total annual realized income is less than 7 percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than 7 percent of our wealth.
- Thomas J Stanley
No man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.
- P.T. Barnum
If you’re going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.
- Seth Godin
There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
I cringe at backstory. Because it never quite explains or gets into some psychological thing that is never quite right and never quite the truth and who knows why someone is some way.
- Steve Martin
We need to understand the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment is what you do to someone, discipline is what you do for someone.
- Zig Ziglar
I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.
- Ray Dalio
It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.
- Donald Trump
When you are committed to doing what’s right, you are sowing seeds for God’s blessings. You will never go wrong by taking the high road and doing more that is required.
- Joel Olsteen
One can steal ideas, but no one can steal execution or passion.
- Timothy Ferriss
Don’t count the things you do. Do the things that count.
- Zig Ziglar
God, You said You would restore health unto me and heal me of my wounds. You said I would live and not die. You said what is impossible with men is possible with God. When you pray.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s in the difficult times that we’re growing and you can’t just rebuke everything hard. We’ve got to endure it and fight the good fight of faith and pass the test.
- Joel Olsteen
What one does easily, one does well.
- Andrew Carnegie
Personal initiative is the power that inspires the completion of that which one begins. It is the power that starts all action. No person is free until he learns to do his own thinking and gains the courage to act on his own.
- Napoleon Hill
It is expected that Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation will materialise in the near future and the country will see further growth in its economy unfolding at a faster pace.
- Lee Shau Kee
Learning is truly a value, growth for every employee is a real objective, mistakes aren’t always fatal, and there are lots of people around whom you can reach out to for coaching and mentoring.
- Jack Welch
Time is your most precious asset.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.
- Bill Gates
If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.
- Peter Thiel
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Zig Ziglar
My priorities are; Family, Church, Business.
- Terry Fischer
Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
You can’t worry about the mistakes, because you’re going to make a lot of them. You’ve got to be thinking about your next move.
- Ben Horowitz
Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.
- Timothy Ferriss
