The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
- Winston Churchill
Notable Quotables
Most people believe that results matter. The idea that results matter is one that you have to keep letting go of. And most of the time, I believe it.
- Russell Simmons
most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings.
- Timothy Ferriss
So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it…Fortunate indeed is the person who has discovered how to give sex emotion an outlet through some form of creative effort, for he has by that discovery lifted himself to the status of a genius…The majority of men lower themselves through misunderstanding and misuse of this great force to the status of the lower animals…Highly sexed people always have a plentiful supply of magnetism…Highly sexed people move briskly and with grace and ease…The public speaker, orator, preacher, laywer or salesman who is lacking in sex energy is a flop as far as being able to influence others is concerned…The salesman who knows how to take his mind off the subject of sex, and direct it in sales effort with as much enthusiasm and determination as he would apply to its original purpose, has acquired the art of sex transmutation, whether he knows it or not….Intemperance in sex habits is just as detrimental as intemperance in habits of drinking and eating…A sex-mad is not essentially different than a dope-mad man! Both have lost control over their their faculties of reason and will-power…When driven by his desire to please a woman based upon the motive of sex alone, a man may steal , cheat and even committ murder. But when the emotion of LOVE is mixed with the emotion of sex, that same sme man will guide his actions with more sanity, balance, and reason…The emotion of love, when mixe dwith the emotion of sex softens, modifies, and beautifies the facial expression. No character analyst is needed to tell you this, you may observe it for yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
- Steve Martin
There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.
- Zig Ziglar
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
- Peter Drucker
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
- Seth Godin
We are gods in the chrysalis.
- Dale Carnegie
As you begin changing your thinking, start immediately to change your behavior. Begin to act the part of the person you would like to become. Take action on your behavior. Too many people want to feel, then take action. This never works.
- John C. Maxwell
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Edison
Rockefeller never clarified why he dropped out of high school around May 1855, just 2 months shy of commencement, excercises on July 16…
- Ron Chernow
The Group is rapidly increasing its activities in Mainland China, where it now has projects ranging from landmark commercial developments in the major cities of Beijing and Shanghai to massive residential schemes in the second-tier cities.
- Lee Shau Kee
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
- Steve Jobs
Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?”
- Ben Horowitz
I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.
- Yoda
Philanthropy should be voluntary.
- Bill Gates
Our approach as a Group is based on strong economic, social and environmental principles. We strive to create high quality, visually stimulating innovative new homes and commercial developments that enhance, as well as integrate with, their surrounding natural and built environments.
- Lee Shau Kee
I had a terrible time hiring rich people. It sounds funny, but the problem is when things go wrong they can ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You don’t ever want anybody asking that question. You want them to say, ‘I know why I’m doing it, I need the money, let’s go’ or whatever it is that draws them.
- Ben Horowitz
We wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don’t end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.
- Phil Knight
When I was in college I did a lot of stupid things and I don’t want to make an excuse for that. Some of the things that people accuse me of are true, some of them aren’t. There are pranks, IMs.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
- Steve Ballmer
With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence?
- Timothy Ferriss
Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform. Consider for a moment the possibility of your putting on a series of four lectures for members of your department. Let’s count on three hours preparation for each hour of course time—twelve hours of work in total. Say that you have ten students in your class. Next year they will work a total of about twenty thousand hours for your organization. If your training efforts result in a 1 percent improvement in your subordinates’ performance, your company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the result of the expenditure of your twelve hours.
- Ben Horowitz
Do not assume anything Obi-Wan. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.
- Yoda
As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.
- Peter Thiel
We were trading things before we were using language to communicate.
- Jack Dorsey
Fail openly.
- Jack Dorsey
Every pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, but every optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I failed the LSAT. Basically, if I had not failed, I’d have been a lawyer and there would be no Spanx. I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating.
- Sara Blakely
Secret, shall I tell you? Grand Master of Jedi Order am I. Won this job in a raffle I did, think you? “How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?” Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is.
- Yoda
My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they’re having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we’re doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.
- Larry Page
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you’ve got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don’t give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
- Jack Ma
The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
- Robert Kennedy
Marketing knits the whole organization together.
- Phil Knight
When you throw dirt at people, you’re not doing a thing but losing ground.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.
- Bill Gates
Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.
- Thomas Edison
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
- Henry Ford
I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
- Steve Martin
Don’t waste your time trying to win people over that can never be won over.
- Joel Olsteen
In 1973 when the Hong Kong stock market witnessed an unprecedented slump with the Hang Seng Index plunging by over 90% in a year, the Group built the New World Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong through the acquisition of Holt’s Wharf. In doing so we broke the dominance of the UK-based conglomerates and, as if [being given] a shot in the arm, initiated the course of weaving the companies with Chinese capital into the economic fabric of Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
[That was the case Wednesday night, when Cisco executives talked about results for the fiscal second quarter (which closed on Jan. 26). Chambers and chief financial officer Larry Carter spoke only about the next quarter, when revenue growth from the second fiscal quarter is expected to be nil or in the low single digits.] Our visibility is still very limited, … If there’s one lesson we’ve learned over the past year, it’s how quickly things can change.
- John Chambers
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
- Bill Gates
If you and I go around grumbling about ingratitude, who is to blame? Is it human nature—or is it our ignorance of human nature? Let’s not expect gratitude. Then, if we get some occasionally, it will come as a delightful surprise. If we don’t get it, we won’t be disturbed. Here is the first point I am trying to make in this chapter: It is natural for people to forget to be grateful; so, if we go around expecting gratitude, we are headed straight for a lot of heartaches.
- Dale Carnegie
We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners.
- Phil Knight
I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.
- Donald Bren
Simplicity scales. Complexity does not.
- David Nilssen
If you can’t make 40% on your money in Russia, you’re a fool.
- Simon Reuben
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.
- Zig Ziglar
The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.
- Larry Ellison
People will always blame the poets for society’s ills. But these are the true artists.
- Russell Simmons
The world’s major metropolitan cities are more or less the same.
- Tadashi Yanai
The successful business executive can handle challenges and solve problems at a remarkable clip.
- Zig Ziglar
If a product’s future is unlikely to be remarkable – if you can’t imagine a future in which people are once again fascinated by your product – it’s time to realize that the game has changed. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new.
- Seth Godin
I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.
- Winston Churchill
I wouldn’t say I have a lack of fear. In fact, I’d like my fear emotion to be less because it’s very distracting and fries my nervous system.
- Elon Musk
Each time they Tweet, it sparks interaction.
- Jack Dorsey
In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.
- Ben Horowitz
In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.
- Bill Gates
Everything popular is wrong.
- Oscar Wilde
Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas.
- Seth Godin
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
The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.
- Seth Godin
We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill… it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.
- Li Ka-shing
People don’t want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology – all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why.
- Peter Thiel
If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.
- Elon Musk
I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862)
- Timothy Ferriss
This is not checkers; this is motherfuckin’ chess. Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves, the market moves, the people move. As a result, like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek, there is always a move. You think you have no moves? How about taking your company public with $2 million in trailing revenue and 340 employees, with a plan to do $75 million in revenue the next year? I made that move. I made it in 2001, widely regarded as the worst time ever for a technology company to go public. I made it with six weeks of cash left. There is always a move.
- Ben Horowitz
Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked
- Warren Buffett
We live in an age where everything is based on the short term.
- Howard Schultz
One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.
- Seth Godin
First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.
- Dale Carnegie
I came from a Hindi medium school… the principal felt that I would not fit into an English medium college. Though I was top in my class in school, and I got admission in other colleges, but I really wanted to study in St. Xavier’s.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.
- Malcolm X
Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.
- John C. Maxwell
Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.
- Ben Horowitz
India has the potential to be our biggest market in Asia, bigger than China, in as much as two to five years.
- John Chambers
My new favorite word is ‘awkward.’…The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
- Seth Godin
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.
- Jack Dorsey
‘You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.’
- Joel Olsteen
Chambers have numerous committees and serving on one of them provides numerous networking opportunities as well as professional leadership development.
- American Business Magazine
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The reason Steve Herrell’s shop did so well is that it was famous for having a line! People brought folks from out of town to have the experience.
- Seth Godin
A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.
- P.T. Barnum
If I have one skill as a manager, I can make things extremely clear.
- Ben Horowitz
Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.
- Yoda
In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
- Mark Zuckerberg
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
We saw – we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.
- Larry Ellison
When the negative thoughts come – and they will, they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.
- Joel Olsteen
Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what’s coming.
- Steve Martin
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
[In 1998] The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.
- Phil Knight
My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.
- Bill Gates
