The Apple Stores’ sleek minimalist design and close control over the consumer experience, the omnipresent advertising campaigns, the price positioning as a maker of premium goods, and the lingering nimbus of Steve Jobs’s personal charisma all contribute to a perception that Apple offers products so good as to constitute a category of their own.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
We are in control of the one asset that we all give the most f#%ks about, and that is time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I can become someone’s miracle.
- Joel Olsteen
The number of units that were sold by the Group including those for which the Group acted as sales agent summed up to 2,960 residential units, amounting to approximately HK$9.2 billion in total sales proceeds.
- Lee Shau Kee
There is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure.
- Winston Churchill
The typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.
- Michael Gerber
In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.
- Joel Olsteen
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
I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.
- Warren Buffett
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.
- Joel Olsteen
A lot of people feel very good about Mitt Romney and I think he’s going to do a great job.
- Donald Trump
Use money to make money. Save your ‘first bucket of gold.’ or small fortune – but then use it for investments. Don’t just park money in the bank.
- Lee Shau Kee
Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible.
- Bill Gates
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exup
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
- Wayne Gretzky
Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way. And if you can’t monopolize a unique solution for a small market, you’ll be stuck with vicious competition.
- Peter Thiel
They did not die because of sickness or anything but because of hunger. I remember that and how people suffered.
- Lui Che Woo
Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.
- Lord Chesterfield
I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education.
- Steve Jobs
It’s not about how to get started, it’s about how to get noticed.
- Steve Case
I never thought about success. I always thought about doing the job at hand. My goal was getting through the show that night.
- Steve Martin
When you set down the path to create art, whatever sort of art it is, understand that the path is neither short not easy. That means you must determine if the route is worth the effort. If it’s not, dream bigger.
- Seth Godin
Most people have bosses who hire them to fill a slot in the work chart and to do what they are told. And most people who are doing what they are told feel safe, it feels reliable.
- Seth Godin
One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
- Bill Gates
You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.
- Seth Godin
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
- Napoleon Hill
Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.
- Zig Ziglar
Positive thinking will let you use the ability which you have, and that is awesome.
- Zig Ziglar
It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.
- Joel Olsteen
I think a lot of the American people feel more than a little disappointed that the high-water mark for human exploration was 1969. The dream of human space travel has almost died for a lot of people.
- Elon Musk
Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.
- Howard Schultz
The proposed abolishment of estate duty by the Hong Kong Government will contribute to establish Hong Kong as a regional financial centre as well as an asset management hub.
- Lee Shau Kee
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The lizard isn’t listening and the lizard doesn’t care.
- Seth Godin
The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.
- Anthony Robbins
I’m a geek.
- Bill Gates
TV is a great big megaphone,” and when you can only afford to spend dozens of dollars acquiring a new customer, you need the biggest megaphone you can find.
- Peter Thiel
I think we are living in a time where the consumer has lots of choices, whether it’s coffee, newspapers or whatever it is. And there is parity in the market place, and as a result of that, the consumer is beginning to make decisions, not just on what things cost and the convenience of it.
- Howard Schultz
Measuring and establishing facts at every step of the process. Without facts, assumptions and misperceptions will defeat whatever reason and good judgment can be brought to effort
- Service Profit Chain
Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
- Reid Hoffman
But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill
10,000 years of fitful advance from primitive agriculture to medieval windmills and 16th-century astrolabes, the modern world suddenly experienced relentless technological progress from the advent of the steam engine in the 1760s all the way up to about 1970.
- Peter Thiel
For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better.
- Seth Godin
At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas, but the image is that they all come from the top. I’m afraid that’s not quite right.
- Bill Gates
New information makes new and fresh ideas possible.
- Zig Ziglar
And I think the more money you put in people’s hands, the more they will spend. And if they don’t spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that.
- Michael Bloomberg
You may think using Google’s great, but I still think it’s terrible.
- Larry Page
One of the roles of the Presidency is to lead a political party. Having a President in office is usually a huge advantage to a party because it gives the party a mouthpiece and an advocate at the highest level.
- John C. Maxwell
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
- Abraham Lincoln
People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
- Zig Ziglar
Nine out of ten businesses fail, so I came up with a foolproof plan — create ten businesses.
- Robert Kiyosaki
That’s the goal, isn’t it? For every crack to be filled with your ideas and innovations and creativity? The only way to achieve this, though, is to be prepared for many of them to fail, to land on pavement, to be perfect yet cease to grow. We can cry about these failures, but that will lead us to hold back on the next idea. Or we can celebrate them, realizing that it’s proof that we’re being promiscuous in our shipping, putting the best work we can into the world, regardless of whether this particular idea actually works. When was the last time you set out to be promiscuous in your failures?
- Seth Godin
You should know now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, not by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it.
- Carlos Castaneda
You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
- Oprah Winfrey
He listened closely to what people said and filed away as much information as he could, repeating valuable information to himself until it was memorized. There was humility in this eagerness to learn. As he said, It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.
- Ron Chernow
Be candid with everyone.
- Jack Welch
As a company it is always better for us to work with more customers than fewer customers. The more people that we serve, the more money that we will make.
- Napoleon Hill
The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.
- John C. Maxwell
The challenge of the retail business is the human condition.
- Howard Schultz
Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.
- Michael Dell
Eventually I left City College in my senior year, just four or five credits short of a sociology degree. This really upset my father who thought that I was a fool. Over and over he lectured me that the only way for a black man to make it was to get a degree and a job. For a while there I felt like I was a failure in my father’s eyes, which hurt alot, but promoting felt right in my gut. I knew that to be a man I had to follow my heart. My mother was always more open to Danny, Joey and me pursuing a more non-traditional entrepreneurial way…Early in my promoting career I lost all the money I’d saved on a show in Harlem no one came to. I came out to Hollis and no one would help me. My father just wanted me to go back to school and told me so. What could I say? I had no money. Then my mother went back in the house and came with $2,000 in crisp $100 bills from her personal savings. It was that money that kept me afloat until Kurtis Blow broke and I entered the record business. That act of love and faith, which is what kept me in business at a key time, is my favorite memory of her.
- Russell Simmons
We are set in our ways, bound by our perspectives and stuck in our thinking.
- Joel Olsteen
I don’t feel under-taxed in any way at all.
- Jack Welch
Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.
- Napoleon Hill
The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That’s why graceful is in such demand.
- Seth Godin
As a group, we feel that our daughters are financially handicapped in comparison to our sons. Men seem to make much more money even within the same occupational categories. That is why most of us would not hesitate to share some of our wealth with our daughters. Our sons, and men in general, have the deck of economic cards stacked in their favor. They should not need subsidies from their parents.
- Thomas J Stanley
Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.
- Seth Godin
I think that maybe inside any business, there is someone slowly going crazy.
- Michael Gerber
Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.
- Dale Carnegie
The Chinese government still would like to see U.S. Internet companies explore the Chinese market, providing they are willing to abide by Chinese law. I think companies like Facebook should think about the Chinese market.
- Robin Li
If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that’s not much – unless you’ve been warned that if you’re even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.
- Zig Ziglar
The secret of 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. The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.
- Seth Godin
Failure is an event not a person.
- Zig Ziglar
Quite or be exceptional. Average is for losers.
- Seth Godin
If you can dream it, you can do it. -Walt Disney
- Walt Disney
The more you talk about negative things in your life, the more you call them in. Speak victory not defeat.
- Joel Olsteen
The PC has improved the world in just about every area you can think of. Amazing developments in communications, collaboration and efficiencies. New kinds of entertainment and social media. Access to information and the ability to give a voice people who would never have been heard.
- Bill Gates
In whatever you do, strive to be the best at it.
- Aliko Dangote
Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education.
- Bill Gates
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
Branding is what people think about you before they even know you.
- Bryan Smith
Well, it’s very clear that the Arab population is rising because they’d like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.
- Harold Hamm
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
- David Novak
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.
- Dale Carnegie
Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.
- Joel Olsteen
To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
Some people are so belligerent in their communication style that people just stop talking when they are in the room. If every time anyone brings up an issue with the marketing organization, the VP of marketing jumps down their throats, then guess what topic will never come up? This behavior can become so bad that nobody brings up any topic when the jerk is in the room. As a result, communication across the executive staff breaks down and the entire company slowly degenerates. Note that this only happens if the jerk in question is unquestionably brilliant. Otherwise, nobody will care when she attacks them. The bite only has impact if it comes from a big dog. If one of your big dogs destroys communication on your staff, you need to send her to the pound.
- Ben Horowitz
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill
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
Smith never wavered. Twenty-five years later, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper outright and beat Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories.12 In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.
- James C. Collins
Whenever a company proudly announces the establishment of its beautiful, new, modern corporate headquarters, you can be sure it’s heading downhill. Why? Because instead of focusing on their business, the company’s managers are focusing on themselves. Messy desks, cramped quarters and unlovely surroundings are the physical manifestations of people too busy getting the work done to care much about their own creature comforts. The greatest danger to a business is not risk. It’s a lack of risk: complacency.
- Harvey Mackay
I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn’t get off the ground.
- Herb Kelleher
A broad trend I’m completely obsessed with is mobile commerce. Like completely. I’m completely convinced that everybody’s going to be buying from their mobile devices. Whoever can claim that space or be in that space, I’m very interested in.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The recovering economic environment will lead to an increase in local demand for home purchases and the purchasing power which has accumulated in the past two years due to uncertainty surrounding the local economy will result in increased demand for residential properties, particularly for residential units of small to medium size which match well with your [Henderson] Group’s property development focus.
- Lee Shau Kee
I get calls from everybody asking if I know of any drivers, anybody they can hire.
- Jack Taylor
