To succeed consistently, good managers need to be skilled not just in choosing, training, and motivating the right people for the right job, but in choosing, building, and preparing the right organization for the job as well.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Notable Quotables
Unhappy Barnes & Noble filed a lawsuit three days before Amazon’s IPO, claiming that Amazon was unfairly calling itself a “bookstore” when really it was a “book broker”.
- Peter Thiel
I’m not speaking defeat into my future. I’m not speaking failure over my life. I will turn it around and speak favor into my future. I will declare, I’m blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy. This will be a great year.” When you do that, you are blessing your future.
- Joel Olsteen
If your access to health care involves your leaving work and driving somewhere and parking and waiting for a long time, that’s not going to promote healthiness.
- Larry Page
My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.
- Joel Olsteen
Simplicity scales. Complexity does not.
- David Nilssen
Pull in your belt, spend less, and reduce debt.
- Ray Dalio
I just am a Democrat. I could never, never be a Republican.
- Anne Cox Chambers
I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir ’em up, but you can’t do that on television. It’s just not on.
- Rupert Murdoch
60% of the bonus was based on financials and 40% on Six Sigma (quality) results.
- Jack Welch
our skills and talent, but above all, be tenacious. See yourself as victorious–which means never giving up
- Donald Trump
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.
- Henry Ford
You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.
- Sergey Brin
Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.
- Bill Gates
I wanted to be a sailor, I wanted to sail the world, to navigate it.
- Jack Dorsey
I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.
- Jack Ma
We are making these changes at a time when we are beginning to see signs that our business is stabilizing.
- John Chambers
Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.
- Timothy Ferriss
The result of information overload is usually distraction, and it dilutes your focus and takes you off your game.
- Zig Ziglar
[Introducing himself to Sony co-founder Akio Morita] I have six of your TVs in my house.
- Phil Knight
At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization—taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere.
- Peter Thiel
Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.
- Bill Gates
There’s a fascinating statistic: One out of every four people in America has visited New York since 9/11. It is astounding. Now, I don’t know how you count it; it’s some people coming multiple times.
- Michael Bloomberg
Increasingly, the Chinese will own a lot more of the world because they will be converting their dollar reserves and U.S. government bonds into real assets.
- George Soros
If you can’t make 40% on your money in Russia, you’re a fool.
- Simon Reuben
My wealth is reflected in the price of Severstal, and the number of shares I have in my possession doesn’t have any impact on the company.
- Alexei Mordashov
Today I will be a successful sales professional, and I will learn something today that will make me even more professional tomorrow.
- Zig Ziglar
Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.
- Joel Olsteen
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
- Bill Gates
The path of least resistance makes all rivers, and some men, crooked.
- Napoleon Hill
There are some people that can get things done, and it seems there are others who just can’t. That’s why we move heaven and earth to retain our stars and the main reason we manage out our lowest performers – the bottom 10% at least – each year.
- David Novak
Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college.
- Michael Bloomberg
There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize any-one. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.
- Dale Carnegie
My home is in Moscow and I have no plans to change this.
- Alisher Usmanov
The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‘Oh nom it’s on the house.’
- Richard Branson
I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they’re going. Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.
- Michael Gerber
We’re working toward the ability for all Cisco devices to work together and communicate with each other to stop attacks. The idea is that one device can warn another device of a threat.
- John Chambers
Esta es la clave: las únicas promesas que se avivarán en su vida y terminarán convirtiéndose en realidad son las promesas en las que usted se levanta y dice: Sí, eso es para mí”. Tiene que entrar en acuerdo con Dios y permitir que eso eche raíz.
- Joel Olsteen
My whole life had been designing computers I could never build.
- Steve Wozniak
A kite flies against the wind, not with it.
- Winston Churchill
It’s not as though we can keep burning coal in our power plants. Coal is a finite resource, too. We must find alternatives, and it’s a better idea to find alternatives sooner then wait until we run out of coal, and in the meantime, put God knows how many trillions of tons of CO2 that used to be buried underground into the atmosphere.
- Elon Musk
Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.
- Jeff Bezos
Thee may be some concern about rising inflation, shortage of labour and increased trade protectionism but the economy is generally in good shape.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Change means opportunity for those with the experience and confidence to look to the future.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.
- Zig Ziglar
[On Twitter] This company is bigger than any individual.
- Jack Dorsey
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
- Steve Jobs
It’s not Pinterest where people are putting up pins. You’re changing the way cities work, and that’s fundamentally a third rail. We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an as—hole named Taxi.
- Travis Kalanick
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
Blackjack is very scientific. There’s always a right answer and a wrong answer. Do you take a card, increase your bet, bet big or bet small. There’s absolutely a right and wrong answer.
- Charles Ergen
It’s hard to say with 100 percent certainty that we’re totally out of it (the dry pattern), and it’s going to shift. But it’s leaning in that direction.
- Ed Clark
It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.
- Winston Churchill
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
Negative Personality.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.
- Seth Godin
We’ve only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?
- Jack Welch
Good communication is a give-and-take proposition. Don’t think of your pitch as a short speech, after which you get a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
- Michael Levine
I am optimistic that we can achieve a better future. It’s not true that the Philippines is a hopeless case.
- Henry Sy
Age doesn’t matter: an open mind does.
- Timothy Ferriss
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
- Warren Buffett
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
- Socrates
It says in Romans 5:17, We are to reign in life as kings.” When God looks at us He doesn’t see us defeated, barely getting by, or just taking the leftover positions. Not at all. God sees you as a king. He sees you as a queen. You have His royal blood flowing through your veins. You and I are supposed to reign in life. Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power. You don’t have a two-year term like a mayor, a four-year term like a president. Your term is to reign every single day, to be victorious, to rise to new levels, to accomplish great things.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m often asked how I define success. It’s an overused term, but I fundamentally view this elusive beast as a combination of two things – achievement and appreciation. One isn’t enough: Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.
- Timothy Ferriss
Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
- Dale Carnegie
If you believe, as I do, that your employees truly are your most valuable asset, you will do whatever you can to help them do their jobs as well as possible.
- Harvey Mackay
The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.
- Vince Lombardi
My friend didn’t understand what it means to be in the world, to be present and aware.
- Seth Godin
You know, if you look back in the 1930s, the money went to infrastructure. The bridges, the municipal buildings, the roads, those were all built with stimulus money spent on infrastructure. This stimulus bill has fundamentally gone, started out with a $500 rebate check, remember. That went to buy flat-screen TVs made in China.
- Michael Bloomberg
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet – how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
- Jeff Bezos
This was a decision we reached after a number of years speaking to the human rights groups, and specifically people who really cared about China on human rights. I understand why other people might have other views.
- Sergey Brin
Who you associate with makes a difference in how far you go in life.
- Joel Olsteen
I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.
- Donald Bren
[Luke:] I can’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.
- Yoda
Nothing will work unless you do.
- Maya Angelou
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.
- Larry Ellison
Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
- Elon Musk
There is tremendous stress these days on liking people, helping people, getting along with people, as qualifications for a manager. These alone are never enough. In every successful organization there is one boss who does not like people, who does not help them, and who does not get along with them. Cold, unpleasant, demanding, he often teaches and develops more men than anyone else. He commands more respect than the most likable man ever could. He demands exacting workmanship of himself as well as of his men. He sets high standards and expects that they will be lived up to. He considers only what is right and never who is right. And though often himself a man of brilliance, he never rates intellectual brilliance above integrity in others. The manager who lacks these qualities of character—no matter how likable, helpful, or amiable, no matter even how competent or brilliant—is a menace and should be adjudged “unfit to be a manager and a gentleman.
- Peter Drucker
Chance can allow you to accomplish a goal every once in a while, but consistent achievement happens only if you love what you are doing.
- Bart Conner
Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult.
- Og Mandino
Great design = getting people to do what you want.
- Seth Godin
Differentiation (rating and evaluating people) Develops Great Organizations. Differentiation is hard, anybody who finds it easy doesn’t belong in the organization, and anyone who can’t do it falls in the same category…It is important for companies to continually remove the bottom 10 percent of their employees anually.
- Jack Welch
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas Edison
Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn’t. It’s just the opposite. What I think is brutal and false kindness is keeping people around who aren’t going to grow and prosper. There’s no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don’t belong – just when the options are limited and they’re putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.
- Jack Welch
When you simplify… When you get down to the essence, you fix so many things.
- Jack Dorsey
I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.
- Bill Gates
In setting goals and executing a strategy, Wanda is sophisticated. We have good systems and departments. If targets are not reached, a yellow light goes off.
- Wang Jianlin
This is a learning in the business life that first of all you need to have commitment, dedication and passion for what you are doing.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
Yes, I think it’s okay to abandon the big, established, stuck tribe. It’s okay to say to them, “You’re not going where I need to go, and there’s no way I’m going to persuade all of you to follow me. So rather than standing here watching the opportunities fade away, I’m heading off. I’m betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me.
- Seth Godin
Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.
- James C. Collins
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Ask yourself, what’s the one thing that I can do right now so I’m on track to achieve my someday goals?
- Gary Keller
When I became proficient as a salesman I was invited to teach new hires.
- Zig Ziglar
Records are made to be broken. It is in man’s nature to continue to strive to do just that.
- Richard Branson
It’s just not right that so many things don’t work when they should. I don’t think that will change for a long time.
- Steve Wozniak
