Notable Quotables

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

- Warren Buffett

Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.

- Zig Ziglar

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.

- Peter Drucker

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

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.

- Thomas Edison

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

When you are the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you are basically saying, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong.’ That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilaration and the same time an invitation to be attacked.

- Larry Ellison

If David our CEO, devotes so much of his time to this, then all this stuff about teamwork and learning how to be a great leader must be pretty important.

- David Novak

Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.

- Ben Horowitz

Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.

- Ben Horowitz

After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.

- Cheng Yu-tung

If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.

- Harvey Mackay

Will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer, instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.

- Peter Thiel

Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.

- Dale Carnegie

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.

- John C. Maxwell

We see no major changes in that model for the next several years. In fact, we are more optimistic about Cisco’s position and opportunities in both the enterprise and service provider markets than at any point in the last several years.

- John Chambers

Some companies out there quote a start of production that is substantially in advance of when customers get their cars.

- Elon Musk

These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.

- Winston Churchill

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

- Winston Churchill

What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.

- Steve Martin

That’s the hard thing about hard things—there is no formula for dealing with them.

- Ben Horowitz

There’s never been a doctor who served many patients who, despite their best efforts, did not lose some of them to death. But they understood that was part of life itself.

- Zig Ziglar

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

- P.T. Barnum

if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.

- Dale Carnegie

The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination, between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals, between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition, between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity, between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard.

- Winston Churchill

In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.

- Ben Horowitz

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.

- Ben Horowitz

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

Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.

- Dale Carnegie

What did I do that was right—and in what way could I have improved my performance? What lessons can I learn from that experience?

- Dale Carnegie

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

- Joel Olsteen

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

- Joel Olsteen

One who works the same reactive 40 hours per week and takes the same amount of sick days and holidays off as his or her employees, yet expects to make significantly more than everyone else simply because they have the title of owner and are thus making the loan payments and the lease payments.

- Clay Clark

Xiaomi looks a bit like Apple but is really more like Amazon with some elements of Google.

- Lei Jun

I’ve always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.

- Hakeem Olajuwon

Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand.

- Ben Horowitz

A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance. This will give her a chance to cancel the meeting if nothing is pressing.

- Ben Horowitz

It’s no use saying, “We are doing our best.” You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

- Winston Churchill

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

- Albert Einstein

I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.

- Elon Musk

I am pleased with the strides we’ve made in our global equipment business where revenues grew 41 percent this past quarter and 37 percent year-to-date, … The strong dollar continues to negatively impact our European results constant dollar revenues in Europe were up 23 percent in the second quarter.

- Phil Knight

No individual may have great power without availing himself of the Master Mind.

- Napoleon Hill

I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.

- Jerry Seinfeld

The hazards of imitative competition may partially explain why individuals with an Asperger’s-like social ineptitude seem to be at an advantage in Silicon Valley today.

- Peter Thiel

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

Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me – they’re going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, ‘This guy is obnoxious.’ I spend enormous time with them – every negative review of ‘Crush It!’ on Amazon has a response from me – and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.

- Dale Carnegie

Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.

- Bill Gates

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

Or heritage and ideals, our code and standards- the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

- Walt Disney

Nuclear energy, in terms of an overall safety record, is better than other energy.

- Bill Gates

I definitely think there’s some way to understand how people emotionally feel about somebody, but I don’t think data collects it. They’re not going to click your bit.ly link or click your TweetMeme retweet every time.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn’t matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you’re going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.

- Harvey Mackay

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

- Joel Olsteen

Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it’s getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.

- Donald Trump

Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.

- Donald Trump

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‘I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.’

- Jerry Seinfeld

Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.

- Wang Jianlin

IM is interesting because you look at your buddy list and, at a glance, see what your friends are listening to, what they’re working on, what they’re doing. The problem was that you were bound to the computer keyboard.

- Jack Dorsey

I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it’s just such a dramatic success.

- Bill Gates

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

- Bill Gates

Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.

- John C. Maxwell

Once you’ve engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them. If you hide your spark, bury your ideas, keep your questions and notions from the team, you have hurt them as badly as if you had stolen a laptop and fenced it on eBay.

- Seth Godin

[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.

- Jack Dorsey

No matter how dark and gloomy it looks in your life right now, if you’ll release the weight of those burdens, you will see the sun break forth.

- Joel Olsteen

You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.

- Winston Churchill

It’s not where you start or even what happens to you along the way that’s important. What is important is that you persevere and never give up on yourself.

- Zig Ziglar

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.

- Elon Musk

Here’s the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don’t you hate that? I love that there’s no map.

- Seth Godin

You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.

- Seth Godin

You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.

- Dale Carnegie

Complaints are your best learning opportunity

- Bill Gates

We have an average household net worth of $3.7 million. Of course, some of our cohorts have accumulated much more. Nearly 6 percent have a net worth of over $10 million. Again, these people skew our average upward. The typical (median, or 50th percentile) millionaire household has a net worth of $1.6 million.

- Thomas J Stanley

Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company.

- Tadashi Yanai

Every one of my positions cuts – out half the country. I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-gay rights, I’m pro-immigration, I’m against guns, I believe in Darwin.

- Michael Bloomberg

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

- Alexander Graham Bell

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

I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a ‘gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.’ Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.

- Winston Churchill

Don’t live worried, frustrated or upset because of what somebody did or what didn’t work out. Come back to a place of peace. It’s not going to work against you; it’s going to work for you.

- Joel Olsteen

And in urology, it could be drugs or devices for bladder and prostate problems.

- David Pyott

Differentiate yourself! Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?

- Sara Blakely

Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible.

- Donald Trump

People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest …But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.

- Thomas Edison

Most people have never thought through how they’re going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance.

- Clayton M. Christensen

In some ways, running a successful business is a bit like coaching a football team. The fundamentals of football are blocking and tackling. The fundamentals of a business are it’s governing policies andprocesses. To carry out the metaphor, touchdowns are profits. The best business idea in the world cannot survive bad execution. So when you sit down to develop your workflow, internal policies, and business structure, be merciless, probe for weaknesses and assume that the worst will happen. – Jack Nadel (Author&Entrepreneur)

- Jack Nadel

People who do not succeed have one distinguishing trait in common. They know all the reasons for failure, and have what they believe to be air-tight alibis to explain their lack of achievement: 1) If I had the money… 2) If I could get the job… 3) If I had been given a chance… 4) If I were younger… 5) If I were older… 6) If I only had a better education… 7) If I could just save some money… 8) If I lived in a big city… 9) If I were not so fat… 10) If my talents were better known… 11) If I didn’t have a past… 12) If I had my own business… 13) If I had the courage…

- Napoleon Hill

I love doing a lot of things I’m told I can’t do. I think that’s what drives me and keeps me awake every day.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

The Value of a Smile at Christmas It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.

- Dale Carnegie

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

- Bill Gates

I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.

- Howard Schultz

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