[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.
- Phil Knight
Notable Quotables
Unfavorable Environment Influences During Childhood.
- Napoleon Hill
What most people want in a leader is something that’s very difficult to find: we want someone who listens…The secret, Reagan’s secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you hear what they said – they’re less focused on whether or not you do what they said.
- Seth Godin
The price of greatness is responsibility.
- Winston Churchill
The more you know, the more you care.
- Sam Walton
I love the presentation from the more flamboyant guy, who excitedly presents his plans.
- Jack Welch
Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
- Dale Carnegie
Each morning before breakfast, Rockefeller led the family in prayer, charging out a penny fine to latecomers.
- Ron Chernow
There’s no reason why the future should happen only at Stanford, or in college, or in Silicon Valley.
- Peter Thiel
Keep doing the right. God is building character in you, and you are passing that test. Remember, the greater the struggle, the greater the reward.
- Joel Olsteen
I think my greatest moment in business was when the first Southwest airplane arrived after four years of litigation, and I walked up to it and I kissed that baby on the lips and I cried.
- Herb Kelleher
The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.
- Howard Schultz
People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.
- Dale Carnegie
SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.
- Elon Musk
Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
- James C. Collins
There is plenty capital available, just a shortage of good ideas
- Napoleon Hill
I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread
- Mitch Hedberg
Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective – doing less – is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
- Timothy Ferriss
When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
- Steve Martin
Consensus decisions about executives almost always sway the process away from strength and toward lack of weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
I took up an offer for me to lose 30 pounds in 30 days. It worked. I lost 30 days!
- Zig Ziglar
Computing shows up in many different ways. You have computing that you wear, computing that you carry. What you think of as the traditional PC market has a long tail of usage, particularly in the commercial world, but also in consumer.
- Michael Dell
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
- Winston Churchill
A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Chinese people today have strong demand for culture, but we need effective supply, and China needs innovative cultural products.
- Wang Jianlin
I consider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment…..the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy. A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only “postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.
- Peter Drucker
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they’ve never failed to imitate them.
- Zig Ziglar
The customer reaction to Dell going private has been a lot more positive than I would have ever imagined. Customers see it as – ‘You don’t have to be distracted. Now you can totally focus on your business.’ So they see it as a positive.
- Michael Dell
[On signing up Michael Jordan in 1984 when he was just 21 years old] We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.
- Phil Knight
I am placed in situations with opportunities in those situations that others are not. I don’t believe that that is happenstance. I believe that there is a God that has a plan for me.
- Ronald Perelman
If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
- Jeff Bezos
I’d work in the store all day, then take off around closing and drive that windy road over the Mississippi River, and then into Tennessee with an old homemade trailer I had hitched to my car. I’d stuff that car and trailer with whatever I could get good deals on – usually on soft lines, ladies panties and nylons, men’s shirts and I’d bring them back, price them low and just blow that stuff out of the store.
- Sam Walton
In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren’t management books out there that could help me.
- Ben Horowitz
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.
- Richard Branson
It’s obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.
- Elon Musk
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Success is doing what you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want and as much as you want.
- Tony Robbins
You are looking at an economy that most CEOs are going to believe will be a good economy for 2006. Most CEOs are saying they are going to spend both on hiring of people and on technology.
- John Chambers
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
Nearly every person who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.
- Thomas Edison
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
The way I did it, every job was A+.
- Steve Wozniak
Entrepreneurs must protect themselves and the venture at all times by documenting your agreements.
- Jack Nadel
When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—“Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally”—she’s not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she’s reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.
- Seth Godin
Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.
- Howard Schultz
The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.
- Elon Musk
Acquiring Sunseeker deepens Wanda’s international influence and represents an important step forward for the development of the business.
- Wang Jianlin
I’m not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you’re in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places.
- Timothy Ferriss
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
- Winston Churchill
In War: Resolution,In Defeat: Defiance,In Victory: MagnaminityIn Peace: Good Will.
- Winston Churchill
It’s not one of the enduring mysteries of all time. A motivated employee treats the customer well. A customer is happy so they’ll keep coming back, which pleases the shareholder. It’s just the way it works.
- Herb Kelleher
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
- Jeff Bezos
You have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart.
- Thomas J Watson
Real change rarely comes from the front of the line. It happens from the middle or even the back. Real change happens when someone who cares steps up and takes what feels like a risk. People follow because they want to, not because you can order them to.
- Seth Godin
Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.
- Richard Branson
Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap.
- Ray Kroc
Freedom does not come automatically, it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound
- Rollo May
Selling is the highest paid profession in the world. Our leaders in business, politics, research and the arts are all great sales people or they have great sales people on their payrolls.
- Jerry Vass
You can’t depend on polls.
- Michael Bloomberg
Share your experiences, tell your stories, and inspire others along the way.
- Blake Mycoskie
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
Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions. Therefore, a CEO can most accurately be measured by the speed and quality of those decisions.
- Ben Horowitz
Keep the big picture in mind. There are always opportunities and possibilities, and thinking too small can negate a lot of them.
- Donald Trump
In my opinion, education is the finest gift an individual can give a young person.
- Donald Bren
The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage
- Warren Buffett
On my desk I have three screens, synchronized to form a single desktop. I can drag items from one screen to the next. Once you have that large display area, you’ll never go back, because it has a direct impact on productivity.
- Bill Gates
The problem is not getting rid of fear, but using it properly.
- Zig Ziglar
Inflation is taking up the poverty line, and poverty is not just economic but defined by way of health and education.
- Azim Premji
Google’s done a super good job on search. Apple’s done a great job on the iPod.
- Bill Gates
Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory?Destruction of false theories will not decrease the sum of human happiness in future, any more than it has in the past… The days of miracles have passed. I do not believe, of course, that there was ever any day of actual miracles. I cannot understand that there were ever any miracles at all. My guide must be my reason, and at thought of miracles my reason is rebellious. Personally, I do not believe that Christ laid claim to doing miracles, or asserted that he had miraculous power…Our intelligence is the aggregate intelligence of the cells which make us up. There is no soul, distinct from mind, and what we speak of as the mind is just the aggregate intelligence of cells. It is fallacious to declare that we have souls apart from animal intelligence, apart from brains. It is the brain that keeps us going. There is nothing beyond that.Life goes on endlessly, but no more in human beings than in other animals, or, for that matter, than in vegetables. Life, collectively, must be immortal, human beings, individually, cannot be, as I see it, for they are not the individuals – they are mere aggregates of cells.There is no supernatural. We are continually learning new things. There are powers within us which have not yet been developed and they will develop. We shall learn things of ourselves, which will be full of wonders, but none of them will be beyond the natural.
- Thomas Edison
Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?
- Ray Kroc
Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today.
- Peter Thiel
Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they’re hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that my not always make sense, so that’s why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them.
- George Foreman
Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
- Steve Jobs
We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
- Winston Churchill
When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: Try to bear lightly what needs must be. Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and resignation that touched the hem of divinity.
- Dale Carnegie
Do not look like you are playing the fiddle while Rome is burning….stay focussed – Paraphrased from
- David Novak
thoughtless reliance on technology is a liability.
- James C. Collins
Named must your fear be before banish it you can.
- Yoda
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
- Jack Welch
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
- Warren Buffett
Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.
- Sam Walton
Japanese tend to put sales and market share first. They make many products with the aim of raising sales. But then profits decline, and companies find themselves falling into debt… I changed the mindset at Canon by getting people to realize that profits come first.
- Fujio Mitarai
We saw strength across our core switching and routing businesses, as well as traction in our advanced technologies. The service provider and public sector segments, in particular, continue to be solid markets for our products.
- John Chambers
Keep it simple. Tell the truth. People can smell the truth.
- Stephen Wynn
Although I receive a small salary from Apple, I do virtually no real work at the company.
- Steve Wozniak
The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
- Napoleon Hill
I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
- Steve Martin
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
- Jack Nadel
I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.
- Steve Martin
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
We’re on our way to Greece, in the hands of a confused, foolish government. It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.
- Stephen Wynn
To get rich is glorious. So is helping poor farmers.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.
- Winston Churchill
Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.
- Peter Drucker
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
