Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World.
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
Every time you walk down the street people are screaming, ‘You’re fired!’
- Donald Trump
We’re better than the rest of the country but we shouldn’t believe it too much.
- Peter Thiel
It took 23 years from Abraxane being conceived to us showing now with conclusiveness that it works in pancreatic cancer. We cannot afford as a society to wait another 23 years to make sure that the patients get the right care, at the right time, at the right place.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Don’t take anyone for granted.
- Jack Dorsey
The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it’s very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk.
- Bill Gates
I never worry about action, but only about inaction.
- Winston Churchill
In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.
- Peter Thiel
Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.
- Ben Horowitz
To be willing to do new things you don’t think you’ll like requires you to prefer the unknown. Not just to tolerate it, but to prefer it. One way to achieve that is to set out to experience things you’re sure you won’t like. To have conversations that are frightening. Becoming generous beyond measure, just to see what happens. And most of all, setting out to fail. Failing helps you see how far is too far, failing helps remind you that failing isn’t fatal, and most of all, failing opens you up to succeeding.
- Seth Godin
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.
- Celine Dion
It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested? Collin’s advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.
- James C. Collins
I want to sit with 80- and 90-year-old people more than anyone. They have played this game before. Not one of them has told me, ‘I wish I had more money.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
In the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we’ve done, and they will say ‘do not despair, do not yield…march straightforward.
- Winston Churchill
People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, ‘Soave,’ and say, ‘Oh, O.K., cool.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We can never learn too much of His will towards us, too much of His messages and His advice. The Bible is His word and its study gives at once the foundation for our faith and an inspiration to battle onward in the fight against the tempter.
- John D. Rockefeller
I start where the last man left off.
- Thomas Edison
Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!
- Timothy Ferriss
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I will everyday as just a blow from my blade against a mighty oak…strike until it falls quote.
- Og Mandino
I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream – and by tuning into one another’s secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.
- Oprah Winfrey
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
- Warren Buffett
I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.
- Herb Kelleher
It is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.
- Winston Churchill
Nevertheless, in the first years of Standard Oil, Rockefeller regularly toured his facilities and was extremely inquisitive and observant, soaking up information and assiduously quizzing plant superintendants. In his pocket, he carried a little red notebook in which he jotted suggestions or improvements and always followed up on them. He knew the terror inspired by the little red book. More than once I have gone to luncheon with a number of our heads of departments and have seen the sweat out of on the foreheads for some of them when that little red notebook was pulled out.
- Ron Chernow
Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.
- Reed Hastings
Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.
- Peter Thiel
The general upward trend in residential property prices seems to be continuing, with the luxury end of the residential market poised to show better performance in particular.
- Lee Shau Kee
Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.
- Peter Drucker
There would be no advantage to be gained by sowing a field of wheat if the harvest did not return more than was sown.
- Napoleon Hill
Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.
- Bill Gates
I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
If the human race wishes to have a prolonged and indefinite period of material prosperity, they have only got to behave in a peaceful and helpful way toward one another.
- Winston Churchill
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director – who were just fun.
- Steve Martin
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
I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that’s the reason so many liked him and did business in his store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. (on role of managing partner)
- Inez Threet
For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn boat.
- Tony Hsieh
Luck Follows Persistence.
- Jim Collins
Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want.
- Timothy Ferriss
People’s favorite topic is themselves.
- Dale Carnegie
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
You could warm Mars up, over time, with greenhouse gases.
- Elon Musk
In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It’s a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems. A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.
- Ben Horowitz
Eventually you won’t think of ‘the Internet business.’ You’ll think of it more like news, weather, sports, but even that taxonomy isn’t clear.
- Bill Gates
I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons
- Russell Simmons
Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.
- Donald Trump
Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money, non-monopolists can’t.
- Peter Thiel
Effort is grossly underrated.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.
- Elon Musk
Look back in forgiveness, forward in hope, down in compassion, and up with gratitude.
- Zig Ziglar
Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain.
- Yoda
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
Culture is one of the most precious things a company has…So you must work harder on it than anything else.
- Herb Kelleher
The lizard brain is hungry, scared, angry, and horny.The lizard brain only wants to eat and be safe.The lizard brain will fight (to the death) if it has to, but would rather run away. It likes a vendetta and has no trouble getting angry.The lizard brain cares what everyone else thinks, because status in the tribe is essential to its survival.A squirrel runs around looking for nuts, hiding from foxes, listening for predators, and watching for other squirrels. The squirrel does this because that’s all it can do. All the squirrel has is a lizard brain.The only correct answer to ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ is ‘Because it’s lizard brain told it to.’ Wild animals are wild because the only brain they posses is a lizard brain.The lizard brain is not merely a concept. It’s real, and it’s living on the top of your spine, fighting for your survival. But, of course, survival and success are not the same thing.The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.
- Seth Godin
Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here.” Everyone around the table nodded assent. “Then,” continued Mr. Sloan, “I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.
- Peter Drucker
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
- Peter Drucker
I have never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life.
- Steve Ballmer
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
The majority of people begin to drift as soon as they meet with opposition, and not one out of ten thousand (people) will keep on trying after failing two or three times.
- Napoleon Hill
I would prefer not to be involved in party politics.
- George Soros
It’s absolutely true we set out to expose Microsoft’s covert activities, I feel very good about what we did … Maybe our investigation organization may have done things unsavory, but it’s not illegal. We got the truth out.
- Larry Ellison
What gets measured gets managed.
- Peter Drucker
1815 to 1914 was a period of both rapid technological development and rapid globalization.
- Peter Thiel
I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
We will as ever continue to pursue growth opportunities that will further enhance our ability to capitalize on the investment opportunities and to face the challenges ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.
- Sara Blakely
I always say, ‘To have a big dream requires the same effort as having a small dream. Dream big!’
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.
- Elon Musk
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
On this basis, we intend to increase the dividend for the third time in a row. We are proposing a distribution of €3.25 per share, corresponding to a dividend payout ratio of 27.4 percent, which is again up slightly on the previous year’s level.
- Elmar Degenhart
De-escalating the rivalry post-merger wasn’t easy, but as far as problems go, it was a good one to have.
- Peter Thiel
Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
- Winston Churchill
Well… I graduated from the business school of Northumberland University in Newcastle.
- Alexei Mordashov
We have a mantra: don’t be evil, which is to do the best things we know how for our users, for our customers, for everyone. So I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.
- Larry Page
[On working at Nike for 48 years] In those 48 years, I have never had a promotion. but it had its other benefits.
- Phil Knight
The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.
- Walt Disney
Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? I will speak ill of no man,” he said, … and speak all the good I know of everybody.
- Dale Carnegie
Learn to speak God’s favor over every area of your life. Remember, the more favor-minded you are, the more of God’s favor you’re going to experience.
- Joel Olsteen
At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.
- Mark Zuckerberg
One has to live with the fact that some corporate decisions are going to be wrong. As long as most of the decisions are right.
- Michael Otto
The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
- Ben Horowitz
Pick the best people, face the reality (the way it is), speak with candor to everything, never lose sight of the relationship with the constituency.
- Jack Welch
I do not believe that people want to work hard enough and they want to find the quick Twitter, SEO. Anybody who’s obsessed with SEO has lost already, period. I believe that firmly.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy, so (he keeps) coming back, which pleases the shareholder.
- Herb Kelleher
I’ve found reporters, editors, and producers to be an engaging lot overall, naturally curious and ever on the prowl for good stories.
- Michael Levine
The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.
- Thomas Edison
There’s a wonderful saying that’s dead wrong. ‘Why did you climb the mountain?’ ‘I climbed the mountain because it was there.’ That’s utter nonsense…You climbed the mountain because you were there, and you were curious if you could do it. You wondered what it would be like.
- Larry Ellison
And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
- Romans 8:28
I’m a huge believer in clarity.
- Ben Horowitz
And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.
- Michael Bloomberg
Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war. Stir up the mighty men. Let all the warriors draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong.
- Joel 3:9
One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you.
- Jeff Bezos
It is my dream to have a controlling stake of Arsenal.
- Alisher Usmanov
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
- Og Mandino
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill
Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.
- Howard Schultz
Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.
- Peter Thiel
Arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.
- Peter Thiel
To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.
- Bill Gates
