It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?
- James C. Collins
Notable Quotables
We do lots of Stuff. The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.
- Sergey Brin
Changes that used to occur over quarters are literally occurring over months.
- John Chambers
Visibility remains limited, and this should come as no surprise, given that our customers’ visibility is limited.
- John Chambers
What I’m trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.
- Elon Musk
TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE Principle 1—Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Principle 2—Give honest and sincere appreciation. Principle 3—Arouse in the other person an eager want.
- Dale Carnegie
And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that’s there.
- Steve Ballmer
There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.
- Henry Ford
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you’ve got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don’t give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
- Jack Ma
An organization’s capabilities reside in two places. The first is in its processes—the methods by which people have learned to transform inputs of labor, energy, materials, information, cash, and technology into outputs of higher value. The second is in the organization’s values, which are the criteria that managers and employees in the organization use when making prioritization decisions. People are quite flexible, in that they can be trained to succeed at quite different things. An employee of IBM, for example, can quite readily change the way he or she works, in order to work successfully in a small start-up company. But processes and values are not flexible. A process that is effective at managing the design of a minicomputer, for example, would be ineffective at managing the design of a desktop personal computer. Similarly, values that cause employees to prioritize projects to develop high-margin products, cannot simultaneously accord priority to low-margin products. The very processes and values that constitute an organization’s capabilities in one context, define its disabilities in another context.
- Clayton M. Christensen
What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.
- Michael Bloomberg
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.
- Ben Horowitz
I think that any wealth creates a sense of trusteeship… it is characteristic of the new generation which has created wealth to have some amount of responsibility for it.
- Azim Premji
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard P. Feynman
In Riyadh, there’s going to be a huge project that will house at least 12,000 units with inhabitants of approximately 150,000 people. It’s like a city within a city.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Everybody has a product to sell.
- Peter Thiel
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
He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.
- Ray Dalio
The guerrilla is obsessed with benefits. Whenever offering a product or service, she focuses on how it will benefit the consumer and builds everything—the product, the delivery, the marketing—around that benefit.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
I believe we are in at least a two-quarter slowdown.
- John Chambers
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.
- Thomas Edison
You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.
- Reid Hoffman
Wal-Mart’s leaders had obviously made a point of educating and informing everyone at all levels about all aspects of the company, and that shows a real respect for their people.
- David Novak
On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’
- Michael Bloomberg
Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that’s really powerful.
- Reid Hoffman
In business, just the opposite is often true; silence means dissent. Have you ever been in a meeting where you sense there is obvious disagreement, but the disagreement never really gets put on the table? This what I call the Slow No’s.
- David Novak
Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Hong Kong has, throughout it’s history, experienced periods of uncertainties… I believe that the virtues of Hong Kong people – diligent, flexible and entrepreneurial – will once again overcome the obstacles before us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The goal is to be able to live your life the way Michael Jordan played basketball, or Marvin Gaye sang a song. To be able to feel the way you feel when you laugh at a joke, but to feel that way all the time.
- Russell Simmons
What we’ve gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question ‘Can we trust Microsoft?’
- Steve Ballmer
If you are going to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.
- Seth Godin
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
- Henry Kissinger
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
Life really happens at intersections.
- Jack Dorsey
We think of Starbucks not as a coffee company but a media company.
- Howard Schultz
Politicians make decisions in favor of their interest groups or their supporters back in their hometowns.
- Tadashi Yanai
But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.
- Peter Thiel
There is no such thing as Something for nothing.
- Napoleon Hill
One definition of hope is happy anticipation of something good.
- Joel Olsteen
Good action today will produce good living tomorrow.
- Zig Ziglar
There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.
- Winston Churchill
Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.
- Apostle Paul
Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.
- Winston Churchill
When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
- Winston Churchill
Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.
- John C. Maxwell
Education and the Internet must go hand in hand, … It will serve as one of the great equalizers.
- John Chambers
Other people and things can stop you temporarily. You’re the only one who can do it permanently.
- Zig Ziglar
I care about our employees more than anybody in my company. I care about my kids, too, but that doesn’t mean I give them everything that they want.
- Charles Ergen
Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.
- Ben Horowitz
Lack of Capital.
- Napoleon Hill
I believe that visualization is one of the most powerful means of achieving personal goals.
- Harvey Mackay
I don’t think you ever stop giving. I really don’t. I think it’s an on-going process. And it’s not just about being able to write a check. It’s being able to touch somebody’s life.
- Oprah Winfrey
The spirit of Southwest Airlines is exuberant, it’s caring, it’s dedicated, it’s diligent, it’s fun, it’s rewarding, it’s a joy.
- Herb Kelleher
When you have no one to answer to, vendetta as investment strategy is as legitimate as anything.
- Carl Icahn
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
- Elon Musk
Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
- Jack Welch
If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.
- Seth Godin
Arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.
- Peter Thiel
Crash diets don’t work.They don’t work for losing weight, they don’t work for making sales quota and they don’t work for getting and keeping a job.The reason they don’t work has nothing to do with what’s on the list of things to be done (or consumed). No, the reason they don’t work is that they don’t change habits, and habits are where our lives and careers and bodies are made.
- Seth Godin
There is no accountability today… no willingness to focus on big ideas.
- Michael Bloomberg
A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.
- Seth Godin
A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.
- Joel Olsteen
Choose your customers, choose your future.
- Seth Godin
Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
- Henry Ford
Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless.
- Warren Buffett
The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.
- Azim Premji
Stand-up is hard. Or to keep it at a certain level is hard: I have no writers but me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
So what we do every Monday is review the whole business…I put out an agenda – 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week.
- Steve Jobs
I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.
- Andrew Carnegie
I’m in two modes when I’m on Lanai: In engineering mode, I’m trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I’m in decompression mode. I’m on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins.
- Larry Ellison
I’m an HBO subscriber, and I watch a bunch of great shows on HBO.
- Reed Hastings
Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can’t – you can’t put a wall up around here. We tried that in the ’30s. It didn’t work.
- Jack Welch
This book, then, is a product of the last fifteen years, as well as a product of the fifteen years that preceded them. It was almost exactly eight years before The E-Myth was published that I founded our company, E-Myth Worldwide, which has provided the fuel and experience for the point of view I have shared with those of you who have read The E-Myth, and with those.
- Michael Gerber
[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold
- Phil Knight
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Magnesium and calcium are easiest to consume in pill form, and 500 milligrams of magnesium taken prior to bed will also improve sleep.
- Timothy Ferriss
An Enemy Called Average
- Jim Collins
I’ve known entrepreneurs who were not great salespeople, or didn’t know how to code, or were not particularly charismatic leaders. But I don’t know of any entrepreneurs who have achieved any level of success without persistence and determination.
- Harvey Mackay
Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.
- Warren G. Tracy
We feel like right now, computers are still pretty bad. You’re just messing around. You’re scrolling on your touchscreen phone, and trying to find stuff. You’re in a car. It’s bouncy, and you can’t– it doesn’t really work. I think the actual amount of knowledge you get out of your computer versus the amount of time you spend with it is still pretty bad. So I think our job is to solve that, and most of the things we’re doing make sense in that context.
- Larry Page
I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.
- Elon Musk
A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed.
- Seth Godin
Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual . . . Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude – the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.
- Dale Carnegie
They did not die because of sickness or anything but because of hunger. I remember that and how people suffered.
- Lui Che Woo
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.So the question is: Have you ever done that?
- Seth Godin
Constantly probe the people who report to you, and encourage them to probe you.
- Ray Dalio
There’s no single company in the whole world that has a big-scale production base and at the same time has screening and distribution channels. Wanda Group is the first one in the world.
- Wang Jianlin
Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.
- Donald Trump
Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas.
- Seth Godin
If we are growing we are always going to be outside our comfort zone.
- John C. Maxwell
If it’s not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that’s when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you.
- Joel Olsteen
I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.
- Seth Godin
Education comes from within, you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
- Napoleon Hill
So many people label themselves a failure when they fail at something. Instead, the entrepreneurial spirit is realizing that these failures are a necessary part of the path to wherever you’re going to end up.
- Tony Hsieh
The first thing the secretary types is the boss.
- Donald Trump
A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Steve Jobs’ ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.
- Bill Gates
Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.
- George Soros
