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
Notable Quotables
On my grandfather’s tombstone, you will find his favorite Marx quote: “Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
- Ben Horowitz
Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.
- Reed Hastings
Some people are averse to change, but the advertising model is going to change with or without the Hopper. What we’re saying to the broadcasters is, ‘There’s a way for you not to put your head in the sand.’
- Charles Ergen
When I used to play sports, I’d be the one cheering the team on, ‘Come on, we can beat these guys!’ That’s just in me.
- Joel Olsteen
The premium single-cup segment is the fastest-growing business within the global coffee industry.
- Howard Schultz
We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
- Bill Gates
The economy is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
Nothing remains permanent in the world, change is just the eternal fact.
- Cheng Yu-tung
What’s dangerous is not to evolve.
- Jeff Bezos
Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.
- Seth Godin
Be honest, always.
- Jack Dorsey
Write like you talk. Often.
- Seth Godin
It certainly wasn’t where we were planning to be.
- Simon Wolfson
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.
- Bill Gates
Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world. If you do so, you are insulting yourself.
- Bill Gates
The balloons only have one life and the only way of finding out whether they work is to attempt to fly around the world.
- Richard Branson
Our underwear used to just be cotton, but we wanted to see if we could create something out of synthetics.
- Tadashi Yanai
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’
- Henry Ford
What we learn from history is that people don’t learn from history.
- Warren Buffett
Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation.
- Travis Kalanick
No company has a culture, every company is a culture.
- Peter Thiel
People often say motivation doesn’t last. Neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar
That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity.
- Beryl Markham
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want that on my business card.
- Bill Gates
Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy
- Chris Humphrey
Although Hong Kong continued to be affected by the slowdown of the global economy in the past financial year, most of the retail shopping properties owned by the Group are located in new towns where continual growth of residents are maintained and consumer spending power are segregated, thereby providing a good support to stabilise rental of the retail shopping properties located in such new towns.
- Lee Shau Kee
Don’t panic.
- David Novak
The culture was strong enough to transcend the original company.
- Peter Thiel
Keep in mind, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that one does not exist. You simply haven’t discovered it yet.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.
- James C. Collins
Back, you know, a few generations ago, people didn’t have a way to share information and express their opinions efficiently to a lot of people. But now they do. Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
- Bishop Desmond TuTu
When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.
- George Soros
Don’t marry too early in life. It’s better to work hard when young and establish a career first.
- Lee Shau Kee
As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.
- Seth Godin
Mrs. Carnegie and I had dinner at a friend’s house in Chicago. While carving the meat, he did something wrong. I didn’t notice it; and I wouldn’t have cared even if I had noticed it. But his wife saw it and jumped down his throat right in front of us. John,” she cried, watch what you are doing! Can’t you ever learn to serve properly!” Then she said to us: He is always making mistakes. He just doesn’t try.” Maybe he didn’t try to carve; but I certainly give him credit for trying to live with her for twenty years. Frankly, I would rather have eaten a couple of hot dogs with mustard—in an atmosphere of peace—than to have dined on Peking duck and shark fins while listening to her scolding.
- Dale Carnegie
The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
How about we agree upon what our common American values are, which is let’s make this a true land of opportunity.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
- Napoleon Hill
As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies. At my companies, our position is that we hire someone in spite of an MBA, not because of one.
- Elon Musk
The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.
- John D. Rockefeller
The ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines, the one who actually talk to the customer, are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble within it, you must listen to what your associates are telling you.
- Sam Walton
You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.
- Steve Case
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
You have a real chance to make an impact, but you have to do it in the first 90 days. Otherwise they’ll think it’s going to be business as usual.
- David Novak
I know something about how to build constituencies in an independent way.
- Michael Bloomberg
Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.
- John C. Maxwell
Don’t make excuses, don’t blame the past. The rest of your life can be the best of your life!
- Joel Olsteen
the expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back
- Dale Carnegie
Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
- Seth Godin
I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know anything about the speaker so there’s nothing that makes me want to get up early and go to it. I might catch it on TV.
- John Chambers
It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.
- Zig Ziglar
What’s your vision for the future of your follicles?
- Clay Clark
Simple works, complex fails.
- Timothy Ferriss
The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.
- Peter Drucker
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
- Peter Drucker
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
The interesting products out on the Internet today are not building new technologies. They’re combining technologies. Instagram, for instance: Photos plus geolocation plus filters. Foursquare: restaurant reviews plus check-ins plus geo.
- Jack Dorsey
Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.
- Seth Godin
A lot of churches have not moved with the times.
- Joel Olsteen
Because there have been no settlements reached for the securities action with any of the less-involved banks, it is difficult to know what reserves are prudent.
- Ed Clark
We should remember it wasn’t so long ago that confidence in New York was in short supply.
- Michael Bloomberg
On average, our total annual realized income is less than 7 percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than 7 percent of our wealth.
- Thomas J Stanley
Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.
- Apostle Paul
Everybody has a calling. And your real job in life is to figure out as soon as possible what that is, who you were meant to be, and to begin to honor that in the best way possible for yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
- John Wooden
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
We were trading things before we were using language to communicate.
- Jack Dorsey
Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don’t approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides.
- Bill Gates
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
Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done.
- Ben Horowitz
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
- Napoleon Hill
I’m less interested in how people are following each other and more interested in how they are following topics and tweets themselves. People are following more key words and concepts and more ideas and acting on those rather than individuals or organizations.
- Jack Dorsey
Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people’s lives.”
- John C. Maxwell
Live creatively, friends. . . . Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others” (Galatians 6:1, 4).
- Zig Ziglar
We were looking to guide and help people who want to start small businesses.
- David Nilssen
We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these nonmillionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?
- Thomas J Stanley
We’re responsible for the creation of the PC industry. The whole idea of compatible machines and lots of software.. that’s something we brought to computing. And so it’s a responsibility for us to make sure that things like security don’t get in the way of that dream.
- Bill Gates
To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark – in a way that you think is important and lasting – that’s a life well-lived.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
This isn’t stealing this is standing on the shoulders of giants.
- David Novak
I can’t really comment on rumors.
- Larry Page
David Novak CEO of YUM Brands (on crisis management)
- David Novak
My own center, my Kingdom Center, which is the highest priced tower in Saudi Arabia, was vacated twice because of terrorist attacks, terrorist threats.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Eventually we’ll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system.
- Bill Gates
Intentional Dishonesty.
- Napoleon Hill
Part of company culture is path-dependent – it’s the lessons you learn along the way.
- Jeff Bezos
The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.
- Seth Godin
They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.
- Dale Carnegie
The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.
- Winston Churchill
I’m not looking for a legacy, and you’ll never shut up the critics. I’ve been around 50 years. When you’re a catalyst for change, you make enemies – and I’m proud of the ones I’ve got.
- Rupert Murdoch
Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.
- Howard Schultz
I have had problems when I have had money, and I have had problems when I haven’t had money. I have learned that if you are going to have problems, it’s better to have money.
- Zig Ziglar
A false transaction using my own people to buy the flat? I’ll make a bet with you. For every $10,000 you put down, I’ll wager $1 million.
- Lee Shau Kee
Christopher Colombus’ big mistake was that he was looking for a trade route to China, and accidentally bumped into America, the richest, most powerful country in the world.
- Robert Kiyosaki
