Notable Quotables

An open society is a society which allows its members the greatest possible degree of freedom in pursuing their interests compatible with the interests of others.

- George Soros

The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.

- Peter Thiel

I’ve talked to nearly 30,000 people on this show, and all 30,000 had one thing in common: They all wanted validation…I would tell you that every single person you will ever meet shares that common desire.

- Oprah Winfrey

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

- Winston Churchill

Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.

- Herb Kelleher

The six people who had the biggest impact on my life were all women. Had I been sexist, my life would have been far less fulfilling.

- Zig Ziglar

Churchill was in the lavatory in the House of Commons and his secretary knocked on the door and said: Excuse me Prime Minister, but the Lord Privy Seal wishes to speak to you. After a pause Churchill replied: Tell His Lordship: I’m sealed on The Privy and can only deal with one shit at a time.

- Winston Churchill

I had a feeling once about Mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me – the Byss and Abyss. I saw – as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.

- Winston Churchill

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.

- Jeff Bezos

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

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1973 when the Hong Kong stock market witnessed an unprecedented slump with the Hang Seng Index plunging by over 90% in a year, the Group built the New World Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong through the acquisition of Holt’s Wharf. In doing so we broke the dominance of the UK-based conglomerates and, as if [being given] a shot in the arm, initiated the course of weaving the companies with Chinese capital into the economic fabric of Hong Kong.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Levi Strauss headed for the gold fields of California to strike it rich in mining. However, he was not a good miner, so he instead began sewing pants out of canvas for the miners who were successful. Today I think most of the world has heard of Levi’s pants.

- Robert Kiyosaki

It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

- Dale Carnegie

I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.

- Jack Ma

Be candid with everyone. Candor is the biggest dirty little secret in business?

- Jack Welch

The dangers of unchecked bureauracy are a constant thorn in the CEO’s side.

- Jack Welch

Lots of people will give you advice… and depending upon how well they know you, the advice might be valid or not so valid.

- Abigail Johnson

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.

- Napoleon Hill

The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand – without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it….

- Thomas Edison

Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.

- Howard Schultz

First and foremost, there is a difference between being perceived as an expert and being one. In the context of business, the former is what sells product and the latter, relative to your minimal customer base,” is what creates good products and prevents returns.

- Timothy Ferriss

Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.

- Oprah Winfrey

The Group will be able to capture opportunities arising from the growth and integration of the two economies, and scale new heights in the years ahead.

- Cheng Yu-tung

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes, but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The quality of our integration will be judged, not by the ultimate costs in hitting our targets, but instead by the level of service we give to our clients throughout the process. That’s kind of my 8-to-5 job. My 5-to-8 job is what’s the next move? Where else in health care do we see inefficiencies, that we see a splintered system with tremendous cost overruns?

- George Paz

It was always a challenge for me to prove that a Russian financial investor can be as successful in the West as back at home in Russia.

- Alisher Usmanov

The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.

- Zig Ziglar

If you are a big company, a big website, and lots of users come to your website, you will have attacks, and you have to deal with that. It just cannot be a reason to take actions to exit certain markets.

- Robin Li

The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.

- Bill Gates

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

- Jerry Seinfeld

There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.

- Seth Godin

When you are tempted to get discouraged, remind yourself that according to God’s word, your future is getting brighter; you are on your way to a new level of glory. You may think you’ve got a long way to go, but you need to look back at how far you’ve already come. You may not be everything you want to be but atleast you can thank God that you’re not what you used to be.

- Joel Olsteen

If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.

- Elon Musk

Changes that used to occur over quarters are literally occurring over months.

- John Chambers

It doesn’t matter how many people you offend, as long as you’re getting your message to your consumers. I say to those people who do not want to offend anybody: You are going to have a very, very difficult time having meaningful advertising.

- Phil Knight

You can build a successful career, regardless of your field of endeavor, by the dozens of little things you do on and off the job.

- Zig Ziglar

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

- Elon Musk

The S.A.L.H. were mostly South Africans, with a high proportion of hardbitten adventurers from all quarters of the world, including a Confederate trooper from the American Civil War.

- Winston Churchill

I think when you’re very dedicated to something and you’re engaged fully, you become a giver.

- Russell Simmons

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.

- P.T. Barnum

Today, we’ve begun to make the extraordinary historic films of the National Archives available to the world for the first time online. Students and researchers whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 — the historic first landing on the Moon.

- Sergey Brin

If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.

- Bill Gates

There is a time to provide advice and offer an opinion, and there is a time not to. Don’t be too quick to offer unsolicited advice. It certainly will not endear you to people.

- Harvey Mackay

the expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back

- Dale Carnegie

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!

- Andrew Carnegie

Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.

- James C. Collins

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.

- Elon Musk

Cisco’s collaboration with AT&T and GI will result in a New World network that will fundamentally change the way communications services are delivered to the consumer market.

- John Chambers

I wish I could do a lot of things different. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I’d go, ‘Okay, I’ll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.’ Really. But I’ve made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?

- Steve Martin

This can only be accomplished by people who live, breathe, eat and sleep what they are doing…. [I am] associated with a large group of knowledgeable, dedicated [people] who eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics…. Man’s objective should be opportunity for greater accomplishment and greater service. The greatest pleasure life has to offer is the satisfaction that flows from… participating in a difficult and constructive undertaking.

- James C. Collins

The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

- Bill Gates

The single reason for a salesperson’s existence is to get the Buyer’s commitment. Just how poor are salespeople at their jobs? In a study of professional sales people (those who sell full time), 50% failed to ask for the buyer’s commitment to buy.

- Jerry Vass

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. That would be you.

- Seth Godin

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

- Winston Churchill

I was afraid of the internet… because I couldn’t type.

- Jack Welch

Culture manages when management is not there.

- Joe Jordan

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

- Bill Gates

This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.

- Seth Godin

If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is, too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think. Unreasonable and unrealistic goals are easier to achieve for yet another reason.

- Timothy Ferriss

It’s through curiosity and looking at opportunities in new ways that we’ve always mapped our path at Dell. There’s always an opportunity to make a difference.

- Michael Dell

We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun together.

- Walt Disney

If the broadcasters were to win on their claims, they’d outlaw the DVR.

- Charles Ergen

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

- Dale Carnegie

we can not prepare for defeat and expect to live a life in Victory.

- Joel Olsteen

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.

- Ray Kroc

So long as I can stay mentally alert – inquiring, curious – I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don’t want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I’m just not ready to stop, to die.

- Rupert Murdoch

Most of a tech company’s value will come at least 10 to 15 years in the future.

- Peter Thiel

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.

- Peter Drucker

Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.

- Jack Welch

When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.

- Jerry Seinfeld

For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.

- Timothy Ferriss

If you’re not one or two in the market, you don’t make money. The market leaders make the money.

- Jack Welch

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

- Zig Ziglar

Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.

- Dale Carnegie

We’re pleased with the solid revenue and earnings per share results Cisco delivered during its second quarter, but also especially pleased with our strong order momentum. This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data along with our balanced approach to our customer segments, core and advanced technologies, business and technology architecture and key geographic theaters.

- John Chambers

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.

- Aristotle

For every ailment under the sun, There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try to find it; If there be none, never mind it.

- Dale Carnegie

Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected. I try to live by that on a daily basis.

- Jack Dorsey

I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

I can’t afford to be indifferent to politics, but I don’t have personal ambitions.

- Vagit Alekperov

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.

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