Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.
- Winston Churchill
Notable Quotables
Step up to the front, select what you want, create your plan, put your plan into action, and follow through with Persistence. Capitalist America will not rest.
- Napoleon Hill
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Getting things straight in your head is a major achievement because there’s so much clutter out there. You’ve got to push aside the static to really hear the music.
- Stephen Wynn
Think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass…if we do not take [tasks] one at a time and let them pass…slowly and evenly, then we are bound to break our own…structure.
- Dale Carnegie
I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.
- Larry Ellison
The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I’ve come to believe that each of us has a personal calling that’s as unique as a fingerprint – and that the best way to succeed is to discover what you love and then find a way to offer it to others in the form of service, working hard, and also allowing the energy of the universe to lead you.
- Oprah Winfrey
Most People have a desire to look for the exception instead of the desire to become exceptional.
- John C. Maxwell
The Silver Spoon, the best-selling Italian cookbook of the last 50 years.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple.
- Joel Olsteen
Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The proposed abolishment of estate duty by the Hong Kong Government will contribute to establish Hong Kong as a regional financial centre as well as an asset management hub.
- Lee Shau Kee
We are the safest large city in America, but any crime rate is too high.
- Michael Bloomberg
I don’t know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me.
- Steve Ballmer
If you treat your wife like a thoroughbred, you’ll never end up with a nag.
- Zig Ziglar
I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.
- Oprah Winfrey
Look back in forgiveness, forward in hope, down in compassion, and up with gratitude.
- Zig Ziglar
It is not good to demonstrate your luxury and your wealth: to rub it in the faces of others is insulting. So you should be modest, try not to insult people by showing that you can do what they cannot.
- Vladimir Potanin
…The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.
- Seth Godin
The way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions.
- Principle of the Bushido
Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.
- Bill Gates
We do lots of Stuff. The only way you are going to have success is to have lots of failures first.
- Sergey Brin
I found [retail] to be interesting, challenging, and fun.
- Michael Balmuth
Like technical debt, management debt comes in too many different forms to elaborate entirely, but a few salient examples will help explain the concept. Here are three of the more popular types among startups: 1. Putting two in the box 2. Overcompensating a key employee, because she gets another job offer 3. No performance management or employee feedback process
- Ben Horowitz
The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‘Oh nom it’s on the house.’
- Richard Branson
Q1 was a solid quarter for Cisco, with balanced execution across most of our geographies, market segments and product categories, … We are especially pleased with the improving business momentum in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, the strength of our product families and the accelerated growth of the commercial marketplace, which has become our fastest growing customer segment.
- John Chambers
The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.
- Steve Young
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
Working to fulfill someone else’s needs or dreams almost always catches up with you.
- Jack Welch
We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.
- Bill Gates
Strive to be the very best you can be. Run the race against yourself and not the guy in the other lane. The reason I say that is, as long as you give it 110% you are going to succeed. But as long as you’re trying to beat the guy over there, you are worried about him; you’re not worrying about how you’ve got to perform
- Herschel Walker
The factory has programmed that adventurous impulse out of us. The economic imperative of the last century has been to avoid risk, avoid change, and most of all, avoid exploration and the new. An efficient factory fears change because change means retooling and risk and a blip in productivity. Sure, we’ll put up with change if we have to, and welcome the predictable incremental change of productivity improvement, but please leave us alone when it comes to the word “bold.” Avoiding risk worked then but doesn’t work now. Now “what’s next?” is in fact the driving force for individuals and for organizations. Ever onward, ever faster.
- Seth Godin
I have a calendar life that is complicated, so I use BusyCal and Google Calendar. I keep two different browsers open to avoid some confusion.
- Steve Wozniak
Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.
- Howard Schultz
Employers have decided that having the breadth of knowledge that’s associated with a four-year degree is often something they want to see in the people they give that job to.
- Bill Gates
Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.
- Jack Welch
The buyer needs to talk at least 70% of the time.
- Clay Clark
I am excited for the opportunity to pursue new interests, including my work with a few public company boards, several universities in the U.S. and the UK and ophthalmic charities whose goals are to improve eye health in emerging markets.
- David Pyott
Only by believing in and looking for secrets could you see beyond the convention to an opportunity hidden in plain sight.
- Peter Thiel
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
the world belongs to the man or woman who got up today and did something
- Jim Stovall
This is our commitment to users and the people who use our service, is that Facebook’s a free service. It’s free now. It will always be free. We make money through having advertisements and things like that.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people. Bringing the right people on board saves you thousands, and your business will run smoothly and efficiently.
- Brian Tracy
A wise man is a confirmed optimist.
- Andrew Carnegie
Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.
- Donald Trump
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
- John D. Rockefeller
From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.
- Thomas Edison
Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.
- Joel Olsteen
If you will remain at rest and hold your peace, then the battle is not yours, but the battle is the Lord’s.
- Joel Olsteen
I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.
- Michael Bloomberg
The first thing to recognize is that no startup has time to do optional things.
- Ben Horowitz
Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.
- Larry Page
In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.
- Bill Gates
I don’t blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.(…) You can say that and be 100 percent sincere, because if you were the other person you, of course, would feel just as he does (…) Suppose you had inherited the same body and temperament and mind (…) Suppose you had had his environment and experiences. You would then be precisely what he was – and where he was. For it is those things -and only those things – that made him what he was. (…) You deserve very little credit for being what you are – and remember, the people who come to you irritated, bigoted, unreasoning, deserve very little discredit for being what they are.
- Dale Carnegie
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.
- Oprah Winfrey
There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Nature is a machine. The family is a machine. The life cycle is like a machine.
- Ray Dalio
Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs.
- The Millionaire Next Door
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
- Seth Godin
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
My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I’ve given.
- Russell Simmons
All great truths are simple in final analysis, and easily understood; if they are not, they are not great truths.
- Napoleon Hill
The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.
- P.T. Barnum
If they really don’t want to buy the flats, I’ll take their deposits.
- Lee Shau Kee
I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.
- Thomas Edison
People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, ‘Soave,’ and say, ‘Oh, O.K., cool.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Fears are nothing more than states of mind.
- Napoleon Hill
We think that athletes are human beings and have foibles just like human beings do…
- Phil Knight
Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That’s why there’s the old saw: location, location, location.
- Jeff Bezos
Disneyland is the star, everything else is in the supporting role.
- Walt Disney
Almost every way we make electricity today, except for the emerging renewables and nuclear, puts out CO2. And so, what we’re going to have to do at a global scale, is create a new system. And so, we need energy miracles.
- Bill Gates
I was raised with ‘Laurel and Hardy’ and ‘I Love Lucy’ and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it’s the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you’re performing in your bedroom for yourself.
- Steve Martin
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.
- Elon Musk
See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.
- Joel Olsteen
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them – peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.
- Winston Churchill
I want to be able to speak with errors in my wording, errors in my grammar. When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know ‘No, he couldn’t have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.’
- Steve Wozniak
Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn’t matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you’re going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.
- Harvey Mackay
You must have a vision and not just a vision but you must have a plan that would make you fulfil that vision.
- Aliko Dangote
If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered – the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.
- Larry Page
My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.
- Mukesh Ambani
It’s easy to get negative because you get beat down. You go through a few disappointments and it’s easy to stay in that negative frame of mind. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is a whole cliche, but your attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
- Joel Olsteen
Being a leader gives you charisma. If you look and study the leaders who have succeeded, that’s where charisma comes from, from the leading.
- Seth Godin
In the Next Society’s corporation, top management will be the company. Everything else can be outsourced.
- Peter Drucker
[On his son Matt dying in 2004 in a scuba diving accident] It aged me much faster than anything you can imagine…
- Phil Knight
EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
- Peter Thiel
You’re not really free until you’re free from trying to please everybody.
- Joel Olsteen
Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.
- Joel Olsteen
Spare the conquered and confront the proud.
- Winston Churchill
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
Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly–until you can learn to do it well.
- Zig Ziglar
What you are will show in what you do.
- Thomas Edison
We won’t change at all, … We feel consolidation will continue. We’re seeing more and more movement to fewer networking vendors.
- John Chambers
If you don’t know how it works, find out. If you’re not sure if it will work, try it. If it doesn’t make sense, play with it until it does. If it’s not broken, break it. If it might not be true, find out.
- Seth Godin
I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.
- Sam Walton
The way to stay ahead was through product innovation. We happened to be great at it.
- Phil Knight
My mother taught me something at a young age – she said ‘you are the company you keep’. To define yourself by some label or some level of resources – that’s pretty shallow.
- Howard Schultz
