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
Notable Quotables
Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
- Alexander Graham Bell
The oil patch pays good. They’re decent jobs paying between 50 and 70 thousand a year. Fracking has a big impact on the oil consumption in the United States.
- Harold Hamm
With our feet to the fire, we needed to produce, in the course of the deal we figured out how to buy, how to sell, and how to finance a transaction.
- Jack Nadel
Your margin is my opportunity.
- Jeff Bezos
Once Microsoft lost its grip on developers, it became only a matter of time before it lost its monopoly on operating systems.
- Ben Horowitz
If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that’s not much – unless you’ve been warned that if you’re even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.
- Zig Ziglar
Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.
- Ben Horowitz
Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.
- Peter Drucker
After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Always pass on what you have learned.
- Yoda
So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale.
- Sergey Brin
Companies such as Echelon are poised to help drive this change with Cisco and extend the power of the Internet from business to the home.
- John Chambers
The choice to have a great attitude is something that nobody or no circumstance can take from you.
- Zig Ziglar
Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.
- Seth Godin
The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.
- Winston Churchill
If one dream dies, dream another dream. If you get knocked down, get back up and go again.
- Joel Olsteen
For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.
- Jeff Bezos
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit
- Napoleon Hill
War will find us whether we are ready or not.
- Winston Churchill
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
I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.
- Joel Olsteen
I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I believe that those who stay in faith are highly favored. You need to prepare for an exceeding, abundant, above-and-beyond life; a life where people go out of their way for no reason to be good to you; a life where you get promoted even though you weren’t the most qualified; a life where you find yourself in the right place at the right time.
- Joel Olsteen
God didn’t create you to be average. You were created to excel You have everything.
- Joel Olsteen
Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‘I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.’ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.
- Joel Olsteen
We are not 100 percent there, but we are finding consensus.
- Jon Fredrik Baksaas
The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully.
- Napoleon Hill
Well… I graduated from the business school of Northumberland University in Newcastle.
- Alexei Mordashov
Know your numbers’ is a fundamental precept of business.
- Bill Gates
It’s really complex to make something simple…
- Jack Dorsey
My belief and goal is that every professional in the world should be on a service liked LinkedIn.
- Reid Hoffman
Poor people ride the bus, because they value money more than time.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Dell will participate in tablets and all sorts of client devices. Our main business is helping our customers secure, protect their data and access it from any device they want to.
- Michael Dell
It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, an Inner Temple lawyer, now become a seditious fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor.
- Winston Churchill
The regulatory systems in place disincentive innovation. It’s intense to fight the red tape.
- Travis Kalanick
Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken.
- Donald Trump
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds
- Warren Buffett
Nigeria has moved into low-middle-income, but their north is very poor, and the health care systems there have broken down.
- Bill Gates
Essentially, whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference, is going to be talked about.
- Mukesh Ambani
It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.
- Joel Olsteen
We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.
- Seth Godin
Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.
- P.T. Barnum
In the old generation, if one kid bought a PlayStation 2 and the other kid bought an Xbox, at his house you played PlayStation, at your house you played Xbox. Now that it’s online, all those early buyers who… you want to play with, they’ve got their reputation online of who they are and how good they are at these games.
- Bill Gates
I believe social responsibility begins with a strong, competitive company. Only a healthy enterprise can improve and enrich the lives of people and their communities.
- Jack Welch
It encourages you to focus on your work and the generosity that comes from interacting with (and helping) your community.
- Seth Godin
I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.
- Michael Jordan
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.
- Napoleon Hill
Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.
- Timothy Ferriss
You can abuse me, you can strike me, so long as you let me have my own.
- Ron Chernow
A much better idea would have been to give the problem to the people who could not only fix it, but who would also be personally excited and motivated to do so.
- Ben Horowitz
Revolution has values, revolution has purpose. Revolution has direction. Revolution has leaders. Revolution looks at the intersection ahead and pushes people to do the right thing. And it doesn’t always have to be loud. It doesn’t always have to be violent. It’s just as powerful in it’s stillness.
- Jack Dorsey
I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
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
I’m short on New York, long on Silicon Valley.
- Peter Thiel
You will make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was meant to be wooed and won by youth.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t consider myself enigmatic, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.
- Phil Knight
That was so much fun. It’s been such a neat experience racing with these guys.
- Ed Clark
China gets their oil from Libya. Why isn’t China involved? They’re going out spending billions of dollars a day on trying to take over the world economically. And we’re spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on policing the world. Why isn’t China involved with Libya? That – we don’t get oil from Libya, China does.
- Donald Trump
If you want to increase your success rate, double your rate of failure.
- Thomas J Watson
What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.
- Bill Gates
Diplomacy is the art of saying Nice Doggie until you can find a rock.
- Will Rogers
We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
- Bill Gates
There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, ‘Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?
- Sara Blakely
The book ‘Do You!’ is about your inner voice. And when you connect to that voice then you – then the freedom comes. And we’re only here to be happy. So happy makes money. Money doesn’t make happy.
- Russell Simmons
Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
- Winston Churchill
Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.
- Harvey Mackay
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- John C. Maxwell
You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
- Jack Welch
Well, clearly Apple is a role model of the American innovation whereby it produced all these products – iPod, iPhone, iPad – that are really now dominating all the technology arena in the world.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Where there is no vision, there is no hope.
- George Washington Carver
I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.
- Elon Musk
Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.
- Dale Carnegie
It’s not about toughness, it’s not about attitude. Companies don’t fail for lack of cash or attitude. Companies fail for lack of brains and effort.
- Mark Cuban
People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.
- Elon Musk
I attract a crowd, not because I’m an extrovert or I’m over the top or I’m oozing with charisma. It’s because I care.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.
- Seth Godin
Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.
- George Soros
The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realise in some subtle way that you realise their importance, and recognise it sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
Why do you ask so much?
- Lee Shau Kee
We’re talking about changing every aspect of our lives.
- John Chambers
Remember to celebrate milestones as you prepare for the road ahead.
- Nelson Mandela
Giving away money to the right cause, with a leveraged effect and your own involvement in how it is spent, will ‘give you peace of mind.’
- Lee Shau Kee
the expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back
- Dale Carnegie
The mainstream is always under attack.
- Bill Gates
Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.
- Warren Buffett
I definitely believe that the so-called American decline is greatly exaggerated.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Never under estimate the other guy.
- Jack Welch
Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
If this market transition truly evolves the way that I think it’s most likely to, the worst decision you could make is not to move.
- John Chambers
There are not many companies in China that dare to say in public, ‘We don’t offer bribes’, or companies that operate only by market rules.
- Wang Jianlin
It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.
- Zig Ziglar
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
But I believe in fair trade, and I will tell you, I have many, many friends heading up corporations, and people that do just business in China, they say it’s virtually impossible. It’s very, very hard to come into China. And yet, we welcome them with open arms.
- Donald Trump
Desire is what takes the hot water of mediocrity and turns it into the steam of outstanding success.
- Zig Ziglar
God accepts you. God approves you. And He has something better in store.
- Joel Olsteen
Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.
- Winston Churchill
