I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!
- Bill Gates
Notable Quotables
The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
- George Orwell
Everyone deserves at least a chance to make things better. And besides people can surprise you.
- David Novak
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.
- Elon Musk
Never, never, never give up.
- Winston Churchill
It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for ‘realistic’ goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy-consuming.
- Timothy Ferriss
You give before you get.
- Napoleon Hill
I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend … if you have one.”— George Bernard Shaw, playwright (to Winston Churchill)”Cannot possibly attend first night; will attend second, if there is one.”— Churchill’s response.
- Winston Churchill
Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.
- Larry Ellison
There’s been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that’s already legal, you’ll never get it.
- Travis Kalanick
You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.
- Dale Carnegie
If you can’t communicate and talk to other people and get across your ideas, you’re giving up your potential.
- Warren Buffett
I am convinced that in order for you, as a patient, to be protected, it has to be transparent, evidence-based, objective information. Not self-serving information. Not pharma-driven information. Not ad-driven information. It is transparent, objective, evidence-based information.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
In Hong Kong, the property business has always been very competitive, so we have to think of ways to get an edge over our competitors.
- Raymond Kwok
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
- Jack Welch
No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.
- Winston Churchill
By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.
- Bill Gates
The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.
- Peter Thiel
A business that looks orderly says to your customer that your people know what they’re doing.
- Michael Gerber
IT’S SAID that you can only live life forward and understand it backward.
- Jack Welch
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein
Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.
- Jack Welch
This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules.
- Peter Thiel
Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution.
- Elon Musk
I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.
- Richard Branson
When an entrepreneur has an object in his line of vision, he should dismiss all other considerations from his mind, abandon all other activities, and charge directly at that object, continuing to charge until the object has been secured.
- Paul Johnson
In the years to come, that lure of partnership helped us attract a lot of good managers, but I don’t believe that we ever had one who bought more stock than Willard. And of course he feels pretty good about it today. – Sam Walton (on human resources, hiring, early history of Wal-Mart)
- Sam Walton
Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.
- Dale Carnegie
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
We see no major changes in that model for the next several years. In fact, we are more optimistic about Cisco’s position and opportunities in both the enterprise and service provider markets than at any point in the last several years.
- John Chambers
One of the things that I’m really proud of is that I have really good timing. It’s very easy for me to see what’s coming up and it’s no coincidence that I went headfirst into wine and then headfirst into new media – none at all.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.
- Bill Gates
At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.
- Donald Trump
Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking.It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every dayto deliver your message with authority.You should write one.
- Seth Godin
We are always listening to ideas presented by our customers and in an effort to keep up with their demands, we are adding those quality improvements to Atlanta Motor Speedway. The changes we have planned are a direct result of fan input and are aimed at giving our fans options they currently don’t have.
- Ed Clark
Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
- Oprah Winfrey
He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.
- David Novak
Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.
- Jack Welch
Be a coach, not a cheerleader
- Stacy Thorn
Whether it’s eight o’clock in the morning or eight o’clock at night, I always try to greet others before they have a chance to speak to me.
- Zig Ziglar
And I think the more money you put in people’s hands, the more they will spend. And if they don’t spend it, they invest it. And investing it is another way of creating jobs. It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that.
- Michael Bloomberg
I’m bored with it all.
- Winston Churchill
I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.
- Ray Dalio
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Andrew Carnegie
The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications, teamwork, self-development, and development of others.
- Peter Drucker
The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.
- Steve Young
You don’t make spending decisions, investment decisions, hiring decisions, or whether-you’re-going-to-look-for-a-job decisions when you don’t know what’s going to happen.
- Michael Bloomberg
If it wasn’t a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth much.
- Seth Godin
Now, we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year, over 26 billion tons. For each American, it’s about 20 tons. For people in poor countries, it’s less than one ton. It’s an average of about five tons for everyone on the planet. And, somehow, we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero.
- Bill Gates
We’re better than the rest of the country but we shouldn’t believe it too much.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
10,000 years of fitful advance from primitive agriculture to medieval windmills and 16th-century astrolabes, the modern world suddenly experienced relentless technological progress from the advent of the steam engine in the 1760s all the way up to about 1970.
- Peter Thiel
Twitter is about simplicity.
- Jack Dorsey
The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing.
- Walt Disney
If Alibaba cannot become a Microsoft or Wal-Mart, I will regret it for the rest of my life.
- Jack Ma
You have to keep your goal in mind and never lose sight of it. I envisioned myself winning the heavyweight title for ten years before I actually captured it. If you’re not driven to do your best, you’ll never reach the level of excellence in your life.
- George Foreman
As a rule, theory does not precede practice. Its role is to structure and codify already proven practice. Its role is to convert the isolated and “atypical” from exception to “rule” and “system,” and therefore into something that can be learned and taught and, above all, into something that can be generally applied.
- Peter Drucker
Let me remind everyone in this room that we are not changing guidance.
- John Chambers
I kicked but I also hugged.
- Jack Welch
Throw it all up on the wall and see what sticks.
- Timothy Ferriss
Ultimately you want to have the entire world’s knowledge connected directly to your mind
- Sergey Brin
When we had seventy-five stores in Arkansas, seventy-five in Missouri, eighty in Oklahoma, whatever, people knew who we were, and everybody except the merchants who weren’t discounting looked forward to our coming to their town.
- Sam Walton
It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides.
- Winston Churchill
Do what you want to do. Do what you like to do.
- Lei Jun
In fact, when I look at it today, I realize that so much of what we did in the beginning was really poorly done. But we managed to sell our merchandise as low as we possibly could, and that kept us right-side-up for the first 10 years – that and consistently improving sales in these smaller markets by buildling up our relationship with the customers. The ideas was simple: when customers thought of Wal-Mart, they should think of low prices and satisfaction guaranteed.
- Sam Walton
E – Edge, ability to make tough yes and no decisions
- Jack Welch
It’s ironic that no matter where I go, I meet people from Brooklyn. I’m proud of that heritage. It’s where I’m from, who I am.
- Howard Schultz
Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.
- Sara Blakely
DAY TWENTY I DECLARE that I am calm and peaceful. I will not let people or circumstances upset me. I will rise above every difficulty, knowing that God has given me the power to remain calm. I choose to live my life happy, bloom where I am planted, and let God fight my battles. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.
- Howard Schultz
In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.
- Ben Horowitz
Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.
- Larry Ellison
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
Names are the sweetest, most important sound in any language.
- Dale Carnegie
Remember: There is a direct correlation between an increased sphere of comfort and getting what you want.
- Timothy Ferriss
Whether changes happen depends on people’s mind and view.
- Cheng Yu-tung
a greater way. Take a few minutes every day to dream big dreams; close your eyes, and envision your dreams coming to pass. Envision yourself out of debt. Envision yourself breaking that addiction. Envision your marriage being more fulfilled. Envision yourself rising to new levels in your career. If you can establish that picture in your heart and mind, then God can begin to bring it to pass in your life.
- Joel Olsteen
So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.
- Oprah Winfrey
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.
- Napoleon Hill
The real opportunity for success lies within the person and not in the job.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple.
- Joel Olsteen
In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally.
- Ben Horowitz
Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.
- Peter Drucker
I am looking to buy companies that are run by painters. Most great artists have a hard time letting go of their paintings. That’s because the joy is not in the finished work, the joys is in the painting. They are constantly adding a dab of color here, a little more texture there. I’m looking for the boss who is always tweaking his company, constantly trying to make it better. No matter how successful he may have already been, what he still sees is a master-piece-in-progress.
- Warren Buffett
Out that expending emotional labor, working without a map, and driving in the dark involve confronting fear and living with the pain of vulnerability. The artist comes to a détente with these emotions and, instead of fighting with them, dances with them. The linchpin connects as a result of the indispensable nature of her contribution. The artist, on the other hand, connects because that’s what art is. The artist touches part of what it means to be truly human and does that work again and again.
- Seth Godin
You learn how to be book smart in school, but you better not forget that you also need to be street smart.
- Harvey Mackay
No one knows more about the way you think than you do.
- Seth Godin
Maui reminded me of San Diego: beautiful, but crowded.
- Larry Ellison
Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.
- Zig Ziglar
Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.
- Walt Disney
I’m not as interested in what you make as I am in what you’re passionate about. What business are you really in?
- Howard Schultz
Too often, sales reps simply regurgitate their presentations and expect to land the sale. It doesn’t work.
- Harvey Mackay
God would not have put a dream in your heart if He had not already given you everything you need to fulfill it.
- Joel Olsteen
Opening new stores outside of Japan is important, but training our employees is even more important.
- Tadashi Yanai
The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
- Peter Thiel
I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.
- Thomas Edison
He was probably America’s first capitalist.
- Travis Kalanick
Write like you talk. Often.
- Seth Godin
