A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.
- Elon Musk
Notable Quotables
What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The doctors actually told my family there was a five percent chance of me living.
- Ed Clark
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
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
I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.
- Bill Gates
What this industry is about is back to the basics in the new Internet economy; and the basics are profitability, cash flow, productivity and market-share gains.
- John Chambers
There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal weakness of LACK OF AMBITION!
- Napoleon Hill
People ask me all the time, ‘How can I become a successful entrepreneur?’ And I have to be honest: It’s one of my least favorite questions, because if you’re waiting for someone else’s advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you’re not one.
- Michael Dell
Remember that tomorrow when you are trying to get somebody to do something. If, for example, you don’t want your children to smoke, don’t preach at them, and don’t talk about what you want; but show them that cigarettes may keep them from making the basketball team or winning the hundred-yard dash.
- Dale Carnegie
The Group adopts a two-pronged strategy in its business development in mainland China. In the prime cities, the Group targets those prime sites with heavy pedestrian flow and easy access for development into large-scale complexes of exceptional design and quality. In the second-tier cities, which are mostly provincial capitals or municipalities with a preponderance of middle class residents, the Group focuses on large-scale developments so as to achieve an efficient use of land as well as long-term appreciation in property value.
- Lee Shau Kee
You never achieve success unless you like what you are doing.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m a constant learner. You need to be a constant student because things change and you have to change and grow. And I emphasize the word ‘grow.’
- Zig Ziglar
Here’s a quote from ultramarathoner Dick Collins: Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop and drop out. You don’t want to be out there saying, “Well gee, my leg hurts, I’m a little dehydrated, I’m sleepy, I’m tired, and it’s cold and windy.” And talk yourself into quitting. If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.
- Seth Godin
I’m surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms.
- Steve Wozniak
If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.
- Joel Olsteen
China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.
- Bill Gates
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
- Bill Gates
Often people fail to start or complete a task because they don’t see any connection between what they’re doing and what they really want to accomplish in life.
- John C. Maxwell
More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.
- Napoleon Hill
As an entrepreneur, I try to push the limits. Pedal to the metal.
- Travis Kalanick
I said a long time ago that Foursquare can make cities better. You have these augmented realities like Foursquare and Twitter and Facebook that provide these virtual nodes and instant feedback from anywhere, adding annotation around a physical places.
- Jack Dorsey
Our improvement and innovative ideas have never been hindered by our proven record, which instead has paved the way for determined, practical development and new directions.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Life’s most soothing things are a child’s goodnight and sweet music….
- Thomas Edison
I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don’t laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that’s not real laughter.
- Steve Martin
From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Peter Thiel
Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.
- Dale Carnegie
Momentum is a little fragile, and when people got excited before, they were disappointed, … But this is the most positive guidance we’ve given in eight quarters, going into a seasonally challenging quarter.
- John Chambers
The Group is rapidly increasing its activities in Mainland China, where it now has projects ranging from landmark commercial developments in the major cities of Beijing and Shanghai to massive residential schemes in the second-tier cities.
- Lee Shau Kee
Success is doing what you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want and as much as you want.
- Tony Robbins
Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.
- Michael Dell
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
- Winston Churchill
Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
- Andrew Carnegie
The student who elects to risk it all—which is nothing—to establish an online video rental service that delivers $5,000 per month in income from a small niche of Blu-ray aficionados, a two-hour-per-week side project that allows him to work full-time as an animal rights lobbyist.
- Timothy Ferriss
Life is not fair – get used to it!
- Bill Gates
People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest …But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.
- Thomas Edison
Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.
- James C. Collins
We understand the most important thing we do is market the product…
- Phil Knight
No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.
- Andrew Carnegie
Every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.
- Peter Thiel
With residential property prices having dropped by around two-thirds from their peak in 1997 and local interest rates dropping to their historic lows, mortgage payments currently falls below rental payment. This positive carry has led to property purchases by both home purchasers as well as investors. Further, with the local stock market becoming active again and reaching its highest level in the past 17 months, this has resulted in an increase in the number of transactions and a price for the luxury properties.
- Lee Shau Kee
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all.
- Winston Churchill
You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.
- Russell Simmons
Dig your well before you’re thirsty.
- Seth Godin
Don’t marry too early in life. It’s better to work hard when young and establish a career first.
- Lee Shau Kee
A little boy went out to the backyard to play with a baseball bat and a ball. He said to himself, I am the best hitter in the world.” Then he threw the ball up in the air and took a swing at it, but he missed. Without a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the ball and tossed it in the air again, saying as he swung the bat, I’m the best hitter in all the world.” He swung and missed. Strike two. He tossed the ball up again, concentrating more intensely, even more determined, saying, I am the best hitter in all the world!” He swung the bat with all his might. Whiff! Strike three. The little boy laid down his bat and smiled real big. What do you know?” he said. I’m the best pitcher in all the world!
- Joel Olsteen
Discontent is the first necessity of progress.
- Thomas Edison
Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.
- Peter Thiel
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
It’s difficult for any single company to develop all the applications and services.
- Ma Huateng
Don’t count the things you do. Do the things that count.
- Zig Ziglar
He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.
- Andrew Carnegie
You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.
- Napoleon Hill
I see tremendous imbalance in the world. A very uneven playing field, which has gotten tilted very badly. I consider it unstable. At the same time, I don’t exactly see what is going to reverse it.
- George Soros
The guerrilla is a cheapskate. She knows that every dollar allocated to marketing is essential, and she doesn’t plan to waste a penny. But she’s not foolish. When necessary, she hires the best designers, media planners, and experts in the business—she realizes that the best is often the cheapest in the end.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Ohhh. Great warrior.Wars not make one great.
- Yoda
When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.
- John C. Maxwell
The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
- Timothy Ferriss
If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from ’87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.
- Howard Schultz
EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
- Peter Thiel
Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked.
- Steve Wozniak
Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
- Zig Ziglar
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
- Jack Welch
Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.”
- John C. Maxwell
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet – how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
- Jeff Bezos
Every other country is afraid that China is going to take over the world. China is the only country afraid that it won’t.
- Peter Thiel
I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….
- Thomas Edison
Each close you use should be an educational process by which you are able to raise the value in the prospect’s mind.
- Zig Ziglar
Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.
- Bill Gates
India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.
- Bill Gates
The future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed.
- William Gibson
Turn your wounds into wisdom.
- Oprah Winfrey
You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure.
- Zig Ziglar
Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.
- Steve Martin
If GE’s strategy of investment in China is wrong, it represents a loss of a billion dollars, perhaps a couple of billion dollars. If it is right, it is the future of this company for the next century.
- Jack Welch
The Franchise Prototype is also the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.
- Michael Gerber
I would summarize the quarter as a solid quarter from a revenue and earnings per share perspective and a strong quarter from an orders perspective.
- John Chambers
My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.
- Winston Churchill
This is indicative of how quickly CEO caution can put the foot on the brake.
- John Chambers
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
Diversification and globalization are the keys to the future.
- Fujio Mitarai
I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.
- John D. Rockefeller
To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.
- Yoda
Normal is fading away. Governments and industries and schools like normal, because it’s easier, it scales and it’s profitable. But people don’t like it – we want to be who we are, not who some marketer tells us to be.
- Seth Godin
Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.
- Seth Godin
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.
- Oscar Wilde
Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.
- Michael Dell
It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.
- Timothy Ferriss
The purpose of process is communication. If there are five people in your company, you don’t need process, because you can just talk to each other.
- Ben Horowitz
Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.
- Peter Thiel
The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world.
- Bill Gates
The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people – including my ex-wives.
- Ronald Perelman
Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence. A good product manager is the CEO of the product. Good product managers take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product.
- Ben Horowitz
The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic of beginnings.
- Peter Thiel
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.
- Bill Gates
In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
