If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.
- Jeff Bezos
Notable Quotables
Simply stated, the value of a business today is the sum of all the money it will make in the future.
- Peter Thiel
KNOWLEDGE will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical PLANS OF ACTION, to the DEFINITE END of ac- cumulation of money. Lack of understanding of this fact has been the source of confusion to millions of people who falsely believe that knowledge is power. It is nothing of the sort! Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
- Napoleon Hill
If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.
- Peter Drucker
If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved. The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.
- Ben Horowitz
Your network is your net worth.
- Porter Gale
If we are growing we are always going to be outside our comfort zone.
- John C. Maxwell
Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.
- Peter Thiel
I… had no need for cheering dreams,” he wrote. Facts are better than dreams.
- James C. Collins
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
By becoming interested in the cause, we are less likely to dislike the effect.
- Dale Carnegie
A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better.
- Seth Godin
Success in the United States is not an entitlement in China. You have to go there and earn it, and earn it the right way.
- Howard Schultz
Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.”
- Bill Gates
It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don’t feel like an oligarch.
- Vladimir Potanin
In business, just the opposite is often true; silence means dissent. Have you ever been in a meeting where you sense there is obvious disagreement, but the disagreement never really gets put on the table? This what I call the Slow No’s.
- David Novak
We will as ever continue to pursue growth opportunities that will further enhance our ability to capitalize on the investment opportunities and to face the challenges ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Good and great are seldom in the same man.
- Winston Churchill
Named must your fear be before banish it you can.
- Yoda
Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
- Zig Ziglar
Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.
- Napoleon Hill
Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools.
- Og Mandino
This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream: —There spread a cloud of dust along a plainAnd underneath the cloud, or in it, ragedA furious battle, and men yelled, and swordsShocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s bannerWavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.A craven hung along the battle’s edge,And thought, Had I a sword of keener steel —That blue blade that the king’s son bears, — but thisBlunt thing! — he snapt and flung it from his hand,And lowering crept away and left the field.Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead,And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,Hilt-buried in the dry and trodden sand,And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shoutLifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down,And saved a great cause that heroic day.
- Edward Rowland Sill
Being flooded with information doesn’t mean we have the right information or that we’re in touch with the right people.
- Bill Gates
Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.
- Dale Carnegie
I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.
- Joel Olsteen
You will know (the good from the bad) when you are calm, at peace. Passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.
- Yoda
The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There’s an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win.
- Seth Godin
No matter how dark and gloomy it looks in your life right now, if you’ll release the weight of those burdens, you will see the sun break forth.
- Joel Olsteen
Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.
- Yoda
Success is how high you bounce after you hit bottom.
- General George S. Patton
Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company.
- Tadashi Yanai
The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.
- Peter Drucker
Happiness is found in doing, not merely possessing.
- Napoleon Hill
So now, having learned from machines, organizations are applying the same logic to people. Letting people in the organization use their best judgment turns out to be faster and cheaper—but only if you hire the right people and reward them for having the right attitude.
- Seth Godin
This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put
- Winston Churchill
One day a friend came by the job site and asked them separately what they were doing. The first said, Aw, we’re just laying brick. We’ve been doing this for thirty years. It’s so boring. One brick on top of the other.” Then the friend asked the second bricklayer. He just lit up. Why, we’re building a magnificent skyscraper,” he said. This structure is going to stand tall for generations to come. I’m just so excited that I could be a part of it.” Each bricklayer’s happiness or lack of it was based on their perspective. You can be laying a brick or you can be building a beautiful skyscraper. The choice is up to you. You can go to work each day and just punch in on the clock and dread being there and do as little as possible. Or you can show up with enthusiasm and give it your best, knowing that you’re making the world a better place.
- Joel Olsteen
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.
- Thomas Edison
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.
- Thomas Edison
TAKE CARE OF THE PEOPLE, THE PRODUCTS, AND THE PROFITS—IN THAT ORDER.
- Ben Horowitz
To be a superstar, you must do something exceptional. Not just survive the Dip, but use the Dip as an opportunity to create something so extraordinary that people can’t help but talk about it, recommend it, and, yes, choose it.
- Seth Godin
3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we’re getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we’ve ever had before.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft
- Bill Gates
Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.
- Og Mandino
The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
- Napoleon Hill
Education and the Internet must go hand in hand, … It will serve as one of the great equalizers.
- John Chambers
We have to find our way back to a definite future.
- Peter Thiel
Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.
- Bill Gates
There is a revolution happening, and within two years I think that Wi-Fi and Netflix will be built into all the televisions.
- Reed Hastings
What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.
- Larry Ellison
I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy — a little boy!
- Dale Carnegie
[In January 2011] I think Twitter is so unique that we must stay independent.
- Jack Dorsey
Motivation needs to be a part of your own life for you to be effective in conveying it to other people.
- Zig Ziglar
There’s this myth that has been exacerbated by others that Starbucks means a $4 cup of coffee, which is not true.
- Howard Schultz
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- Warren Buffett
The secret of your success is found in your daily routine
- John Maxwell
Facing reality sounds simple, but it isn’t. I found it hard to get people to see a situation for what it is and not for what it was, or what they hoped it would be.
- Jack Welch
There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.
- Dale Carnegie
I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.
- Seth Godin
What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.
- Cheng Yu-tung
We’re absolutely going to have a better facility.
- Ed Clark
You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.
- Joel Olsteen
Many people who want to be great aren’t willing to do the work to make it possible!
- Zig Ziglar
Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.
- Seth Godin
Hay que evitar siempre el ángulo agudo.
- Dale Carnegie
It’s not how far you fall. But how high you bounce that counts.
- Zig Ziglar
I write all my sermons.
- Joel Olsteen
There is only one way under high heaven to get anybody to do anything. Did you ever stop to think of that? Yes, just one way. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
- Dale Carnegie
We would be interested in anything used by neurologists, such as treatments for epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and pain medication.
- David Pyott
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.
- Celine Dion
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
- Steve Jobs
I really believe that you cannot use the stock market as a proxy for the economy.
- Howard Schultz
Age doesn’t matter: an open mind does.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
I’ve known entrepreneurs who were not great salespeople, or didn’t know how to code, or were not particularly charismatic leaders. But I don’t know of any entrepreneurs who have achieved any level of success without persistence and determination.
- Harvey Mackay
I believe people have to follow their dreams – I did.
- Larry Ellison
Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.
- Seth Godin
It’s [the internet] like the flu – it just spreads like crazy.
- Jack Welch
People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
- Elon Musk
It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
- Napoleon Hill
With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.
- Seth Godin
If I have one skill as a manager, I can make things extremely clear.
- Ben Horowitz
When you deal with change, you have a couple choices: you can lead it and make the rules, or you can be a fast follower, or you can be a slow follower.
- Charles Ergen
Don’t say anything you can’t prove.
- Jerry Vass
If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.
- Zig Ziglar
Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.
- Tony Hsieh
By the time we see that climate change is really bad, your ability to fix it is extremely limited… The carbon gets up there, but the heating effect is delayed. And then the effect of that heat on the species and ecosystem is delayed. That means that even when you turn virtuous, things are actually going to get worse for quite a while.
- Bill Gates
The most important thing about education is appetite.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t romance Wall Street. You don’t want investors who are only concerned about the quarter, or who are working on their exit strategy from day one. You want shareholders to own you forever. If we have no trading at all, I consider that a tremendous accomplishment.
- Warren Buffett
When people write checks, they are depleting an asset. And when people are using credit cards, they are increasing their liabilities. In other words, credit cards make it so much easier to get deeper and deeper into debt by increasing your monthly liabilties.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you’re trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you’re giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you’re trying to do?
- Bill Gates
Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?
- Rupert Murdoch
When people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options.
- Peter Thiel
No matter who you are, you need two kinds of friends in your life. The first kind is one you can call when something good happens, and you need someone who will be excited for you. Not a fake excitement veiling envy, but a real excitement. You need someone who will actually be more excited for you than he would be if it had happened to him. The second kind of friend is somebody you can call when things go horribly wrong—when your life is on the line and you only have one phone call. Who is it going to be? Bill Campbell is both of those friends.
- Ben Horowitz
John, never lend money to your friends; it will spoil your friendships.
- John D. Rockefeller
Hong Kong still offers the best value.
- Lee Shau Kee
We made a disastrous move into casual shoes.
- Phil Knight
