I don’t think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you’re willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn’t work. If you’re going to invent, it means you’re going to experiment, and if you’re going to experiment, you’re going to fail, and if you’re going to fail, you have to think long term.
- Jeff Bezos
Notable Quotables
Monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.
- Peter Thiel
The result of information overload is usually distraction, and it dilutes your focus and takes you off your game.
- Zig Ziglar
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
- John Naisbitt
I felt like Samson with a fresh haircut. But that dream of what the company could be sustained me.
- Ray Kroc
To make an embarrassing admission, I like video games. That’s what got me into software engineering when I was a kid. I wanted to make money so I could buy a better computer to play better video games – nothing like saving the world.
- Elon Musk
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
- Haruki Murakami
I own almost 100 hotels in North America. Some of them are only in management, but some of them we have some small stakes in them.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Surround yourself only with those that uplift you.
- Oprah Winfrey
If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The idea that everyone should slavishly work so they do something inefficiently so they keep their job – that just doesn’t make any sense to me. That can’t be the right answer.
- Larry Page
No individual may have great power without availing himself of the Master Mind.
- Napoleon Hill
People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things – to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today.
- Zig Ziglar
My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The problems forced us to take a hard look at what we were doing, what was going wrong, what we were good at, and where we wanted to go.
- Phil Knight
Trate siempre de que la otra persona se sienta importante.
- Dale Carnegie
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge….
- Thomas Edison
One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.
- Dale Carnegie
This is one of the innovator’s dilemmas: Blindly following the maxim that good managers should keep close to their customers can sometimes be a fatal mistake.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Well, in war, you can only be killed once. But in politics, many times.
- Winston Churchill
People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
- Zig Ziglar
I was not strong enough to defeat him. Like his master before him, be destroyed, he must.
- Yoda
I’m enamored with the art world. Anytime you look at anything that’s considered artistic, there’s a commercial world around it: the ballet, opera, any kind of music. It can’t exist without it.
- Steve Martin
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
- Henry Ford
Much about success is just the result of simply the ability to follow up, follow through, and finish what we started.
- Zig Ziglar
Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life’ (Prov. 4:23 KJV).
- Joel Olsteen
For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.
- Richard Branson
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
- Winston Churchill
Present my story and the difficulties that I have faced. As an entrepreneur, a CEO.
- Ben Horowitz
In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.
- Elon Musk
Don’t waste your energy trying to convince people to understand you. Your time is too valuable to try to prove yourself to people.
- Joel Olsteen
One reason to buy a watch (or a book) is because you want to possess it, show it off, give it to your grandchildren. Holding a book is a luxury, one for which you pay a premium.
- Seth Godin
The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge.
- Napoleon Hill
Make your desires clear and reduce them to writing.
- Napoleon Hill
This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines. If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace.
- Timothy Ferriss
Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don’t believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you’re likely to have issues.
- Larry Page
It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.
- Herb Kelleher
I would say this for Montserrat? one of its credit weaknesses is that it’s in a zone that depends greatly on external savings.
- John Chambers
I have no interest in going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids. I’m just not that kind of dude.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.
- Steve Ballmer
There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don’t really think most people really understand what they’ve seen.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I think I’m less afraid of failure than some others.
- Russell Simmons
This is not checkers; this is motherfuckin’ chess. Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves, the market moves, the people move. As a result, like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek, there is always a move. You think you have no moves? How about taking your company public with $2 million in trailing revenue and 340 employees, with a plan to do $75 million in revenue the next year? I made that move. I made it in 2001, widely regarded as the worst time ever for a technology company to go public. I made it with six weeks of cash left. There is always a move.
- Ben Horowitz
We are still masters of our fate.We are still captains of our souls.
- Winston Churchill
Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with.
- Timothy Ferriss
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… The ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
- Steve Jobs
Most salespeople won’t stop talking long enough to let the Buyer make a decision.
- Jerry Vass
If you’re going to buy a real book, a paper book, there better be a good reason. Perhaps scarcity is one of those reasons.
- Seth Godin
What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.
- Dave Thomas
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
- Jim Rohn
In life and in business, you need to be good-hearted and trustworthy, and to have integrity. This is the way to build long-term relationships. It is also important to be optimistic and to look at challenges as opportunities.
- Henry Sy
I’ve seen the promised land, and there is good news. You can have it all.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think I may not be able to retire.
- Tadashi Yanai
20% of what you do accounts for 80% of your results
- Brian Tracy
I demand pretty aggressive goal setting and a commitment to measured progress towards those goals because I don’t like surprises. I don’t even like good surprises.
- Abigail Johnson
The lizard isn’t listening and the lizard doesn’t care.
- Seth Godin
If I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.
- Jeff Bezos
My new favorite word is ‘awkward.’…The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
- Seth Godin
I believe Twitter, right now, is just finishing the venture capital phase, getting into a maturity level.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
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
The uncertainty and importance of the present reduce the past and future to comparative insignificance, and clear the mind of minor worries. And when all is over, memories remain which few men do not hold precious.
- Winston Churchill
I’m an Urban Scholar.
- Michael Ward
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
Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in business and politics, it works in family life as well.
- Dale Carnegie
“What would you do if capital were free?” is a dangerous question to ask an entrepreneur. It’s kind of like asking a fat person, “What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”
- Ben Horowitz
I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.
- Bill Gates
A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.
- P.T. Barnum
Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.
- Confucius
People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.
- Zig Ziglar
All that hullabaloo about somebody’s net worth is just stupid, and it’s made my life a lot more complex and difficult.
- Sam Walton
It doesn’t matter how many people you offend, as long as you’re getting your message to your consumers. I say to those people who do not want to offend anybody: You are going to have a very, very difficult time having meaningful advertising.
- Phil Knight
My two primary areas of focus have been open-space conservation and education, and I expect those to remain my priorities in the future. The Irvine open space and parklands provide serenity and balance to our unique Orange County lifestyle.
- Donald Bren
Self-disciplined begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.
- Napoleon Hill
You are here today because of a decision you made yesterday.
- Bryan Smith
You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to those situations.
- Zig Ziglar
I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.
- Dale Carnegie
the best possible way to prepare for tomorrow is to concentrate with all your intelligence, all your enthusiasm, on doing today’s work superbly today. That is the only possible way you can prepare for the future.
- Dale Carnegie
It’s not how far you fall. But how high you bounce that counts.
- Zig Ziglar
But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities. Startups face an especially high risk of this since job roles are fluid at the early stages. Eliminating competition makes it easier for everyone to build the kinds of long-term relationships that transcend mere professionalism. More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
So the challenge, as you contemplate your next opportunity to be boring or remarkable, is to answer these two questions: (1) “If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impact? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat, or lose important friendships?” If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you’ll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off. And then, once you’ve compared the bad feeling and the benefits, and you’ve sold yourself on taking the remarkable path, answer this one: (2) How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
There are 309 million people out there that are trying to improve their lot in life. And we’ve got a system that allows them to do it.
- Warren Buffett
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
When you cease to dream you cease to live.
- Malcolm Forbes
You need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?
- Ben Horowitz
I would like to be remembered, if I am remembered at all, as being a catalyst for change in the world, change for good.
- Rupert Murdoch
You know the funny thing, I don’t get along with rich people. I get along with the middle class and the poor people better than I get along with the rich people.
- Donald Trump
Journalists should think of themselves as outside the Establishment, and owners can’t be too worried about what they’re told at their country clubs.
- Rupert Murdoch
At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I was so mad I ran a personal record.
- Phil Knight
As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.
- Elon Musk
When you look at a company that’s already succeeded or is at the very top of its game, it isn’t necessarily when it’s executing well. It tends to be peacetime – you’ve defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple.
- Ben Horowitz
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
Ebooks had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
The Group is well positioned to meet the challenges ahead and will as ever continue to pursue higher growth.
- Cheng Yu-tung
OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me ‘Trey’ because I’m William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I’m also known.
- Bill Gates
Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.
- Elon Musk
Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.
- Michael Bloomberg
