In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money.
- P.T. Barnum
Notable Quotables
A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest… Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.
- Jack Welch
Wanda and Reliance are two of the largest private conglomerates in their respective countries. By joining our strengths together, we hope our cooperation will bring mutual benefits and great results.
- Wang Jianlin
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
Customers today are strongly value oriented. But just what does that mean? Customers tell us that value means the results they receive in relation to the total costs (both the price and other costs to customers incurred in acquiring the service).
- Gary W. Lo
Infrastructure web services had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.
- Ray Dalio
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
I love doing a lot of things I’m told I can’t do. I think that’s what drives me and keeps me awake every day.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
To add value to others, one must first value others.
- John C. Maxwell
I was about twenty and the Beatles were meditating and I heard about it and they had a center in New York and I came to the center and I learned about it.
- Ray Dalio
It’s not Pinterest where people are putting up pins. You’re changing the way cities work, and that’s fundamentally a third rail. We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an as—hole named Taxi.
- Travis Kalanick
Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.
- Tadashi Yanai
My mother taught me something at a young age – she said ‘you are the company you keep’. To define yourself by some label or some level of resources – that’s pretty shallow.
- Howard Schultz
In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.
- Mark Zuckerberg
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
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.
- Andrew Carnegie
Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping – they called it opportunity.
- Bill Gates
The next season starts right now.
- Tom Izzo
Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’m truly passionate about basketball. I’m not as passionate about baseball as I am about basketball, but I watch baseball and I watch football. I love sports in general.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
- Winston Churchill
Who most benefits from keeping marijuana illegal? The greatest beneficiaries are the major criminal organizations in Mexico and elsewhere that earn billions of dollars annually from this illicit trade – and who would rapidly lose their competitive advantage if marijuana were a legal commodity.
- George Soros
I seldom read anything that is not of a factual nature because I want to invest my time wisely in the things that will improve my life. Don’t misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with reading purely for the joy of it. Novels have their place, but biographies of famous men and women contain information that can change lives.
- Zig Ziglar
Now that we had a name, we had to have a trademark for the side of the shoe. It was 1971, and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million, so I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State, and there was a woman there saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get enough money for the dress for this prom,’ And I said, ‘I have a job for you.’ I paid her $2 an hour, and she spent 17 and a half hours. So $35 and she came up with what is now the swoosh.
- Phil Knight
Sam phoned to tell me he was going to start a wholesale club. It was no surprise. He is notorious for looking at what everybody else does, taking the best of it, and then making it better.
- Sol Price
Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.”
- Ben Horowitz
The Overseas Chinese habit is to save a lot and make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
With the intensity of the first three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, fans have been treated to exciting finishes each race. Fans can expect nothing less than the same for the John Deere 200.
- Ed Clark
I believe God gives you the grace to do what you need to do.
- Joel Olsteen
Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.
- Zig Ziglar
I’ll trade glib for common sense any day.
- Stephen Wynn
We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective.
- Peter Thiel
The courage take tough yes-or-no decisions. Look, the world is filled with gray. Anyone can look at an issue from every different angle. Some smart people can –and will-analyze those angles indefinitely. But effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.
- Jack Welch
Every morning when I wake up, I make up my mind to solve as many problems before returning home.
- Aliko Dangote
They must be plans for learning rather than plans for implementation.
- Clayton M. Christensen
I had a terrible time hiring rich people. It sounds funny, but the problem is when things go wrong they can ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You don’t ever want anybody asking that question. You want them to say, ‘I know why I’m doing it, I need the money, let’s go’ or whatever it is that draws them.
- Ben Horowitz
He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.
- Ray Dalio
Excellence isn’t achieved without inspiration and perspiration. You’ve got to have both.
- George Foreman
The idea is to have relationships where you make money and the other guy makes money, too. That’s how a business keeps its team together.
- Russell Simmons
I love building technology, I love programming. I love building teams. And I also love building beautiful things.
- Jack Dorsey
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.
- Seth Godin
Life’s too short” is repeated often enough to be a cliche, but this time it’s true. You don’t have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre. It’s not just pointless, it’s painful. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.
- Seth Godin
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.
- Warren Buffett
There’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives.
- Tony Dungy
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them…let them be your friends.
- Winston Churchill
As a businessperson, I don’t have the power to change the government. That is in the hands of the political leaders. However, as a taxpayer, we have the right to be critical of the government and demand change.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’m in two modes when I’m on Lanai: In engineering mode, I’m trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I’m in decompression mode. I’m on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins.
- Larry Ellison
I’ve always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize.
- Jeff Bezos
m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.
- Elon Musk
If someone’s criticism is completely unfounded on data, then I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.”
- Timothy Ferriss
The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.
- Dale Carnegie
All of us profit from being corrected – if we’re corrected in a positive way.
- Sam Walton
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
- Winston Churchill
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
- James C. Collins
Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.
- Zig Ziglar
We are still masters of our fate.We are still captains of our souls.
- Winston Churchill
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people,” said Schwab, the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors.
- Dale Carnegie
Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.
- Michael Levine
In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.
- Reed Hastings
Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.
- Wayne Gretzky
Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.
- Bill Gates
I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.
- Thomas Edison
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …
- Dale Carnegie
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
Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
- Jeff Bezos
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
- Napoleon Hill
We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.
- Ray Kroc
Starting a company is a very tough thing. There’s a friend of mine, Bill Lee, whose phrase is ‘starting a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass.’ So you should certainly expect that it’s going to be very hard. It’s going to be harder than getting a job somewhere by a pretty good margin and the odds of you losing the money that you invested or your friends invested is pretty high. I mean, those are just the basic facts. So if you don’t mind things being really hard and high risk, then starting a company is a good idea. Otherwise, it’s probably unwise. It will certainly stress you out. So I think you have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.
- Elon Musk
The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I’m wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.
- Ray Dalio
The first is the result of a decision to act—to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold. The second is the result of a decision of sloth—to not do something—wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences.
- Timothy Ferriss
If plan A” fails — remember you have 25 letters left.
- Chris Guillebeau
Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.
- Guy Kawasaki
If you don’t love what you’re doing with unbridled passion and enthusiasm, you’re not going to succeed when you hit obstacles.
- Howard Schultz
Never forget that people are your greatest asset.
- John Maxwell
Aim for the highest.
- Andrew Carnegie
On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.
- Joel Olsteen
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
You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:
- Peter Thiel
Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today.
- Peter Thiel
In the next two to three years there will probably be only three to five players in this area. The chances to gain or lose market share are exciting.
- John Chambers
With tech companies, whoever’s the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, ‘Is this the end of them?’ And – there’s more – more times people think that’s the case than it really is the case.
- Bill Gates
Teaching’s hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.
- Bill Gates
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
- Arnold Glasow
Leaders lead when they take positions, when they connect with their tribes, and when they help the tribe connect to itself.
- Seth Godin
We remain confident about the market opportunity ahead of us over the next three to five years.
- John Chambers
Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect.
- Ben Horowitz
Hong Kong has gone through many ups and downs in the past. Unavoidably, one needs to go through the lowest point before reaching the peak again.
- Cheng Yu-tung
While 9:00 to 5:00 and what happens in the job is important… what happens from 5:00 – 9:00 while you’re off the job is INFINITELY more important.
- Zig Ziglar
If you pay people peanuts, you will get monkeys.
- Andy Pearson
Don’t simply settle for what your parents had. You can go further than that. You can do more, have more, be more.
- Joel Olsteen
I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.
- Bill Gates
The typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.
- Michael Gerber
Great companies are built on great products.
- Elon Musk
Don’t be impatient. It’s not over until God says it’s over.
- Joel Olsteen
We don’t know exactly how it will work. Advertisers want greater access, better accountability.
- Sergey Brin
If you want to earn more, learn more.
- Zig Ziglar
I made a conscious decision not to tell anyone in my life. Now I tell people–don’t tell anyone your idea until you have invested enough of yourself in it that you are not going to turn back. When a person has an idea at that conception moment, it is the most vulnerable–one negative comment could knock you off course.
- Sara Blakely
