Notable Quotables

I’m an HBO subscriber, and I watch a bunch of great shows on HBO.

- Reed Hastings

Of course people are getting smarter nowadays, they are letting lawyers instead of their conscience be their guides.

- Will Rogers

If you are against yourself, you will never reach your highest potential. And when you criticize yourself, you’re criticizing God.

- Joel Olsteen

The social network is the paradigm of the modern service application.

- Larry Ellison

This could easily end up one of the driest winters ever, unless things switch around.

- Ed Clark

Business in Russia was not being done like in the West, with contracts. In Russia, hundreds of millions of dollars were going forward and backward by word of mouth.

- David Reuben

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

- Steve Jobs

Being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.

- Peter Thiel

The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time. When there’s no ball, there’s no game. Bullies hate that. So they’ll either behave so they can play with you or they’ll go bully someone else.

- Seth Godin

I am upset with the effect that both of these issues have had on the public,

- Michael Gerber

A true entrepreneur is someone who seeks to profitably solve a problem that the world has in exchange for enough monetary compensation to achieve their dreams.

- Clay Clark

The United States is definitely ahead in culture of innovation. If someone wants to accomplish great things, there is no better place than the U.S.

- Elon Musk

For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.

- Bill Gates

I’m a bit of a P. T. Barnum. I make stars out of everyone.

- Donald Trump

Most people have ‘one way’ brains—they acquire information and do nothing. Guerillas have ‘two way’ brains—they obtain relevant information and act on it.

- Jay Conrad Levinson

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

- Dale Carnegie

Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.

- Ben Horowitz

There is no sure path to success, but the surest path to failure is trying to please everyone.

- Timothy Ferriss

That’s the true spirit of Christmas, people being helped by people other than me.

- Jerry Seinfeld

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

If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.

- Joel Olsteen

There’s a time that may come in an organization where leading by influence is not enough. When things are not going the way they need to go, there’s a time when one has to step up… to set the organization back on the right direction.

- Abigail Johnson

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

- P.T. Barnum

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

- Winston Churchill

I come back to the same thing: We’ve got the greatest pipeline in the company’s history in the next 12 months, and we’ve had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we’re predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year ’06.

- Steve Ballmer

And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

- Romans 8:28

Two things about Sam Walton distinguish him from almost everyone else I know. First he gets up everyday bound and determined to improve something. Second, he is less afraid of being wrong than anyone I’ve ever know. And once he sees he’s wrong, he just shakes it off and heads in another direction. (qualities of great leaders)

- David Glass

If you can identify a delusional popular belief, you can find what lies hidden behind it: the contrarian truth.

- Peter Thiel

of preparing for defeat, prepare for victory. Prepare for increase. Prepare for God’s favor. You have to set the tone at the start of each day.

- Joel Olsteen

I wouldn’t ever say if you’re having tough times then there must be something wrong with you or your attitude. Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith. I encourage people to stay up, stay hopeful, stay faith-filled.

- Joel Olsteen

My big focus is China and OPEC and all of these countries that are just absolutely destroying the United States.

- Donald Trump

Drucker said: ‘If you weren’t already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?’ … Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.

- Jack Welch

You’re not better than anybody else, but you’re not less than anybody else. You’re a child of the Most High God.

- Joel Olsteen

You can’t fault government for seizing that opportunity. But it has an impact on Barbados’ current account deficit and it does bring with it attended risks. And, therefore, you have to ask whether or not the tourism business that is going to be generated from the publicity around the cricket matches will be sustained after the cricket matches are over.

- John Chambers

Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

- Dale Carnegie

In general, the apparel industry isn’t about continual process improvement or making the perfect piece of denim; it’s about chasing trends.

- Tadashi Yanai

Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s OK for China to invent cancer drugs that cure patients in the United States. We want them to catch up. But as the leader, we want to keep setting a very, very high standard. We don’t want them to catch up because we’re slowing down or, even worse, going into reverse.

- Bill Gates

I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

- Seth Godin

Six out of 10 Americans believe the American dream is dead according to a recent poll.

- CBSNews.com

Maybe you once were excited about that person God supernaturally brought into your life as a marriage partner, but now all the excitement has worn off. Don’t’ allow that sense of a miracle to slip away. Don’t get so familiar with each other that you take one another for granted.

- Joel Olsteen

We think a modern cloud lets you decide when you want to upgrade. We don’t decide for you.

- Larry Ellison

most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings.

- Timothy Ferriss

2006, I started ‘WineLibrary TV.’ To build ‘WineLibrary TV,’ I started using Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter in 2008.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.

- Dale Carnegie

If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

- Bill Gates

Because we publicists are hired guns, reported don’t often put much stock in our pleas and arguments, at least not a first. I was told by one entertainment reporter from a large metropolitan paper, Publicists don’t believe in what they are selling. They’re just paid pitchmen.

- Michael Levine

Mike suggested that we might want to turn our stockholders’ meetings into an event, and we went along with him.

- Sam Walton

Well I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

- Richard Branson

Let’s make it easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can.

- Jack Dorsey

When we launched the WineLibrary website in 1996, I didn’t even own a computer yet. I just understood that there was an opportunity here to market in a different way.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

- Jerry Seinfeld

It’s surreal to think that I own this beautiful island. It doesn’t feel like anyone can own Lanai. What it feels like to me is this really cool 21st-century engineering project, where I get to work with the people of Lanai to create a prosperous and sustainable Eden in the Pacific.

- Larry Ellison

As we said, even the best venture investors have a portfolio, but investors who understand the power law make as few investments as possible.

- Peter Thiel

The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.

- Bill Gates

Answer me this: would you work harder to earn $100 or avoid losing $100? The smiley optimist says the former, but if research from the Center for Experimental Social Science at New York University is any indication, fear of loss is the home-run winner. Experimental groups given $15 and then told the $15 would be rescinded if they lost a subsequent auction routinely overbid the most. Groups offered $15 if they won weren’t nearly as committed.

- Timothy Ferriss

Leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum.

- Peter Thiel

I think that the first thing is you should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don’t know what the future is going to hold.

- Ray Dalio

If you find yourself plagued by a recurrent worry, train yourself to think of something else. Your conscious mind can concentrate on only one thought at a time, and driving the negativity away will free you up to move forward again.

- Harvey Mackay

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

- Bill Gates

Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war. Stir up the mighty men. Let all the warriors draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong.

- Joel 3:9

I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.

- Sara Blakely

When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky – poor parents! – I would be home before it got dark.

- Larry Ellison

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 old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I built a steel plant from the grassroots, so I learned all the nuts and bolts. When there was a problem, I would be able to guide them, though I am not a technical person.

- Lakshmi Mittal

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

- Warren Buffett

A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing.

- Phil Knight

m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.

- Elon Musk

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.

- Seth Godin

Maybe you’ve invested a lot of time, effort, money, emotion, and energy in a relationship; you did your best to make it work out. But for some reason, things got off course. And now you feel as though you have been robbed. When we focus on or disappointments, we stop God from ringing fresh new blessing into our lives.

- Joel Olsteen

There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human, are created, strengthened and maintained.

- Winston Churchill

A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.

- John Shedd

This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.

- Peter Thiel

In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.

- Lee Shau Kee

The record results for the third quarter once again demonstrate the ability of GE’s diverse mix of leading global businesses to deliver top-line growth, increased margins and strong cash generation.

- Jack Welch

There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track… We and the consumer were one and the same.

- Phil Knight

The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.

- Peter Drucker

The real estate market in mainland China, however, experienced a dramatic change during the past year. In the second half of 2007, transacted prices in many cities had been repeatedly bid up to all time highs as a result of fierce competition at land auctions. The subsequent upsurge in housing prices, which were beyond the affordability of the general public, resulted in an overheated property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

Pull in your belt, spend less, and reduce debt.

- Ray Dalio

Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking all day from one laboratory table to another. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.

- Thomas Edison

I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don’t like beautiful things. But I don’t like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.

- Vladimir Potanin

The most stable companies have strong leaders at every level of the organization. The only way to develop such widespread leadership is to make developing leaders a part of your culture. That is a strong part of Coca-Cola’s legacy.

- John Maxwell

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