As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in.
- Howard Schultz
Notable Quotables
I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.
- Bill Gates
If there is a Swedish style, I cannot identify it.
- Stefan Persson
The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.
- P.T. Barnum
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.
- Thomas Edison
It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.
- Napoleon Hill
I am a man who has always needed heros.
- Phil Knight
We saw that a thousand results weren’t necessarily as useful as 10 good ones.
- Sergey Brin
Start where you are, with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied.
- George Washington Carver
Concentration is my motto – first honesty, then industry, then concentration.
- Andrew Carnegie
I think our leadership team is a highly accountable leadership team.
- Steve Ballmer
Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
- Bill Gates
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.
- Bill Gates
Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.
- Jack Ma
I believe social responsibility begins with a strong, competitive company. Only a healthy enterprise can improve and enrich the lives of people and their communities.
- Jack Welch
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, and do more and become more, you are a leader.
- John Quincy Adams
I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that’s in my head.
- Steve Martin
Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
- Winston Churchill
The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants.
- Michael Dell
You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.
- Andrew Carnegie
Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.
- P.T. Barnum
Philanthropy should be voluntary.
- Bill Gates
Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day.
- Joel Olsteen
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.
- Dale Carnegie
A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance. This will give her a chance to cancel the meeting if nothing is pressing.
- Ben Horowitz
China is certainly an important player in the global economy, and a widespread AIDS epidemic would threaten that growth.
- Bill Gates
If you say you can or you can’t you are right either way
- Henry Ford
I look at Facebook as being more conscientious about operator concerns, we are not 100 percent there, but we are finding consensus.
- Jon Fredrik Baksaas
Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.
- Peter Thiel
A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between right and wrong. It is at best a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong”—but much more often a choice between two courses of action neither of which is provably more nearly right than the other.
- Peter Drucker
Nothing tells in the long run like a good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the stock exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.
- Andrew Carnegie
We’re running the company to serve more people.
- Mark Zuckerberg
What I mean is that none of my talents had a – what’s that great word – rubric. A singer, an actor, a dancer – there was nothing I could really say I was. The writing came much later. And, actually, thank God, because if I had said I’m a singer, I would really have just had one thing to do.
- Steve Martin
That’s the true spirit of Christmas, people being helped by people other than me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Success in the knowledge economy comes to those who know themselves – their strengths, their values, and how they best perform.
- Peter Drucker
You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.
- Winston Churchill
I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident…. Almost none of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.
- Thomas Edison
Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I’d put myself in the latter category. But I’d never call myself a normal designer of anything.
- Steve Wozniak
On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.
- Joel Olsteen
It is unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything because the thing you bought was incapable of doing what it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot . .
- Zig Ziglar
We just sort of factor all that information into the computer between the ears and come up with conclusions.
- Phil Knight
I once asked General Eisenhower’s son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. No,” he replied, Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
Business leaders cannot be bystanders.
- Howard Schultz
If you learn late, you pass it on to people so they can learn early. It’s a step process.
- Russell Simmons
So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.
- Winston Churchill
Whether you’re 9 or 90, stop trying to fix the things you’re bad at, and focus on the things you’re good at.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The Interros strategy toward various assets generally depends on the stage of their development and level of their maturity.
- Vladimir Potanin
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?
- John Wooden
There’s a belief that you’re supposed to be poor, and suffering, and show your humility. I just don’t see the Bible that way. I see that God came and Jesus died so that we might live an abundant life and be a blessing to others.
- Joel Olsteen
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
I care about our employees more than anybody in my company. I care about my kids, too, but that doesn’t mean I give them everything that they want.
- Charles Ergen
Use what you have to get what you want.
- Jack Nadel
The Internet is the easiest thing to get into. To be an Internet retailer, you just get that URL.
- Bill Gates
When I started the diamond business, no black person, period, was in it to do what we’re trying to do to change the industry. So I like to do things that I see clearly that are in my, you know, scope. And then, I had to figure how I get talented or smart business people around me to execute. That’s what I have to do.
- Russell Simmons
Once Microsoft lost its grip on developers, it became only a matter of time before it lost its monopoly on operating systems.
- Ben Horowitz
Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of his imagination
- Napoleon Hill
It’s not time,” “Take it easy,” “Wait and see,” “It’s someone else’s turn” – none of these stalls are appropriate for a leader in search of change. There’s a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late. The longer you wait to launch an innovation, the less your effort is worth.
- Seth Godin
His friends, drunk to the point of speaking in tongues, were asleep.
- Timothy Ferriss
God created every one of us to be successful. Before the foundation of the world, He laid out an exact plan for our lives. And in this plan He has moments of favor that will come across our path. These moments are not ordinary. They are destiny-altering moments.
- Joel Olsteen
Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.
- Rich Karlgaard
Be reactionary. React to what the market wants. And the market wants one-on-one real time engagement. Now that we have the tools to engage, I’m going to continue fighting for the end user.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
Freedom does not come automatically, it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound
- Rollo May
You’ve got to eat while you dream. You’ve got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.
- Jack Welch
The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
- Vince Lombardi
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
Eventually, all companies are replaced.
- Bill Gates
The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.
- Ray Dalio
Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets
- Steve Jobs
A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
- Peter Drucker
The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.
- Bill Gates
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
Give me a highly successful unionized industry.
- Jack Welch
The focus is on the future.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
I don’t want anybody to not recognize how appreciative I am of the volume of e-mails I get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
When I was a CEO, the books on management that I read weren’t very much help after the first few months on the job. They were all designed to give you directions on how not to screw up your company.
- Ben Horowitz
You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over.
- Richard Branson
It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.
- Thomas Edison
My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’
- Richard Branson
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A wise man is a confirmed optimist.
- Andrew Carnegie
Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.
- Seth Godin
Of course people are getting smarter nowadays, they are letting lawyers instead of their conscience be their guides.
- Will Rogers
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
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people 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. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.
- Charles M. Schwab
A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.
- Peter Thiel
The War was decided in the first twenty days of fighting, and all that happened afterwards consisted in battles which, however formidable and devastating, were but desperate and vain appeals against the decision of Fate.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t wait for the right answer and the golden path to present themselves.This is precisely why you’re stuck. Starting without seeing the end is difficult, so we often wait until we see the end, scanning relentlessly for the right way, the best way and the perfect way.The way to get unstuck is to start down the wrong path, right now.Step by step, page by page, interaction by interaction. As you start moving, you can’t help but improve, can’t help but incrementally find yourself getting back toward your north star.You might not end up with perfect, but it’s significantly more valuable than being stuck.Don’t just start. Continue. Ship. Repeat.
- Seth Godin
The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people – including my ex-wives.
- Ronald Perelman
We’re introducing separate rooms with double beds in all our planes so people can actually go with their partner and have a proper night’s sleep.
- Richard Branson
Planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out.
- Peter Thiel
When commercializing disruptive technologies, they found or developed new markets that valued the attributes of the disruptive products, rather than search for a technological breakthrough so that the disruptive product could compete as a sustaining technology in mainstream markets.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Specifically, the following things that cause no trouble when you are small become big challenges as you grow: Communication Common knowledge Decision making.
- Ben Horowitz
I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It’s seeing what other people don’t see And pursuing that vision.
- Howard Schultz
the key to not feeling rushed is remembering that lack of time is actually lack of priorities. Take time to stop and smell the roses, or—in this case—to count the pea pods.
- Timothy Ferriss
People are the key to success or extraordinary success.
- Azim Premji
I personally think that money can do very little. And this has been my experience all across.
- Mukesh Ambani
I’m not averse to making a lot of money. But where does that end? I hang out with people with hundreds of millions of dollars. Is that the standard by which I should measure myself? Where does that take you if you’re in my business? I think it takes you to pretty dark, corrupt places.
- Timothy Ferriss
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
- Seth Godin
