No individual may have great power without availing himself of the Master Mind.
- Napoleon Hill
Notable Quotables
Buda dijo: El odio nunca es vencido por el odio sino por el amor, y un malentendido no termina nunca gracias una discusión sino gracias al tacto, la diplomacia, la conciliación, y un sincero deseo de apreciar el punto de vista de los demás.
- Dale Carnegie
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
- Winston Churchill
Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.
- Peter Drucker
We subpoenaed him for the SAP trial and he was on the lam. The HP board sent him to Bolivia to talk to customers. Then they sent him to Mongolia to talk to customers, just out of reach of the federal subpoenas … the board figured out [later]: we should have left Leo in Mongolia.
- Larry Ellison
Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.
- Ben Horowitz
I can’t afford to be indifferent to politics, but I don’t have personal ambitions.
- Vagit Alekperov
We’re seeing an explosion in new approaches, new models and new forms of interaction. This growth comes from change, insight and exploration, not obedience.
- Seth Godin
PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.
- Ben Horowitz
The worst that could happen wasn’t crashing and burning, it was accepting terminal boredom as a tolerable status quo.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
Worrying about the past or the future isn’t productive. When you start chastising yourself for past mistakes, or seeing disaster around every corner, stop and take a breath and ask yourself what you can do right now to succeed.
- Harvey Mackay
Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.
- Ben Horowitz
A record isn’t like a movie – you can get it together pretty fast.
- Steve Martin
My revenue was $4 million my first year in business, off of one $20 item.
- Sara Blakely
We are beginning to see the benefits of global consolidation.
- Lakshmi Mittal
A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.
- Elon Musk
Here in the West, people often don’t like listening to their leaders, even if they are right.
- Elon Musk
You can’t jump to vegan if you’re not. Some people are absolute. Some people are able to be gradual.
- Russell Simmons
Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.
- Michael Dell
No question about it, alot of my attitude towards money stems from growing up during a pretty hardscrabble time in our country’s history: the Great Depression.
- Sam Walton
If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.
- Joel Olsteen
Faith is about trusting God when you have unanswered questions.
- Joel Olsteen
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
When you have an understanding of how someone else lives, the less likely it is that you conflict with them.
- Jack Dorsey
The story drives the mission.
- Jim Cathcart
Tesla is becoming a real car company.
- Elon Musk
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them.
- Seth Godin
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
- William Arthur Ward
Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
- Steve Jobs
You may think there is a lot wrong with you, but there is also a lot right with you.
- Joel Olsteen
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 updated my grilling app, iGrill, today and it now has Facebook integration that lets you see what other people are grilling right now around the world. Awesome.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The possibilities of creative effort connected with the subconscious mind are stupendous and imponderable. They inspire one with awe.
- Napoleon Hill
Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.
- Napoleon Hill
The noblest art is that of making others happy.
- P.T. Barnum
I am wired like a CEO and care a great deal about the bottom line, but I care about my customers even more than that. That’s always been my competitive advantage.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.
- Richard Branson
You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.
- Joel Olsteen
As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.
- Reid Hoffman
I DECLARE it is not too late to accomplish everything God has placed in my heart. I have not missed my window of opportunity. God has moments of favor in my future. He is preparing me right now because He is about to release a special grace to help me accomplish that dream. This is my time. This is my moment. I receive it.
- Joel Olsteen
Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.
- Zig Ziglar
Strategy is a commodity, execution is an art.
- Peter Drucker
Bury your mistakes.
- Rupert Murdoch
If you’re using first-class land for biofuels, then you’re competing with the growing of food. And so you’re actually spiking food prices by moving energy production into agriculture.
- Bill Gates
Lack of Enthusiasm.
- Napoleon Hill
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
The first three-and-a-half months of calendar year 2001 have been extremely challenging for many of us in high-tech.
- John Chambers
I am very lucky that I have talented and creative people around me. Also, mediation has been a very big part of my freedom, because it allows me to watch all the things going on and allows me to focus.
- Russell Simmons
The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more things you’ll have to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
Our schools teach the opposite: institutionalized education traffics in a kind of homogenized, generic knowledge. Everybody who passes through the American school system learns not to think in power law terms. Every high school course period lasts 45 minutes whatever the subject. Every student proceeds at a similar pace. At college, model students obsessively hedge their futures by assembling a suite of exotic and minor skills. Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
The important thing about outsourcing or global sourcing is that it becomes a very powerful tool to leverage talent, improve productivity and reduce work cycles.
- Azim Premji
There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.
- Henry Ford
Despite the office rent in Hong Kong generally declining, the Group’s rental is resilient as the major rental properties owned by the Group are retail shopping properties situated in the new towns and mass transportation network.
- Lee Shau Kee
My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.
- Elon Musk
I don’t yell at people, I don’t mistreat people. I don’t talk down to people, so no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it.
- Oprah Winfrey
Polio’s pretty special because once you get an eradication, you no longer have to spend money on it; it’s just there as a gift for the rest of time.
- Bill Gates
You need to spend all of your time and energy on creating something that actually brings value to the people you’re asking for money!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
- Bill Gates
Cherish your visions and dreams as they are the children of your soul. The blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
- Napoleon Hill
You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
You have to get all agreements in writing.
- Jack Nadel
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.
- Gail Devers
Ideas… they have the power.
- Napoleon Hill
Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.
- Seth Godin
Well, it’s very clear that the Arab population is rising because they’d like to have a say in the running of their affairs, running of their government, and this is very legitimate.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I’m a genetic optimist.
- Jeff Bezos
As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.
- Peter Thiel
Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy.
- Seth Godin
As a group, we believe that education is extremely important for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. We spend heavily for the educations of our offspring.
- Thomas J Stanley
Whatever your income, always live below your means.
- Thomas J Stanley
I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.
- Bill Gates
The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.
- Bill Gates
For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn boat.
- Tony Hsieh
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.
- Dale Carnegie
Start where you are, with what you have. Make something of it and never be satisfied.
- George Washington Carver
People are more likely to accept an order if they have had a part in the decision that caused the order to be issued.
- Dale Carnegie
In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.
- Winston Churchill
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
If you don’t plan your time, someone else will help you waste it.
- Zig Ziglar
It is well documented that I am a lifelong football fan. My love of the British game started with the 1966 World Cup.
- Alisher Usmanov
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’
- Henry Ford
There are really two things that have to occur in order for a new technology to be affordable to the mass market. One is you need economies of scale. The other is you need to iterate on the design. You need to go through a few versions.
- Elon Musk
In taking Dell private, we plan to go back to our roots, focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dell one of the fastest-growing and most successful companies in history.
- Michael Dell
What’s amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It’s so far away in time that they can’t appreciate what it means for their whole life.
- Bill Gates
You can’t spend as much money as I have, even if you try. I’ve been trying.
- Larry Ellison
In a position to be more accommodating. There are some lights at the end of the tunnel. If political leaders in Europe can put things in order, things will be better. These days, much relies on politics.
- Lee Shau Kee
Cherish each hour of this day for it can never return.
- Og Mandino
Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.
- Warren Buffett
Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it, and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
I think the advantage of democracy is that it makes us less dependent on a group of leaders.
- Azim Premji
Often, out of our greatest rejection comes our greatest direction.
- Joel Olsteen
Never surrender opportunity for security.
- Branch Rickey
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 lesson is that, No. 1, this management has to be at the highest class possible. No. 2, they have to have a succession plan.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.
- Ben Horowitz
IN A NUTSHELL FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.
- Dale Carnegie
