It certainly wasn’t where we were planning to be.
- Simon Wolfson
Notable Quotables
Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.
- Harvey Mackay
Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.
- Bill Gates
Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individuals and businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators.
- Peter Thiel
Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle and a victory.
- Mahatma Gandhi
The reason that I have Global Grind is to communicate ideas to people who might otherwise not be listening.
- Russell Simmons
This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.
- Winston Churchill
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.
- Larry Ellison
MySpace is like a bar, Facebook is like the BBQ you have in your back yard with friends and family, play games, share pictures. Facebook is much better for sharing than MySpace. LinkedIn is the office, how you stay up to date, solve professional problems.
- Reid Hoffman
This is not a book for the wild-haired crazies your company keeps in a corner. It is a book for you, your boss, and your employees, because the best future available to us is a future where you contriubute your true self and your best work. Are you up for that?
- Seth Godin
This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing.
- Bill Gates
It’s not what you’ve got. It’s what you use that makes a difference.
- Zig Ziglar
My dad is like a cactus – introverted and tough. I’m a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He’s my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Okay, let’s talk about cartoon labels for half a second – some people think anything with a dog or a car or a colorful alien is garbage, which is not true. Look at Big Moose Red. It’s, like, a $6 wine with a cheesy label, and it’s actually a solid wine.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Every company must deal decisively with people who don’t perform satisfactorily….Great people, not great strategies are what made it all work (GE).
- Jack Welch
She said, ‘My family is OK, John, but we lost everything.
- John Chambers
He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.
- David Novak
and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand”
- Dale Carnegie
We sold ‘Seinfeld’ all over the world but it was a very specific kind of show. In some countries it went down really well, in others they hated it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
It’s better to have a hundred people that love you, than a million people that sort of like you.
- Paul Graham
Faith doesn’t always instantly deliver you, but it always carries you through.
- Joel Olsteen
Establish good internal controls over the handling of cash. The people who record the cash receipts on the bank deposits must be different from those who post it to the accounts receivable and general ledger.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Luck Follows Persistence.
- Jim Collins
I didn’t like the way it looked in white trousers, and I couldn’t find anything to work underneath them.
- Sara Blakely
My politics are: I’m a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I’m pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It’s good for everybody; it’s not red or blue.
- Travis Kalanick
By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: ‘John, I’d love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I’ve got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said ‘no’ yesterday. Gotta run!
- Timothy Ferriss
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
I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in ‘American History X,’ yes. I remember coming home from school and asking my mum if I could get an eye transplant, and of course she declined.
- Timothy Ferriss
Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.
- Jack Welch
I like money, but it’s never been about the money.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Don’t be so nervous. It’s not a big deal.
- Lee Shau Kee
Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
- Henry Ford
There is more treasure in books then in all pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.
- Walt Disney
We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison
I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.
- Steve Wozniak
My whole life had been designing computers I could never build.
- Steve Wozniak
A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.
- Seth Godin
No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
- Peter Drucker
Yes, I think it’s okay to abandon the big, established, stuck tribe. It’s okay to say to them, “You’re not going where I need to go, and there’s no way I’m going to persuade all of you to follow me. So rather than standing here watching the opportunities fade away, I’m heading off. I’m betting some of you, the best of you, will follow me.
- Seth Godin
There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it’s hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you’ll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero.
- Peter Thiel
I can be stressed, or tired, and I can go into a meditation and it all just flows off of me. I’ll come out of it refreshed and centered and that’s how I’ll feel and it’ll carry through the day.
- Ray Dalio
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
- Steve Martin
Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education.
- Bill Gates
Back in high school, I really wanted to be a diesel mechanic. I was building pools and it was still working with my hands. I was installing the (reinforcement) bars, shaping the pools and then they’d bring the cement in. It was great. . . . Then I had my accident.
- Ed Clark
Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.
- P.T. Barnum
A well spent day brings happy sleep.
- Leonardo da Vinci
Excepting for reading my numbers on Saturday morning and going to our regular meetings, I don’t have much of a routine for anything else. I always carry my little tape recorder on trips, to record ideas that come up in my conversations with the associates. I usually have my yellow legal pad with me, with a list of ten or fifteen things we need to be working on as a company. My list drives the executives around here crazy, but it’s probably one of my more important contributions.
- Sam Walton
Pick the best people, face the reality (the way it is), speak with candor to everything, never lose sight of the relationship with the constituency.
- Jack Welch
About one in five of us is retired. About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed peoplemake up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires.
- Thomas J Stanley
Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you, you will be neither successful nor happy.
- Napoleon Hill
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
I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.
- Russell Simmons
My vision is for a fully reusable rocket transport system between Earth and Mars that is able to re-fuel on Mars – this is very important – so you don’t have to carry the return fuel when you go there.
- Elon Musk
I never took classic business classes in college, so I don’t have the background that any of the people running large companies have.
- Howard Schultz
I don’t believe in saturation. We’re thinking and talking worldwide.
- Ray Kroc
Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
- Michael Gerber
Trees will improve property values, take pollutants out of the air, help with water runoff.
- Michael Bloomberg
People are using Windows PCs more than they watch TV now.
- Bill Gates
If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.
- Seth Godin
Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.
- Zig Ziglar
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
Starbucks has a role and a meaningful relationship with people that is not only about the coffee.
- Howard Schultz
Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?
- Winston Churchill
As a general thing, I have not ‘duped the world’ nor attempted to do so… I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told.
- P.T. Barnum
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
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
- Albert Schweitzer
Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalues people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented.
- Jack Welch
You must not ever think that anything is common sense.
- Clay Clark
While the uncertainties that the economic climate holds are a challenge for all companies, we are confident that by drawing from the strengths of our people, as well as on our core values of quality, initiative, trust and creativity, we will maintain our focus and strategic direction.
- Cheng Yu-tung
A waitress goes up to Winston Churchill and says, ‘Sir, your drunk.’ To which he replies, ‘I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
In early 2009, the property market was still being driven by pessimistic sentiment and a wait-and-see attitude, leading to a further drop in the transaction volume.
- Lee Shau Kee
And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.
- Winston Churchill
There are many different kinds of PCs. You have fixed, virtual, tablets, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops, workstations. What you find in commercial PCs, business PCs, is that there’s a really long tail of usage on client devices.
- Michael Dell
Fear is the Fatal killer of Desire.
- Zig Ziglar
Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.
- James C. Collins
Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.
- Winston Churchill
It’s not always easy to get over some of those bumps in the road, those disillusionments and disappointments. It’s going to take a strong will. Sometimes, it may take courage. Sometimes nothing but faith in God and say, I refuse to be trapped in the past. I’m not going to let the past destroy my future. I’m pressing on. I’m straining forward, knowing that God has great things in store for me.
- Joel Olsteen
You build trust with others each time you choose integrity over image, truth over convenience, or honor over personal gain.
- John C. Maxwell
Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want that on my business card.
- Bill Gates
Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.
- Bill Gates
Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’
- Peter Drucker
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as compensation.
- Soren Kierkegaard
The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.
- Peter Thiel
At the end, the acquisition of wealth is ignoble in the extreme. I assume that you save and long for wealth only as a means of enabling you the better to do some good in your day and generation.
- Andrew Carnegie
Every well built house started in the form of a definite purpose plus a definite plan in the nature of a set of blueprints.
- Napoleon Hill
I produced Run DMC. I produced some early records, lots of records early on.
- Russell Simmons
I’d be happy to provide advice if anybody asked me no matter who the President is.
- Michael Bloomberg
The alternative to tourism The linchpin, the engaged one, the graceful actor in an unfolding play—these people don’t seek to only inspect. They’re not traveling in order to tick a checkbox. Instead, they open themselves to the world they bought a ticket to, knowing full well that they will be changed.
- Seth Godin
When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.
- Joel Olsteen
The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
- Napoleon Hill
Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities… because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
- Winston Churchill
This could easily end up one of the driest winters ever, unless things switch around.
- Ed Clark
One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.
- Winston Churchill
Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.
- Dale Carnegie
I like to play cards. I’m not very good, because I don’t want to calculate, I just play by instinct. But I’ve learned a lot of business philosophy by playing poker.
- Jack Ma
