Notable Quotables

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

- Reed Hastings

It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.

- Reed Hastings

If you are a prospective entrepreneur with the desire to start and build a visionary company but have not yet taken the plunge because you don’t have a great idea,” we encourage you to lift from your shoulders the burden of the great-idea myth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it might be better to not obsess on finding a great idea before launching a company. Why? Because the great-idea approach shifts your attention away from seeing the company as your ultimate creation.

- James C. Collins

Not every Apple product makes a big enough difference to me to get instantly, although many do.

- Steve Wozniak

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

- Dale Carnegie

It’s all a risk. Always. That’s not true, actually. The only exception: it’s a certainty that there’s risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That’s because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing.

- Seth Godin

If Warren Buffett made his money from ordinary income rather than capital gains, his tax rate would be a lot higher than his secretary’s. In fact a very small percentage of people in this country pay a big chunk of the taxes.

- Michael Bloomberg

The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the Struggle. The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The Struggle is unhappiness. The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse. The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy. The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. The Struggle is where your guts boil so much that you feel like you are going to spit blood. The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak. Most people are not strong enough. Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through the Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is the Struggle. The Struggle is where greatness comes from.

- Ben Horowitz

Winners Evaluate Themselves In A Positive Manner And Look For Their Strengths As They Work To Overcome Weaknesses.

- Zig Ziglar

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

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

- Elon Musk

Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.

- Winston Churchill

Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible.

- Donald Trump

I have no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.

- Walt Disney

We gradually came to the realization that we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese people.

- Sergey Brin

Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.

- Peter Thiel

Pain, suffering, death I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain.

- Yoda

Play like you’re ten points behind in the final quarter. I’ve always heard this defined as operational cadence – creating a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of doing business that drives the relentless pursuit of results. Whatever I’ve learned about creating a sense of urgency started when I worked for Howard Davis at Tracy Locke. He really knew how to push people. Everything had to be done yesterday. And I was one of the people who go pushed. Howard was a master of intimidation. Everyone knew if you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to find another way to get it, and if your weren’t part of the solution then you were part of the problem. The clients loved Howard because they knew he’d kill for them (and none of us wanted to be killed). It wasn’t always comfortable, but it taught me the value of constantly putting pressure on myself and the people who work for me. In corporate America, pressure is a way of life, so rather that resist it or merely accept it, you have to learn to use it as a personal motivator.

- David Novak

Foreign politicians don’t have resources – or limited resources. It’s useless dealing with them.

- Wang Jianlin

I’m constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don’t train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.

- Zig Ziglar

Well we know that people in Austrailia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it’s fun to be able to deliver it.

- Richard Branson

KNOWLEDGE will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical PLANS OF ACTION, to the DEFINITE END of ac- cumulation of money. Lack of understanding of this fact has been the source of confusion to millions of people who falsely believe that knowledge is power. It is nothing of the sort! Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

- Napoleon Hill

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

- CBSNews.com

A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.

- Bill Gates

Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence. A good product manager is the CEO of the product. Good product managers take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product.

- Ben Horowitz

Like biological evolution, ‘survival of the fittest’ during the course of reformation is to adapt to changes in the surrounding environment and make changes accordingly.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble.

- Peter Thiel

What you need to keep most in the U.S. is the entrepreneurial spirit.

- Alexei Mordashov

I am also one of those persons who were transformed, who grew out of the Soviet system and transformed myself into the new Russia.

- Vagit Alekperov

Thoughts mixed with definiteness of purpose, persistence, and a burning desire are powerful things.

- Napoleon Hill

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

- Bill Gates

If we can get you a car in five minutes, we can get you anything in five minutes.

- Travis Kalanick

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.

- Steve Ballmer

If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.

- Dave Ramsey

The challenge with being an initiator of projects is that you are never, ever done.

- Seth Godin

If you get something right, you really feel it, right in your chest, on stage. I think it’s an incomparable experience.

- Jerry Seinfeld

If all we do with these tools is teach compliance and consumption, that’s all we’re going to get. School can and must do more than train the factory workers of tomorrow.

- Seth Godin

I spent a disproportionate amount of my time in a car in L.A. I’m 35 years old. If you add up the hours spent in cars, it would be years.

- Travis Kalanick

One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that good ones slip through.

- Seth Godin

How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?

- Seth Godin

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

- Warren Buffett

For any business to grow, individuals must be accountable for each of the systems, and a general overall director must be in charge of making sure all the systems operate at the highest capacity.

- Robert Kiyosaki

E – Edge, ability to make tough yes and no decisions

- Jack Welch

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

- Andrew Carnegie

The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

- Joel Olsteen

It is not so much that I am a blue-blooded oligarch: I just don’t feel like an oligarch.

- Vladimir Potanin

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly–until you can learn to do it well.

- Zig Ziglar

Sometimes you do have to fight. Where that’s true, you should fight and win. There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.

- Peter Thiel

When you import goods, you import poverty and you export jobs to other parts of the globe where such goods are produced.

- Aliko Dangote

By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.

- Timothy Ferriss

I think the currency of leadership is transparency. You’ve got to be truthful. I don’t think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where you’ve got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who you are, and not be afraid of it.

- Howard Schultz

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I believe great people to be those who know how they got where they are, and what they need to do to get where they’re going. Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. Their lives are spent living out the vision they have of their future, in the present. They compare what they’ve done with what they intended to do. And where there’s a disparity between the two, they don’t wait very long to make up the difference.

- Michael Gerber

The most expensive piece of real estate is the six inches between your right and left ear. It’s what you create in that area that determines your wealth. We are only really limited by our mind.

- Dr. Dolf de Roos

I DECLARE God’s dream for my life is coming to pass. It will not be stopped by people, disappointments, or adversities. God has solutions to every problem I will ever face already lined up. The right people and the right breaks are in my future. I will fulfill my destiny. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

Esta es la clave: las únicas promesas que se avivarán en su vida y terminarán convirtiéndose en realidad son las promesas en las que usted se levanta y dice: Sí, eso es para mí”. Tiene que entrar en acuerdo con Dios y permitir que eso eche raíz.

- Joel Olsteen

Real entrepreneurs have what I call the three Ps (and, trust me, none of them stands for ‘permission’). Real entrepreneurs have a ‘passion’ for what they’re doing, a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved, and a ‘purpose’ that drives them forward.

- Michael Dell

Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.

- Peter Thiel

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

- Bill Gates

I am an expert in Higher Level Math. You + God= Enough

- Zig Ziglar

I think when smallpox was eliminated, the whole world got pretty excited about that because it’s just such a dramatic success.

- Bill Gates

I think there is probably no better person to aspire to emulate than Steve Jobs and what he has done at Apple in terms of his leadership, his innovation, not settling for mediocrity.

- Howard Schultz

The three Rs in educationare reading, writing and arithmetic. Without these basic skills, learning becomes almost impossible. In a similar way, business starts with a relationship. You are then judged by the results. Rewards spring from the results.

- Jack Nadel

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.

- P.T. Barnum

In some parts of life, like mathematics and science, yeah, I was a genius. I would top all the top scores you could ever measure it by.

- Steve Wozniak

If it’s not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that’s when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you.

- Joel Olsteen

The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.

- Steve Martin

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

- Thomas Edison

I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.

- Seth Godin

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

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Save someone’s face once and your influence with him rises. Save his face every time you can, and there is practically nothing he won’t do for you.

- Dale Carnegie

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.

- Andrew Carnegie

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.

- Ben Horowitz

When you focus on being a blessing, God makes sure that you are always blessed in abundance.

- Joel Olsteen

You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.

- Zig Ziglar

Politicians make decisions in favor of their interest groups or their supporters back in their hometowns.

- Tadashi Yanai

Become meaningful in your interactions and the path to success in any endeavor is simpler and far more sustainable.

- Dale Carnegie

One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

- Dale Carnegie

Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous.

- Peter Thiel

Christopher Colombus’ big mistake was that he was looking for a trade route to China, and accidentally bumped into America, the richest, most powerful country in the world.

- Robert Kiyosaki

What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question, and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at the very least handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open as they will. Read on from the first sentence that turns the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

- Winston Churchill

Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power.

- Joel Olsteen

Personally, I’d like to see more of our leaders take a technocratic approach to solving our biggest problems.

- Bill Gates

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

- Dale Carnegie

The choice to have a great attitude is something that nobody or no circumstance can take from you.

- Zig Ziglar

I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention…. Its their ‘ideas’ that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as ‘more of a sponge than an inventor….’

- Thomas Edison

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

- Winston Churchill

Show a real interest in his problem and helping him solve it.

- Jack Nadel

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author’s world.

- Jeff Bezos

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