Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
I’m surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms.
- Steve Wozniak
Any time is a good time to start a company.
- Ron Conway
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
You either trust someone day one until they prove you wrong, or you say, ‘I don’t trust you until you show me I can trust you.’ I’m the latter.
- Charles Ergen
I’ve run into people in my life who were so dramatic; people who are so extreme and so frustrating to be around that you end up thinking about them and talking about them for literally years after your experience with them is over. I’ve had that happen to me, and I’ve seen it happen to other people. I find it fascinating.
- Steve Martin
There is no substitute for hard work.
- Thomas Edison
I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.
- Larry Ellison
I declare to you, from the bottom of my heart, that no Socialist system can be established without a political police…No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance.
- Winston Churchill
So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.
- Thomas Edison
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
- Bill Gates
My personal opinion is that I’m in the media too much. I’m not a politician, I’m a businessman. I would like to be without any extra visibility.
- Viktor Vekselberg
You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog.
- Carl Icahn
An economy is not a complicated thing, it just has a lot of moving parts.
- Ray Dalio
In the U.S. there are many people willing to work on $9 per hour, which is causing Tasmania to lose its famous apple industry and Australia to import more and more of its fruit and food from lower cost countries. In fact, all over Australia there are warning signs of us killing or restricting our own industries.
- Gina Rinehart
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
- Sergey Brin
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
Number one, cash is king… number two, communicate… number three, buy or bury the competition.
- Jack Welch
Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.
- Steve Ballmer
The fastest and best way to build value for your business is to build your people
- Clay Clark
Our business is diversified across many sectors, be it supermarkets or finance. We can invest in many areas.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Philanthropy should be voluntary.
- Bill Gates
Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.
- Bill Gates
Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.
- Peter Thiel
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
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Keep on keeping on!!!
- Joel Olsteen
Does it make sense to go to college, or should I instead be a plumber?
- Michael Bloomberg
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
Say ‘Hello’ in tones that bespeak how pleased you are to have the person call.
- Dale Carnegie
The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I’m wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.
- Ray Dalio
Quoting from Chapter 2 of the Sayings Of Confucius, ‘At 30, I stood firm; at 40, I had no more doubts.’ Time has its role to play in one’s behavior and how one conducts himself in society. With the passage of time, we master our lives better and become more refined and polished, step by step. At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.
- Andrew Carnegie
A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.
- P.T. Barnum
Appreciation – Learn to give flowers while people are still living.
- Joel Olsteen
People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.
- Bill Gates
Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.
- Napoleon Hill
As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.
- Elon Musk
wouldn’t that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling the time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone?
- James C. Collins
Superstition of Prejudice.
- Napoleon Hill
In two or three minutes Mr. Roosevelt came through. “Mr. President, what’s this about Japan?” “It’s quite true,” he replied. “They have attacked us at Pearl Harbour. We are all in the same boat now.
- Winston Churchill
Younglings, younglings gather ’round.
- Yoda
Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.
- John C. Maxwell
The ladder of success is never crowded at the top.
- Napoleon Hill
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill
There is no substitute for hard work. There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money.
- Henry Sy
What did I do that was right—and in what way could I have improved my performance? What lessons can I learn from that experience?
- Dale Carnegie
Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
When I cut the feet out of my pantyhose that one time, I saw it as my sign. I had been visualizing being self employed prior to this happening. It was my mental preparation meeting the opportunity in that moment.
- Sara Blakely
For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.
- Bill Gates
You’ll never find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
- Winston Churchill
Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.
- Bill Gates
I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.
- Herb Kelleher
China remains a market with unprecedented potential.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I think that people will always want music; I think that the form that they will get it in, or distributed to them from, and the price they pay for it is what’s up in question.
- Ronald Perelman
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
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
- Henry Ford
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
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.
- Elon Musk
I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good, but on a practical level having dealt with being abandoned by your father, being raised by your alcoholic mom and having severe physical disabilities even today, How do you choose to have the right thoughts?
- Oprah Winfrey
Should surveillance be usable for petty crimes like jaywalking or minor drug possession? Or is there a higher threshold for certain information? Those aren’t easy questions.
- Bill Gates
I have no sense of nostalgia. Tomorrow is what interests me.
- Francois Pinault
There is a strong tendency to get used to and accept very bad things that would be shocking if seen with fresh eyes.
- Ray Dalio
The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That’s why graceful is in such demand.
- Seth Godin
So sure, start with a slogan. But don’t bother wasting any time on it if you’re merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.
- Seth Godin
I’ve always been – you know, my personality is motivating and encouraging. And so I’m just being who God made me to be.
- Joel Olsteen
I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!
- Bill Gates
The fallout from the US sub-prime issue, turbulence on global financial markets and the resulting credit tightening, slow-down in the global economies and increasing inflationary pressure all threaten to pose a drag on the economic growth in Hong Kong.
- Lee Shau Kee
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.
- Steve Jobs
At the start of each new day, remind yourself: I am talented. I am creative. I am greatly favored by God. I am equipped. I am well able. I will see my dreams come to pass.” Declare those statements by faith and before long, you will begin to see them in reality.
- Joel Olsteen
Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!
- Yoda
Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.
- John C. Maxwell
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
DOS is ugly and interferes with users’ experience.
- Bill Gates
You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
- W. Clement Stone
I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who’ve never made any money in business.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
To be sure, real differences of opinion existed between the groups. Compared to pro-life participants, pro-choice participants had more favorable personal attitudes toward the pro-choice issues and less favorable attitudes toward the pro-life issues, and vice versa.
- John Chambers
Our business practices are no different than those of our competitors, but we are bigger, and thus more visible, so we get more flack.
- Phil Knight
10,000 years of fitful advance from primitive agriculture to medieval windmills and 16th-century astrolabes, the modern world suddenly experienced relentless technological progress from the advent of the steam engine in the 1760s all the way up to about 1970.
- Peter Thiel
As you schedule individual tasks, give yourself a cushion. Mark the due date a few days ahead of the actual deadline so you have time to deal with changes or last-minute emergencies.
- Harvey Mackay
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
- Winston Churchill
For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.
- Peter Thiel
My first company, Pure Software, was exciting and innovative in the first few years and bureaucratic and painful in the last few before it got acquired. The problem was we tried to systemize everything and set up perfect procedures.
- Reed Hastings
Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.
- Seth Godin
Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.
- Oprah Winfrey
We are currently not planning on conquering the world.
- Sergey Brin
What would have happened to me if I would not have believed I would see the goodness of God?
- Joel Olsteen
With the attention I got on my wealth, I thought I would have become a source of resentment, but it is just the other way around – it just generates that much more ambition in many people.
- Azim Premji
Applause is a receipt, not a bill.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m in a different position than most CEO’s. I’m a founder. I’m not a hired CEO. Now, I can be fired by the board, but most CEO’s are hired by the board.
- Howard Schultz
If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.
- Zig Ziglar
I like sports, and I enjoy playing basketball and lifting weights.
- Joel Olsteen
Let’s think beyond the normal stuff and have an environment where that sort of thinking is encouraged and rewarded and where it’s okay to fail as well. Because when you try new things, you try this idea, that idea… well a large number of them are not gonna work, and that has to be okay. If every time somebody comes up with an idea it has to be successful, you’re not gonna get people coming up with ideas.”
- Elon Musk
An organization takes its cue from the person on top. I always told our business leaders their personal intensity determined their organization’s intensity….For me intensityh covers a lot of sings. If there’s one characteristic all winners share, it’s that they care more than anyone else. No detail is too small to sweat or too large to dream. Over the years I have looked for this characteristic in the leaders we selected. It doesn’t mean loud or flamboyant. It’s something that comes from deep inside. Great organizations can ignite passion….Leaders must have courage to kick ass and break glass.
- Jack Welch
you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.
- Dale Carnegie
When I was 12 years old, I got interested in learning English.
- Jack Ma
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
- John C. Maxwell
If it’s set up in such a way that it breaks the conditionality required by the (International Monetary Fund), I think that would be a step backward.
- John Chambers





