Notable Quotables

Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.

- George Soros

If you count E-mail, I’m on the Internet all day, every day.

- Bill Gates

I definitely think there’s some way to understand how people emotionally feel about somebody, but I don’t think data collects it. They’re not going to click your bit.ly link or click your TweetMeme retweet every time.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Typically, your corporate e-mail account is not, today, that spam-targeted. It’s more the free e-mail accounts that are spam-targeted.

- Bill Gates

For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.

- Elon Musk

Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don’t base your self-esteem on their opinions.

- Harvey Mackay

If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.

- Jeff Bezos

It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.

- Paul Graham

You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.

- Dale Carnegie

Do not assume anything Obi-Wan. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.

- Yoda

It’s hard for me to imagine how a $50 million marketing campaign is ever appropriate for any business to launch an ideavirus. If you need to interrupt that many people, you’re doing something wrong.

- Seth Godin

e liked to call them idiots for making it too expensive. Well, one megabyte of RAM back then cost 10,000 of today’s dollars. He made a cheap one — but what he did was he made a really weak, lousy computer, to tell you truth, in the Macintosh, and still at a fairly high price. He made it by cutting the RAM down, by forcing you to swap disks here and there. It was a lousy product. Every time we improved the Macintosh, year by year by year, it got closer to what the Lisa had been.

- Steve Wozniak

most people go through college and learn to read Virgil and master the mysteries of calculus without ever discovering how their own minds function.

- Dale Carnegie

60% of the bonus was based on financials and 40% on Six Sigma (quality) results.

- Jack Welch

Every time you walk down the street people are screaming, ‘You’re fired!’

- Donald Trump

People who are able to lift up others and boost the morale in organization are invaluable, and they are always a tremendous asset to a leader’s inner circle.

- Napoleon Hill

The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into that well. I don’t like to use the word efficiency. It’s creativity. It’s a belief that every person counts.

- Jack Welch

OK, I have a nickname. My family calls me ‘Trey’ because I’m William the third. My dad has the same name, which is always confusing because my dad is well known, and I’m also known.

- Bill Gates

Often, out of our greatest rejection comes our greatest direction.

- Joel Olsteen

At first, we couldn’t be establishment, because we didn’t have any money. We were guerrilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit. But, as we became No. 1 in our industry, we’ve had to modify our culture and become a bit more planned.

- Phil Knight

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

- David Ogilvy

Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

- Yoda

Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.

- John C. Maxwell

People around the world, they want the authentic Starbucks experience.

- Howard Schultz

Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.

- Steve Ballmer

Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.

- Thomas Edison

If you believe, as I do, that your employees truly are your most valuable asset, you will do whatever you can to help them do their jobs as well as possible.

- Harvey Mackay

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

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

- Thomas Edison

You’ve probably heard about “first mover advantage”: if you’re the first entrant into a market, you can capture significant market share while competitors scramble to get started. But moving first is a tactic, not a goal. What really matters is generating cash flows in the future, so being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits. The way to do that is to dominate a small niche and scale up from there, toward your ambitious long-term vision. In this one particular at least, business is like chess. Grandmaster José Raúl Capablanca put it well: to succeed, “you must study the endgame before everything else.

- Peter Thiel

I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.

- Howard Schultz

Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.

- Michael Dell

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

- Thomas Edison

Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It’s fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.

- Bill Gates

What you get by achieving your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

- Zig Ziglar

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

It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.

- John Wooden

If you will lie about the little things, before long you’ll lie about bigger things.

- Joel Olsteen

Always try to learn from other peoples mistakes, not your own – It is much cheaper that way!

- Donald Trump

I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else.

- Seth Godin

Cisco will be well placed to continue building our presence in India as a critical part of our research and development efforts and as domestic market for networking products and solutions continues to expand.

- John Chambers

This is why so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t use tools that bigger firms take for granted. It’s not that small business proprietors are unusually backward or that good tools don’t exist: distribution is the hidden bottleneck.

- Peter Thiel

A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.

- Winston Churchill

Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.

- Jack Welch

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

- P.T. Barnum

Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it.

- Seth Godin

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

- Jeff Bezos

Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.

- Paula Poundstone

Our line of business structure has served us very well in the past, when customer segments and product requirements were very distinct. Today, the differences have blurred between these customer segments and Cisco is in a unique position to provide the industry’s broadest family of products united under a consistent architecture designed to help our customers improve productivity and profitability.

- John Chambers

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

We all need a check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitude.

- Zig Ziglar

You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

- Bill Gates

I think Les Moonves is the most highly overrated person in television.

- Donald Trump

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

- Peter Drucker

You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.

- Dale Carnegie

Similar to all of you, we would like to see higher growth.

- John Chambers

If you spend money on what you want, you’ll beg for what you need.

- T.D Jakes

Poker is a game where you don’t have to have the best hand to win. Poker is really reading other people and reading human emotion, which certainly comes into play in business.

- Charles Ergen

I’d learned the hard way that when hiring executives, one should follow Colin Powell’s instructions and hire for strength rather than lack of weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

I’ve always taught that a poor economy is the best opportunity for salespeople because the naysayers and grumblers have already given up, leaving more territory, more opportunities to be successful than in a good economy when virtually all salespeople are out there, giving it their best.

- Zig Ziglar

Surely, we all can look back and see things in our lives that we wish we would have done differently. But the Bible says, Make the most of each day.”4 Yesterday is gone; tomorrow may not come. You must live for today. Start right where you are. You can’t do anything about what’s gone, but you can do a great deal about what remains.

- Joel Olsteen

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

Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.

- John C. Maxwell

Often people fail to start or complete a task because they don’t see any connection between what they’re doing and what they really want to accomplish in life.

- John C. Maxwell

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

My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.

- Mukesh Ambani

Sales is a simple conversation where I ask you questions and I relate to your answers.

- Bryan Smith

My store, Wine Library, outsells big national chains. How do you think we do it? It started with hustle. I always say that our success wasn’t due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

We obviously are getting to be one of the largest players in the industry, so it’s hard to grow faster than that number, … But we’re very, very pleased with the last quarter results of 53 percent year-over-year. That’s on the upside, so I wouldn’t get too optimistic when it goes above 50 percent, just like we encouraged people two years ago, when it went below 30 percent growth for us, not to get too pessimistic.

- John Chambers

There is a hidden blessing in the most traumatic things we go through in our lives. My brain always goes to, ‘Where is the hidden blessing? What is my gift?

- Sara Blakely

The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.

- Seth Godin

Yes, iD is a machine vision and sensor browser for the physical world. That’s what we have been working on with Coca-Cola, Verizon, Bank of America and Disney to launch content when an image is recognised.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

This book, then, is a product of the last fifteen years, as well as a product of the fifteen years that preceded them. It was almost exactly eight years before The E-Myth was published that I founded our company, E-Myth Worldwide, which has provided the fuel and experience for the point of view I have shared with those of you who have read The E-Myth, and with those.

- Michael Gerber

Fulfilling the vision of the Irvine Ranch master plan has been a lifetime dedication and lifetime passion, and I am hopeful the heritage of our Irvine stewardship will live on in many new ways.

- Donald Bren

The connected economy of ideas demands that we contribute initiative. And yet we resist, because our lizard brain, the one that lives in fear, relentlessly exaggerates the cost of being wrong.

- Seth Godin

SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over.

- Timothy Ferriss

[On American running shoes] They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters after five miles. Adidas was taking advantage. And at $30 a pair, Adidas was making a killing.

- Phil Knight

The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.

- Dale Carnegie

If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.

- Henry Ford

I love the freedom of movement that my phone gives me. That has definitely transformed my life.

- Richard Branson

The choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.

- Oprah Winfrey

It is possible to know all there is to know about a subject—medicine, for example—but if you don’t have M.D. at the end of your name, few will listen. The M.D. is what I term a credibility indicator.” The so-called expert with the most credibility indicators, whether acronyms or affiliations, is often the most successful in the marketplace, even if other candidates have more in-depth knowledge. This is a matter of superior positioning, not deception.

- Timothy Ferriss

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.

- Elon Musk

One of my favorite perks was picking out an issue and doing what I called a deep dive. It’s spotting a challenge where you think you can make a difference…one that looks like it would be fun, and then throwing the weight of your position behind it. Some might justifiably call it meddling….I followed up on all of them with a passion and a mania that often veered toward the lunatic fringe…To make the initiatives work, it took a passionate all-consuming commitment from the top. Beyond passion, there was alot of rigor…Making initiates successful is all about focus and passionate commitment. The drumbeat must be relentlessness. Every leadership action must demonstrate total committment to the initiative….I was an outrageous champion of everything that we did from our early need to face reality and change the culture to our major initiatives that reshaped the company. Whenever I had an idea or message that I wanted to drive into the organization, I could never say it enough. I repeated it over and over, at every meeting and review for years, until I could almost gag on the words.

- Jack Welch

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

- Winston Churchill

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

- Bill Gates

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