Notable Quotables

You must find something that you deeply love and are passionate about and are willing to sacrifice a lot to achieve.

- Howard Schultz

Customers today are strongly value oriented. But just what does that mean? Customers tell us that value means the results they receive in relation to the total costs (both the price and other costs to customers incurred in acquiring the service).

- Gary W. Lo

I say something, and then it usually happens. Maybe not on schedule, but it usually happens.

- Elon Musk

The world has been very careful to pick very few diseases for eradication, because it is very tough.

- Bill Gates

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

If your goal is to never make a mistake in your life, you shouldn’t look for secrets. The prospect of being lonely but right—dedicating your life to something that no one else believes in—is already hard. The prospect of being lonely and wrong can be unbearable.

- Peter Thiel

At Tencent, we may be businessmen, but we are still chasing our IT, our science. We are still striving to create something really cool, trying to create things we couldn’t even imagine without our new technologies. I am still clinging to this enthusiasm.

- Ma Huateng

Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you.

- Seth Godin

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked, leadership is defined by results not attributes.

- Peter Drucker

The Roman world, like an aged man, wished to dwell in peace and tranquillity and to enjoy in philosophic detachment the good gifts which life has to bestow upon the more fortunate classes. But new ideas disturbed the internal conservatism, and outside the carefully guarded frontiers vast masses of hungry, savage men surged and schemed. The essence of the Roman peace was toleration of all religions and the acceptance of a universal system of government. Every generation after the middle of the second century saw an increasing weakening of the system and a gathering movement towards a uniform religion. Christianity asked again all the questions which the Roman world deemed answered for ever, and some that it had never thought of.

- Winston Churchill

The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.

- Dale Carnegie

I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

- Bill Gates

MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS Some things that you want to encourage will be quantifiable, and some will not. If you report on the quantitative goals and ignore the qualitative ones, you won’t get the qualitative goals, which may be the most important ones. Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers—it’s strictly for amateurs. At HP, the company wanted high earnings now and in the future. By focusing entirely on the numbers, HP got them now by sacrificing the future. Note that there were many numbers as well as more qualitative goals that would have helped: Was our competitive win rate increasing or declining? Was customer satisfaction rising or falling? What did our own engineers think of the products? By managing the organization as though it were a black box, some divisions at HP optimized the present at the expense of their downstream competitiveness. The company rewarded managers for achieving short-term objectives in a manner that was bad for the company. It would have been better to take into account the white box. The white box goes beyond the numbers and gets into how the organization produced the numbers. It penalizes managers who sacrifice the future for the short term and rewards those who invest in the future even if that investment cannot be easily measured. CLOSING THOUGHT It is easy to see that there are many ways for leaders to be misinterpreted. To get things right, you must recognize that anything you measure automatically creates a set of employee behaviors. Once you determine the result you want, you need to test the description of the result against the employee behaviors that the description will likely create. Otherwise, the side-effect behaviors may be worse than the situation you were trying to fix.

- Ben Horowitz

This is a strange Christmas Eve,”Churchill told the the crowd of several hundred gathered at the mansion’s garden.”Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and with the most terrible weapons which science can devise the nations advance upon each other.

- Winston Churchill

No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy — unless you let him.

- Napoleon Hill

In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.

- Bill Gates

Doing a mall is not only construction of the physical place, what’s important is the merchandising mix.

- Henry Sy

I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir ’em up, but you can’t do that on television. It’s just not on.

- Rupert Murdoch

Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That’s success.

- Zig Ziglar

You want supply to always be full, and you use price to basically either bring more supply on or get more supply off, or get more demand in the system or get some demand out. It’s classic Econ 101.

- Travis Kalanick

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

- Steve Martin

Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.

- Napoleon Hill

Often, it is in trying times that the greatest endeavours are realised.

- Cheng Yu-tung

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

Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.

- Jack Welch

I always say that the real success of Wine Library wasn’t due to the videos I posted, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Use money to make money. Save your ‘first bucket of gold.’ or small fortune – but then use it for investments. Don’t just park money in the bank.

- Lee Shau Kee

Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

- Steve Jobs

So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.

- Reed Hastings

Some city-council people are really awesome, but most are uninspired. I meet with them as little as possible.

- Travis Kalanick

WHY 20 MILE MARCHERS WIN 20 Mile Marching helps turn the odds in your favor for three reasons: 1. It builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances. 2. It reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption. 3. It helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.

- James C. Collins

Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked

- Warren Buffett

Money isn’t everything , but it’s right up there with oxygen.

- Zig Ziglar

Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?

- Elon Musk

My new favorite word is ‘awkward.’…The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

- Seth Godin

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.

- P.T. Barnum

If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.

- Jack Welch

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

Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice – fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.

- Sergey Brin

Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands

- David Novak

Formal education will make you a living, self-education will make you a fortune.

- Jim Rohn

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

Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice.

- John C. Maxwell

Whether changes happen depends on people’s mind and view.

- Cheng Yu-tung

What do you want? is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer.

- Timothy Ferriss

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.

- Larry Ellison

Nobody in the heavens above or on the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth will ever object to your saying: ‘I may be wrong. Let’s examine the facts.

- Dale Carnegie

The future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed.

- William Gibson

What products in the marketplace are similar? Who else in the marketplace is doing this successfully? How big is the market?

- Jack Nadel

This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.

- John Chambers

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.

- George Soros

The Law of the Garbage Truck,” was this: Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you’ll be happier.

- Joel Olsteen

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

- Thomas Edison

I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great thing that entrepreneurship is getting easier. When I started, it was just much harder to begin a company.

- Ben Horowitz

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.

- Winston Churchill

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

- Peter Drucker

If you always think about your dreams or goals, work steadfastly towards them and continue to challenge yourself, you will definitely be able to realise those dreams or goals.

- Tadashi Yanai

My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others…. Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.

- Thomas Edison

Being a winner is much different from having the potential to win. Everyone has the potential, it’s what you do with that potential that really matters.

- Zig Ziglar

When commercializing disruptive technologies, they found or developed new markets that valued the attributes of the disruptive products, rather than search for a technological breakthrough so that the disruptive product could compete as a sustaining technology in mainstream markets.

- Clayton M. Christensen

The result of information overload is usually distraction, and it dilutes your focus and takes you off your game.

- Zig Ziglar

You hope that one or both of them win a race right before our race. I know that in the past, when Bill Elliott won it always boosted sales here.

- Ed Clark

Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don’t have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

“High expectations are the key to everything.”

- Sam Walton

Many people fail to make a favourable impression because they don’t listen attentively.

- Isaac F. Marcosson

You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.

- Joel Olsteen

We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.

- Walt Disney

There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.

- Simon Sinek

Search engine optimization is essentially about obtaining admission to an event in which you are competing. Getting invited to compete in the event has no bearing on how you do within the competition itself, but you don’t get to play in the game unless you are on Page 1 of Google search results.

- Clay Clark

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

- Dale Carnegie

IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I’m far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read ‘Tech Crunch,’ ‘Ad Age.’ I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Expect to make some mistakes when you try new and different approaches. Sometimes colossal failures lead to spectacular successes.

- Harvey Mackay

When you are truly interested in other people, you will learn what they are interested in and if they have a need for your product. If they like you, and most people like folks who take an interest in them, they’ll help you find people who do need what you have to sell, even if they don’t.

- Zig Ziglar

Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It’s the image, not what you sing.

- Rod Stewart

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

- Joel Olsteen

Where is the love that will overlook a person’s faults?

- Joel Olsteen

I ask every participant to think about who their personal business mentors have been and why. I tell them my own business hero was Andy Pearson and I give them a few Andy stories to illustrate why. Then we break into groups of about twenty to go around in a circle and have each person talk about the person who has mean the most to him…We reconvene in the larger group and discuss some of the traits that were exhibited by the mentors; integrity, passion, inspiration, a positive outlook, and so on. A lot of people said it was someone who, helped me realize what I could achieve or really cared about me as a person. Then I try to get them to go a little deeper. I say, Now suppose that you were a fly on the wall, looking down on this room ten years from now. What would you like people to be saying about you? How would you feel if someone were saying that you were the person who had the greatest impact on his or her professional life?

- David Novak

The first step is to establish that something is possible, then probability will occur.

- Elon Musk

To win without risk is to triumph without glory.

- Confucius

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 power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

- Winston Churchill

Facing reality sounds simple, but it isn’t. I found it hard to get people to see a situation for what it is and not for what it was, or what they hoped it would be.

- Jack Welch

I wasn’t prepared for this big room with clattering typewriters and teletype printers. You could hardly hear yourself think.

- Ray Kroc

A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.

- Arnold Glasow

I own a home in Kyoto, Japan actually on the temple on grounds in Nanzenji that is going to become a Japanese art museum.

- Larry Ellison

On behalf of the employees of Cisco, we send our deepest sympathy and condolences to all of those affected by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, … This has been a crushing blow to the residents of the Gulf Coast and we stand by them, ready to help.

- John Chambers

What is a movie star? A movie star is many things. They can be tall, short, thin, or skinny. They can be Democrats… or skinny.

- Steve Martin

Our goal is not to build a platform, it’s to be cross all of them.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.

- Seth Godin

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