Notable Quotables

Don’t worry that you can’t seem to come up with sure billion dollar winners at first. Just do projects for yourself for fun. You’ll get better and better.

- Steve Wozniak

Using people to leverage a refined process multiplies production, using people as a solution to a poor process multiplies problems.

- Timothy Ferriss

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

- John D. Rockefeller

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

- John C. Maxwell

The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.

- Bill Gates

Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.

- Bill Gates

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

Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people. The management team.

- James C. Collins

I fell in love with flora of all types, especially ferns. Loved the sparse structure and repetition of shape – almost fractal.

- Jack Dorsey

Look back in forgiveness, forward in hope, down in compassion, and up with gratitude.

- Zig Ziglar

It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

- Ronald Reagan

I’ll mix a lot of things. I’ll wear a Temperley dress with flip flops, or I might be in head-to-toe Gucci and have on a ring that I got from a gumball machine for 50 cents.

- Sara Blakely

(Physics is) a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

- Elon Musk

When an employee asks why the company does things a certain way, and you can explain the logical reason, then the employee knows what she’s doing is valid.

- Harvey Mackay

Structure a deal and create a plan around it.

- Jack Nadel

Believe in your idea, trust your instincts, and don’t be afraid to fail. It took me two years from the time I had the idea for Spanx until the time I had a product in hand ready to sell into stores. I must have heard the word “no” a thousand times. If you believe in your idea 100%, don’t let anyone stop you! Not being afraid to fail is a key part of the success of Spanx.

- Sara Blakely

The bigger we get as a company, the more important it becomes for us to shift responsibility and authority toward the front lines, toward the department manager who’s stocking the shelves and talking to the customer. When we were much smaller, I probably wasn’t as quick to catch on to this idea as I do should have been. But as an avid student of management theory, back in the mid-seventies I started reading the work of W. Edwards Deming, the famous statistician who taught so much to the Japanese about improving their productivity and competitiveness.

- Sam Walton

That was so much fun. It’s been such a neat experience racing with these guys.

- Ed Clark

If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.

- Joel Olsteen

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.

- Bill Gates

Since most people have not been taught how to make mistakes and learn from them, they either avoid making mistakes altogether, which is a bigger mistake, or they make a mistake but fail to find the lesson from the mistakes.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Your faith is very important. I have done the math, and you are going to be dead a whole lot longer that you will be alive.

- Zig Ziglar

Don’t go into the new year holding a grudge from last year. Leave the hurts and disappointments behind.

- Joel Olsteen

The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people. Bringing the right people on board saves you thousands, and your business will run smoothly and efficiently.

- Brian Tracy

Do you ever worry’ asked Dale Carnegie, I replied: ‘No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?’

- Henry Ford

Approach each customer with the idea of helping them solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.

- Brian Tracy

MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future.

- Peter Thiel

The screwball. Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.

- Michael Levine

What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.

- Cheng Yu-tung

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

- Rod Stewart

On my grandfather’s tombstone, you will find his favorite Marx quote: “Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.

- Ben Horowitz

The craftsman and the artist say, “Here, I made this.” The workingman is asked to follow instructions.

- Seth Godin

The millionaires and billionaires who chose to invest in Australia are actually those who most help the poor and our young. This secret needs to be spread widely.

- Gina Rinehart

As a company it is always better for us to work with more customers than fewer customers. The more people that we serve, the more money that we will make.

- Napoleon Hill

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

- Jack Welch

When unsavvy observers see a nonprofit organization with dozens of people on its board, they think: “Look how many great people are committed to this organization! It must be extremely well run.” Actually, a huge board will exercise no effective oversight at all; it merely provides cover for whatever microdictator actually runs the organization.

- Peter Thiel

Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.

- Seth Godin

There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. ‘Good pride’ represents our dignity and self-respect. ‘Bad pride’ is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.

- John C. Maxwell

I’m not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.

- Celine Dion

The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader.

- Albert Einstein

Any time a company grows as fast as Wal-Mart has, pockets of duplication are going to build up, and there will be areas of the business which we may no longer need. No boss or employee really likes to dwell on such matters; it’s only human nature not to want to have your job, or the jobs of the people who work for you, eliminated. But it is absolutely the responsibility of a company’s top management to be thinking about this issue all the time – to ensure the sound future for the overall company.

- Sam Walton

If you had to boil down the Wal-Mart system to one single idea, it would porbably be communication, because it is one of the real keys to our success…Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

- Sam Walton

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

- Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

- Winston Churchill

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

At your next sales meeting with 20 people, three will take home the money of 17 others. Is it luck, hard work and a great attitude? Or it is persuasive skill – understanding the transactional dynamics of the sales process?

- Jerry Vass

Stealing Coach Wooden’s sets of three, I have come up with a formula for success no matter what kind of business you happen to be in: 1) Make sure you have the right people around you; 2) Have fun and drive results by recognizing the achievements of others; and 3) Be a passionate learner, and pass on what you know to others. Not only will this make you a success in business, but it will make you a success in life.

- David Novak

A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.

- Bob Dylan

Over the long run, the price of gold approximates the total amount of money in circulation divided by the size of the gold stock. If the market price of gold moves a long way from this level, it may indicate a buying or selling opportunity.

- Ray Dalio

Indeed, if there is any one secret” to an enduring great company, it is the ability to manage continuity and change—a discipline that must be consciously practiced, even by the most visionary of companies.

- James C. Collins

While evaluating his future professional opportunities, Gary has chosen to spend some time with his family.

- John Chambers

People who can put themselves in the place of other people, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for them.

- Dale Carnegie

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

The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.

- Sergey Brin

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

- Harvey Mackay

The most impressive person I’ve ever met? Elaine Wynn is no slouch. She’s a much better person than me. But I’ve got her. Finders keepers, losers weepers. And it’s been forty-seven years.

- Stephen Wynn

Whether in San Francisco or Bangladesh, students and researchers can watch remarkable video such as World War II newsreels and the story of Apollo 11 — the historic first landing on the Moon.

- Sergey Brin

A decade and a half ago an ‘Esquire’ magazine reporter, noting our advertising played up the heros as aspects of great atheletes asked the question, who is your hero? My answer was simple. My college track coach and partner, Bill Bowerman. He had won four national championships, coached more sub four minute milers than anyone when he retired. He was the 1972 Olympic coach yet he insisted he was not a track coach. He was a professor of competitive response.

- Phil Knight

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

Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.

- Bill Gates

The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.

- Andrew Carnegie

The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.

- Oprah Winfrey

A man convinced against his will Is of the same opinion still.

- Dale Carnegie

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

- Bill Gates

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

- John Chambers

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.

- Warren Buffett

One who works their tail off because they hate working for other people so much, but who has no concept of what they are doing and who justifies their poverty when anyone more successful gives them advice by saying their business is different.

- Clay Clark

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

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

- Peter Drucker

There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.

- Zig Ziglar

If your message is not getting heard, then it doesn’t much matter what it is…Breaking through the clutter is such a powerful concept that even when it’s done badly it can still work. Once I graduated from college I needed a job quickly. I was applying to advertising agencies, so rather than send out a typical one-page resume, I made up this dinky little brochure. It had my picture on the front and on the back a little poem I had written about why someone should hire me… – David Novak CEO of Yum! Brands

- David Novak

The Web provides a very easy way to immediately grasp what’s going on. It really offers the transparency, so you can see, especially with the search engine, how people are using Twitter at one glance. The phone doesn’t allow for that.

- Jack Dorsey

Jobs and businesses are just vehicles to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

- Clay Clark

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

- Andrew Carnegie

[On exporting sports shoes from Japan to the US]The best hope for exports lay with Onitsuka Company. So I made a cold call on them.

- Phil Knight

Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you’ve got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn’t your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.

- Jerry Seinfeld

It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Great companies have secrets: specific reasons for success that other people don’t see.

- Peter Thiel

Nothing is as powerful as a changed mind,

- T.D Jakes

God will never ask you for something without first depositing it within you. If you will dare to take a step of faith, you will discover gifts inside that you never before realized were there.

- Joel Olsteen

Hope is the engine of your attitude, and your attitude determines your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

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