Notable Quotables

Just because an employee does things differently doesn’t mean he or she won’t do the job right or as well. If you establish expectations of the goal and the standards to follow, then methodology shouldn’t be an issue.

- Harvey Mackay

Remember that failure is an event, not a person.

- Zig Ziglar

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.

- Dale Carnegie

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

- Winston Churchill

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

- Peter Drucker

The worst day of a man’s life is when he sits down and begins thinking about how he can get something for nothing.

- Thomas Jefferson

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

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

I swore I would never get involved in another startup ever again in my entire life.

- Larry Ellison

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

- Albert Einstein

It’s almost unfathomable how much I still have to learn. Learning never ends…I always have another mountain to climb is what keeps you going.

- David Novak

There is no shame in taking pride in achievements or position. But nobody gets to the top alone.

- Harvey Mackay

Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you.

- J. Gitomer

If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.

- Zig Ziglar

It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.

- Ben Horowitz

Starbucks has changed the rules of engagement for the music industry.

- Howard Schultz

It’s not what you’ve got. It’s what you use that makes a difference.

- Zig Ziglar

All marketers are storytellers. Only the losers are liars.

- Seth Godin

The laws of business physics have been broken in terms of how many customers you can acquire and how fast. No one in history has ever acquired 450 million customers in the same amount of time that WhatsApp did

- Ben Horowitz

Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.

- Bill Gates

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe 10% to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want that on my business card.

- Bill Gates

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

Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

- Bill Gates

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you maycome 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

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

- Elon Musk

I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.

- Reid Hoffman

If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

- Bill Gates

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

I think our main real estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and letting the population build out to us.

- Sam Walton

History recalls the remarkable resilience of the territory’s people.

- Cheng Yu-tung

In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there’s such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.

- Bill Gates

All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.

- Peter Thiel

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

The arrival of the 21st century precedes the onslaught of turmoil and tsunami. The business environment has become unpredictable and the global economy even harsher…

- Cheng Yu-tung

Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

- Steve Jobs

Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.

- Seth Godin

American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.

- Russell Simmons

Making it good at scale means admitting that it must be different and embracing the changes that you’ll need to make to keep things from falling apart.

- Ben Horowitz

Japanese businesspeople and companies are lacking in individuality.

- Tadashi Yanai

Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn’t an artist, he was a plumber.

- Seth Godin

I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am an investor.

- Warren Buffett

Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?”

- Ben Horowitz

Tolerance for failure is a very specific part of the excellent company culture—and that lesson comes directly from the top. Champions have to make lots of tries and consequently suffer some failures or the organization won’t learn.

- Michael Gerber/ Thomas J. Peters and Robert H

If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

- Bill Gates

One person is never as stupid as a group of people. That’s why they have lynch mobs, not lynch individuals.

- Ben Horowitz

The residential leasing market remained robust with expatriates from the banking and financial sectors continuing to be the major source of tenant demand for luxury properties on Hong Kong Island.

- Lee Shau Kee

[That was the case Wednesday night, when Cisco executives talked about results for the fiscal second quarter (which closed on Jan. 26). Chambers and chief financial officer Larry Carter spoke only about the next quarter, when revenue growth from the second fiscal quarter is expected to be nil or in the low single digits.] Our visibility is still very limited, … If there’s one lesson we’ve learned over the past year, it’s how quickly things can change.

- John Chambers

We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.

- Jeff Bezos

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.

- Mario Andretti

Leaders don’t rise to the pinnacle of success without developing the right set of attitudes and habits, they make every day a masterpiece.

- John C. Maxwell

I never hid my thoughts or feelings. During a business meeting I could get so emotionally charged and involved that I’d stammer out what others might consider to be outrageous things like, My six year old could do better than that! Or Don’t Walter Cronkite me!

- Solutions

Later on, Rockefeller learned to camouflage his business anxiety behind a studied calm, but during these years it ws often graphically displayed. Clark remembered one daring venture when the firm wagered its entire capital on a large grain shipment to Buffalo. With foolish, atypical imprudence, Rockefeller suggested that they skip the insurance and pocket the $150.00 premium; Gardner and Clark reluctantly acquiesced. That night, a terrible storm blew across Lake Erie, and when Gardner came to the office the next morning, a frightfully pale Rockefeller paced the floor in agitation. Let’s take out insurance right away, he said, We still have time – if the boat hasn’t been wrecked by now. Gardner ran off to pay the premium. By the time he got back, Rockefeller was waving a telegram announcing the ship’s safe arrival in Buffalo. Whether unnerved by the episode or upset at having paid the unnecessary premium, Rockefeller went home ill that afternoon.

- Ron Chernow

I’m born into the cycle of giving that we’re all born into, and I recognize it. So just because something is a good business, I’m not a business guy. I’m a creative guy.

- Russell Simmons

It is clothes. It is parts. Therefore, you combine the parts differently to create your own unique expression.

- Tadashi Yanai

With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.

- Richard Branson

Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to close it for us.

- Oprah Winfrey

When you give directives to a child, especially a teenager, you must consider the nature of your child.

- Zig Ziglar

I am a fifty-seven-year-old male, married with three children. About 70 percent of us earn 80 percent or more of our household’s income.

- Thomas J Stanley

I think that the first thing is you should have a strategic asset allocation mix that assumes that you don’t know what the future is going to hold.

- Ray Dalio

Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.

- James C. Collins

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.

- Walt Disney

In any new business, someone has to have a vision. You are as good as the people around you. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Identify your core community and go from there. Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. In my experience it often takes as long as five years to make a business work. Partners can fail you. Staff may not execute properly. You could be too far ahead of the market. SO you have to be willing to hand in there and make it happen. From the founding of Phat Farm in 1992 until 1997, I lost money. By my account, I experienced $10 million in losses. But today Phat Farm is visible, it is imitated and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars. It took time, but good ideas often do need time to take off. Being an entrepreneur requires instinct, fortitude and the ability to accept that the world does not run on your schedule. Sometimes you just have to believe.

- Russell Simmons

Anyone working for a big company might be skeptical that a large business, or even a strictly online business, can form the same kind of friendly, loyal relationship with customers as a local retailer. I’m saying it’s already been done because I lived it.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The Group has always adhered to prudent financial management principles.

- Lee Shau Kee

I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business, basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.

- Jack Welch

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

The desire to be important is the deepest urge in human nature.

- John Dewey

You are at the top when: You have made friends with your past, are focused on the present, and are optimistic about your future.

- Zig Ziglar

of preparing for defeat, prepare for victory. Prepare for increase. Prepare for God’s favor. You have to set the tone at the start of each day.

- Joel Olsteen

Mine, or I will help you not!

- Yoda

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.

- Og Mandino

The typical factory-centric organization places a premium on not-wrong, and spends no time at all weeding out those who don’t start. In the networked economy, the innovation-focused organization has no choice but to obsess about those who don’t start. Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.

- Seth Godin

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

- John C. Maxwell

Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual . . . Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude – the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

- Dale Carnegie

Success doesn’t make you and failure doesn’t break you.

- Zig Ziglar

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

- Elon Musk

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

Whoever is first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover in the whole market.

- Peter Thiel

Being first is more important to me [than earning money]. I have so much money. Whatever money is, it’s just a method of keeping score now. I mean, I certainly don’t need more money

- Larry Ellison

A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.

- John C. Maxwell

Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.

- Vida D. Scudder

I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.

- Joel Olsteen

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

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