Notable Quotables

I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to be Bruce Lee.

- Jack Dorsey

People are afraid of failure – they don’t like to work so hard and have people keep saying, ‘No.’ I think that’s what people fear most.

- Russell Simmons

Here’s Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can’t even deal with him because he’s always saying something that people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe Kanye said that. I can’t believe he did that.’

- Ben Horowitz

Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.

- Ben Horowitz

-It is possible to vastly compress most learning. In a surprising number of cases, it is possible to do something in 1-10 months that is assumed to take 1-10 years.-The more you compress things, the more physical limiters become a bottleneck. All learning is physically limited. The brain is dependent on finite quantities of neurotransmitters, memories require REM and non-REM (NREM) sleep for consolidation, etc. The learning graph is not unlike the stress-recovery-hyperadaptation curves of weight training.-The more extreme your ambition, just as in sports, the more you need performance enhancement via unusual schedules, diet, drugs, etc.-Most important: due to the bipolar nature of the learning process, you can forecast setbacks. If you don’t, you increase the likelihood of losing morale and quitting before the inflection point.

- Timothy Ferriss

Do extremely difficult work.That seems obvious, right? If you do something that’s valued but scarce because it’s difficult, you’re more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do.The implication is stunning, though: When designing a project or developing a skill, seek out the most difficult parts to master and contribute. If it’s easy, it’s not for you.

- Seth Godin

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

- Jim Rohn

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

- Russell Simmons

Luck plays a role in business but whether you succeed or fail depends on many other factors. I haven’t really had a failure.

- Lui Che Woo

My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.

- Michael Gerber

In bad times and good, I have never lost my sense zest for life

- Walt Disney

The austerity policies for the mainland property market will remain intact in 2011.

- Lee Shau Kee

China is likely to sustain its pace of economic growth for the next decade.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Many times, we miss out on God’s best because we give up too soon. We don’t realize how close we are to victory.

- Joel Olsteen

I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple.

- Joel Olsteen

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Sometimes when you take strong stands, if you’re not called to do it, you’re dividing the audience you’re trying to reach.

- Joel Olsteen

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

- Thomas Edison

Good talkers often choose to become sales professionals. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that selling well means listening well.

- Jerry Vass

Most good ideas are already out there, and to learn about them, all you have to do is ask the right people.

- David Novak

The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.

- Seth Godin

Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Stop doing things that waste time. Don’t replace time with your family or things that you need to do. I needed to put together two fantasy teams this weekend because that’s something I enjoy, but I did stop playing Nintendo Wii for hours on end.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He’s always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.

- Steve Wozniak

Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.

- Napoleon Hill

Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

- Winston Churchill

I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one’s children. It’s not constructive for them.

- Bill Gates

To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.

- Bill Gates

The market is fast-moving, fast-growing. Things that are true today may not be true tomorrow.

- Robin Li

If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.

- Elon Musk

Although Hong Kong continued to be affected by the slowdown of the global economy in the past financial year, most of the retail shopping properties owned by the Group are located in new towns where continual growth of residents are maintained and consumer spending power are segregated, thereby providing a good support to stabilise rental of the retail shopping properties located in such new towns.

- Lee Shau Kee

Continually get the word out about how you’re handling the situation.

- David Novak

Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.

- John D. Rockefeller

Look creatively at your resume, work experience, physical habits, and hobbies and compile a list of all the groups, past and present, that you can associate yourself with.

- Timothy Ferriss

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

- Henry Ford

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

- Mark Zuckerberg

If I’m in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what’s possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that’s a valuable thing.

- Ben Horowitz

Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.

- Peter Thiel

Even today few businessmen understand that research, to be productive, has to be the “disorganizer,” the creator of a different future and the enemy of today. In most industrial laboratories, “defensive research” aimed at perpetuating today, predominates.

- Peter Drucker

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

- Thomas Edison

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862)

- Timothy Ferriss

I’ve always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.

- Hakeem Olajuwon

A good engineering interview will include some set of difficult problems to solve. It might even require that the candidate write a short program. In addition, it will test the candidate’s knowledge of the tools she uses in great depth.

- Ben Horowitz

Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress.

- Seth Godin

Sometimes God will deliver you from the fire, and other times God will make you fireproof.

- Joel Olsteen

I have an excellent memory, a most excellent memory.

- Bill Gates

TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.

- Jack Dorsey

The responsibility of the leader is to define reality and create hope.

- David Novak

I’m not as interested in what you make as I am in what you’re passionate about. What business are you really in?

- Howard Schultz

Motivation needs to be a part of your own life for you to be effective in conveying it to other people.

- Zig Ziglar

The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.

- Dale Carnegie

It’s hard to improve public education – that’s clear.

- Bill Gates

Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.

- Jeff Bezos

If it’s a good idea, someone has already probably thought about it first.

- Jack Nadel

Globally, business and government leaders are beginning to dramatically transform their traditional business models into Internet economy business models, … Customers are increasingly seeking Cisco’s expertise to help them through this transformation.

- John Chambers

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

- Napoleon Hill

I’ve found reporters, editors, and producers to be an engaging lot overall, naturally curious and ever on the prowl for good stories.

- Michael Levine

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth.

- Stephen Wynn

Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

- Dale Carnegie

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

- Herbert Simon

All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.

- Donald Trump

The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.

- Zig Ziglar

Start believing today that things are going to change for the better. Your best days are still out in front of you.

- Joel Olsteen

We had gotten people’s attention. So a lot of American shoe distributors were going to Japan and telling Onitsuka, ‘Well, if this two-bit outfit up in the woods in Oregon can do this kind of business, wait till you get somebody that’s really in the business.

- Phil Knight

We can make the world a better place, one butt at a time

- Sara Blakely

Canon is basically a very aggressive company. Our company works on competitive principles. It does not treat people equally, but it does treat them fairly.

- Fujio Mitarai

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

- Henry Ford

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

- Seth Godin

In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.

- Bill Gates

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

- Peter Drucker

Life’s too short to fight the forces of change. Life’s too short to hate what you do all day. Life’s way too short to make mediocre stuff.

- Seth Godin

The bulk of the universities are about teaching kids.

- Bill Gates

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

We got to know a lot of investors and know what they like and don’t like. Through many co-investments opportunities, we have built trust among these investors. So when it came to investing in Xiaomi, things were a lot easier.

- Lei Jun

The failure to strangle Bolshevism at its birth and to bring Russia, then prostrate, by one means or another, into the general democratic system lies heavy upon us today.

- Winston Churchill

Document in writing every agreement or important conversation with suppliers and customers.

- Jack Nadel

And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.

- Peter Drucker

Once we finished Christmas Rappin’ we began shopping it around town. There was interest, but no one was biting. The industry’s attitude was that Rapper’s Delight despite its U.S. sales and international appeal was an unrepeatable fluke. We identified Polygram which had a great roster of funk and R&B acts (Kool and the Gang, the Gap Band, Parliament) as the best place for Kurtis, so we made up a gang of test pressings and took them to clubs all over the city. Response in the street from DJs and club goers was great. So to hype up PolyGram we placed fake orders for the record into their system by telling retailers and wholesalers to order the 12 inch through PolyGram. PolyGram didn’t own it yet, but we created an appetite for Christmas Rappin that led them to buy it…So in the fall of 1979 Kurtis Blow signed with Mercury Records a division of Polygram Records, making him the first rapper on a major label…Christmas eve 1979 was the first time that I heard Christmas Rappin’ on the radio; I was upstairs at my family’s house. Frankie Crocker the biggest radio DJ in New York played it on WBLS.

- Russell Simmons

We had been kicked out of one bank… The second, it was touch and go…

- Phil Knight

My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….

- Thomas Edison

Ethical decisions ensure that everyone’s best interests are protected. When in doubt, don’t.

- Harvey Mackay

Whatever the trend in exchange rates or whatever the external factors, a manufacturing company is always faced with the mission of transforming itself into a company that can produce higher value-added to absorb the increase in the cost of living in the country it’s operating in.

- Fujio Mitarai

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

- Napoleon Hill

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

If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

- Joel Olsteen

You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

- Bill Gates

Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.

- Jack Ma

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