War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they’re not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter.
- Seth Godin
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
Entrepreneurship, then, is behavior rather than personality trait. And its foundation lies in concept and theory rather than in intuition.
- Peter Drucker
I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work. And I taught myself how to program so I can understand how the city works.
- Jack Dorsey
I mostly eat healthy. I just do. I’m not a vegan for health reasons – although obviously I’m 20 pounds lighter than when I started. I stayed 20 pounds lighter. I feel better. My friends say I look better. All that’s true. But I’m a vegan for compassionate reasons
- Russell Simmons
If your feet are in two buckets and the average temperature of the water is 90 degrees, you’re probably fine—unless one bucket is at 35 and the other is at 145 degrees. On average, you’re fine. Based on variation, though, you’re miserable.
- Seth Godin
If people look inward, they would see the opportunities for greatness.
- Aliko Dangote
That which becomes acceptable becomes inevitable.
- Michael Levine
Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.
- Bill Gates
Steve Jobs’ ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.
- Bill Gates
I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.
- John C. Maxwell
When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside.
- Joel Olsteen
Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.
- Herb Kelleher
By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.
- Bill Gates
Let us work together to take Hong Kong to new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.
- Joel Olsteen
True success has more components than one sentence or idea can contain.
- Zig Ziglar
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
- Dale Carnegie
Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.
- Joel Olsteen
I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn’t turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.
- Steve Martin
What would have happened to me if I would not have believed I would see the goodness of God?
- Joel Olsteen
One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you’ve got somebody who’s raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give ’em that shot.
- Jack Welch
But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.
- Peter Thiel
Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what’s coming.
- Steve Martin
Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you’re doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they’re hiding out in the comfortable zone. When your uncomfortable actions lead to success, the organization rewards you and brings you back for more.
- Seth Godin
I’m an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.
- Bill Gates
I built a conglomerate and emerged the richest black man in the world in 2008 but it didn’t happen overnight, it took me 30 years.
- Aliko Dangote
If there is a Swedish style, I cannot identify it.
- Stefan Persson
I probably have about four or five cups of coffee a day. I make myself an espresso macchiato when I wake, which is a shot of espresso and just a dollop of steamed milk. Then, if I’m going to do some work at home, I would make myself a French press. It’s the best way to make conventional coffee.
- Howard Schultz
If you look at our current technology level, something strange has to happen to civilisations, and I mean strange in a bad way. And it could be that there are a whole lot of dead, one-planet civilisations.
- Elon Musk
Our thoughts make us what we are.
- Dale Carnegie
You will give birth to more in the future than you’ve lost in the past.
- Joel Olsteen
Determine your destiny or somebody else will.
- Jack Welch
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
You cannot get into business for the fashion of it.
- Azim Premji
After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.
- Jim Rohn
A waitress goes up to Winston Churchill and says, ‘Sir, your drunk.’ To which he replies, ‘I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
- Winston Churchill
So Bush certainly wasn’t the greatest, and Obama has not done the job. And he’s created a lot of disincentive. He’s created a lot of great dissatisfaction. Regulations and regulatory is going through the roof. It’s almost impossible to get anything done in the country.
- Donald Trump
I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.
- Harry Truman
I’m not panicking, and I’m not scared, I’ve been through the Gulf War, the Asia crisis, and the Russian crisis.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
- George Soros
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.
- Seth Godin
About two-thirds of us work between forty-five and fifty-five hours per week.
- Thomas J Stanley
Some conflicts are simply territorial. For instance, I’ve rarely met a marketing person who wanted to raise prices and I’ve rarely met a finance person who wanted to lower prices.
- David Novak
This is not to imply that we agree on everything because we don’t. Nor does it mean there are no arguments because there are. It does mean there is never any maliciousness or bitterness in our differences. It does mean each is willing to admit a mistake and apologize if he or she is wrong. It means we enjoy each other and love each other enough to put the other one first. We never part company or go to sleep without settling our differences and reaffirming our love. We’re both grateful that God has let us spend enough years together to develop a relationship and discover what real love is all about. Our prayer is that God will permit us to have many more years together before we start our walk though eternity—together.
- Zig Ziglar
I used to believe that a good product sold itself.
- Phil Knight
The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
- Bill Gates
The proposed abolishment of estate duty by the Hong Kong Government will contribute to establish Hong Kong as a regional financial centre as well as an asset management hub.
- Lee Shau Kee
Esta es la clave: las únicas promesas que se avivarán en su vida y terminarán convirtiéndose en realidad son las promesas en las que usted se levanta y dice: Sí, eso es para mí”. Tiene que entrar en acuerdo con Dios y permitir que eso eche raíz.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.
- Larry Ellison
His friends, drunk to the point of speaking in tongues, were asleep.
- Timothy Ferriss
Chinese consumption, particularly high-end consumption, is booming.
- Wang Jianlin
MySpace is like a bar, Facebook is like the BBQ you have in your back yard with friends and family, play games, share pictures. Facebook is much better for sharing than MySpace. LinkedIn is the office, how you stay up to date, solve professional problems.
- Reid Hoffman
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.
- Ben Horowitz
I never took classic business classes in college, so I don’t have the background that any of the people running large companies have.
- Howard Schultz
I am optimistic that we can achieve a better future. It’s not true that the Philippines is a hopeless case.
- Henry Sy
I’m trying to change the culture in New York City, that’s hard enough!
- Michael Bloomberg
If you are going to be successful, you must develop persistence. How do you do that? It is not easily condensed in one simple statement, but one thing you can be sure of is that your must define your purpose.
- Zig Ziglar
The information about your project is objective, but your presentation is subjective. When your own subjectivity collides with that of the media, there’s plenty of room for confusion,misinterpretation and disinterest. That is why you must know precisely how to pitch before you make that first phone call or mail a press release.
- Michael Levine
Pessimism doesn’t grow your business or even maintain the status quo. The pessimists on your staff make the job harder for everyone around them. They make difficulties out of opportunities.
- Harvey Mackay
China’s movie industry is growing a lot faster than that of the U.S.
- Wang Jianlin
Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.
- Seth Godin
The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world.
- Bill Gates
And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.
- Seth Godin
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.
- Steve Jobs
You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.
- Elon Musk
No effort has been spared in ensuring the best designs for all our projects.
- Lee Shau Kee
Chinese people today have strong demand for culture, but we need effective supply, and China needs innovative cultural products.
- Wang Jianlin
Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected. I try to live by that on a daily basis.
- Jack Dorsey
At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important.
- Jack Welch
The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.
- Dale Carnegie
What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.
- Peter Thiel
Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.
- Howard Schultz
I’ve already figured out when I’m going to be No. 2 and No. 1.
- Sheldon Adelson
We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.
- Larry Page
Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
Save your first bucket of gold… then use it for investments.
- Lee Shau Kee
Great design = getting people to do what you want.
- Seth Godin
The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
- Dale Carnegie
Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.
- Seth Godin
We’ll see how that evolves. Obviously, it doesn’t mean we’ll just be willing to do anything that’s requested of us.
- Sergey Brin
Passion is everything. In fact, you’ve got to be borderline fanatical about what you do.
- Chris Gardner
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
- Colin Powell
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
- Dale Carnegie
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …
- Dale Carnegie
When you were made a leader you weren’t given a crown, you were given the responsibility to bring out the best in others.
- Jack Welch
Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work.
- Bill Gates
If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.
- Napoleon Hill
China is a government-oriented economy. No one can say he can run his business entirely without government connections. Anybody who says that he or she can do things alone… is a hypocrite.
- Wang Jianlin
Monotony reveals our limitations.
- Dale Carnegie
Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.
- James C. Collins
If geek means you’re willing to study things, and if you think science and engineering matter, I plead guilty. If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.
- Bill Gates
The doctors actually told my family there was a five percent chance of me living.
- Ed Clark
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- Winston Churchill
Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.
- Richard Branson
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
