One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You can’t fault government for seizing that opportunity. But it has an impact on Barbados’ current account deficit and it does bring with it attended risks. And, therefore, you have to ask whether or not the tourism business that is going to be generated from the publicity around the cricket matches will be sustained after the cricket matches are over.
- John Chambers
I’m tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.
- Steve Martin
The ballplayer who loses his head can’t keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.
- Lou Gehrig
Maintain ‘baseball cards’ and/or ‘believability matrixes’ for your people. Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
Stop selling. Start helping.
- Zig Ziglar
Now that we had a name, we had to have a trademark for the side of the shoe. It was 1971, and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million, so I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State, and there was a woman there saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get enough money for the dress for this prom,’ And I said, ‘I have a job for you.’ I paid her $2 an hour, and she spent 17 and a half hours. So $35 and she came up with what is now the swoosh.
- Phil Knight
Less than 3% of newly published authors make enough in royalties and advances to be happy to live on.
- Seth Godin
All of the great empires of the future will be empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill
A company needs lots of smart, super-engaged employees who can identify its particular weaknesses and help it improve them.
- Ben Horowitz
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
- Peter Drucker
The conditions of suffering that exist today in our impoverished communities are not acceptable. The reflection of those conditions are less concerning to me. And I work everyday about changing the conditions.
- Russell Simmons
Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day.
- Peter Thiel
I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.
- Steve Jobs
You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.
- Seth Godin
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
- Steve Martin
Value is achieved primarily through frontline employees who are satisfied, loyal, and productive, in part because of the high degree of capability they possess to deliver results to customers
- Service Profit Chain
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
- Dale Carnegie
If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.
- Henry Ford
I’ve found that many of the greatest ideas surface in bars because that’s where many people cultivate inspiration.
- Herb Kelleher
We found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.
- James C. Collins
I don’t have any opinions about Russians. There are celebrity persons in each country. Different people do different things.
- Alexei Mordashov
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
- Samuel Beckett
Remember that failure is an event, not a person.
- Zig Ziglar
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
- Henry Ford
Every patient is a consumer, and every consumer is a potential patient. What NantWorks is doing is building the world the way Da Vinci saw it, and augmenting every frame a human being sees as they work, live and play.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
If you don’t have a voice that forces you back to basics, you’re a dangerous person. Or to put it another way: You’re at risk, and the people with you are at risk. I’m not a daredevil. I don’t fly without a safety net.
- Stephen Wynn
If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.
- Jeff Bezos
A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
- Peter Drucker
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
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
You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.
- Gary Keller
Disneyland is a work of love. We didn’t go into Disneyland just with the idea of making money.
- Walt Disney
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.
- Jack Welch
Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.
- Zig Ziglar
He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.
- Ray Dalio
People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
- Elon Musk
I loved the work – and that’s an important point: To succeed in retail, you have to love it. The process of bringing items in, displaying them attractively, and seeing them miraculously change into actual cash in the drawer has to gt your blood racing. You can triple the sale of an item just by how and where you display it.
- David Green
The regulatory systems in place disincentive innovation. It’s intense to fight the red tape.
- Travis Kalanick
You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.
- Oprah Winfrey
Music plays a very important role in my life. I’m a frustrated musician. I play the drums.
- Ronald Perelman
PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.
- Ben Horowitz
An old battleax of a woman said to Winston Churchill, “If you were my husband I would put poison in your tea.” Churchill’s response, “Ma’am if you were my wife I would drink it.
- Winston Churchill
From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
Forty to 60 I would say is your prime. That’s when you know the most, you’ve seen the most, you understand the most, and you still have some physical energy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are, and not merely as we might like to be.
- Arthur Golden
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
Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
Save them [Luke and Leia], we must. They are our last hope.
- Yoda
Culture manages when management is not there.
- Joe Jordan
Had the people who started Facebook decided to stay at Harvard, they would not have been able to build the company, and by the time they graduated in 2006, that window probably would have come and gone.
- Peter Thiel
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill
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
Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.
- Bill Gates
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.
- Seth Godin
Today is our most precious possession. It is our only sure possession.
- Dale Carnegie
Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people.
- Dee Hock
An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
- Steve Martin
Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, ‘the United States of America.’But it is hardly strange.Paine’s teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind.We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen.Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty.I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine’s writings, and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of it.Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied. Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore time must balance the scales. The Declaration and the Constitution expressed in form Paine’s theory of political rights. He worked in Philadelphia at the time that the first document was written, and occupied a position of intimate contact with the nation’s leaders when they framed the Constitution.Certainly we may believe that Washington had a considerable voice in the Constitution. We know that Jefferson had much to do with the document. Franklin also had a hand and probably was responsible in even larger measure for the Declaration. But all of these men had communed with Paine. Their views were intimately understood and closely correlated. There is no doubt whatever that the two great documents of American liberty reflect the philosophy of Paine….Then Paine wrote ‘Common Sense,’ an anonymous tract which immediately stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at Albany, and a night meeting was voted to answer this unknown writer with his clarion call to liberty. The Assembly met, but could find no suitable answer. Tom Paine had inscribed a document which never has been answered adversely, and never can be, so long as man esteems his priceless possession.In ‘Common Sense’ Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. It must be remembered that ‘Common Sense’ preceded the declaration and affirmed the very principles that went into the national doctrine of liberty. But that affirmation was made with more vigor, more of the fire of the patriot and was exactly suited to the hour… Certainly [the Revolution] could not be forestalled, once he had spoken.
- Thomas Edison
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
- Peter Drucker
‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.
- Bill Gates
I’m trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.
- Elon Musk
I produced Run DMC. I produced some early records, lots of records early on.
- Russell Simmons
You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.
- Walt Disney
You know, Saudi Arabia has a lot of poverty also. Regardless about what you hear about the viceroy and people being rich, et cetera.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
One of the huge mistakes people make is that they try to force an interest on themselves. You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you.
- Jeff Bezos
Worrying about the past or the future isn’t productive. When you start chastising yourself for past mistakes, or seeing disaster around every corner, stop and take a breath and ask yourself what you can do right now to succeed.
- Harvey Mackay
Gain alignment every step of the way. Again, no involvement means no committment. Skip a layer and you will ultimately pay the price.
- David Novak
Wrong Selection of Associates in Business
- Napoleon Hill
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
When you deal with change, you have a couple choices: you can lead it and make the rules, or you can be a fast follower, or you can be a slow follower.
- Charles Ergen
To do the most good requires saying no to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.
- Peter Drucker
What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.”
- James C. Collins
Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.
- William Feather
The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill…
- Thomas Edison
It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.
- Winston Churchill
Respect your parents. What they tell you is true. Hard work, dedication and faith will get you anything. Imagination will drive itself. You can get anything you want, but you have to have faith behind all your ideas. Stick to your goals and have an undying faith.
- Russell Simmons
I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It’s their work that I’m supporting. So it’s not me doing it.
- George Soros
You may never get to that perfect world that you’re waiting for where everything’s going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.
- Joel Olsteen
The accumulation of great fortunes calls for POWER and power is acquired through highly organized and intelligently directed specialized knowledge, but that knowledge does not necessarily have to be in the possession of the man who accumulates the fortune.
- Napoleon Hill
I DECLARE it is not too late to accomplish everything God has placed in my heart. I have not missed my window of opportunity. God has moments of favor in my future. He is preparing me right now because He is about to release a special grace to help me accomplish that dream. This is my time. This is my moment. I receive it.
- Joel Olsteen
I personally think that money can do very little. And this has been my experience all across.
- Mukesh Ambani
Forty-five years ago, when I was 18, I came to San Francisco by boat and took two weeks to get here. I had a great impression. I think San Francisco is the welcoming gate for people from Asia.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’m pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don’t see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I’m petrified of being wrong.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
The ability of a successful company to add functionality to its product has long been upheld.
- Bill Gates
Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.
- Joel Olsteen
A great business is seldom if ever built up, except on lines of the strictest integrity. A reputation for cuteness and sharp dealing is fatal in great affairs. Not the letter of the law, but the spirit, must be the rule. The standard of commercial morality is now very high. A mistake made by any one in favor of the firm is corrected as promptly as if the error were in favor of the other party. It is essential to permanent success that a house should obtain a reputation for being governed by what is fair rather that what is merely legal. A rule which is adpoted and adhered to has given greater returns than one would believe possible, namely; always give the other party the benefit of the doubt. This course does not apply to the speculative class (the stock market). An entirely different atmosphere pervades that world. Men are only gamblers there. Stock gambling and honorable business are incompatible. In recent years it must be admitted that the old fashioned banker, like Julius S. Morgan of London has become rare.
- Andrew Carnegie
Mrs. Carnegie and I had dinner at a friend’s house in Chicago. While carving the meat, he did something wrong. I didn’t notice it; and I wouldn’t have cared even if I had noticed it. But his wife saw it and jumped down his throat right in front of us. John,” she cried, watch what you are doing! Can’t you ever learn to serve properly!” Then she said to us: He is always making mistakes. He just doesn’t try.” Maybe he didn’t try to carve; but I certainly give him credit for trying to live with her for twenty years. Frankly, I would rather have eaten a couple of hot dogs with mustard—in an atmosphere of peace—than to have dined on Peking duck and shark fins while listening to her scolding.
- Dale Carnegie
A goal properly set is halfway reached.
- Zig Ziglar
You can either endure the difficult or do the difficult.
- Michael Levine
God’s desire is that we excel.
- Joel Olsteen
I still get up fairly early around six, but I work out for an hour every morning, I read often while excercising and give myself some private team. I’ll speak with administrative my administrative assistant, Donna Hughes, who is an organizational genus on the way into the office and go through the day, so by the time I get to the office around 8:30 or 9:00 I can hit the ground running…In both my workday and my life, what I try to achieve is balance.
- David Novak
See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.
- Joel Olsteen
When you’re green, your growing. When you’re ripe, you rot.
- Ray Kroc
