At first, we couldn’t be establishment, because we didn’t have any money. We were guerrilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit. But, as we became No. 1 in our industry, we’ve had to modify our culture and become a bit more planned.
- Phil Knight
Notable Quotables
Flavor is, counterintuitively, less than 10% taste and more than 90% smell.
- Timothy Ferriss
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
- Winston Churchill
In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.
- Ben Horowitz
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin
Try to maximize the number of people that can benefit from an individual contribution.
- Lee Shau Kee
You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you.
- Joel Olsteen
There is no shame in taking pride in achievements or position. But nobody gets to the top alone.
- Harvey Mackay
If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.
- Jeff Bezos
Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.
- James C. Collins
I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was… an arctic wilderness.
- Steve Martin
Every leader’s potential is determined by the people closest to him. No matter what I did with that staff, they would never be able to take the organization to the place we needed to go.
- Napoleon Hill
Too few people in computer science are aware of some of the informational challenges in biology and their implications for the world. We can store an incredible amount of data very cheaply
- Sergey Brin
It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.
- Zig Ziglar
The maxim, “Nothing prevails but perfection,” may be spelled PARALYSIS.
- Winston Churchill
Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.
- John C. Maxwell
Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.
- Zig Ziglar
In a literal sense, even a private company, of course, cannot do everything that it wants without some discussion with government. As a good corporate citizen, Severstal discussed the idea of a merger with Arcelor with the Russian government.
- Alexei Mordashov
When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.
- Winston Churchill
The power of this new era is simple: if you want to (need to, must!) lead, then you can. It’s easier than ever and we need you. But if this isn’t the right moment, if this isn’t the right cause, then hold off. Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can.
- Seth Godin
So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.
- Richard Branson
Count your blessings—not your troubles!
- Dale Carnegie
Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.
- Elon Musk
I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.
- Joel Olsteen
Over 80% of America’s millionaires are self-made.
- Thomas J Stanley
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.
- Herb Kelleher
As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.
- Peter Thiel
One of the things it was obvious you could do with an online store is have a much more complete selection.
- Jeff Bezos
Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt.
- Zig Ziglar
I get more spam than anyone I know.
- Bill Gates
It is more agreeable to have the power to give than to receive.
- Winston Churchill
Andy Andrews is the best speaker I have ever seen.
- Zig Ziglar
This presents more of a challenge, given our current size and market leadership.
- John Chambers
Smith never wavered. Twenty-five years later, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper outright and beat Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories.12 In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.
- James C. Collins
Do all things with love.
- Og Mandino
There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
- Zig Ziglar
You are closer than you think.
- Joel Olsteen
If you don’t set the tone for the day, the devil will set it for you.
- Joel Olsteen
My drive into high tech doesn’t involve a lot of people – just me and a very small team.
- Raymond Kwok
Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited.
- Napoleon Hill
It takes the same effort to think small than to think big. But to think big frees you from the insignificant details.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
- Warren Buffett
Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. To know all is to forgive all.
- Dale Carnegie
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
- Warren Buffett
Driving up the value of the advertising is a big commitment for Microsoft.
- Bill Gates
God can do in a split second what might otherwise take you many years.
- Joel Olsteen
And yet the real success goes to those who obsess. The focus that leads you through the Dip to the other side is rewarded by a marketplace in search of the best in the world.
- Seth Godin
Most often I am only interested in an idea if it’s going to get hundreds of millions of users. That’s the scale that I am always trying to play to.
- Reid Hoffman
Many businesses forget that a crucial part of cash flow is managing your own bill paying. Make sure you pay your bills promptly. Ask for extended terms up front. After you have paid timely for two or three months, ask for additional extensions on your payable terms. A supplier will usually extend credit for 30 to 90 days to a good customer.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it’s getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.
- Donald Trump
I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.
- Bill Gates
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill
As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
- Henry Ford
We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.
- Dale Carnegie
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
- Winston Churchill
I came over from Wal-Mart to help set up Sam’s. Since we were patterned after PRICE CLUBS, sometimes we copied them without exactly knowing what we were doing. We were bringing a West Coast idea to the Midwest, and we didn’t know how it would be received. I remember one idea that didn’t transfer too well. Price Club had a huge stack of wine in front of its stores. We bought the same amound for our stores in the Midwest and we learned the hard way that Midwesterners aren’t exactly wine drinkers. (on competition)
- Ron Loveles
[On Square in July 2011] We’re going to make it amazing.
- Jack Dorsey
Husbands and wives, have fun with each other. I’m convinced it makes all the difference in the world.
- Zig Ziglar
As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now.
- Joel Olsteen
I found [retail] to be interesting, challenging, and fun.
- Michael Balmuth
A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.
- John C. Maxwell
If it didn’t happen in your life before, then you’re not paying attention you don’t think it’s possible. But almost all important events never happen in your life before.
- Ray Dalio
Arrange to meet with the members of your Master Mind group at least twice a week, and more often if possible, until you have jointly perfected the necessary plan or plans for the accumulation of money.
- Napoleon Hill
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went mad).
- Peter Thiel
The only way to get ahead is to find errors in conventional wisdom.
- Larry Ellison
E – Energy
- Jack Welch
Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and “do well by doing good.” Usually they end up doing neither.
- Peter Thiel
These are not dark days: these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived.
- Winston Churchill
If you’re a Wal-Mart of a Meijer you can draw the shoppers without using signs to advertise your specials, … But when you’re a little guy, you really depend on those signs.
- Michael Ward
Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.
- Zig Ziglar
L.A. is only where you live, because otherwise it’s just a sprawling mass of everything, and I think if you live in L.A., you get a little network of places you go, and people you see, and when you leave town, you do miss those places and your friends.
- Steve Martin
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
There’s been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that’s already legal, you’ll never get it.
- Travis Kalanick
It’s not enough to use information for something”—it needs to be immediate and important.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.
- Jeff Bezos
Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.
- Napoleon Hill
Those whose work and pleasure are one… are… Fortune’s favoured children.
- Winston Churchill
Every twenty-four hours God has a fresh new supply of grace, of favor, of wisdom, of forgiveness.
- Joel Olsteen
(1) Define a to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list. In general terms, there are but two questions:
- Timothy Ferriss
If you go out looking for friends, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
- Zig Ziglar
People buy titles, and not contents of books. By merely changing the name of one book that was not moving his sales on that book jumped upward more a million copies. The inside of the book was no changed in any way. He merely ripped off the cover bearing the title that did not sell, and put on new cover with a title that had box-office value.
- Napoleon Hill
In the Networked Age, we’re all like the little kid from The Sixth Sense. If you’re not seeing networks when you enter a room, you might want to check your pulse.
- Reid Hoffman
Fear is one of the worst things in business.
- Jack Nadel
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
Residential properties that were sold by the Group summed up to around 5,800 units and amounted to approximately HK$12.8 billion.
- Lee Shau Kee
Whatever you accept your employees will expect.
- Clifton Taulbert
I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.
- Sara Blakely
My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
At Uniqlo, we’re thinking ahead. We’re thinking about how to create new, innovative products… and sell that to everyone.
- Tadashi Yanai
People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
- Zig Ziglar
The market’s going to move with tremendous speed. If there is such a thing as a killer app, video is it.
- John Chambers
I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
GE’s businesses turned in a terrific first quarter. Our products and services are being well received in unusually robust global markets.
- Jack Welch
Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.
- Ray Kroc
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
There is no sale without the story, no knockout without the setup.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
