Notable Quotables

Hong Kong is uniquely positioned as the best place to integrate with the fast-growing Pearl River Delta Region and to capitalize on the opening up of China’s economy and markets.

- Cheng Yu-tung

There are abundant business opportunities to bring about the recovery of the local economy.

- Lee Shau Kee

Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win — essential to success.

- 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

I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.

- Zig Ziglar

Q1 was a solid quarter for Cisco, with balanced execution across most of our geographies, market segments and product categories, … We are especially pleased with the improving business momentum in the U.S. and Asia Pacific, the strength of our product families and the accelerated growth of the commercial marketplace, which has become our fastest growing customer segment.

- John Chambers

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

- Winston Churchill

I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.

- Howard Schultz

I was the night foreman of a galvanizing factory, which is hot and smelly and dirty and miserable.

- Ronald Perelman

Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute.

- Zig Ziglar

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.

- Warren Buffett

Ahhh! Yoda’s little friend you seek!

- Yoda

Planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out.

- Peter Thiel

No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, or nonmusic radio. Music is permitted at all times. No news websites whatsoever (cnn.com, drudgereport.com, msn.com,10 etc.). No television at all, except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening. No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction11 pleasure reading prior to bed. No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary, not nice to have.

- Timothy Ferriss

If I hadn’t given my money away, I’d have had more than anyone else on the planet.

- Bill Gates

I am a former sabre fencer and fenced as part of the Uzbek republic team.

- Alisher Usmanov

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

- Robert Kennedy

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

- Bill Gates

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

- Henry Ford

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

- Mario Andretti

If your message is not getting heard, then it doesn’t much matter what it is…Breaking through the clutter is such a powerful concept that even when it’s done badly it can still work. Once I graduated from college I needed a job quickly. I was applying to advertising agencies, so rather than send out a typical one-page resume, I made up this dinky little brochure. It had my picture on the front and on the back a little poem I had written about why someone should hire me… – David Novak CEO of Yum! Brands

- David Novak

My store, Wine Library, outsells big national chains. How do you think we do it? It started with hustle. I always say that our success wasn’t due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Whatever your critics say about you has no bearing on your worth. You are a child of the Most High God. The Creator of the universe breathed life into you. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. You’ve been crowned with favor. God has already equipped and empowered you with everything you need. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to play up to people, trying to win over all your critics, or trying to prove to someone that you’re important.

- Joel Olsteen

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.

- Jeff Bezos

Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that everything changes except the law of change. He said: You cannot step in the same river twice. The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?

- Dale Carnegie

If you really believe that you’re making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets, why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools, bring down crime, build affordable housing, clean the streets – not to have a fair fight.

- Michael Bloomberg

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

- Mark Zuckerberg

California, in a sense, is almost Starbucks’ largest country, with almost 3,000 stores

- Howard Schultz

Failures are life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.

- Sara Blakely

You can win more friends with your ears than with your mouth. People who feel like they’re being listened to feel accepted and appreciated. They feel like they’re being taken seriously and what they say really matters.

- Harvey Mackay

There is a time to provide advice and offer an opinion, and there is a time not to. Don’t be too quick to offer unsolicited advice. It certainly will not endear you to people.

- Harvey Mackay

On all open platforms, regardless of whether it’s Facebook or the Apple App Store, the largest segment is entertainment and games. It’s the largest revenue segment. And it’s the same for Tencent.

- Ma Huateng

De-escalating the rivalry post-merger wasn’t easy, but as far as problems go, it was a good one to have.

- Peter Thiel

Don’t kill competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you – the entrepreneur – on your toes.

- Aliko Dangote

An employer has no business with a man’s personality. Employment is a specific contract calling for a specific performance, and nothing else. Any attempt by an employer to go beyond this is usurpation. It is an immoral as well as illegal intrusion of privacy.

- Peter Drucker

Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected. I try to live by that on a daily basis.

- Jack Dorsey

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

- Bill Gates

Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

I am going to enjoy some other things apart from business.

- Jack Ma

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

- Andrew Carnegie

I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.

- Gina Rinehart

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 general idea of the rich helping the poor, I think, is important.

- Bill Gates

If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising.

- Seth Godin

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.

- Ray Kroc

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

- Winston Churchill

It’s not about size, it’s about your ability to make a difference. At that small size, collaboration is all the more important.

- John Chambers

Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Build on what you know so that you don’t repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company’s life.

- Harvey Mackay

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.

- Yoda

My biggest concern is that America is drifting towards mediocrity and that people don’t recognize – and by people I’m meaning Washington – don’t recognize the sense of urgency and the fact that I don’t think this is a crisis anymore. I think it’s an emergency.

- Howard Schultz

My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.

- Bill Gates

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

- Winston Churchill

Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.

- Peter Drucker

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The financial world has long been missing immediacy, transparency, and approachability and this is what’s needed now.

- Jack Dorsey

I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.

- Bill Gates

If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.

- Peter Drucker

No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn’t create that – society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that’s good.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Growing up I always felt like I was living on the other side of the tracks. I knew the people on the other side had more resources, more money, happier families.

- Howard Schultz

When you face adversity, you need to remind yourself that whatever is trying to defeat you could very well be what God will use to promote you.

- Joel Olsteen

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.

- Sara Blakely

Organizations that achieve both market and operating focus are nearly unbeatable Customers don’t buy products or services. They buy results. They were designed to break what Schlesinger and his colleagues called the cycle of failure practiced by many of Au Bon Pain’s competitors who paid their employees and managers low wages, offered them little training and other support, and suffered high turnover of employees and limited customer loyalty as a result.

- James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser and Leonard

Nothing in life has happened to you. It’s happened for you. Every disappointment. Every wrong. Even every closed door has helped make you into who you are.

- Joel Olsteen

No matter how many times you get knocked down, keep getting back up. God sees your resolve. He sees your determination. And when you do everything you can do, that’s when God will step in and do what you can’t do.

- Joel Olsteen

It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.

- Timothy Ferriss

Ohhh. Great warrior.Wars not make one great.

- Yoda

The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake or proves to be incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed.

- Napoleon Hill

The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.

- 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

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.

- Jack Ma

When my dad founded our church, he used either a globe or a map of the world behind him. It was symbolic of what Christ said: to go forth and preach hope to the world. We believe in the cross, but we just continued with the globe.

- Joel Olsteen

Since we happened to be good at shoes, we thought we could be successful with casual shoes. But we got our brains beat out.

- Phil Knight

That doesn’t mean the opposite ideas are automatically true: you can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

- Peter Thiel

We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.

- Jack Welch

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

So sure, start with a slogan. But don’t bother wasting any time on it if you’re merely going for catchy. Aim for true instead.

- Seth Godin

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

- Winston Churchill

Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.

- Confucius

Hope is the engine of your attitude, and your attitude determines your altitude.

- Zig Ziglar

There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in.

- Seth Godin

You are responsible for your life. If you’re sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time. Only you have the power to move your life forward.

- Oprah Winfrey

The three Rs in educationare reading, writing and arithmetic. Without these basic skills, learning becomes almost impossible. In a similar way, business starts with a relationship. You are then judged by the results. Rewards spring from the results.

- Jack Nadel

Feedback

Let us know what's going on.

Get Started

Your first month is ONLY $1!

You will be redirected to your dashboard in a moment.

Fill out the information below to cancel your subscription