We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill… it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.
- Li Ka-shing
Notable Quotables
Much of our strategic shift is providing production advances over the next 60 days in the Gulf Coast. This effort sets the stage for Gulf Coast growth in 2006, along with production growth in our East, West and Canada regions.
- Dan Dinges
You cannot climb the ladder of success dressed in the costume of failure.
- Zig Ziglar
The most important quality for an investor is temperament, not intellect. You need a temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd.
- Warren Buffett
If values do not affect daily life, they are not values.
- Marty St. George
Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
- Peter Drucker
You can’t build any kind of organization if you’re not going to surround yourself with people who have experience and skill base beyond your own.
- Howard Schultz
Technology is an inherent democratizer. Because of the evolution of hardware and software, you’re able to scale up almost anything. It means that in our lifetime everyone may have tools of equal power.
- Sergey Brin
Creative things have to sell to get acknowledged as such.
- Steve Wozniak
A man may be poor; he may have nothing at all except his labour to sell; he may be a manual worker for a weekly wage, but in a free commonwealth he must enjoy as good a right as any lord, or prelate, or capitalist in the country to the integrity of his own political convictions.
- Winston Churchill
They said it was only a ground shark, but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.
- Winston Churchill
We certainly employ a lot of immigrants at Fox… and we do not take any consistent anti-immigrant line.
- Rupert Murdoch
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
So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested.
- Dale Carnegie
A company is the strangest place of all for an indefinite optimist: why should you expect your own business to succeed without a plan to make it happen? Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.
- Peter Thiel
You must unlearn what you have learned.
- Yoda
As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown.
- Dale Carnegie
It’s difficult for any single company to develop all the applications and services.
- Ma Huateng
The trouble with energy farming is that the energy isn’t always where you want to use it, and it isn’t always when you want to use it.
- Bill Gates
We will invest 1.1 billion dollars in India, of which 150 million dollars would be for providing leasing and financial solutions to the company’s customers and partners.
- John Chambers
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative.
- Winston Churchill
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
Do not wait: the time will never be ‘just right’. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.
- Napoleon Hill
If you don’t agree with the core principles, which are the premise of that compromise, then you have to have what I call principled confrontation. And so that is the thing that we do that I think can rub some people the wrong way.
- Travis Kalanick
Not victory , Obi- Wan. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, this Clone War has.
- Yoda
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
- Peter Drucker
The Group will be able to capture opportunities arising from the growth and integration of the two economies, and scale new heights in the years ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Media companies focused on things like creating great stories whereas technology companies focused on creating a better way of doing things. We began to think about new ideas and about forming a new company.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it’s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.
- George Soros
Why is this mediocre? We love to point out how broken our systems are. We enjoy getting angry at hotels or government agencies or airlines that are so obviously doing a poor job. Idiots! But we almost never look at merely mediocre products and wonder why they aren’t great. Mediocre services or products do what they’re supposed to, but have set the bar so low that it’s hardly worth the energy to cross the street to buy them. A resolute generic sameness pervades this mediocrity. Why isn’t every restaurant meal a fabulous buy for the money? Why isn’t every tax dollar spent with the intensity and focus it could be spent with? It seems as though we are willing to accept mediocre as long as the product, the service, or the organization isn’t totally broken.
- Seth Godin
Prospering just doesn’t have to do with money.
- Joel Olsteen
We don’t have a monopoly. We have market share. There’s a difference.
- Steve Ballmer
NO PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT OR EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK PROCESS Your company now employs twenty-five people and you know that you should formalize the performance management process, but you don’t want to pay the price. You worry that doing so will make it feel like a “big company.” Moreover, you do not want your employees to be offended by the feedback, because you can’t afford to lose anyone right now. And people are happy, so why rock the boat? Why not take on a little management debt? The first noticeable payments will be due when somebody performs below expectations: CEO: “He was good when we hired him; what happened?” Manager: “He’s not doing the things that we need him to do.” CEO: “Did we clearly tell him that?” Manager: “Maybe not clearly . . .” However, the larger payment will be a silent tax. Companies execute well when everybody is on the same page and everybody is constantly improving. In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally across either dimension. Directions with no corrections will seem fuzzy and obtuse. People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of. The ultimate price you will pay for not giving feedback: systematically crappy company performance.
- Ben Horowitz
To make meetings less boring, leaders must look for legitimate reasons to provoke and uncover relevant, constructive ideological conflict.
- Patrick M. Lencioni
The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.
- Jeff Bezos
When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would’ve had a chance. Because that’s where my real heart was.
- Steve Martin
I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.
- Winston Churchill
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
The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it.
- Ray Kroc
Bill Gates was in his 20s when he started with $50,000 and became the richest man in the world with $90 billion. It’s a good idea that he did not ask too many people for their ideas on what they thought was possible for his life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.
- Steve Jobs
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
The dollar has lost 90% of its value in the last century.
- Robert Kiyosaki
We are always listening to ideas presented by our customers and in an effort to keep up with their demands, we are adding those quality improvements to Atlanta Motor Speedway. The changes we have planned are a direct result of fan input and are aimed at giving our fans options they currently don’t have.
- Ed Clark
Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.
- Oprah Winfrey
Life is actually far better than it is in the movies. And it takes longer.
- Seth Godin
You will need to find ways to do less and less to make more and more.
- Robert Kiyosaki
There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.
- Napoleon Hill
If something is expensive to develop, and somebody’s not going to get paid, it won’t get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?
- Bill Gates
Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day.
- Joel Olsteen
When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software.” We had dreams about the impact it could have.
- Bill Gates
Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone needs to be appreciated. Every person needs that blessing.
- Joel Olsteen
India has the potential to be our biggest market in Asia, bigger than China, in as much as two to five years.
- John Chambers
Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right.
- Dale Carnegie
Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.
- Zig Ziglar
Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
- Marilyn vos Savant
Doing something different is what’s truly good for society—and it’s also what allows a business to profit by monopolizing a new market. The best projects are likely to be overlooked, not trumpeted by a crowd; the best problems to work on are often the ones nobody else even tries to solve.
- Peter Thiel
Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.
- Peter Thiel
The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That’s why graceful is in such demand.
- Seth Godin
If you try to make such projects, unseen by others, as perfect as any human could, you’ll develop skills that other professionals don’t have.
- Steve Wozniak
Since time is your most valuable asset, it’s odd to spend it working with people who don’t envision any long-term future together. If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well—even in purely financial terms.
- Peter Thiel
Success is not what you have, but who you are.
- Bo Bennett
If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.
- Ben Horowitz
I want get across to not just the church world. I want to get outside those walls to everyday people.
- Joel Olsteen
If you can’t retain the people after an acquisition, it’s not worth it.
- John Chambers
We’re all working together, that’s the secret.
- Sam Walton
The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read.
- Winston Churchill
Later on, Rockefeller learned to camouflage his business anxiety behind a studied calm, but during these years it ws often graphically displayed. Clark remembered one daring venture when the firm wagered its entire capital on a large grain shipment to Buffalo. With foolish, atypical imprudence, Rockefeller suggested that they skip the insurance and pocket the $150.00 premium; Gardner and Clark reluctantly acquiesced. That night, a terrible storm blew across Lake Erie, and when Gardner came to the office the next morning, a frightfully pale Rockefeller paced the floor in agitation. Let’s take out insurance right away, he said, We still have time – if the boat hasn’t been wrecked by now. Gardner ran off to pay the premium. By the time he got back, Rockefeller was waving a telegram announcing the ship’s safe arrival in Buffalo. Whether unnerved by the episode or upset at having paid the unnecessary premium, Rockefeller went home ill that afternoon.
- Ron Chernow
Measuring and establishing facts at every step of the process. Without facts, assumptions and misperceptions will defeat whatever reason and good judgment can be brought to effort
- Service Profit Chain
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly–until you can learn to do it well.
- Zig Ziglar
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.
- Bill Gates
You can’t just let nature run wild.
- Walt Disney
So long as I can stay mentally alert – inquiring, curious – I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don’t want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I’m just not ready to stop, to die.
- Rupert Murdoch
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
- John F. Kennedy
We’ve used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II.
- Warren Buffett
Life’s a journey. It’s a journey about discovering limits.
- Larry Ellison
Culture drives great results.
- Jack Welch
The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That’s approaching evil.
- Jeff Bezos
The ideal thing would be to have a 100 percent effective AIDS vaccine. And to have broad usage of that vaccine. That would literally break the epidemic.
- Bill Gates
The ability to get the job done.
- Jack Welch
You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.
- Joel Olsteen
Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.
- Donald Trump
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
- Seth Godin
Constantly probe the people who report to you, and encourage them to probe you.
- Ray Dalio
China is investing in factories in Eastern Europe, not because their labor costs are lower, but because they want to be closer to their markets.
- Michael Bloomberg
So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.
- Peter Drucker
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
- Andrew Carnegie
The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission.
- Peter Drucker
If it’s a good idea, someone has already probably thought about it first.
- Jack Nadel
Here’s a quote from ultramarathoner Dick Collins: Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop and drop out. You don’t want to be out there saying, “Well gee, my leg hurts, I’m a little dehydrated, I’m sleepy, I’m tired, and it’s cold and windy.” And talk yourself into quitting. If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.
- Seth Godin
Blue Ribbon Sports of Portland, Oregon. Sorry I’m all out of cards. Boy, does your country ever eat up business cards.
- Phil Knight
Look, we live in a very dangerous world. We know there are people who want to take away our freedoms. New Yorkers probably know that as much if not more than anybody else after the terrible tragedy of 9/11.
- Michael Bloomberg
It will be disastrous when a leader or manager shows up with one attitude one day and treats people with a different attitude the next day.
- Zig Ziglar
A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest… Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.
- Jack Welch
That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Tell your lizard (brain) to shut up.
- Seth Godin
I seldom read anything that is not of a factual nature because I want to invest my time wisely in the things that will improve my life. Don’t misunderstand; there is nothing wrong with reading purely for the joy of it. Novels have their place, but biographies of famous men and women contain information that can change lives.
- Zig Ziglar
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.
- Seth Godin
