Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it’s rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything that you know. So who do you tell? Whoever you need to, and no more. In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody—and that’s a company. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
It almost goes without saying that the team needs diversity of skills. Can you imagine a hockey team of goalies? Or a football team of quarterbacks? It doesn’t make sense. In the same way, organizations require diverse talents to succeed, each player taking his part.
- John Maxwell
It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
It’s pretty chilly by southern California standards.
- Ed Clark
In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.
- Bill Gates
Consider scheduling a daily meeting with your new executive. Require them to bring a comprehensive set of questions about everything they heard that day but did not completely understand.
- Ben Horowitz
When Ford sells a car, a dealer isn’t allowed to take out the engine and put a different one in. When a newsstand sells the Washington Post, no one can go to the newsstand and pay them to rip out the classified section and put their own classified section in – if they could, they would do so.
- Bill Gates
I don’t think you should spend your life praying for things, but I do believe you should thank God for what He’s given you… but I think the scripture teaches us that we can pray for our dreams, pray for the big things… he’s not a small God; this God is incredible.
- Joel Olsteen
Don’t go into the new year holding a grudge from last year. Leave the hurts and disappointments behind.
- Joel Olsteen
If you let pride stop you, you will hate life.
- Timothy Ferriss
Seek Criticism Not Praise.
- Paul Arden
I have no interest in going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids. I’m just not that kind of dude.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
- Henry Ford
What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.
- Oprah Winfrey
With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence?
- Timothy Ferriss
As you stumble and learn, stumble and learn again, resolve to talk to yourself as if you were your best friend. So no What a #?%$@ idiot! when your BFF smashes an egg on the floor, m’kay? Be cool, like the Fonz.
- Timothy Ferriss
There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.
- Richard Branson
You are at the top when: You have made friends with your past, are focused on the present, and are optimistic about your future.
- Zig Ziglar
A goal properly set is halfway reached.
- Zig Ziglar
The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.
- Ray Dalio
Every morning brings new potential, but if you dwell on the misfortunes of the day before, you tend to overlook tremendous opportunities.
- Harvey Mackay
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.
- Napoleon Hill
Dinner would have been splendid…if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess.
- Winston Churchill
Doughnuts are a normal part of a healthy, balanced diet.
- Brooke Smith
The public is upset. If they haven’t lost their job, they know somebody that has. If they haven’t lost their house, they know somebody that has. What do you do? When something’s wrong, it’s government’s job to fix it, it must be government that’s responsible for causing it.
- Michael Bloomberg
You’ve got to take a big jump to make it. You’ve got to have great big balls.
- Forrest Ray
You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.
- Joel Olsteen
Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, – it largely increases the product.
- P.T. Barnum
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.
- Bill Gates
Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris.
- Peter Thiel
No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.
- Harvey Mackay
Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.
- Warren Buffett
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?
- Ben Horowitz
You must not ever think that anything is common sense.
- Clay Clark
your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
- Dale Carnegie
The Chinese market is a very good expansion opportunity for us, and we will continue looking to buy stakes and make acquisitions.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
- Zig Ziglar
Allow endings.
- Jack Dorsey
Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.
- Napoleon Hill
I would like to be remembered, if I am remembered at all, as being a catalyst for change in the world, change for good.
- Rupert Murdoch
The lizard isn’t listening and the lizard doesn’t care.
- Seth Godin
Above all, you want to create something you’re proud of. This has always been my philosophy of business. I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off not doing it.
- Richard Branson
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
- Winston Churchill
Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.
- Bill Gates
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
- John D. Rockefeller
The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.
- Elon Musk
Gold is a kind of mortar and offers a form of capital preservation. We’re still bullish about gold.
- Lee Shau Kee
For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.
- Peter Thiel
My worry about the New York Times is that it’s got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we’d love to challenge it.
- Rupert Murdoch
Perks are good, but they are not culture.
- Ben Horowitz
The challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us.
- Seth Godin
[In January 2011] I think Twitter is so unique that we must stay independent.
- Jack Dorsey
If the employees come first, then they’re happy….A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy, so they keep coming back, which pleases the shareholders. It’s not one of the enduring green mysteries of all time, it is just the way it works.
- Herb Kelleher
Pride deafens us to the advice or warnings of those around us.
- John C. Maxwell
[In February 2011] We’ve not done a lot of marketing whatsoever. A lot of it has just been word of mouth.
- Jack Dorsey
For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.
- Timothy Ferriss
What nerds miss is that it takes hard work to make sales look easy.
- Peter Thiel
What destroys more self-confidence than any other educational thing in America is being assigned to some remedial math when you get into some college, and then it’s not taught very well and you end up with this sense of, ‘Hey, I can’t really figure those things out.’
- Bill Gates
The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.
- Napoleon Hill
Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice – fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.
- Sergey Brin
The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.
- Elon Musk
Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.
- Seth Godin
Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle…
- Napoleon Hill
Consumers are spontaneous and if you can catch their attention, that’s going to increase the chance that they will look at your product.
- Jack Taylor
He had realized something while arcing in slow circles toward the earth—risks weren’t that scary once you took them. His.
- Timothy Ferriss
I first thought maybe I’d do a banjo presentation record, where I’d play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.
- Steve Martin
Eradications are special. Zero is a magic number. You either do what it takes to get to zero and you’re glad you did it; or you get close, give up and it goes back to where it was before, in which case you wasted all that credibility, activity, money that could have been applied to other things.
- Bill Gates
There’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.
- Bill Gates
A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.15 Smile. It increases your face value.
- Dale Carnegie
Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature, Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon’s unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.
- Walt Disney
Well, excuuuuuse me!
- Steve Martin
Mind you, I got this reduction without saying a word about what I wanted. I talked all the time about what the other person wanted and how he could get it.
- Dale Carnegie
I believe that the biggest problem that humanity faces is an ego sensitivity to finding out whether one is right or wrong and identifying what one’s strengths and weaknesses are.
- Ray Dalio
If you want a successful business, your people must feel that you are working for them—not that they are working for you.
- Sam Walton
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
You are going to survive. And good things are going to start to happen again. And one day you are going to look back and this will not even be such a bad thing.
- Dale Carnegie
I think most of the important stuff on the Internet has been built. There will be continued innovation, for sure, but the great problems of the Internet have essentially been solved.
- Elon Musk
The minimum effective dose (MED) is defined simply: the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome.
- Timothy Ferriss
Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.
- Mark Zuckerberg
When there is no job related stress, you are more aware of your mate and children, if you are a parent.
- Zig Ziglar
A man who succeeds in life must sometimes go against the current.
- Ron Chernow
What this industry is about is back to the basics in the new Internet economy; and the basics are profitability, cash flow, productivity and market-share gains.
- John Chambers
Respect people’s wishes.
- Jack Dorsey
It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
- Ronald Reagan
Logic, like science, must be the servant and not the master of man.
- Winston Churchill
Poisonous people do not deserve your time. To think otherwise is masochistic. The best way to approach a potential break is simple: Confide in them honestly but tactfully and explain your concerns. If they bite back, your conclusions have been confirmed. Drop them like any other bad habit. If they promise to change, first spend at least two weeks apart to develop other positive influences in your life and diminish psychological dependency. The next trial period should have a set duration and consist of pass-or-fail criteria. If this approach is too confrontational for you, just politely refuse to interact with them. Be in the middle of something when the call comes, and have a prior commitment when the invitation to hang out comes. Once you see the benefits of decreased time with these people, it will be easier to stop communication altogether.
- Timothy Ferriss
Storytelling is the game. It’s what we all do. It’s why Nike is Nike, it’s why Apple is Apple, it’s why Walt Disney built Disney World and it’s why Vince McMahon makes a billion dollars.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‘Didn’t you make that movie already?’ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.
- Jerry Seinfeld
When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.
- Bill Gates
I will not talk to God about how big my problems are. I will talk to my problems about how big my God is. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Stones of judgment, discouragement or doubt may be thrown at you. You can’t stop them, but you can make the choice to keep your walls up and not let them affect you.
- Joel Olsteen
A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know—if anybody does. He said: About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life—and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centered desires.
- Dale Carnegie
All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.
- Napoleon Hill
There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‘The government’s corrupt,’ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.
- Bill Gates
I have many children, as you seek you may find that this the last one till he must die before he must reach the becoming of mankind. Many men have failed but i have surpassed their expectation of being a Jedi master.
- Yoda
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
