Notable Quotables

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

- Joel Olsteen

The main thing that’s missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics.

- Bill Gates

Be there for your kids. Later, when you need them, they’ll be there for you.

- Zig Ziglar

I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It’s really a great invention and I wouldn’t under-estimate the value of that, but they’re not designed to take care of social needs.

- George Soros

I’m a Silicon Valley guy. I just think people from Silicon Valley can do anything.

- Elon Musk

Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.

- Winston Churchill

Art has no right answer. The best we can hope for is an interesting answer.

- Seth Godin

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

There’s no mystery in business success. If you do each day’s task successfully and stay faithfully within these natural operations of commercial laws which I talk so much about and keep your head clear, you will come out all right.

- John D. Rockefeller

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn’t even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

- Sara Blakely

Had I actually clerked on the Supreme Court, I probably would have spent my entire career taking depositions or drafting other people’s business deals instead of creating anything new.

- Peter Thiel

A good practice is to have the employee send you the agenda in advance. This will give her a chance to cancel the meeting if nothing is pressing.

- Ben Horowitz

Learning is truly a value, growth for every employee is a real objective, mistakes aren’t always fatal, and there are lots of people around whom you can reach out to for coaching and mentoring.

- Jack Welch

Did we not all grow up saying we had to have four glasses of whole milk a day for healthy bones? It’s ridiculous. It’s liquid cholesterol.

- Stephen Wynn

In the 1950s, people welcomed big plans and asked whether they would work. 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. You can still visit the Bay Model in that Sausalito warehouse, but today it’s just a tourist attraction: big plans for the future have become archaic curiosities.

- Peter Thiel

China and India will, separately and together, unleash an explosion of demand.

- Mukesh Ambani

There are a thousand excuses for failure, but never a good reason.

- Mark Twain

But this “spray and pray” approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.

- Peter Thiel

Life’s too short to fight the forces of change. Life’s too short to hate what you do all day. Life’s way too short to make mediocre stuff.

- Seth Godin

My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.

- Joel Olsteen

The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts.

- James C. Collins

If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.

- Dale Carnegie

For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.

- James C. Collins

To me, it’s OK to have differences. But we don’t have to be mad about it. You know? And I think that’s where sometimes we get so passionate that we – you know, it turns into anger.

- Joel Olsteen

Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

- Bill Gates

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

- Winston Churchill

Certainly, the Windows share of servers is strong.

- Bill Gates

Steve really took over the project when I had a plane crash and wasn’t there. He took over the project, and it was really my own opinion — only my opinion — that he wanted to compete with the Lisa group that had kicked him out.

- Steve Wozniak

[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.

- Phil Knight

Even though I get older, what I do never gets old, and that’s what I think keeps me hungry.

- Warren Buffett

Never be bothered by what people say, as long as you know in your heart you are right.

- Dale Carnegie

Diversification and globalization are the keys to the future.

- Fujio Mitarai

We are seeing the beginning of things. Web 2.0 is broadband. Web 3.0 is 10 gigabits a second.

- Reed Hastings

95% financing arrangement offered by Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited in a period of sustained low interest have added impetus to secondary trading activities in the property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.

- Oprah Winfrey

One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!

- Winston Churchill

In Germany they had no kings. They developed them in Britain from leaders who claimed descent from the ancient gods.

- Winston Churchill

Every twenty-four hours God has a fresh new supply of grace, of favor, of wisdom, of forgiveness.

- Joel Olsteen

Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.

- Jeff Bezos

Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret.

- George Soros

I worry about losing a real talent. I hate losing a great leader more than anything. I also hate it when I have to manager out a good person for poor performance or for simply doing something that is not in sync with our values. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life and I’ve had to do it more than once, is fire a friend.

- David Novak

When I hear Mitt Romney say that he believes that Jesus is the Son of God, that He’s the Christ, raised from the dead, that He’s his savior – that’s good enough for me.

- Joel Olsteen

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?

- John Chambers

The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.

- Bill Gates

A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.

- Peter Drucker

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

We decided that instead of avoiding our competitors, or waiting for them to come to us, we would meet them head-on. It was one of the smartest strategic decisions we ever made. In fact, if our story doesn’t prove anything else about the free market system, it erases any doubt that spirited competition is good for business – not just for customers, but the companies which have to compete with one another too. Our competitors have honed and sharpened us to an edge we wouldn’t have with out them. We wouldn’t be nearly as good as we are today without Kmart, and I think they would admit we’ve made them a better retailer. One reason Sears fell so far off the pace is that they wouldn’t admit for the longest time that Wal-Mart and Kmart were their real competition. They ignored both of us, and we both blew right by them.

- Sam Walton

Failure to deliver on committments is, in the end, unacceptable.

- Jack Welch

We all need a daily checkup from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.

- Zig Ziglar

China gets their oil from Libya. Why isn’t China involved? They’re going out spending billions of dollars a day on trying to take over the world economically. And we’re spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on policing the world. Why isn’t China involved with Libya? That – we don’t get oil from Libya, China does.

- Donald Trump

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.

- Napoleon Hill

Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.

- Thomas J Stanley

“High expectations are the key to everything.”

- Sam Walton

Take the first step in faith, you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Each close you use should be an educational process by which you are able to raise the value in the prospect’s mind.

- Zig Ziglar

In our day Capital, Business Ability, and Manual Labor are the legs of a three-legged stool. While the three legs stand sound and firm, the stool stands; but let any one of the three weaken and break, let it be pulled out or struck out, down goes the stool to the ground. And the stool is of no use until the third leg is restored.

- Andrew Carnegie

I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.

- Jack Dorsey

You’re not really free until you’re free from trying to please everybody.

- Joel Olsteen

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

I love comedy. That’s what got me into the arts. I don’t even know how to categorize myself anymore.

- Steve Martin

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn’t really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.

- Richard Branson

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

Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.

- Ben Horowitz

There should be order if the development of the cyber world is to be sustainable.

- Ma Huateng

God can cause opportunity to find you. He has unexpected blessings where you suddenly meet the right person, or suddenly your health improves, or suddenly you’re able to pay off your house. That’s God shifting things in your favor.

- Joel Olsteen

Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.

- Larry Page

There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.

- Elon Musk

This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.

- Seth Godin

More than trends, consumers need functionality. Everything needs an element of fashion, but that’s more like a spice.

- Tadashi Yanai

I mean, there’s no arguing. There is no anything. There is no beating around the bush. ‘You’re fired’ is a very strong term.

- Donald Trump

The part of uranium that’s fissile – when you hit it with a neutron, it splits in two – is about 0.7%. The reactors we have today are burning that 0.7%.

- Bill Gates

People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.

- John C. Maxwell

The prizes of life are at the end of each journey, not near the beginning, and it is not given to me to know how many steps are necessary in order to reach my goal. Failure I may still encounter at the thousandth step, yet success hides behind the next bend in the road. Never will I know how close it lies unless I turn the corner.

- Og Mandino

A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see and who sees before others see.

- Leroy Eimes

We’re absolutely going to have a better facility.

- Ed Clark

People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.

- Elon Musk

Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.

- Sam Walton

Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation.

- Peter Thiel

More business decisions occur over lunch and dinner than any other time, yet no MBA courses are given on the subject.

- Peter Drucker

A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, ‘You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish!’ They won. Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.

- Napoleon Hill

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

- Thomas Edison

A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

- Mark Zuckerberg

You must unlearn what you have learned.

- Yoda

Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.

- Ben Horowitz

Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs.

- The Millionaire Next Door

Un cambio de actitud Lo que diferencia a los individuos exitosos de aquellos que languidecen es exactamente lo mismo que separa a las organizaciones innovadoras y en crecimiento de aquellas que se estancan y mueren. Los ganadores han convertido la iniciativa en una pasión y en una práctica. Adelante, prepara una lista de las personas y organizaciones a las que admiras. Apuesto a que el séptimo imperativo es lo que las hace destacar. Como ves, el reto no consiste en perfeccionar tu capacidad de saber cuándo empezar o cuándo mantenerte al margen, sino en adoptar la costumbre de empezar.

- Seth Godin

For every sale you miss because you were too enthusiastic, you’ll miss a hundred because you weren’t enthusiastic enough.

- Zig Ziglar

An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

- Jack Welch

When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Approach each customer with the idea of helping them solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.

- Brian Tracy

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