Notable Quotables

If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward.

- Thomas Edison

We’re on our way to Greece, in the hands of a confused, foolish government. It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.

- Stephen Wynn

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.

- Bill Gates

Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.

- Ben Horowitz

A good engineering interview will include some set of difficult problems to solve. It might even require that the candidate write a short program. In addition, it will test the candidate’s knowledge of the tools she uses in great depth.

- Ben Horowitz

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.

- Dale Carnegie

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

- Winston Churchill

Most governments are pragmatic, most people are logical. There are pockets of extremism in Israel, in the U.S. and in the Muslim world. But we have to fight them with reason, with logic and with compassion.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

The Government simply cannot make up their mind or they cannot get the prime minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful for impotency. And so we go on preparing more months more years precious perhaps vital for the greatness of Britain for the locusts to eat. – Speaking in the Address in Reply debate, after giving some specific instances of Germany’s war preparedness.

- Winston Churchill

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Somebody talked me into writing an autobiography about six or seven years ago. And I said I’d try. We talked into a tape recorder, and after a couple of months, I said, To hell with it. I was so depressed. It was like saying, ‘This is the end.’ I was more interested in what the hell was coming the next day or the next week.

- Rupert Murdoch

You can achieve difficult things, but you can’t achieve the impossible.

- Peter Thiel

I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.

- Timothy Ferriss

Let your motto then always be ‘Excelsior’, for by living up to it there is no such word as fail.

- P.T. Barnum

Nearly every person who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.

- Thomas Edison

There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.

- Winston Churchill

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

- Steve Martin

It’s absolutely true we set out to expose Microsoft’s covert activities, I feel very good about what we did … Maybe our investigation organization may have done things unsavory, but it’s not illegal. We got the truth out.

- Larry Ellison

While we remain cautious about the implications of a brief pause in the current 10-year expansion of the U.S. economy, we believe that Cisco has never been better positioned to help our customers solve their two most important business issues: Increasing productivity and creating new sources of revenue.

- John Chambers

It marks a big step in a man’s development when he comes to realize that other men can be called in to help him do a better job than he can do alone.

- Andrew Carnegie

We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective.

- Peter Thiel

A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.

- Peter Thiel

Where you start is not as important as where you finish.

- Zig Ziglar

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end – people like myself – should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.

- Warren Buffett

They don’t understand that Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.

- Seth Godin

You make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.

- Winston Churchill

Whoever is first to dominate the most important segment of a market with viral potential will be the last mover in the whole market.

- Peter Thiel

The U.S., especially Hollywood, is so strong for film production.

- Wang Jianlin

When you have an understanding of how someone else lives, the less likely it is that you conflict with them.

- Jack Dorsey

That’s the hard thing about hard things—there is no formula for dealing with them.

- Ben Horowitz

Of course, the challenge of being the initiator is that you’ll be wrong. You’ll pick the wrong thing, you’ll waste time, you’ll be blamed. This is why being an initiator is valuable. Most people shy away from the challenge. They’ve been too abused, they’re too fearful, they hold back, they’re happy to let someone else take the heat. Initiative is scarce. Hence valuable. Ditch digging is not scarce. It’s not hard at all to find manual labor at minimum wage, which is precisely why manual labor gets paid minimum wage. It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence, because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.

- Seth Godin

You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.

- Steve Martin

The subject of this book is managing oneself for effectiveness.

- Peter Drucker

I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not a politician.

- Robin Li

It doesn’t matter how many people you offend, as long as you’re getting your message to your consumers. I say to those people who do not want to offend anybody: You are going to have a very, very difficult time having meaningful advertising.

- Phil Knight

Chance can allow you to accomplish a goal every once in a while, but consistent achievement happens only if you love what you are doing.

- Bart Conner

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

- Winston Churchill

If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.

- James C. Collins

Selling and delivering a product is at least as important as the product itself.

- Peter Thiel

Improvement is to invent something completely new.

- Peter Thiel

The worst way of flying, I think, is standby. It never works. That’s why they call it standby. You end up standing there going, ‘Bye!’

- Jerry Seinfeld

In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can.

- Peter Thiel

We survive the market volatility and political changes. We cater for the actual need of the people and keep pace with the country.

- Cheng Yu-tung

What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labor, but a third team, one that straddled elements of both? I think there’s a huge opportunity for a third kind of participant, a linchpin, and now there is an opportunity to change all the rules that we’ve lived with all our lives. There is a shortage of this third kind of worker, and that shortage means that the market needs you desperately. The con game is ending, at least for people passionate enough to do something about it.

- Seth Godin

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship.

- Seth Godin

But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.

- Peter Thiel

Even if you have a world class idea and want to give it away for the good of humanity, you will have to sell the concept. If you can’t sell it, you’ll be stuck with your idea, poorer for your brilliance and generosity.

- Jerry Vass

Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.

- Peter Thiel

I think Twitter is the future of communications and Square will be the payment network.

- Jack Dorsey

If you focus on near-term growth above all else, you miss the most important question you should be asking: will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer; instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.

- Peter Thiel

Nobody walks this earth thinking he’s better than I think I am – I think I’m great. At the same time, it’s so obvious to me that I’m nobody.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Cisco believes that the Internet, and related technologies, will be a key enabler for India to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation.

- John Chambers

Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.

- Mark Twain

The 1980s will seem like a walk in the park when compared to new global challenges, where annual productivity increases of 6% may not be enough. A combination of software, brains, and running harder will be needed to bring that percentage up to 8% or 9%.

- Jack Welch

People have come to me over the years and said to me: ‘I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?’ I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.

- Howard Schultz

Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we’re afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.

- Seth Godin

I wasn’t prepared for this big room with clattering typewriters and teletype printers. You could hardly hear yourself think.

- Ray Kroc

In some ways, running a successful business is a bit like coaching a football team. The fundamentals of football are blocking and tackling. The fundamentals of a business are it’s governing policies andprocesses. To carry out the metaphor, touchdowns are profits. The best business idea in the world cannot survive bad execution. So when you sit down to develop your workflow, internal policies, and business structure, be merciless, probe for weaknesses and assume that the worst will happen. – Jack Nadel (Author&Entrepreneur)

- Jack Nadel

Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.

- Jerry Seinfeld

The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.

- James Simons

To enjoy life, you don’t need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.

- Timothy Ferriss

Certainly there’s a phenomenon around open source. You know free software will be a vibrant area. There will be a lot of neat things that get done there.

- Bill Gates

Job security lasts only as long as the customer is satisfied. Nobody owes anybody else a living.

- Sam Walton

The debt limits have to come down. The whole world of debt has to be changed as far as this country is concerned. We have to create jobs and we have to create them rapidly because if we don’t things are just going to head in a direction that’s going to be almost impossible to recover from.

- Donald Trump

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.

- Seth Godin

Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, one step at a time, picking your feet up and putting them down. At the end of the day, twenty miles later, you stop at a hotel. And what happens the next morning? Either you quit the project or you start again, walking to Cleveland. In fact, every step is a new beginning. Sure, you’re closer than you were yesterday or last week, but you’re still…

- Seth Godin

I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.

- Jeff Bezos

Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.

- Warren Buffett

Lo que una persona diga de ti no define quién eres. Su opinión de ti no determina tu dignidad propia. Deja que eso te resbale como si fuera agua sobre el plumaje de un pato. Esa persona tiene todo el derecho a tener una opinión, y tú tienes todo el derecho a pasarla por alto.

- Joel Olsteen

Blacksmiths sometimes twist a rope tight around the nose of a horse, and by thus inflicting a little pain they distract his attention from the shoeing process. One way to get air out of a glass is to pour in water. Be Absorbed by Your Subject.

- Dale Carnegie

Learn to speak God’s favor over every area of your life. Remember, the more favor-minded you are, the more of God’s favor you’re going to experience.

- Joel Olsteen

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

- Bill Gates

The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?

- Mark Zuckerberg

His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.

- Ron Chernow

Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.

- Phil Knight

When the negative thoughts come – and they will, they come to all of us – it’s not enough to just not dwell on it… You’ve got to replace it with a positive thought.

- Joel Olsteen

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

- Peter Drucker

A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them.

- Ben Horowitz

We think of Starbucks not as a coffee company but a media company.

- Howard Schultz

My parents got one bedroom, my three sisters got the other bedroom, and my brother and I made do with a rollaway in the kitchen.

- David Green

Effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible.

- Jack Welch

This presents a very curious phenomenon. There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines. If you haven’t identified the mission-critical tasks and set aggressive start and end times for their completion, the unimportant becomes the important. Even if you know what’s critical, without deadlines that create focus, the minor tasks forced upon you (or invented, in the case of the entrepreneur) will swell to consume time until another bit of minutiae jumps in to replace.

- Timothy Ferriss

Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.

- James C. Collins

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked, leadership is defined by results not attributes.

- Peter Drucker

In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I’ve ever seen run for the presidency of the United States.

- Jack Welch

Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.

- Michael Dell

Law of Clarity – If you can’t explain what you sell to a ten-year old child then you don’t know what you sell.

- Jerry Vass

The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

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