Notable Quotables

Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.

- Howard Schultz

Thinking about what might happen if we ran completely out of money—laying off all the employees that I’d so carefully selected and hired, losing all my investors’ money, jeopardizing all the customers who trusted us with their business—made it difficult to concentrate on the possibilities. Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke: Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.

- Ben Horowitz

I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.

- Howard Schultz

Anatomy of a MovementSenator Bill Bradley defines a movement as having three elements: (1) A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we’re trying to build. (2) A connection between and among the leader and the tribe. (3) Something to do – the fewer limits the better. Too often organizations fail to do anything but the third.

- Seth Godin

Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good, but that I heard never.

- Dale Carnegie

We’re still in a recession. We’re not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.

- Warren Buffett

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

If anyone has a vested interest in space solar power, it would have to be me.

- Elon Musk

Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.

- Larry Ellison

Just like Mark Snider told the Board of Elections within a couple hours of when he first became aware of it… first of all, Mike and I didn’t even know anything about this till March 16, … Second of all, nobody benefited from this in any way, shape or form whatsoever.

- Michael Ward

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

If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness.

- Jeff Bezos

Giving feels good, but it’s also good for the bottom line. Charity is a viable growth strategy for a lot ofcompanies. Our customers get excited to be a part of what we’re doing. If you ask anyone wearing Toms how they first heard about us, most won’t mention an advertisement; they’ll say a friend told them our story.

- Blake Mycoskie

I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It’s their work that I’m supporting. So it’s not me doing it.

- George Soros

if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.

- Dale Carnegie

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

- Bill Gates

It’s not Pinterest where people are putting up pins. You’re changing the way cities work, and that’s fundamentally a third rail. We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an as—hole named Taxi.

- Travis Kalanick

The challenge is this: training creative, independent, and innovative artists is new to us.

- Seth Godin

Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.

- Seth Godin

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But… I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

- Thomas Edison

College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.

- Peter Thiel

My two primary areas of focus have been open-space conservation and education, and I expect those to remain my priorities in the future. The Irvine open space and parklands provide serenity and balance to our unique Orange County lifestyle.

- Donald Bren

When plans appear into your mind, they will probably flash into your mind through the sixth sense, in the form of an inspiration. This inspiration may be considered a direct telegram, or message from infinite intelligence. Treat it with respect, and act upon it as soon as you receive it. Failure to do this is fatal to your succeess.

- Napoleon Hill

I think like a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Failure is a great teacher. At the same time, you must remember, success will never last… Whether it’s tech or fashion, it must be for the customer.

- Tadashi Yanai

It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.

- Timothy Ferriss

We want the brand to stand for the same thing all over the world

- Phil Knight

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

- Bill Gates

Continually get the word out about how you’re handling the situation.

- David Novak

It is very helpful to me, in my job, for people to know me better. A lot of that is, it’s a communication job.

- Ben Horowitz

So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.

- Reed Hastings

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

- Walt Disney

We could definitely make a flying car – but that’s not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.

- Elon Musk

It sounds awful, but a crisis rarely ends without blood on the floor. That’s not easy or pleasant. But sadly, it is often necessary so the company can move forward again.

- Jack Welch

A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.

- Winston Churchill

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

- Winston Churchill

The Internet economy continues to create unprecedented growth opportunities for people, companies and countries on a global basis.

- John Chambers

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 friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

- John D. Rockefeller

But as an entrepreneur you have to feel like you can jump out of an aeroplane because you’re confident that you’ll catch a bird flying by. It’s an act of stupidity, and most entrepreneurs go splat because the bird doesn’t come by, but a few times it does.

- Reed Hastings

Focus on your people – Without employees and customers, your’re going nowwhere.

- David Green

The torch relay is an excellent embodiment of all that the Olympic Games have come to symbolise – a celebration of the human spirit. Personally to me, it represents striving to be the best in whatever we do, never giving up despite the odds, and a commitment to health and fitness.

- Lakshmi Mittal

Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.

- Michael Gerber

If I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations.

- Bill Gates

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

- Robin Li

Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.

- Howard Schultz

I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, ‘That’s the company that honoured me, even though I don’t have an education’. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience.

- Howard Schultz

A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

- Winston Churchill

In the early days, I really felt the pain of not being able to find information easily. I guess that helped me to develop an urge to write things like a search engine.

- Robin Li

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

- Joel Olsteen

Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path.

- Seth Godin

This is a perverse thing, personally, but I would rather be in the cycle where people are underestimating us. It gives us the latitude to go out and make big bets that excite and amaze people.

- Mark Zuckerberg

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

- Bill Gates

Even if we are right and the other person is definitely wrong, we only destroy ego by causing someone to lose face. The legendary French aviation pioneer and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote: I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.

- Dale Carnegie

In the end, I hope there’s a little note somewhere that says I designed a good computer.

- Steve Wozniak

CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.

- Peter Thiel

We wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don’t end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.

- Phil Knight

A number of people in the United States, almost everyone, is using plastic cards to pay for things, but it’s extremely difficult to accept these cards. So let’s make it’s easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can.

- Jack Dorsey

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

At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Networking is one of the most valuable uses of your time in terms of return—and not just in monetary terms.

- Business Insider.com

You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to those situations.

- Zig Ziglar

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

- Thomas Edison

If you cannot save money, then the seeds of greatness are not in you.

- Brian Tracy

Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.

- Rich Karlgaard

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?

- Michael Bloomberg

I did not like the way I looked in a pair of white pants.

- Sara Blakely

There is slow growth, but it is positive slow growth. At the same time, ratios of debt-to-incomes go down. That’s a beautiful deleveraging.

- Ray Dalio

A person’s life is over in 50, 100 years. But a company lives on through the people it is composed of, and SoftBank group has to survive even after I’m gone.

- Masayoshi Son

The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.

- Peter Thiel

Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.

- Peter Thiel

What I know is that if you do work that you love, and the work fulfills you, the rest will come.

- Oprah Winfrey

Any time a company grows as fast as Wal-Mart has, pockets of duplication are going to build up, and there will be areas of the business which we may no longer need. No boss or employee really likes to dwell on such matters; it’s only human nature not to want to have your job, or the jobs of the people who work for you, eliminated. But it is absolutely the responsibility of a company’s top management to be thinking about this issue all the time – to ensure the sound future for the overall company.

- Sam Walton

Nobody wanted to believe Jack Ma.

- Jack Ma

I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in ‘American History X,’ yes. I remember coming home from school and asking my mum if I could get an eye transplant, and of course she declined.

- Timothy Ferriss

Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.

- Zig Ziglar

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

- Steve Jobs

Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.

- Winston Churchill

Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.

- Peter Drucker

I think Yahoo is a great company, with great assets.

- Jack Ma

Your business has to work when it’s small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.

- Seth Godin

If I were to retire, I would keep my family’s interest in the company the same and say, Don’t sell.

- Sheldon Adelson

Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike”, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

- Peter Thiel

The most important persuasion tool you have in your entire arsenal is integrity.

- Zig Ziglar

It is possible to become world-class, enter the top 5% of performers in the world, in almost any subject within 6-12 months, or even 6-12 weeks.

- Timothy Ferriss

Bloodshed, gentlemen, no doubt is lamentable. I have seen some of it–more perhaps than many of those who talk about it with such levity. But there are worse things than bloodshed, even on an extreme scale. . . . The trampling down of law and order which, under the conditions of a civilised state, assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–all this would be worse than bloodshed.

- Winston Churchill

I had this very rich sense of how the metropolis was living and breathing.

- Jack Dorsey

There are a great many wetless” bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.

- Dale Carnegie

Athletic skills are acquired over a long period of time and after countless hours of practice.

- Zig Ziglar

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