Notable Quotables

The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE.

- Winston Churchill

One of the statistics that always amazes me is the approval of the Chinese government, not elected, is over 80 percent. The approval of the U.S. government, fully elected, is 19 percent. Well, we elected these people and they didn’t elect those people. Isn’t it supposed to be different? Aren’t we supposed to like the people that we elected?

- Bill Gates

A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.

- John C. Maxwell

If you are a big company, a big website, and lots of users come to your website, you will have attacks, and you have to deal with that. It just cannot be a reason to take actions to exit certain markets.

- Robin Li

Every breakthrough business idea begins with solving a common problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. I discovered a big one when I took apart an IBM PC. I made two interesting discoveries: The components were all manufactured by other companies, and the system that retailed for $3,000 cost about $600 in parts.

- Michael Dell

We thought we ought to put that in because it’s the truth but the (like-for-like) number even with those factors taken into account is still very disappointing.

- Simon Wolfson

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.

- James C. Collins

The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves

- Ray Kroc

Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.

- Seth Godin

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

- Zig Ziglar

I try to make myself happy, no, because I know that if I’m not happy, my colleagues are not happy and my shareholders are not happy and my customers are not happy.

- Jack Ma

Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.

- Jack Welch

There’s only one trick in software, and that is using a piece of software that’s already been written.

- Bill Gates

They have destroyed your weapons,but these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.

- Winston Churchill

We’re all obsessed with ideas because ideas, not products, are the engine of our new economy.

- Seth Godin

The problems forced us to take a hard look at what we were doing, what was going wrong, what we were good at, and where we wanted to go.

- Phil Knight

When nobody else celebrates you, learn to celebrate yourself. When nobody else compliments you, then compliment yourself. It’s not up to other people to keep you encouraged. It’s up to you. Encouragement should come from the inside.

- Joel Olsteen

There’s a wonderful saying that’s dead wrong. ‘Why did you climb the mountain?’ ‘I climbed the mountain because it was there.’ That’s utter nonsense…You climbed the mountain because you were there, and you were curious if you could do it. You wondered what it would be like.

- Larry Ellison

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

- Mark Twain

Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!

- Yoda

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

- Henry Ford

I didn’t think I would come to this conclusion — but eventually I came to the conclusion that more information is better, even if it is not as full as we would like to see.

- Sergey Brin

Once we assembled the entire package, Mike named it Netscape SuiteSpot, as it would be the “suite” that displaced Microsoft’s BackOffice. We lined everything up for a major launch on March 5, 1996, in New York. Then, just two weeks before the launch, Marc, without telling Mike or me, revealed the entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is. We are getting killed killed killed out there. Our current product is radically worse than the competition. We’ve had nothing to say for months. As a result, we’ve lost over $3B in market capitalization. We are now in danger of losing the entire company and it’s all server product management’s fault. Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you, Marc I received this email the same day that Marc appeared barefoot and sitting on a throne on the cover of Time magazine. When I first saw the cover, I felt thrilled. I had never met anyone in my life who had been on the cover of Time. Then I felt sick. I brought both the magazine and the email home to Felicia to get a second opinion. I was very worried. I was twenty-nine years old, had a wife and three children, and needed my job. She looked at the email and the magazine cover and said, “You need to start looking for a job right away.” In the end, I didn’t get fired and over the next two years, SuiteSpot grew from nothing to a $400 million a year business. More shocking, Marc and I eventually became friends; we’ve been friends and business partners ever since. People often ask me how we’ve managed to work effectively across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.

- Ben Horowitz

If you’ve found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

- Bill Gates

If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.

- Woodrow Wilson

Successful Investing takes time, discipline and patience. No matter how great the talent or effort, some things just take time: You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

- Warren Buffett

Expect to make some mistakes when you try new and different approaches. Sometimes colossal failures lead to spectacular successes.

- Harvey Mackay

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

- Dale Carnegie

Six out of 10 Americans believe the American dream is dead according to a recent poll.

- CBSNews.com

I never called my work an ‘art’. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

- Walt Disney

Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.

- Yoda

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

- Mark Twain

The formula for handling Inherent Objections: 1. Isolate the Objection 2. Minimize the Objection 3. Offset the Objection with Benefits

- Jerry Vass

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

- Timothy Ferriss

My first transistor radio was the heart of my gadget love today. It fit in my hand and brought me a world of music 24 / 7.

- Steve Wozniak

Don’t just accept whatever comes your way in life. You were born to win, you were born for greatness, you were created to be a champion in life.

- Joel Olsteen

I am a better investor because I am a businessman, and a better businessman because I am an investor.

- Warren Buffett

Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.

- Jeff Bezos

Regardless of what position people originally took, once the decision is made, everyone supports it. That’s why it is critical that no one hold anything back during the discussion.

- Patrick M. Lencioni

I’m less interested in how people are following each other and more interested in how they are following topics and tweets themselves. People are following more key words and concepts and more ideas and acting on those rather than individuals or organizations.

- Jack Dorsey

I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.

- Warren Buffett

One definition of hope is happy anticipation of something good.

- Joel Olsteen

Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we’re just trying to accomplish something.

- Thomas Edison

Happiness is not a tangible thing, it’s a byproduct – a byproduct of achievement.

- Ray Kroc

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.

- Vince Lombardi

Today our challenge is to both imagine and create the new technologies that can make the 21st century more peaceful and prosperous than the 20th.

- Peter Thiel

People have no confidence that Washington, both sides of aisle, are coming together to try and do what’s right for the economy.

- Michael Bloomberg

We have a number of difficulties facing our nation, but I believe fatherlessness is right at the top of the list.

- Tony Dungy

Our business practices are no different than those of our competitors, but we are bigger, and thus more visible, so we get more flack.

- Phil Knight

Enduring great companies don’t exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed, in a truly great company, profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point of life.

- James C. Collins

But the Mahommedan religion increases, instead of lessening, the fury of intolerance. It was originally propagated by the sword, and ever since, its votaries have been subject, above the people of all other creeds, to this form of madness. In a moment the fruits of patient toil, the prospects of material prosperity, the fear of death itself, are flung aside. The more emotional Pathans are powerless to resist. All rational considerations are forgotten. Seizing their weapons, they become Ghazis—as dangerous and as sensible as mad dogs: fit only to be treated as such. While the more generous spirits among the tribesmen become convulsed in an ecstasy of religious bloodthirstiness, poorer and more material souls derive additional impulses from the influence of others, the hopes of plunder and the joy of fighting. Thus whole nations are roused to arms. Thus the Turks repel their enemies, the Arabs of the Soudan break the British squares, and the rising on the Indian frontier spreads far and wide. In each case civilisation is confronted with militant Mahommedanism. The forces of progress clash with those of reaction. The religion of blood and war is face to face with that of peace.

- Winston Churchill

[On American running shoes] They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters after five miles. Adidas was taking advantage. And at $30 a pair, Adidas was making a killing.

- Phil Knight

Chinese people, young people, they don’t go shopping a lot in department stores. All department store guys hate me. They say business is bad because of Jack.

- Jack Ma

I am excited for the opportunity to pursue new interests, including my work with a few public company boards, several universities in the U.S. and the UK and ophthalmic charities whose goals are to improve eye health in emerging markets.

- David Pyott

As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.

- Seth Godin

Money won’t make you have, but it will pay for the search.

- Prince

JANUARY 16 Reach Out by Faith For she said to herself, If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well.” MATTHEW 9:21–22 NKJV ONE FELLOW WHOSE MARRIAGE was on the verge of dissolution told me, Joel, I’ve been this way for a long time. Nothing good ever happens to me. I don’t see how my marriage can be restored. We’ve always had these problems.” Those wrong attitudes will keep you from receiving the good things God wants to pour out in your life,” I told him. Stop dwelling on negative, destructive thoughts that keep you in a rut. Your life will change when you change your thinking.” God has so much more in store for him, and for you as well. If you want to see God’s far and beyond favor, you have to start believing it, seeing it, and speaking it.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it’s very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk.

- Bill Gates

K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.

- Bill Gates

You may think you’re getting the short end of the stick, but when it’s all said and done, God will make sure that you don’t lose anything truly valuable. Moreover, He’ll make sure you get your just reward. Your responsibility is to remain calm and peaceable even when those around you are not.

- Joel Olsteen

When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmmm?

- Yoda

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

- Jack Ma

Hedgehog Concept—disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

- James C. Collins

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

- Jerry Seinfeld

The door to a balanced success opens wide on the hinges of hope and encouragement.

- Zig Ziglar

From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.

- Peter Thiel

Bell took the opposite approach, building multiple restaurants in a single neighborhood to eliminate the competition. It’s a strategy that’s widely used today by many companies like Starbuck’s, Barnes & Noble, and many others, and it worked for Bell.

- David Novak

Passion isn’t project-specific. It’s people-specific.

- Seth Godin

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.

- Jeff Bezos

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

Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.

- Oprah Winfrey

The challenge, it turns out, isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by.

- Seth Godin

It’s been a long career, and I’ve made some mistakes along the way.

- Rupert Murdoch

You must not ever think that anything is common sense.

- Clay Clark

We’ve fallen into a trap of ever-widening orbits of contact, and there is a total disregard for the present moment.

- Jerry Seinfeld

I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent….

- Thomas Edison

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ‘naturals’, the ones who somehow know how to teach.

- Peter Drucker

If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.

- Steve Jobs

I don’t think that ambition should not be in the dictionary of entrepreneurs. But our ambition should be realistic. You have to realise that you can’t do everything.

- Mukesh Ambani

There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.

- Richard Branson

If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.

- Ray Kroc

Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

- Elon Musk

Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.

- Ray Kroc

I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.

- Thomas Edison

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

- Henry Ford

If you don’t have peace, it isn’t because someone took it from you; you gave it away. You cannot always control what happens to you, but you can control what happens in you.

- John C. Maxwell

It’s about stories. If I can tell the story to America, whether it’s Riesling or a boxer from Harlem, it will sell. I know on my gravestone it’s going to be, ‘Storyteller.’

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness…..

- Thomas Edison

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