Success is a choice
- Napoleon Hill
Notable Quotables
We modeled our employee stock ownership plan after Sam’s, and it worked well for us.
- Bernie Marcus
Change is the price of progress.
- Napoleon Hill
When I think about parallels between myself and an Olympian, I believe that success in the world of business is underpinned by very similar principles of perseverance and hard work.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Of this I am quite sure. If we open up a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.
- Winston Churchill
In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.
- Sam Walton
Although my spelling is still sometimes poor, I have managed to overcome the worst of my difficulties through training myself to concentrate.
- Richard Branson
The freedom of the new kind of work (which most of us do, most of the time) is that the tasks are vague and difficult to measure. We can waste an hour surfing the ’Net because no one knows if surfing the ’Net is going to help us make progress or connections. This freedom is great, because it means no one is looking over your shoulder; no one is using a stopwatch on you. This freedom is a pox, because it’s an opening for the resistance. Freedom like this makes it easy to hide, easy to find excuses, easy to do very little.
- Seth Godin
The minute there’s a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.
- Seth Godin
Profit and cash flow are not the same thing.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s not how far you fall. But how high you bounce that counts.
- Zig Ziglar
There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
Once you go from 10 people to 100, you already don’t know who everyone is. So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale.
- Sergey Brin
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
- Napoleon Hill
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
- John C. Maxwell
I’ve been to Disneyland, like, 10 times. I’m getting really tired of Disneyland.
- Elon Musk
The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities.
- Peter Thiel
I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.
- Winston Churchill
It is my dream to have a controlling stake of Arsenal.
- Alisher Usmanov
India has been and continues to be a strategic market for Cisco both in terms of business opportunities and as a base for outstanding engineering talent, … With the launch of our new campus in Bangalore today, Cisco will be well placed to continue building our presence in India as a critical part of our R&D efforts and as the domestic market for networking products and solutions continues to expand.
- John Chambers
Measure, coach and reward the right things. Measure the vitally important. Reward the doers.
- David Novak
My biggest wish is for government, the private sector and all of us to work together to make the Philippines the best tourism destination in Southeast Asia.
- Henry Sy
The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
Innovation could impact everything…
- Jack Dorsey
Riches does not mean money. You can never have enough money. By following the principles of God he will provide you with what you need materially and internal committment.
- Ben Meinhardt
I don’t believe in statistics. I believe in calculus.
- Ben Horowitz
The squeaky wheel always getting the grease.
- James Taylor
Look we gave this thing a good run. We both know it’s not working out. Let’s wrap this thing up.
- Jack Welch
The tragedy is that society (your school, your boss, your government, your family) keeps drumming the genius part out. The problem is that our culture has engaged in a Faustian bargain, in which we trade our genius and artistry for apparent stability.
- Seth Godin
Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends, the best paths are new and untried.
- Peter Thiel
We had been kicked out of one bank… The second, it was touch and go…
- Phil Knight
Hong Kong has gone through many ups and downs in the past. Unavoidably, one needs to go through the lowest point before reaching the peak again.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Microsoft is not about greed. It’s about innovation and fairness.
- Bill Gates
You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.
- Warren Buffett
Anything you’re interested in the world – whether it be Charlie Rose or JetBlue or a public figure or your local coffee shop – they’re on Twitter and broadcasting what is interesting to them.
- Jack Dorsey
There is a winner in you. You were created to be successful, to accomplish your goals, to leave your mark on this generation. You have greatness in you. The key is to get it out.
- Joel Olsteen
The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
- Peter Thiel
Atari is a very sad story.
- Steve Wozniak
Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.
- Warren Buffett
I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.
- Og Mandino
I have ten marathons under my belt, including four New York races and one Boston.
- Harvey Mackay
The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simply. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out, the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish, the other selfish. One is universally admired, the other universally condemned.
- Dale Carnegie
For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.
- Joel Olsteen
There are two main drivers of asset class returns – inflation and growth.
- Ray Dalio
It is crucial that rappers have the chance to express the truth that is in their heart.
- Russell Simmons
Possession of Power That Was Not Acquired Through Self Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence. A good product manager is the CEO of the product. Good product managers take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product.
- Ben Horowitz
Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.
- Seth Godin
Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.
- Dale Carnegie
If you’re not stubborn, you’ll give up on experiments too soon. And if you’re not flexible, you’ll pound your head against the wall and you won’t see a different solution to a problem you’re trying to solve.
- Jeff Bezos
When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They’re playing the sprint. They’re not worried about lifetime value and retention. They’re worried about short-term goals.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.
- Laszlo Bock
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.
- Seth Godin
The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!
- Jerry Seinfeld
Managers will play every game in the book to avoid identifying their bottom 10. Sometimes they’ll sneak in people who were planning to retire that year or others who already have been told to leave the organization.
- Jack Welch
All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
- Brian Tracy
When I finally retire, I just want to go away so no one has to listen to me.
- Steve Martin
Well, real estate is always good, as far as I’m concerned.
- Donald Trump
Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.
- Tadashi Yanai
I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.
- Richard Branson
The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do but the absence of doing it.
- Peter Drucker
I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has.
- Bill Gates
For 24 years of my adult life, by choice I weighed well over 200 pounds. I say ‘by choice’ because I have never ‘accidentally’ eaten anything, so when I choose to eat too much, I have chosen to weigh too much.
- Zig Ziglar
At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.
- Seth Godin
Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?
- Winston Churchill
It’s God’s will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It’s God’s will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt.
- Joel Olsteen
[On the Nike logo] I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.
- Phil Knight
One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.
- Dale Carnegie
At the start of any business, keeping the cash flowing in is the entrepreneur’s most IMPORTANT JOB.
- Robert Kiyosaki
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
The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal. The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.
- Seth Godin
How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world?
- Reed Hastings
The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences.
- George Soros
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
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.
- Bill Gates
My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers. I only started the company when I realized I could be an engineer forever.
- Steve Wozniak
[On an American taking second place in the Olympics] He didn’t win the silver, he lost the gold
- Phil Knight
If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol.
- Joel Olsteen
true love is always backed up with actions.
- Joel Olsteen
Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.
- Elon Musk
May all of your creations have just the right flavor.
- Timothy Ferriss
For a successful entrepreneur it can mean extreme wealth. But with extreme wealth comes extreme responsibility. And the responsibility for me is to invest in creating new businesses, create jobs, employ people, and to put money aside to tackle issues where we can make a difference.
- Richard Branson
An economy is not a complicated thing, it just has a lot of moving parts.
- Ray Dalio
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Peter Drucker
Are you committed to a life of continual counseling, growth, and education? Are you committed to a life of consistently receiving truth, of renewing your mind? From what sources do you receive your counseling? Are you reading books by authors who speak wisdom? Are you listening to music and watching movies that have redemptive and edifying themes? Are you involved in a small group or community of people that can offer you support, guidance, and encouragement, and in which you give back that which you have been given? Do you know of professional counselors you can see when needed? Are you asking God for wisdom about life on a regular basis? (He says if you will ask, He will provide [see James 1:5–8].)
- Zig Ziglar
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
Certainly the caffeine in coffee, whether it’s Starbucks or generic coffee, is somewhat of a stimulant. But if you drink it in moderation, which I think four or five cups a day is, you’re fine.
- Howard Schultz
The Chinese people have always been determined to forge ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Every enterprise is a learning and teaching institution. Training and development must be built into it on all levels—training and development that never stop.
- Peter Drucker
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
- Dale Carnegie
I do think that religion has turned a lot of people off. Part of it is because it was all about the rules and was political. I think now people have a hunger for God, they want to have a relationship, but they don’t want to be called religious. I’m not trying to get them to join my religion, I’m just trying to plant a seed of hope in their heart.
- Joel Olsteen
The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.
- George Soros
Your network is your net worth.
- Porter Gale
Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.
- Bill Gates
Save them [Luke and Leia], we must. They are our last hope.
- Yoda
Long ago, Ben Graham taught me that ‘Price is what you pay; value is what you get.’ Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.
- Warren Buffett
The best way to be missed when you’re gone,Is to stand for something when you’re here.
- Seth Godin
