Notable Quotables

If we’re going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.

- Elon Musk

Anyone who has held an iDevice or a smoothly machined MacBook has felt the result of Steve Jobs’s obsession with visual and experiential perfection. But the most important lesson to learn from Jobs has nothing to do with aesthetics. The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively.

- Peter Thiel

A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.

- Yoda

I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them-nine-tenths of them never happened.

- Andrew Carnegie

Too often, that solution is nothing more than adding another layer. What you should be doing is going to the source of the problem to fix it, and sometimes that requires shooting the culprit,

- Sam Walton

A false transaction using my own people to buy the flat? I’ll make a bet with you. For every $10,000 you put down, I’ll wager $1 million.

- Lee Shau Kee

At least three time per day at scheduled times, he had to ask himself the following question: Am I being productive or just active? Charney captured the essence of this with less-abstract wording: Am I inventing things to do to avoid the important? He eliminated all of the activities he used as crutches and began to focus on demonstrating results instead of showing dedication. Dedication is often just meaningless work in disguise. Be ruthless and cut the fat.

- Timothy Ferriss

We’ll see how that evolves. Obviously, it doesn’t mean we’ll just be willing to do anything that’s requested of us.

- Sergey Brin

Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.

- Bill Gates

I would love to do a deal with Walgreen. If they’re willing to come to the table, and offer rates in line with everybody else, then I’m happy to entertain those conversations.

- George Paz

When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.

- Howard Schultz

It is very important to grasp that Level 5 leadership is not just about humility and modesty. It is equally about ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.

- James C. Collins

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.

- Winston Churchill

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

What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs. And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost. That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.

- Michael Gerber

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.

- Andrew Carnegie

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

- Richard Branson

None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone’s help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.

- Harvey Mackay

Bolsheviks create their own difficulties which they successfully overcame later.

- Winston Churchill

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

How can I create something that critics will criticize?

- Seth Godin

We have to realize that our lives could be gone in a moment. There are no guarantees that we will be here at this time next year. Learn to live each day to the fullest. Don’t complain. Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Be grateful for the opportunity to experience each day.

- Joel Olsteen

We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.

- Seth Godin

The prevailing low mortgage rate, reasonable affordability and the low completion volumes for private-residential units in the coming few years should lend support to the local residential property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem.

- Ben Horowitz

Forty years ago, Richard Branson, who ultimately founded Virgin Air, found himself in a similar situation in an airport in the Caribbean. They had just canceled his flight, the only flight that day. Instead of freaking out about how essential the flight was, how badly his day was ruined, how his entire career was now in jeopardy, the young Branson walked across the airport to the charter desk and inquired about the cost of chartering a flight out of Puerto Rico. Then he borrowed a portable blackboard and wrote, “Seats to Virgin Islands, $39.” He went back to his gate, sold enough seats to his fellow passengers to completely cover his costs, and made it home on time.

- Seth Godin

E – Edge, ability to make tough yes and no decisions

- Jack Welch

The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin.

- Seth Godin

If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.

- Ray Kroc

The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it’s Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.

- Bill Gates

I learned this early on in the variety business: You’ve got to give folks responsibility, you’ve got to trust them, and then you’ve got to check on them.

- Sam Walton

Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.

- Bill Gates

With Windows 8, Microsoft is trying to gain market share in what has been dominated by the iPad-type device. But a lot of those users are frustrated. They can’t type. They can’t create documents.

- Bill Gates

There’s an entire universe in every single tweet, and it all really depends on the content as far as how it’s going to spread.

- Jack Dorsey

I founded Netflix. I’ve built it steadily over 12 years now, first with DVD becoming profitable in 2002, a head-to-head ferocious battle with Blockbuster and evolving the company toward streaming.

- Reed Hastings

We can consider 140 characters to be the full story, but it’s not. It’s just a caption. A headline for something broader.

- Jack Dorsey

I sold my most valuable possession, but I knew that because I worked at Hewlett Packard, I could buy the next model calculator the very next month for a lower price than I sold the older one for!

- Steve Wozniak

The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.

- Thomas Edison

Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.

- Tadashi Yanai

A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.

- Jack Ma

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

An attributable HK$9,892 million worth of properties in Hong Kong was sold, an increase of 25% as compared with HK$7,895 million for the year before.

- Lee Shau Kee

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.

- Winston Churchill

Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‘tap-dancing to work.

- Bill Gates

You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.

- Larry Ellison

About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.

- Reed Hastings

In South Africa, being Chinese meant I wasn’t white and I wasn’t black. I trained in Baragwanath Hospital, the largest black hospital in South Africa. That was around 1976, the time of the Soweto Uprising, when police fired on children and students who were protesting. I was part of the group of interns who volunteered to treat them.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

My politics are: I’m a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I’m pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It’s good for everybody; it’s not red or blue.

- Travis Kalanick

You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you’re an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party… My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Leadership isn’t something that people hand to you. … [i]t’s a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that’s something we can teach.

- Seth Godin

In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

- Clayton M. Christensen

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

- Dale Carnegie

The future of publishing is about having connections to readers and the knowledge of what those readers want.

- Seth Godin

When you throw dirt at people, you’re not doing a thing but losing ground.

- Zig Ziglar

PRINCIPLE 1 The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. PRINCIPLE 2 Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, You’re wrong.” PRINCIPLE 3 If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. PRINCIPLE 4 Begin in a friendly way. PRINCIPLE 5 Get the other person saying yes, yes” immediately. PRINCIPLE 6 Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. PRINCIPLE 7 Let the other person feel that the idea.

- Dale Carnegie

The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

- Warren Buffett

It is true that integrity alone won’t make you a leader, but without integrity you will never be one.

- Zig Ziglar

My relationship with money is that it’s a tool to be self-sufficient, but it’s not something that is a part of who I am.

- Laurene Powell Jobs

People with the right kind of ambition would not likely use the word play to describe their effort to work as a team to build something substantial. Finally, people who use the “me” prism find it natural and obvious to speak in terms of “building out my résumé” while people who use the “team” prism find such phrases to be somewhat uncomfortable and awkward, because they clearly indicate an individual goal that is separate from the team goal.

- Ben Horowitz

The Group is well positioned to meet the challenges ahead and will as ever continue to pursue higher growth.

- Cheng Yu-tung

What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.

- Zig Ziglar

Many salespeople feel that selling is warfare: the buyer is the enemy and words are ammunition…The seller’s advances are turned aside because they are so predictable, amateurish and easily deflected.

- Jerry Vass

This presents more of a challenge, given our current size and market leadership.

- John Chambers

The industry growth is there, and it’s there probably for the next decade. So how well we execute will determine what role we play.

- John Chambers

New World Group believes that the desire to change and surmount the status quo will be the key to advancement and progression.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don’t really even notice it, so it’s part of everyday life.

- Bill Gates

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

- Thomas Edison

It’s not about how to get started, it’s about how to get noticed.

- Steve Case

The worst that could happen wasn’t crashing and burning, it was accepting terminal boredom as a tolerable status quo.

- Timothy Ferriss

Microsoft Research has a thing called the Sense Cam that, as you walk around, it’s taking photos all the time. And the software will filter and find the ones that are interesting without having to think, ‘Let’s get out the camera and get that shot.’ You just have that, and software helps you pick what you want.

- Bill Gates

The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.

- Elon Musk

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

- Mark Zuckerberg

People buy titles, and not contents of books. By merely changing the name of one book that was not moving his sales on that book jumped upward more a million copies. The inside of the book was no changed in any way. He merely ripped off the cover bearing the title that did not sell, and put on new cover with a title that had box-office value.

- Napoleon Hill

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.

- Napoleon Hill

if you want to achieve consistent performance, you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound, a hurdle that you jump over and a ceiling that you will not rise above, the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back.

- James C. Collins

When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.

- Napoleon Hill

The great ambition should be to excel all others engaged in the same occupation.

- P.T. Barnum

From a global CEO and government leader perspective, we remain in a `show- me’ economy.

- John Chambers

My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them.

- Russell Simmons

The experience of the human race indicates strongly that the only person in abundant supply is the universal incompetent.

- Peter Drucker

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.

- John Wayne

No leader enjoys making the tough decision. We constantly faced severe resistence from even the best people in our organization. I’ve struggled with this problem myself and have often been guilty of not being rigorous enough. Every impulse is to look the other way.

- Jack Welch

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.

- Jeff Bezos

Creativity is a highfalutin word for the work I have to do between now and Tuesday.

- Ray Kroc

At the end of the day, effective mission statements balance the possible and the impossible. They give people a clear sense of the direction to profitability and the inspiration to feel they are part of something big and important.

- Jack Welch

Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.

- Bill Gates

Good talkers often choose to become sales professionals. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that selling well means listening well.

- Jerry Vass

The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.

- Winston Churchill

Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right.

- Dale Carnegie

you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.

- Dale Carnegie

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

- Winston Churchill

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