Notable Quotables

I’m afraid Japanese people tend to collective hysteria.

- Tadashi Yanai

I tell college students, when you get to be my age you will be successful if the people who you hope to have love you, do love you.

- Warren Buffett

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.

- Jerry Seinfeld

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

- Winston Churchill

One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.

- Dale Carnegie

When you start a company, it’s a singular focus. You have the wind at your back.

- Howard Schultz

The residential leasing market remained robust with expatriates from the banking and financial sectors continuing to be the major source of tenant demand for luxury properties on Hong Kong Island.

- Lee Shau Kee

Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!

- Timothy Ferriss

Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.

- Bill Gates

In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.

- Peter Thiel

Japan has only 100m people. Asia has 4bn. At least one-third, maybe nearly half, will become middle class, and this is a big opportunity for Japanese businessmen.

- Tadashi Yanai

God wouldn’t have given you the dream unless He already had a way to bring it to pass.

- Joel Olsteen

Happiness does not depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.

- Dale Carnegie

I’ve seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage — leverage being borrowed money. You really don’t need leverage in this world much. If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing.

- Warren Buffett

The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

- Bill Gates

The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.

- Seth Godin

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

Momentum is a little fragile, and when people got excited before, they were disappointed, … But this is the most positive guidance we’ve given in eight quarters, going into a seasonally challenging quarter.

- John Chambers

There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction that goes with knowing your time, talent and abilities are not being properly used.

- Zig Ziglar

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

- Seth Godin

It’s all a risk. Always. That’s not true, actually. The only exception: it’s a certainty that there’s risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That’s because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing.

- Seth Godin

Business in Russia was not being done like in the West, with contracts. In Russia, hundreds of millions of dollars were going forward and backward by word of mouth.

- David Reuben

Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.

- Joel Olsteen

Creative things have to sell to get acknowledged as such.

- Steve Wozniak

There are a few other things that I built when I was at Harvard that were kind of smaller versions of Facebook. One such program was this program called Match. People could enter the different courses that they were taking, and see what other courses would be correlated with the courses they are taking.

- Mark Zuckerberg

We don’t have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.

- Larry Page

We used to think that everything started in the lab. Now we realize that everything spins off the consumer.

- Phil Knight

Like almost everyone who uses e-mail, I receive a ton of spam every day. Much of it offers to help me get out of debt or get rich quick. It would be funny if it weren’t so exciting.

- Bill Gates

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

- Timothy Ferriss

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

- Elon Musk

Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. HEBREWS 11:1.

- Joel Olsteen

Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.

- Sam Walton

We’re totally legal, like totally legal, and the government is telling us to shut down. And you can either do what they say or you can fight for what you believe.

- Travis Kalanick

[On a company founder.] A founder is not a job, it’s a role, it’s an attitude. And it’s something that can happen again, and again, and again. In fact it has to happen, again and again and again. Otherwise we would not move forward.

- Jack Dorsey

In life and in business, you need to be good-hearted and trustworthy, and to have integrity. This is the way to build long-term relationships. It is also important to be optimistic and to look at challenges as opportunities.

- Henry Sy

Stories let us lie to ourselves. And those lies satisfy our desires.

- Seth Godin

The Green Revolution focused on the big three – maize, rice and wheat – and the Green Revolution did not adapt the big three to African conditions, other than South Africa, as much as they should have.

- Bill Gates

The human being is a very poorly designed machine tool. The human being excels in coordination. He excels in relating perception to action. He works best if the entire human being, muscles, senses, and mind, is engaged in the work.

- Peter Drucker

Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.

- Peter Drucker

The Chinese people have always been determined to forge ahead.

- Cheng Yu-tung

When commercializing disruptive technologies, they found or developed new markets that valued the attributes of the disruptive products, rather than search for a technological breakthrough so that the disruptive product could compete as a sustaining technology in mainstream markets.

- Clayton M. Christensen

Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves.

- Dale Carnegie

To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.

- P.T. Barnum

Change means opportunity for those with the experience and confidence to look to the future.

- Cheng Yu-tung

China’s movie industry is growing a lot faster than that of the U.S.

- Wang Jianlin

Theories, for me, are just about freeing your mind. It doesn’t mean the theory is going to work like a scientific theory works. It’s about freeing your mind and making you think a different way.

- Steve Martin

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

- Ray Kroc

Much about success is just the result of simply the ability to follow up, follow through, and finish what we started.

- Zig Ziglar

Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point.

- Bill Gates

The first four months of 2001 were extremely challenging, … This may be the fastest deceleration any company of our size has ever experienced.

- John Chambers

t’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

- Warren Buffett

NO PURCHASE SHOULD EVER BE MADE IN A BUSINESS UNLESS IT IS JUSTIFIED BY AN INCREASE IN SALES.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.

- P.T. Barnum

People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest …But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.

- Thomas Edison

(after listening to people gripe and complain just smile and remember) Crows can’t hang with eagles.

- Joel Olsteen

Gain alignment every step of the way. Again, no involvement means no committment. Skip a layer and you will ultimately pay the price.

- David Novak

The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit… a reputation, character.

- John D. Rockefeller

If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s absolutely a necessary and inevitable evolution in retailing (of Wal-Mart putting small stores out of business), as inevitable as the replacement of the buggy by the car, and the dissappearance of the buggy whip makers. The small stores (and DJs) were destined to dissappear, at least in the numbers they once existed., because the whole thing is driven by customers, who are free to choose where to shop.

- Sam Walton

Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.

- Seth Godin

We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.

- Joel Olsteen

Canon is basically a very aggressive company. Our company works on competitive principles. It does not treat people equally, but it does treat them fairly.

- Fujio Mitarai

In our day Capital, Business Ability, and Manual Labor are the legs of a three-legged stool. While the three legs stand sound and firm, the stool stands; but let any one of the three weaken and break, let it be pulled out or struck out, down goes the stool to the ground. And the stool is of no use until the third leg is restored.

- Andrew Carnegie

The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.

- Peter Thiel

Tip #1 – Self-motivation is the key to success and will achieve powerful results.

- Jack Nadel

Let me remind everyone in this room that we are not changing guidance.

- John Chambers

In a start-up company where there are no processes in place to get things done, then everything that is done must be done by individual people–resources. In this circumstance, it would be risky to draft someone with no experience to do the job–because in the absence of processes that can guide people, experienced people need to lead. But in established companies where much of the guidance to employees is provided by processes, and is less dependent upon managers with detailed, hands-on experience, then it makes sense to hire or promote someone who needs to learn from experience.

- Clayton M. Christensen

I think we are not serious about attacking the long-term debt problem, and that’s one of the things that he’s going to have to find a way to get on the agenda.

- Michael Bloomberg

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society.

- Joel Olsteen

For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.

- Winston Churchill

Anyone would fight for things that matter, true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter

- Peter Thiel

I took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying.

- Sara Blakely

To do the most good requires saying no to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.

- Peter Drucker

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.

- Seth Godin

I’m going to give away a lot more than half my money. I’d be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I’m giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.

- Ray Dalio

I try to do things that I think are helpful to the environment, to the animals, and to the planet.

- Russell Simmons

Personal discipline, when it becomes a way of life in our personal, family, and career lives, will enable us to do some incredible things.

- Zig Ziglar

If you’re brilliant and undiscovered and underappreciated (in whatever field you choose), then you’re being too generous about your definition of brilliant.

- Seth Godin

We’re living in what I like to call the ‘Thank You Economy,’ because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way – and do it authentically – are going to have a prayer of competing.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.

- Peter Thiel

From an operational perspective, this quarter was a home run.

- John Chambers

Revolution has values, revolution has purpose. Revolution has direction. Revolution has leaders. Revolution looks at the intersection ahead and pushes people to do the right thing. And it doesn’t always have to be loud. It doesn’t always have to be violent. It’s just as powerful in it’s stillness.

- Jack Dorsey

Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you.

- J. Gitomer

I think when I was young, let’s call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That’s really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.

- Steve Martin

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

- Bill Gates

There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.

- Elon Musk

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

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