Notable Quotables

Twitter was not started because we started a company. Twitter was started because we had a good idea, and it started out of a failed company. That can happen out of any company today.

- Jack Dorsey

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

- Stephen King

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

- P.T. Barnum

Sports is like rock ‘n’ roll. Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions.

- Phil Knight

Most people consider me an optimist because I laughingly state that I would take my last two dollars and buy a money belt.

- Zig Ziglar

Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.

- Winston Churchill

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy – even beyond the market opportunities – that’s something that appropriately ought to be done.

- Bill Gates

I consider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment…..the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy. A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only “postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

- Peter Drucker

We knew that Lyft was going to raise a ton of money. And we are going [to their investors], Just so you know, we’re going to be fund-raising after this, so before you decide whether you want to invest in them, just make sure you know that we are going to be fund-raising immediately after.

- Travis Kalanick

Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy, profit from folly rather than participate in it.

- Warren Buffett

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

- Joel Olsteen

If you wait until all the lights are green before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.

- Zig Ziglar

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.

- Bill Gates

A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better.

- Seth Godin

Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.

- Bill Gates

The market … demands a signal from you that you’re serious, powerful, accepted, and safe.

- Seth Godin

If you do not see yourself as a winner, you cannot perform as a winner.

- Zig Ziglar

Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.

- Bill Cosby

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

Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble

- Warren Buffett

There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?

- Ben Horowitz

Even if you don’t have the perfect idea to begin with, you can likely adapt.

- Victoria Ransom

Success comes from doing the hard part. When the hard part is all you’ve got, you’re more likely to do it.And this is precisely why it’s difficult to focus. Because focusing means acknowledging that you just signed up for the hard part.

- Seth Godin

This the real world, homie, school finished They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.

- Kanye West

We were trading things before we were using language to communicate.

- Jack Dorsey

I realized about 10 years ago that my wealth has to go back to society. A fortune, the size of which is hard to imagine, is best not passed on to one’s children. It’s not constructive for them.

- Bill Gates

Out-innovating them is the way to beat China. And to do everything that we do in this country to support innovative policy, that drives innovation and new products and more jobs and creates jobs. You can’t – you can’t put a wall up around here. We tried that in the ’30s. It didn’t work.

- Jack Welch

If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.

- Elon Musk

There are abundant business opportunities to bring about the recovery of the local economy.

- Lee Shau Kee

The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.

- Thomas Edison

That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

- Steve Jobs

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

- Steve Jobs

The most expensive piece of real estate is the six inches between your right and left ear. It’s what you create in that area that determines your wealth. We are only really limited by our mind.

- Dr. Dolf de Roos

The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.

- Ben Horowitz

Persistent people are able to visualize the idea of light at the end of the tunnel when others can’t see it.

- Seth Godin

[Medco] had a different culture with respect to spending money. I believe health care demands that we be as frugal as possible and pay money for things that matter. We’re pretty frugal. Everybody has the same size offices. Everybody has the same size cube. There are no perks.

- George Paz

Essentially, whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference, is going to be talked about.

- Mukesh Ambani

Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.

- Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.

- Jeff Bezos

There are few words which are used more loosely than the word “Civilization.” What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort, and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all.

- 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

A good book can be both a window to the world and a mirror to one’s self. It is easier to build community and remain true to the brand when you have zealots instead of marketing mercaries.

- Radical Marketing

A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know—if anybody does. He said: About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives.” To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life—and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centered desires.

- Dale Carnegie

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.

- P.T. Barnum

To model yourself after Steve Jobs is like, ‘I’d like to paint like Picasso, what should I do? Should I use more red?’

- Larry Ellison

It’s absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others.

- Zig Ziglar

A dream is just a dream. A goal is a dream with a plan and a deadline.

- Harvey Mackay

That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

We are fastidious investors. On average, we investnearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year. Most of us invest at least 15 percent. Seventy-nine percent of us have at least one account with a brokerage company. But we make our own investment decisions.

- Thomas J Stanley

My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.

- Mukesh Ambani

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared, but only men of character are trusted.

- Zig Ziglar

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 successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks.

- Napoleon Hill

Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn’t have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he’s getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.

- Mark Zuckerberg

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

We believe that the business system only is the key to success. It’s no miracle, only day-to-day work in the appropriate way.

- Alexei Mordashov

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.

- Bill Gates

The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong questionl

- Peter Drucker

There’s no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, ‘The government’s corrupt,’ and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done.

- Bill Gates

Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule,” Nietzsche wrote (before he went mad).

- Peter Thiel

Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.

- Winston Churchill

Too often, we have tended to fall into a trap of creating plain hamburgers.

- Tadashi Yanai

The cost of praising someone is nil – but every psychological study shows the payoff is huge.

- Harvey Mackay

The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion – others pray in church. It’s a banality, but you don’t possess art, it possesses you. It’s like falling in love.

- Francois Pinault

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.

- Sam Walton

In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.

- Bill Gates

It’s paradoxical, but you want to identify the things that can kill you and engage them sooner. This is part of the metric behind fail fast. Of course, you’re not actually trying to fail; you want to succeed. But failing fast is much better than failing slowly, since it enables you to quickly to pivot, iterate, and redeploy capital. The one key mistake is that people tend to work first on the problems that they have the most confidence they can solve. In a good startup strategy you actually want to face death soonest because then you fail fast or get on a great path to success fast. Identify the hardest problems and try to solve those as soon as you can.

- Reid Hoffman

I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.

- Thomas Edison

The goal is to get the buyer to like and trust you.

- Clay Clark

As you heat the planet up, it’s just like boiling a pot.

- Elon Musk

For me, my father was, and still is, a symbol of qualified persons in the Ministry of Foreign Trade under Soviet conditions.

- Vladimir Potanin

First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund.

- Peter Thiel

If he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.

- Peter Thiel

If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you.

- Peter Thiel

There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.

- Peter Drucker

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

- Socrates

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

Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.

- James C. Collins

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

- Henry Ford

The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake.

- James C. Collins

Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.

- George Soros

Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.

- Howard Schultz

I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen.

- Russell Simmons

We have the brand, and we have the fulfillment capability. Now we had to get the Net, and that’s the easiest part of the game,

- Jack Welch

My view is there’s no bad time to innovate.

- Jeff Bezos

I never took classic business classes in college, so I don’t have the background that any of the people running large companies have.

- Howard Schultz

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

I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.

- Larry Ellison

If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.

- Sam Walton

Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.

- Peter Thiel

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.

- Steve Jobs

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