Share your experiences, tell your stories, and inspire others along the way.
- Blake Mycoskie
Notable Quotables
If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or as it were, fondle them…let them be your friends.
- Winston Churchill
That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity.
- Beryl Markham
The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts.
- James C. Collins
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
Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good, but that I heard never.
- Dale Carnegie
Good product managers crisply define the target, the “what” (as opposed to the “how”), and manage the delivery of the “what.” Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out “how.” Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally. Good product managers don’t give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally.
- Ben Horowitz
Follow the GOLDEN RULE. Do unto others as you would have them do onto you.
- David Robinson
What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.
- Reid Hoffman
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Few startup advisers and venture capitalists have any experience.
- Ben Horowitz
You walk into a retail store, whatever it is, and if there’s a sense of entertainment and excitement and electricity, you wanna be there.
- Howard Schultz
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
Back in high school, I really wanted to be a diesel mechanic. I was building pools and it was still working with my hands. I was installing the (reinforcement) bars, shaping the pools and then they’d bring the cement in. It was great. . . . Then I had my accident.
- Ed Clark
Corruption is one of the most common reasons I hear in views that criticize aid.”
- Bill Gates
Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
Good executives never put off until tomorrow what they can get someone else to do today.
- John C. Maxwell
Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.
- Ben Horowitz
E – Energy
- Jack Welch
When I was growing up, I always knew I’d be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence.
- Sergey Brin
Sometimes, we’re so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing.
- Seth Godin
You may live or work around a bunch of weeds, but don’t let that stop you from blooming. Realize that your environment does not prevent you from being happy. Some people spend all their time trying to pull up all the weeds. Meanwhile, they miss much of their lives. Don’t worry about things you can’t change. You can’t change the traffic in the morning. You can’t fix everybody at work. You can’t make all your family members serve God. But you shouldn’t let that keep you from being happy. Bloom anyway and focus on the things that you can change. You can change your own attitude. You can choose to be happy right where you are.
- Joel Olsteen
Any area of achievement in your life required you to stick with the basics until you became great…it’s not about learning 4,000 moves but about doing just a handful of moves 4,000 times.
- Chet Holmes
[On stopping working and focussing 100% on his company Nike] I was still teaching accounting, but the next year, I told Penny [married in 1968] if we sell $300,000 worth of product, I’m going to go full-time. She was pregnant and a little anxious. We hit $290,000. I said, that ‘s close enough.
- Phil Knight
In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
- Donald Trump
Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.
- Michael Gerber
The culture was strong enough to transcend the original company.
- Peter Thiel
To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’
- Lao Tzu
If God says I’m highly favored, then I will not talk myself out of it. I believe I’m highly favored. If God says the impossible can happen, then I believe the impossible will happen.
- Joel Olsteen
Fear is one of the worst things in business.
- Jack Nadel
Mormonism is a little different, but I still see them as brothers in Christ.
- Joel Olsteen
Strange as it sounds, great leaders gain authority by giving it away.
- Napoleon Hill
Enjoy the moment.
- Jack Dorsey
Start calling yourself healed, happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous. Stop talking to God about how big your mountains are, and start talking to your mountains about how big your God is!
- Joel Olsteen
Bitcoin is mostly about anonymous transactions, and I don’t think over time that’s a good way to go. I’m a huge believe in digital currency… but doing it on an anonymous basis I think that leads to some abuses, so I’m not involved in Bitcoin.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft
- Bill Gates
Strong is Vader. Mind what you have learned. Save you it can.
- Yoda
Dreams grow if you grow.
- Zig Ziglar
Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people.
- Dee Hock
The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Success must never be measured by how much money you have.
- Zig Ziglar
Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.
- Napoleon Hill
I know something about how to build constituencies in an independent way.
- Michael Bloomberg
Spend zero time on what you could have done, and devote all of your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares; just run your company.
- Ben Horowitz
You’ve got to listen to what God’s telling you and not to what other people may tell you. People will try to talk you out of the dream in your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.
- Elon Musk
Just like Mark Snider told the Board of Elections within a couple hours of when he first became aware of it… first of all, Mike and I didn’t even know anything about this till March 16, … Second of all, nobody benefited from this in any way, shape or form whatsoever.
- Michael Ward
The bible says no man can take your joy. That means no person can make you live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force you to live in despair. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of wheelchair-bound President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
- Joel Olsteen
In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.
- Peter Thiel
I never worry about action, but only about inaction.
- Winston Churchill
What has changed is that people have stopped working together.
- Michael Bloomberg
There’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives.
- Tony Dungy
I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.
- Brian Tracy
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
[On Twitter and Japan] We’ve had massive success in Japan… In Japan, it’s not 140 characters, it’s 140 words. So you could write a little mini-novel. This is a whole story in the universe.
- Jack Dorsey
I had been trained by him. I knew him. I loved him. I simply never took it personally. If I had anything to say about it, he was not going to leave.
- Phil Knight
If you end your training now — if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did — you will become an agent of evil.
- Yoda
I DECLARE God is going before me making crooked places straight. He has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities and solutions to problems I haven’t had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment, can stop His plan. What he promised will come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s a matter of invitations versus context. Twitter is really good at providing context, like, I’m having coffee at Third Rail Coffee.’ Foursquare is about invitations to places. In this respect Foursquare has started to replace Yelp for me.
- Jack Dorsey
One of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it’s making cold calls to strangers. Actually, it’s the people who already have strong trust relationships with you, who know you’re dedicated, smart, a team player, who can help you.
- Reid Hoffman
I don’t have any opinions about Russians. There are celebrity persons in each country. Different people do different things.
- Alexei Mordashov
My first company, Pure Software, was exciting and innovative in the first few years and bureaucratic and painful in the last few before it got acquired. The problem was we tried to systemize everything and set up perfect procedures.
- Reed Hastings
Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn’t an artist, he was a plumber.
- Seth Godin
Winning isn’t everything but wanting to win is.
- Zig Ziglar
I have scary eyes. I look like the guy in ‘American History X,’ yes. I remember coming home from school and asking my mum if I could get an eye transplant, and of course she declined.
- Timothy Ferriss
What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?
- Winston Churchill
The only way I can get you to do anything is by giving you what you want.
- Dale Carnegie
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exup
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill
The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.
- James Simons
The more we thought, the more they all sounded boring compared to Apple. You didn’t have to have a real specific reason for choosing a name when you were a little tiny company of two people; you choose any name you want.
- Steve Wozniak
You got to be rigorous in your appraisal system. The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
- Jack Welch
Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.
- Andrew Carnegie
How do you tap in to what God has already done? Very simple: just act like you’re blessed, talk like you’re blessed, walk like you’re blessed, think like you’re blessed, smile like you’re blessed, dress like you’re blessed. Put actions behind your faith, and one day you will see it become a reality.
- Joel Olsteen
Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
- Dale Carnegie
I’ve seen executives improve their performance and skill sets, I’ve never seen one lose the support of the organization and then regain it.
- Ben Horowitz
Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
- Ray Kroc
In the end, I hope there’s a little note somewhere that says I designed a good computer.
- Steve Wozniak
As an immigrant, I chose to live in America because it is one of the freest and most vibrant nations in the world. And as an immigrant, I feel an obligation to speak up for immigration policies that will keep America the most economically robust, creative and freedom-loving nation in the world.
- Rupert Murdoch
“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.
- Sergey Brin
Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.
- John C. Maxwell
My supply of Scotch caution never has been small; but I was apparently something of a daredevil now and then to the manufacturing fathers of Pittsburgh. They were old and I was young, which made all the difference.
- Andrew Carnegie
Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.
- Peter Thiel
Really advanced civilization is based on advances in energy.
- Bill Gates
We have secured the rigs necessary to complete our program, a program that focuses on more development activity and less risk. The current forecasted activity level calls for 391 wells, with increased activity in each region including expanded drilling on each of the acquisition plays purchased in 2005.
- Dan Dinges
If you are unduly nervous, turn it around make your vulnerability an asset.
- Michael Levine
You make all kinds of mistakes, but as long as you are generous and true and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
- Winston Churchill
In the 1970s, Japan moved into the U.S. turf with its televisions, cars, chips, and steel. But if you think about it, the only business Japan destroyed was the U.S. television industry.
- Fujio Mitarai
How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world?
- Reed Hastings
If you’re single and you want to get married, put an empty photo album on your table. That’s where you’re going to put your wedding photos. When you see it, you’re moving toward it.
- Joel Olsteen
If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?
- Ben Horowitz
Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
- John Wayne
Our schools are not teaching students to think. It is astonishing how many young people have difficulty in putting their brains definitely and systematically to work….
- Thomas Edison
Everything man creates or acquires begins in the form of desire, that desire is taken on the first lap of its journey, from the abstract to the concrete, into the workshop of the imagination, where plans for its transition are created and organized.
- Napoleon Hill
If there is any one secret of success,’ said Henry Ford, ‘it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
- Dale Carnegie
One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.
- Ben Horowitz
Failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. This way, it is about answering to yourself.
- Sara Blakely
Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company.
- Tadashi Yanai
Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.
- Timothy Ferriss
No one has any idea what’s next… the uncertainty of the business climate in America is frightening, frightening to everybody, and it’s delaying the recovery.
- Stephen Wynn
The real estate market in mainland China, however, experienced a dramatic change during the past year. In the second half of 2007, transacted prices in many cities had been repeatedly bid up to all time highs as a result of fierce competition at land auctions. The subsequent upsurge in housing prices, which were beyond the affordability of the general public, resulted in an overheated property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
