Notable Quotables

I’m going to retain a lot of Microsoft’s stock.

- Bill Gates

Obama and his attack dogs have nothing but hate and anger in their hearts and spew it whenever possible.

- Donald Trump

Do you know how many companies have wanted me to do an energy drink for them because I named my book ‘Crush It!’? It might be fun one day, but right now I think it would undermine the personal brand I’ve built.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

In the game of life, money is just how we keep score.

- Clay Clark

An extreme representative of this view is Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was a child prodigy who enrolled at Harvard at 16. He went on to get a PhD in math and become a professor at UC Berkeley. But you’ve only ever heard of him because of the 17-year terror campaign he waged with pipe bombs against professors, technologists, and businesspeople. In late 1995, the authorities didn’t know who or where the Unabomber was. The biggest clue was a 35,000-word manifesto that Kaczynski had written and anonymously mailed to the press. The FBI asked some prominent newspapers to publish it, hoping for a break in the case. It worked: Kaczynski’s brother recognized his writing style and turned him in. You might expect that writing style to have shown obvious signs of insanity, but the manifesto is eerily cogent. Kaczynski claimed that in order to be happy, every individual “needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.” He divided human goals into three groups: 1. Goals that can be satisfied with minimal effort; 2. Goals that can be satisfied with serious effort; and 3. Goals that cannot be satisfied, no matter how much effort one makes. This is the classic trichotomy of the easy, the hard, and the impossible. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done. So Kaczynski’s idea was to destroy existing institutions, get rid of all technology, and let people start over and work on hard problems anew. Kaczynski’s methods were crazy, but his loss of faith in the technological frontier is all around us. Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.

- Peter Thiel

We may get knocked down on the outside, but the key to living in victory is to learn how to get up on the inside.

- Joel Olsteen

Ultimately, broadcasters and advertisers have to change the way they do business or they run the risk of linear TV becoming obsolete.

- Charles Ergen

I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.

- Thomas Edison

How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?

- Seth Godin

I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

- Timothy Ferriss

Failed plans should not be interpreted as a failed vision. Visions don’t change, they are only refined. Plans rarely stay the same, and are scrapped or adjusted as needed. Be stubborn about the vision, but flexible with your plan.

- John C. Maxwell

I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.

- Timothy Ferriss

Les tengo buenas noticias: Usted no se tiene que mantener a la par de nadie. Usted puede correr su propia carrera y ser un individuo. Dios le ha dado la gracia para hacer lo que Él le ha llamado a hacer y no le ha dado la gracia para hacer lo que todos los demás están haciendo. Usted no tiene que ser la mejor mamá del mundo, sólo sea la mejor mamá que usted puede ser. Posiblemente, yo nunca seré el mejor pastor del mundo. Quizá no seré el mejor esposo ni el mejor padre, pero he decidido ser lo mejor que yo puedo ser y no me sentiré mal conmigo. Si otra persona puede hacer lo que hago mejor que yo, que bueno, yo no estoy en una competencia ni me estoy comparando con nadie. A mi manera de pensar, ¡yo soy el mejor! Y sé que estoy haciendo lo mejor que puedo. Eso es lo que nos enseña la Escritura. Dice: Así que, cada uno someta a prueba su propia obra…1.

- Joel Olsteen

The ballplayer who loses his head can’t keep his cool, is worse than no ballplayer at all.

- Lou Gehrig

The factory has programmed that adventurous impulse out of us. The economic imperative of the last century has been to avoid risk, avoid change, and most of all, avoid exploration and the new. An efficient factory fears change because change means retooling and risk and a blip in productivity. Sure, we’ll put up with change if we have to, and welcome the predictable incremental change of productivity improvement, but please leave us alone when it comes to the word “bold.” Avoiding risk worked then but doesn’t work now. Now “what’s next?” is in fact the driving force for individuals and for organizations. Ever onward, ever faster.

- Seth Godin

The one essential character trait of any leader is personal integrity.

- David Novak

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

- Seneca

New customers are silver…loyal customers are gold.

- Anonymous

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

- Bill Gates

Before you can be sure of your ability to transmute DESIRE into its monetary equivalent, you will require SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE of the service, merchandise or profession which you intend to offer in return for fortune.

- Napoleon Hill

60% of the bonus was based on financials and 40% on Six Sigma (quality) results.

- Jack Welch

Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.

- Howard Schultz

Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.

- Bill Gates

My store, Wine Library, outsells big national chains. How do you think we do it? It started with hustle. I always say that our success wasn’t due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

“What would you do if capital were free?” is a dangerous question to ask an entrepreneur. It’s kind of like asking a fat person, “What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”

- Ben Horowitz

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

- Winston Churchill

Many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.

- Peter Thiel

You’ve got to take a big jump to make it. You’ve got to have great big balls.

- Forrest Ray

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

- Winston Churchill

Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of SURPRISE.

- Winston Churchill

This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.

- John Chambers

It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.

- Ben Horowitz

Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.

- Benjamin Franklin

War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:

- Peter Thiel

The techniques that worked so extraordinarily well when applied to sustaining technologies, however, clearly failed badly when applied to markets or applications that did not yet exist.

- Clayton M. Christensen

Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.

- Elon Musk

Giving away money to the right cause, with a leveraged effect and your own involvement in how it is spent, will ‘give you peace of mind.’

- Lee Shau Kee

It’s not about size, it’s about your ability to make a difference. At that small size, collaboration is all the more important.

- John Chambers

Don’t waste your energy trying to convince people to understand you. Your time is too valuable to try to prove yourself to people.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.

- Harvey Mackay

I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, ‘Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,’ and he would high-five me and say, ‘Way to go.’

- Sara Blakely

Hedgehog Concept—disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

- James C. Collins

The sad truth is, if you push hard enough, and if you’re so stubborn that you must have things your way, God will sometimes allow you to undertake a project without His blessing or at the wrong time. The problem with that, of course, is when you start something in your own strength and in your own timing, you’re going to have to finish it and maintain it in your own strength.

- Joel Olsteen

Science is the pursuit of pure truth, and the systematizing of it.

- P.T. Barnum

With vision and foresight, thorough consideration, careful planning and steadfast commitment, the New World Group will continue to maintain its ambitious yet healthy investment strategy to grow together with the nation and strive for greater success in the future.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Buda dijo: El odio nunca es vencido por el odio sino por el amor, y un malentendido no termina nunca gracias una discusión sino gracias al tacto, la diplomacia, la conciliación, y un sincero deseo de apreciar el punto de vista de los demás.

- Dale Carnegie

One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.

- Ben Horowitz

We certainly employ a lot of immigrants at Fox… and we do not take any consistent anti-immigrant line.

- Rupert Murdoch

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

- Peter Drucker

If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.

- Winston Churchill

Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets, the wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

- Winston Churchill

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

What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.

- Donald Trump

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

- Thomas Edison

You must not ever think that anything is common sense.

- Clay Clark

Always remember that your present situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.

- Zig Ziglar

George W. Bush stated, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation. That’s when I knew Bush was headed for trouble. With all due respect for the office, I completely disagree with him. In my view, it’s the leader’s responsibility to explain his or her actions every step of the way. And the higher up you are, the more important it is.

- David Novak

A factory demands a compliant workforce in order to succeed.

- Seth Godin

People say that globalisation has negative aspects, but I don’t believe globalisation is bad. It’s criticised from a western perspective, but if you put yourself in the shoes of people in the developing world, it provides an unprecedented opportunity.

- Tadashi Yanai

You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.

- Oprah Winfrey

When I finally retire, I just want to go away so no one has to listen to me.

- Steve Martin

Respect your parents. What they tell you is true. Hard work, dedication and faith will get you anything. Imagination will drive itself. You can get anything you want, but you have to have faith behind all your ideas. Stick to your goals and have an undying faith.

- Russell Simmons

Regardless of what position people originally took, once the decision is made, everyone supports it. That’s why it is critical that no one hold anything back during the discussion.

- Patrick M. Lencioni

Poker is a game where you don’t have to have the best hand to win. Poker is really reading other people and reading human emotion, which certainly comes into play in business.

- Charles Ergen

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

- William Arthur Ward

It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is overcertain of his plot.

- Paul Theroux

Most of my job and most of what I do is to mentor people. There are a lot of people I work with that I don’t have investments in.

- Ben Horowitz

I literally coded Facebook in my dorm room and launched it from my dorm room. I rented a server for $85 a month, and I funded it by putting an ad on the site, and we’ve funded ever since by putting ads on the site.

- Mark Zuckerberg

When you’re doing hard work, getting rejected, failing, working it out—this is a dumb time to make a situational decision about whether it’s time for a nap or a day off or a coffee break. Zig Ziglar taught me this twenty years ago. Make your schedule before you start. Don’t allow setbacks or blocks or anxiety to push you to say, “hey, maybe I should check my e-mail for a while, or you know, I could use a nap.” If you do that, the lizard brain will soon be trained to use that escape hatch again and again.

- Seth Godin

When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, ‘Let’s get a better board’ can be helpful.

- Ben Horowitz

There are two main drivers of asset class returns – inflation and growth.

- Ray Dalio

I have many children, as you seek you may find that this the last one till he must die before he must reach the becoming of mankind. Many men have failed but i have surpassed their expectation of being a Jedi master.

- Yoda

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.

- Elon Musk

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.

- Jeff Bezos

Underneath, you would surely see that the best care passionately about their people—about their growth and success. And you would see that they themselves are comfortable in their own skins. They’re real, filled with candor and integrity, optimism and humanity.

- Jack Welch

We remain confident about the market opportunity ahead of us over the next three to five years.

- John Chambers

I feel like my message is to let people know that God is a good God, that He’s on their side, and no matter what happens, He has a great plan for them.

- Joel Olsteen

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.

- Ben Horowitz

Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.

- Peter Drucker

Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.

- Ben Horowitz

Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Build on what you know so that you don’t repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company’s life.

- Harvey Mackay

Promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.

- Peter Thiel

If Google Books is successful, others will follow.

- Sergey Brin

And in urology, it could be drugs or devices for bladder and prostate problems.

- David Pyott

Hong Kong’s history of success is built on its flexibility in the ever-changing global economy.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit

- Napoleon Hill

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.

- Peter Drucker

If you want to be inventive — you have to be willing to fail.

- Jeff Bezos

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