The three Rs in educationare reading, writing and arithmetic. Without these basic skills, learning becomes almost impossible. In a similar way, business starts with a relationship. You are then judged by the results. Rewards spring from the results.
- Jack Nadel
Notable Quotables
You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.
- Walt Disney
I’ve built a lot of my success off finding these truly gifted people and not settling for B and C players, but really going for the A players…I found that when you get enough A players together, when you go through the incredible work to find five of these A players, they really like working with each other. Because they’ve never had a chance to do that before. And they don’t want to work with B and C players and so it becomes self-policing and they only want to hire more A players. And so you build up these pockets of A players, and it propagates.
- Steve Jobs
I was uncomfortable with the timing, … We were getting millions less from the federal government for Medicaid and having to search for funds to restore some of those cuts and I just did not think it was right to put a pay raise on the board that would cost tens of millions of dollars.
- Michael Gerber
We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.
- Peter Thiel
And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round.
- Winston Churchill
People are chasing cash, not happiness. When you chase money, you’re going to lose. You’re just going to. Even if you get the money, you’re not going to be happy.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.
- John D. Rockefeller
I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.
- Herbert Bayard Swope
A company shouldn’t get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn’t last.
- Jeff Bezos
At the very beginning I actually felt a bit nervous. I didn’t have much experience in gaming.
- Lui Che Woo
Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.
- Bill Gates
I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.
- Larry Ellison
I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.
- Joel Olsteen
A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
- Richard Branson
One person seeking glory doesn’t accomplish very much.
- Sam Walton
Most salespeople won’t stop talking long enough to let the Buyer make a decision.
- Jerry Vass
My wife watches me like a hawk.
- Carl Icahn
My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow.
- Evan Esar
An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.
- Steve Martin
God never promised that we wouldn’t have challenges. In fact, He said just the opposite. His word says, ‘Be truly glad!…these trials are only to test your faith, to see whether or not it is strong and pure…’ so if your faith remains strong after being tried in the test tube of fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day of His return.
- Joel Olsteen
I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
- Bill Gates
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
Treat your life like a game.
- Ray Dalio
You know, I start with the assumption that -or with, with the belief that this president has to succeed. We all have an enormous amount of capital invested in his success. His success is the country’s success.
- Michael Bloomberg
Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.
- Seth Godin
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
- Winston Churchill
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
- John Wooden
Don’t be intimidated as you design your pitch. The fact is that nobody will come to you at first. You must be the aggressor, or you will not be heard.
- Michael Levine
One who buys things to write them off for their business whether they need them or not and who borrows massive sums of money to buy frozen yogurt and cupcake franchises that cannot possibly generate enough money to produce a livable wage, much less anything approaching prosperity.
- Clay Clark
The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.
- Dale Carnegie
Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.
- Seth Godin
Simply stated, the value of a business today is the sum of all the money it will make in the future.
- Peter Thiel
In the real world outside economic theory, every business is successful exactly to the extent that it does something others cannot.
- Peter Thiel
In the simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up and goes.
- John Erskine
Uber is efficiency with elegance on top. That’s why I buy an iPhone instead of an average cell phone, why I go to a nice restaurant and pay a little bit more. It’s for the experience.
- Travis Kalanick
Nobody wanted to believe Jack Ma.
- Jack Ma
I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.
- Joel Olsteen
Success is doing what you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want and as much as you want.
- Tony Robbins
I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.
- Henry Ford
They said it was only a ground shark, but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.
- Winston Churchill
We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere… can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.
- Elon Musk
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
- Jeff Bezos
I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.
- Oprah Winfrey
Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.
- Winston Churchill
What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Even if we are right and the other person is definitely wrong, we only destroy ego by causing someone to lose face. The legendary French aviation pioneer and author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote: I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.
- Dale Carnegie
Guess Instead of Thinking.
- Napoleon Hill
I DECLARE God’s dream for my life is coming to pass. It will not be stopped by people, disappointments, or adversities. God has solutions to every problem I will ever face already lined up. The right people and the right breaks are in my future. I will fulfill my destiny. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
Remember that failure is an event, not a person.
- Zig Ziglar
[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell — a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great — was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing — namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.
- Winston Churchill
For me, my role is about unleashing what people already have inside them that is maybe suppressed in most work environments.
- Tony Hsieh
Don’t just park money in the bank.
- Lee Shau Kee
My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.
- Bill Gates
Personally, I just hope that my family keeps getting bigger and bigger. That would make me very happy.
- Lee Shau Kee
Other people and things can stop you temporarily. You’re the only one who can do it permanently.
- Zig Ziglar
Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.
- Napoleon Hill
You don’t overcome challenges by making them smaller but by making yourself bigger.
- John C. Maxwell
We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
- Winston Churchill
A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.
- Elon Musk
Watching how customers actually use a product provides much more reliable information than can be gleaned from a verbal interview or a focus group.
- Clayton M. Christensen
In the U.S., HBO is a very aggressive service.
- Reed Hastings
If you take someone who lacks the experience and the know-how but has the real desire and the willingness to work his tail off to get the job done, he’ll make up for what he lacks. And that proved true nine times out of ten. It was one way we were able to grow so fast.
- Sam Walton
If you don’t love what you’re doing with unbridled passion and enthusiasm, you’re not going to succeed when you hit obstacles.
- Howard Schultz
Well-spent aid money is saving lives for a few thousand dollars per life saved.
- Bill Gates
While the uncertainties that the economic climate holds are a challenge for all companies, we are confident that by drawing from the strengths of our people, as well as on our core values of quality, initiative, trust and creativity, we will maintain our focus and strategic direction.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Fascinatingly, as companies begin to struggle, the third category always seems to grow much faster than the first. In addition, the sudden wave of “semi-performance-related attrition” usually happens in companies that claim to have a “super-high talent bar.” How do all these superstar employees suddenly go from great to crap?
- Ben Horowitz
The typical factory-centric organization places a premium on not-wrong, and spends no time at all weeding out those who don’t start. In the networked economy, the innovation-focused organization has no choice but to obsess about those who don’t start. Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.
- Seth Godin
Economists copied their mathematics from the work of 19th-century physicists: they see individuals and businesses as interchangeable atoms, not as unique creators.
- Peter Thiel
If we can get you a car in five minutes, we can get you anything in five minutes.
- Travis Kalanick
Be helpful. When you see a person without a smile, give him one of yours.
- Zig Ziglar
Lots of people will give you advice… and depending upon how well they know you, the advice might be valid or not so valid.
- Abigail Johnson
Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you’re an artist.
- Seth Godin
Every great business is built on friendship.
- JC Penney
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly.
- Timothy Ferriss
Comparing Apple to Netflix is like comparing apples to oranges, especially if the oranges made so many mistakes that people stopped eating oranges and just went back to Blockbuster.
- Reed Hastings
1. Why is it foolish to launch a new business with millions of dollars in TV ads?2. Are the market leaders in every industry more vulnerable to sudden successes by the competition than ever before?3. Should book publishers issue the paperback edition of a book before the hardcover?4. What’s the single most important asset a company can create—and what is the simple thing that can kill it?5. Every ad needs to do one of two things to succeed…yet most ads do neither. What’s the right strategy?6. Does the Net create a dynamic that fundamentally changes the way everything is marketed?7. How can every business…big and small…use ideavirus marketing to succeed?
- Seth Godin
The bigger we get as a company, the more important it becomes for us to shift responsibility and authority toward the front lines, toward the department manager who’s stocking the shelves and talking to the customer. When we were much smaller, I probably wasn’t as quick to catch on to this idea as I do should have been. But as an avid student of management theory, back in the mid-seventies I started reading the work of W. Edwards Deming, the famous statistician who taught so much to the Japanese about improving their productivity and competitiveness.
- Sam Walton
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.
- Ben Horowitz
It’s always good to be underestimated.
- Donald Trump
The perfect target market for a startup is a small group of particular people concentrated together and served by few or no competitors. Any big market is a bad choice, and a big market already served by competing companies is even worse. This is why it’s always a red flag when entrepreneurs talk about getting 1% of a $100 billion market. In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition, so it’s hard to ever reach that 1%. And even if you do succeed in gaining a small foothold, you’ll have to be satisfied with keeping the lights on: cutthroat competition means your profits will be zero.
- Peter Thiel
I wanted to be an artist. They see the world in a very different way.
- Jack Dorsey
You want your customers to value your service.
- Jeff Bezos
Mr. Carnegie’s Master Mind group consisted of a staff of approximately 50 men, with whom he surrounded himself, for the definiteness purpose of manufacturing and marketing steel. He attributed his entire fortune to the POWER he accumulated through this Master Mind…Great POWER CAN BE ACCUMULATED THROUGH NO OTHER PRINCIPLE.
- Napoleon Hill
It doesn’t hurt to ask Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.
- Seth Godin
What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.
- Napoleon Hill
My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.
- Richard Branson
As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.
- Reid Hoffman
This is a learning in the business life that first of all you need to have commitment, dedication and passion for what you are doing.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Money is fun to make, fun to spend and fun to give away.
- Sara Blakely
I’ve known entrepreneurs who were not great salespeople, or didn’t know how to code, or were not particularly charismatic leaders. But I don’t know of any entrepreneurs who have achieved any level of success without persistence and determination.
- Harvey Mackay
A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they’re doing work that most any trained person could do.
- Seth Godin
First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
- Dale Carnegie
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
There are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. Therefore, training should be the most basic requirement for all managers in your organization. An effective way to enforce this requirement is by withholding new employee requisitions from managers until they’ve developed a training program.
- Andrew Grove
