The power of this new era is simple: if you want to (need to, must!) lead, then you can. It’s easier than ever and we need you. But if this isn’t the right moment, if this isn’t the right cause, then hold off. Generous and authentic leadership will always defeat the selfish efforts of someone doing it just because she can.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
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
Visibility remains limited, and this should come as no surprise, given that our customers’ visibility is limited.
- John Chambers
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- Winston Churchill
I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
- Reed Hastings
The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure.
- Seth Godin
The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places,
- Peter Thiel
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.
- Peter Thiel
Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, – it largely increases the product.
- P.T. Barnum
We’ll make cloud computing announcements because, you know, if orange is the new pink, we’ll make orange blouses. I mean, I’m not gonna fight this thing … well, maybe we’ll do an ad. Uh, I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing, other than market … you know, change the wording on some of our ads.
- Larry Ellison
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
- Mark Twain
The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure, but to build one that is worthy of enduring.
- Jim Collins
Victory is always possible for the person who refuses to stop fighting.
- Napoleon Hill
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If your business is not a brand, it is just a commodity.
- Donald Trump
In whatever you do, strive to be the best at it.
- Aliko Dangote
It is equally important that diversification is an ongoing process.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Treat your life like a game.
- Ray Dalio
Do all things with love.
- Og Mandino
Always try to learn from other peoples mistakes, not your own – It is much cheaper that way!
- Donald Trump
If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you’ve done and whoever you were and throw them away.
- Steve Jobs
Lack of a well-defined purpose in life.
- Napoleon Hill
Los mitos y los sueños proceden del mismo lugar… Un mito es el sueño de una sociedad.
- Joseph Campbell
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
- Winston Churchill
For any business to grow, individuals must be accountable for each of the systems, and a general overall director must be in charge of making sure all the systems operate at the highest capacity.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
Initiative = Happiness
- Seth Godin
Hay una divinidad que forja nuestros fines, por mucho que queramos alterarlos.
- Dale Carnegie
People will always blame the poets for society’s ills. But these are the true artists.
- Russell Simmons
Become meaningful in your interactions and the path to success in any endeavor is simpler and far more sustainable.
- Dale Carnegie
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
- Warren Buffett
As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-time. Sometimes you’ll have to break this rule; it usually makes sense to hire outside lawyers and accountants, for example. However, anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned.
- Peter Thiel
Get ready, get ready, get ready, to get ready.
- T.D Jakes
Three classes of factors affect what an organization can and cannot do: its resources, its processes, and its values.
- Clayton M. Christensen
If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The best teacher is very interactive.
- Bill Gates
I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
The formula for handling Inherent Objections: 1. Isolate the Objection 2. Minimize the Objection 3. Offset the Objection with Benefits
- Jerry Vass
There is far more opportunity than there is ability.
- Thomas Edison
Ask yourself, what’s the one thing that I can do right now so I’m on track to achieve my someday goals?
- Gary Keller
Wrong Selection Of A Vocation
- Napoleon Hill
I know when one door closes God will open up another door. What was meant for my harm God will use to my advantage. I’m not only coming out, I will come out better off than I was before.
- Joel Olsteen
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
- Napoleon Hill
A valuable business must start by finding a niche and dominating a small market.
- Peter Thiel
My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.
- Jack Ma
The quality of our integration will be judged, not by the ultimate costs in hitting our targets, but instead by the level of service we give to our clients throughout the process. That’s kind of my 8-to-5 job. My 5-to-8 job is what’s the next move? Where else in health care do we see inefficiencies, that we see a splintered system with tremendous cost overruns?
- George Paz
That’s the true spirit of Christmas, people being helped by people other than me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.
- Steve Martin
The only thing worse than training employees and losing them is to not train them and keep them.
- Zig Ziglar
Try to maximize the number of people that can benefit from an individual contribution.
- Lee Shau Kee
The best investments are on main street, not Wall Street.
- Robert P. Miles
All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.
- Peter Thiel
[On working at Nike for 48 years] In those 48 years, I have never had a promotion. but it had its other benefits.
- Phil Knight
[In January 2011] I think the important thing for Twitter is that it works on any technology.
- Jack Dorsey
The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.
- Winston Churchill
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
- Winston Churchill
I think God’s justice is making wrongs right.
- Joel Olsteen
Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
- Dale Carnegie
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.
- Seth Godin
You can literally force yourself to be courteous, happy and enthusiastic with every person you meet. After you have forced yourself to be so for a short period of time… the habit takes over.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Call it the emergence of a “world’s bank” – a system built by and for the people, delivering credit in America and across the globe in a radically decentralized, highly scalable, and crucially equitable way. The World Bank funds institutions.The world’s bank funds people.
- Reid Hoffman
At the very beginning I actually felt a bit nervous. I didn’t have much experience in gaming.
- Lui Che Woo
In periods of stress and grief, not only does your mind do funny things, you say things that surprise you.
- Phil Knight
We have a very wide range of content, but the brand-newest movies, what’s happening with those is a $30 pay-per-view option – not from Netflix but from DirecTV and others – of movies that are in the theater.
- Reed Hastings
The first sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.
- Dale Carnegie
The worse a situation becomes the less it takes to turn it around, the bigger the upside.
- George Soros
Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute.
- Zig Ziglar
Risk, to some, is a bad thing, because risk brings with it the possibility of failure. It might be only a temporary failure, but that doesn’t matter so much if the very thought of it shuts you down. So, for some, risk comes to equal failure (take enough risks and sooner or later, you will fail). Risk is avoided because we’ve been trained to avoid failure.
- Seth Godin
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively. Forget “minimum viable products”—ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others’ successes.
- Peter Thiel
Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
I am looking to buy companies that are run by painters. Most great artists have a hard time letting go of their paintings. That’s because the joy is not in the finished work, the joys is in the painting. They are constantly adding a dab of color here, a little more texture there. I’m looking for the boss who is always tweaking his company, constantly trying to make it better. No matter how successful he may have already been, what he still sees is a master-piece-in-progress.
- Warren Buffett
I read the paper every day and the Bible every day, that way I know what both sides are up to.
- Zig Ziglar
Great design = getting people to do what you want.
- Seth Godin
My role has been to pick good people and give them the maximum authority and responsibility.
- Sam Walton
Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.
- Seth Godin
For any Silicon Valley company, the most important thing is the company. And any great founders need to get out of the way of the company. We presented a spark with an idea.
- Jack Dorsey
All that hullabaloo about somebody’s net worth is just stupid, and it’s made my life a lot more complex and difficult.
- Sam Walton
Therefore, every startup should start with a very small market. Always err on the side of starting too small. The reason is simple: it’s easier to dominate a small market than a large one. If you think your initial market might be too big, it almost certainly is.
- Peter Thiel
People will come to the pharmacy because they want the advice.
- Stefano Pessina
Doing the right thing daily, compounds over time.
- John C. Maxwell
I once asked General Eisenhower’s son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. No,” he replied, Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.
- Jeff Bezos
China is a government-oriented economy. No one can say he can run his business entirely without government connections. Anybody who says that he or she can do things alone… is a hypocrite.
- Wang Jianlin
m reasonably optimistic about the future, especially the future of the United States – for the century, at least.
- Elon Musk
A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.
- Bill Gates
All of us, in a sense, struggle continuously all the time, because we never get what we want. The important thing which I’ve really learned is how do you not give up, because you never succeed in the first attempt.
- Mukesh Ambani
Discrimination has a lot of layers that make it tough for minorities to get a leg up.
- Bill Gates
Pick a movement. Pick a revolution. And join it.
- Jack Dorsey
It’s not enough to do good things. You have to let people know what you’re doing.
- Phil Knight
I have to be ever vigilant to remain open to other people’s points of view. Just because I’m enthusiastic doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right. I have to always keep the doors open for honest communication or I could enthusiastically lead everyone right over the cliff.
- David Novak
My revenue was $4 million my first year in business, off of one $20 item.
- Sara Blakely
Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.
- Jack Welch
One of my lifelong practices is to pay my obligations on time, especially my suppliers. Even in my early years as retailer, I didn’t delay my payments to suppliers, because I tell my kids that we have to be considerate to suppliers and think of their own hinyong or how they have to protect their sense of trustworthiness with others.
- Henry Sy
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.
- Siddhartha Gautama
Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
See win-win deals.
- Jack Nadel
Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
- Benjamin Franklin
