Notable Quotables

A decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw.

- Peter Drucker

Extolling the virtues of conservation of energy, Churchill advised, “Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down.

- Winston Churchill

Our success has really been based on partnerships from the very beginning.

- Bill Gates

The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.

- Napoleon Hill

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

Success is doing what you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want and as much as you want.

- Tony Robbins

If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.

- Joel Olsteen

TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.

- Jack Dorsey

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle…

- Napoleon Hill

You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.

- Seth Godin

Marketing is a contest for people’s attention.

- Seth Godin

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

We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.

- Peter Thiel

I’m the No. 1 developer in New York, I’m the biggest in Atlantic City, and maybe we’ll keep it that way.

- Donald Trump

Most companies that go through layoffs are never the same. They don’t recover because trust is broken. And if you’re not honest at the point where you’re breaking trust anyway, you will never recover.

- Ben Horowitz

mean that you can’t do anything else but pray. But it does mean that you are always ready and willing to go before God with any concern or praise. Nothing is too small or too big for prayer. Prayer is simply opening your heart and connecting with God. It’s taking His promises and applying them to your life. Prayer processes the plan of God. You should bathe your life in prayer. Pray for wisdom, peace, and patience. Pray for your relationships, your job, and your children. Pray for your country and leaders. Pray with others, knowing that when two or more are gathered in His name, He is there.

- Joel Olsteen

Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.

- Bill Gates

Don’t be different just to be different. Be different to be better.

- Seth Godin

Hong Kong has gone through countless difficult moments in the past. Our belief in our abilities and our determination to work for a better future have helped us overcome all obstacles.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we’re afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.

- Seth Godin

Word of mouth works now, much more than ever. @-reply every single person.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.

- Bill Gates

The first rule of organizational design is that all organizational designs are bad.

- Ben Horowitz

Japan has only 100m people. Asia has 4bn. At least one-third, maybe nearly half, will become middle class, and this is a big opportunity for Japanese businessmen.

- Tadashi Yanai

The things you’re not doing are the things you should actually be focused on.

- Ben Horowitz

Lay out what you’re doing to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

- David Novak

Make sure your ego lies in the performance of the company, not in the performance of the stock.

- Warren Buffett

Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform. Consider for a moment the possibility of your putting on a series of four lectures for members of your department. Let’s count on three hours preparation for each hour of course time—twelve hours of work in total. Say that you have ten students in your class. Next year they will work a total of about twenty thousand hours for your organization. If your training efforts result in a 1 percent improvement in your subordinates’ performance, your company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the result of the expenditure of your twelve hours.

- Ben Horowitz

I’m not afraid to call a wine that tastes like Skittles or green peppers mixed with orange marmalade. I’ll say, ‘It tastes like chicken.’ I mean, that’s not what people think of when they think of wine, but that’s what it tastes like to me and it hits home.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The man who acquires the ability to take full possession of his own mind may take possession of anything else to which he is justly entitled.

- Andrew Carnegie

Sales is a simple conversation where I ask you questions and I relate to your answers.

- Bryan Smith

You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.

- Andrew Carnegie

If your access to health care involves your leaving work and driving somewhere and parking and waiting for a long time, that’s not going to promote healthiness.

- Larry Page

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

- Bill Gates

I have come to the conclusion that there is only one way under high heaven to get the best of an argument— and that is to avoid it. Avoid it as you would avoid rattlesnakes and earthquakes.

- Dale Carnegie

I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky

- Oprah Winfrey

The greatest business people I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.

- Michael Gerber

It is possible to know all there is to know about a subject—medicine, for example—but if you don’t have M.D. at the end of your name, few will listen. The M.D. is what I term a credibility indicator.” The so-called expert with the most credibility indicators, whether acronyms or affiliations, is often the most successful in the marketplace, even if other candidates have more in-depth knowledge. This is a matter of superior positioning, not deception.

- Timothy Ferriss

The Indian community in Canada has integrated much better than the Indian community in United States. They’ve become really Canadian at the same time as keeping all their Indian characters and customs and social groups.

- Azim Premji

By my count, more business leaders have failed and derailed because of arrogance than any other character flaw.

- Harvey Mackay

You know, if you look back in the 1930s, the money went to infrastructure. The bridges, the municipal buildings, the roads, those were all built with stimulus money spent on infrastructure. This stimulus bill has fundamentally gone, started out with a $500 rebate check, remember. That went to buy flat-screen TVs made in China.

- Michael Bloomberg

E – Edge, ability to make tough yes and no decisions

- Jack Welch

Drucker said: ‘If you weren’t already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?’ … Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.

- Jack Welch

A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.

- Peter Drucker

It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

- Dale Carnegie

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

- Bill Gates

Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing, right into your product or service. Not slapping on marketing as a last-minute add-on, but understanding that if your offering itself isn’t remarkable, it’s invisible.

- Seth Godin

The Benefits are about the Buyer’s stuff – what your products or services do for Buyers. Do the Benefits make them feel better about life – give them power; make them sexier, prettier, richer, more comfortable or secure, smarter, more competitive? Do they save time, money, fear or hassle?

- Jerry Vass

How to walk to Cleveland Shipping is an event. There’s life before you ship and then there’s the moment you ship. And then there’s life after you ship. Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, one step at a time, picking your feet up and putting them down. At the end of the day, twenty miles later, you stop at a hotel. And what happens the next morning? Either you quit the project or you start again, walking to Cleveland. In fact, every step is a new beginning. Sure, you’re closer than you were yesterday or last week, but you’re still heading toward Cleveland. Keep starting until you finish.

- Seth Godin

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.

- Napoleon Hill

Sports just happen to be excellent for avoiding foreign-language stage fright and developing lasting friendships while still sounding like Tarzan.

- Timothy Ferriss

Remarkable visions and genuine insights are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths – whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it’s over. If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it’s unlikely to be worth the journey. Persist.

- Seth Godin

What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.

- Larry Ellison

When you are the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you are basically saying, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong.’ That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilaration and the same time an invitation to be attacked.

- Larry Ellison

A person convinced against their will Is of the same opinion still.

- Dale Carnegie

Life is a classroom — only those who are willing to be lifelong learners will move to the head of the class.

- Zig Ziglar

That’s not a Puma, that’s a Nike. [‘What’s a Nike?’] A new brand.

- Phil Knight

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

- Andrew Carnegie

Some of the biggest failures I’ve ever met, are people that have never failed.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Often, it is in trying times that the greatest endeavours are realised.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Bottom line: God will not allow any person to keep you from your destiny. They may be bigger, stronger, or more powerful, but God knows how to shift things around and get you to where you’re supposed to be.

- Joel Olsteen

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

The patterns of success and failure we see among firms faced with sustaining and disruptive technology change are a natural or systematic result of good managerial decisions. That is, in fact, why disruptive technologies confront innovators with such a dilemma. Working harder, being smarter, investing more aggressively, and listening more astutely to customers are all solutions to the problems posed by new sustaining technologies. But these paradigms of sound management are useless—even counterproductive, in many instances—when dealing with disruptive technology.

- Clayton M. Christensen

What is school for? If you’re not asking that, you’re wasting time and money.

- Seth Godin

Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.

- John D. Rockefeller

A company needs lots of smart, super-engaged employees who can identify its particular weaknesses and help it improve them.

- Ben Horowitz

I’ve seen more people fail because of liquor and leverage — leverage being borrowed money. You really don’t need leverage in this world much. If you’re smart, you’re going to make a lot of money without borrowing.

- Warren Buffett

The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.

- Napoleon Hill

Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.

- Seth Godin

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

From wherever you are, you can go anywhere you want to go if you pick the right roads to travel.

- Zig Ziglar

If we open a quarrel between past and present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

- Winston Churchill

If you cannot persuade people to do things, you simply will not be a success because you are not an island unto yourself. Everything in life is about persuading people to do what you want them to do.

- David Robinson

While technology is still important, the consumer has to lead innovation.

- Phil Knight

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

Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you.

- J. Gitomer

People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.

- Peter Thiel

It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

- Ronald Reagan

When you are truly interested in other people, you will learn what they are interested in and if they have a need for your product. If they like you, and most people like folks who take an interest in them, they’ll help you find people who do need what you have to sell, even if they don’t.

- Zig Ziglar

The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

- Oprah Winfrey

An apology? Bah! Disgusting! Cowardly! Beneath the dignity of any gentleman, however wrong he might be.

- Steve Martin

While formal schooling is an important advantage, it is not a guarantee of success nor is its absence a fatal handicap.

- Ray Kroc

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have it depends solely on what you think.

- Dale Carnegie

Whatever your critics say about you has no bearing on your worth. You are a child of the Most High God. The Creator of the universe breathed life into you. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. You’ve been crowned with favor. God has already equipped and empowered you with everything you need. Don’t waste your valuable time trying to play up to people, trying to win over all your critics, or trying to prove to someone that you’re important.

- Joel Olsteen

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