You need to be around people who know more than you and have more talent than you. Don’t be intimidated by them, be inspired.
- Joel Olsteen
Notable Quotables
My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them.
- Russell Simmons
I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple. Jesus didn’t go around condemning people.
- Joel Olsteen
I move onward, the only direction Can’t be scared to fail in search of perfection.
- Jay-Z
In order to deal with all the medical cost demands and other challenges in the U.S., as we look to raise that revenue, the rich will have to pay slightly more. That’s quite clear.
- Bill Gates
Today, Andy Quinn pitched a great game finally, and that’s what he’s capable of. He fell behind a few hitters, but he got stronger as he went on.
- Jack Taylor
To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each of these three stages, there are two key concepts, shown in the framework and described below. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept we came to call the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great.
- James C. Collins
Read the Bible, it is your roadmap through life.
- George Foreman
Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.
- John C. Maxwell
Over the past ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
- Ben Horowitz
In business, just the opposite is often true; silence means dissent. Have you ever been in a meeting where you sense there is obvious disagreement, but the disagreement never really gets put on the table? This what I call the Slow No’s.
- David Novak
The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.
- Azim Premji
If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.
- John C. Maxwell
The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo, the job is to invent the status quo.
- Seth Godin
Now that we had a name, we had to have a trademark for the side of the shoe. It was 1971, and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million, so I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State, and there was a woman there saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get enough money for the dress for this prom,’ And I said, ‘I have a job for you.’ I paid her $2 an hour, and she spent 17 and a half hours. So $35 and she came up with what is now the swoosh.
- Phil Knight
The culture was strong enough to transcend the original company.
- Peter Thiel
The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive. When I was managing thousands of people at Hewlett-Packard after the sale of Opsware, there was an incredible number of incoming demands on my time. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Little companies wanted to partner with me or sell themselves to me, people in my organization needed approvals, other business units needed my help, customers wanted my attention, and so forth. As a result, I spent most of my time optimizing and tuning the existing business. Most of the work that I did was “incoming.” In fact, most skilled big company executives will tell you that if you have more than three new initiatives in a quarter, you are trying to do too much. As a result, big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup executive, nothing happens unless you make it happen. In the early days of a company, you have to take eight to ten new initiatives a day or the company will stand still. There is no inertia that’s putting the company in motion. Without massive input from you, the company will stay at rest.
- Ben Horowitz
What most people know but don’t realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn’t there, we’d be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.
- Elon Musk
A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.
- Thomas Carlyle
Leadership is the capacity to transform vision into reality.”
- Warren G. Bennis
A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere.
- Zig Ziglar
Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.
- James C. Collins
Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.
- Napoleon Hill
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
Salvation and Christ’s love is a gift. You don’t earn it. You’ve got to receive that gift.
- Joel Olsteen
The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The surest foundation of a manufacturing concern is quality. After that, and a long way after, comes cost.
- Andrew Carnegie
The guerrilla is obsessed with benefits. Whenever offering a product or service, she focuses on how it will benefit the consumer and builds everything—the product, the delivery, the marketing—around that benefit.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison
Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.
- Bill Gates
If you run a business, if you are responsible for a lot of people, you come to grips with the reality that you have to have discipline. You have to protect the enterprise in order to take care of the employees. So, therefore, you can’t be wasteful. You can’t squander things, or you jeopardize other people.
- Stephen Wynn
I’d work in the store all day, then take off around closing and drive that windy road over the Mississippi River, and then into Tennessee with an old homemade trailer I had hitched to my car. I’d stuff that car and trailer with whatever I could get good deals on – usually on soft lines, ladies panties and nylons, men’s shirts and I’d bring them back, price them low and just blow that stuff out of the store.
- Sam Walton
China will become the IT (information technology) center of the world. We believe in giving something back and truly becoming a Chinese company.
- John Chambers
You are going to fire Mark Hurd and hire Leo? What I said at the time was that this was the best idea since the Apple board fired Steve Jobs. Really brilliant.
- Larry Ellison
Wrong Selection of A Mate In Marriage.
- Napoleon Hill
When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.
- Joel Olsteen
You don’t ever want to sell, you want customers to sell.
- Clay Clark
Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.
- Harvey Mackay
A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.
- Thomas Edison
Disruptive companies often pick fights they can’t win.
- Peter Thiel
Speed is of the essence in responding to a crisis situation, and our focus is squarely on mobilizing resources to help in the relief and rebuilding efforts, while also helping customers and employees recover.
- John Chambers
Another challenge is a phenomenon that I call the Law of Crappy People. The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.
- Ben Horowitz
Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
In some parts of life, like mathematics and science, yeah, I was a genius. I would top all the top scores you could ever measure it by.
- Steve Wozniak
Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.
- Ben Horowitz
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I’ve learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that’s what kids are playing. That’s what people are talking about.
- Bill Gates
To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.
- Peter Thiel
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
In every age there comes a time when a leader must come forward to meet the needs of the hour. Therefore, there is no potential leader who does not have the opportunity to make a positive difference in society.
- Winston Churchill
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that good ones slip through.
- Seth Godin
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you must seek out.
- Seth Godin
Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.
- John C. Maxwell
I will say that walking down the street, getting on the subway, taking the elevator, if there’s one or two people and they say, ‘Great job, Mayor,’ that is a real turn-on. I mean, anybody that wouldn’t find that satisfying, rewarding, exciting, thrilling – I think they should see the doctor.
- Michael Bloomberg
Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.
- Thomas Edison
In absorbing companies, Rockefeller was secretive and asked them to continue operating under their original names and not divulge their Standard Oil Ownership. They were instructed to retain their original stationary, keep secret accounts, and not allude on paper to their Cleveland connection.
- Ron Chernow
I have thought about some kind of musical involving my music. That would be kind of interesting. I have thought of it in that way, as a creator of something, not so much a performer. So that’s in my head.
- Steve Martin
Great opportunities can be and have been created during tough economic times.
- Howard Schultz
I believe we are in at least a two-quarter slowdown.
- John Chambers
You’ve got to take a big jump to make it. You’ve got to have great big balls.
- Forrest Ray
Don’t go in and tell somebody else how to run their business.
- Carl Icahn
Everything important to us—the universe, the planet, the country, your company, your life, and this very moment—is singular.
- Peter Thiel
I like definitive things.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees.
- Putting the Service-Profit Chain To Work - Ja
The onset of global financial turmoil in the second half of 2008 and the resultant wait-and-see attitude adopted by some homebuyers put the property market into the doldrums, with a general decline in both transaction volume and transacted prices.
- Lee Shau Kee
Imagination is more important that knowledge
- Albert Einstein
Love is a promise delivered already broken.
- Steve Martin
Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.
- Jeff Bezos
My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven, he got injured on a job. That was a very important point – because of the injury, he couldn’t walk, and the company he was working for did not pay him. There was no compensation. So there was no money and no food.
- Howard Schultz
The odds of me coming into the rocket business, not knowing anything about rockets, not having ever built anything, I mean, I would have to be insane if I thought the odds were in my favor.
- Elon Musk
It is unhealthy to marinate in your own press clippings.
- Sam Walton
The most valuable companies in the future won’t ask what problems can be solved with computers alone. Instead, they’ll ask: how can computers help humans solve hard problems?
- Peter Thiel
The breadth and maturity of our own businesses is allowing us to weather the prevailing storms.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The price of greatness is responsibility.
- Winston Churchill
Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.
- Napoleon Hill
If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.
- Dale Carnegie
I define joy as a sustained sense of well-being and internal peace – a connection to what matters.
- Oprah Winfrey
An attributable HK$9,892 million worth of properties in Hong Kong was sold, an increase of 25% as compared with HK$7,895 million for the year before.
- Lee Shau Kee
At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn’t matter as much to us. We care about great work.
- Reed Hastings
Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
- James C. Collins
Not good — great.
- Jack Welch
Some city-council people are really awesome, but most are uninspired. I meet with them as little as possible.
- Travis Kalanick
It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.
- Winston Churchill
Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.
- Walt Disney
Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it’s cute but boring and expensive.
- P.J. O'Rourke
We woke up one day, and all the sudden Starbucks was in the middle of this political crossfire between the people who want to bring a gun into Starbucks and the people who want to prevent it. It is a very difficult, fragile situation.
- Howard Schultz
We appreciate size, but only if it is robust growth. Just to be big is not a target.
- Alexei Mordashov
The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.
- Warren Buffett
I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.
- Joel Olsteen
If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.
- Jeff Bezos
Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m addicted to winning. The more you win, the more you want to win.
- Larry Ellison
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The ability to lead is more valuable than sugar or any other commodity
- John D. Rockefeller
Our customers call and e-mai us to say that’s how it feels when a Zappos box arrives. And that’s how we view this company.
- Tony Hsieh
Like any well designed software product, Windows is designed, developed and tested as an integrated whole.
- Bill Gates
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
- Socrates
Eventually you won’t think of ‘the Internet business.’ You’ll think of it more like news, weather, sports, but even that taxonomy isn’t clear.
- Bill Gates
The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.
- Peter Thiel
