I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don’t laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that’s not real laughter.
- Steve Martin
Notable Quotables
The interview process takes twelve to fifteen hoursof your team’s time. This process is expensive for your team, so you should vet people in advance. A technique I use is to email the references and say, Rate this person one to ten. No one’s going to reply a five or a three by email; that means they hate the candidate. Call me is usually the response for a sub-seven rating. At the same time, nobody is going to reply with a ten. What you’re really looking for is a bunch of eights and nines. This is an exceptionally quick referencing system when you’re trying to triage a list.
- Reid Hoffman
Over the course of your career, your Detroit will surely call you at one point or another. If you can go, that’s great. If you can’t, make peace with the reasons why.
- Jack Welch
It’s insane to me to ask anybody to be what they’re not. Know what you know the best, love the most. That’s always going to be the answer to the thing that you have the best shot at winning at.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.
- John C. Maxwell
People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things – to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today.
- Zig Ziglar
Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.
- Sam Walton
You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.
- Dale Carnegie
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
I am a fifty-seven-year-old male, married with three children. About 70 percent of us earn 80 percent or more of our household’s income.
- Thomas J Stanley
Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.
- Yoda
Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.
- Elon Musk
Gas consumption is growing everywhere.
- Vagit Alekperov
Macau has been steady. The shocking, unexpected government is the one in Washington.
- Stephen Wynn
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
It’s not sufficient that I succeed, everyone else must fail.
- Larry Ellison
I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
- Timothy Ferriss
Vision without execution is just hallucination.
- Henry Ford
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Common mission trap for companies: trying to be all things to all people at all times.
- Jack Welch
I don’t yell at people, I don’t mistreat people. I don’t talk down to people, so no one else in this building, in this vicinity, has the right to do it.
- Oprah Winfrey
He has always been like this. His mind works ten times faster than everybody’s else’s. I mean he just gets going and stays two or three jumps ahead, and he’s quick to go with what’s on his mind. If he gets something in his mind that needs to be done – regardless of what else might have been planned – the new idea takes priority, and it has to be done now. Everybody has their angenda already scheduled, and then bang! He just calls a meeting on something. (on CEO leadership and management with speed)
- Loretta Boss Parker
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
- Napoleon Hill
People naturally follow those stronger than themselves.
- John Maxwell
Being called a huckster and a charlatan started several years ago, so that’s something I’m accustomed to. In most cases, it doesn’t bother me.
- Timothy Ferriss
You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.
- Zig Ziglar
I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
- Warren Buffett
I hate how many people think “glass half-empty” when their glass is really four-fifths full. I’m grateful when I have one drop in the glass because I know exactly what to do with it.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We decided that instead of avoiding our competitors, or waiting for them to come to us, we would meet them head-on. It was one of the smartest strategic decisions we ever made. In fact, if our story doesn’t prove anything else about the free market system, it erases any doubt that spirited competition is good for business – not just for customers, but the companies which have to compete with one another too. Our competitors have honed and sharpened us to an edge we wouldn’t have with out them. We wouldn’t be nearly as good as we are today without Kmart, and I think they would admit we’ve made them a better retailer. One reason Sears fell so far off the pace is that they wouldn’t admit for the longest time that Wal-Mart and Kmart were their real competition. They ignored both of us, and we both blew right by them.
- Sam Walton
Change is the price of progress.
- Napoleon Hill
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
- Peter Drucker
When you become a leader success is all about growing others.
- Jack Welch
Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.
- Ray Dalio
You are going to survive. And good things are going to start to happen again. And one day you are going to look back and this will not even be such a bad thing.
- Dale Carnegie
The Pitch is your mechanism for persuasion. Persuasion is the goal. You’re trying to convince them of someone or something, and they might initially be resistant. This isn’t a nice casual conversation; it’s the Guerrilla P.R. version of a first strike.
- Michael Levine
That’s your opportunity–to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.
- Seth Godin
Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me – they’re going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, ‘This guy is obnoxious.’ I spend enormous time with them – every negative review of ‘Crush It!’ on Amazon has a response from me – and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Frequently I’ll be interviewing with somebody or talking and in about 15 minutes they’ll interrupt me mid-stream and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re nothing like I’d thought you’d be.’
- Larry Ellison
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
You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.
- Warren Buffett
E – Executions, how to get things done
- Jack Welch
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
- Donald Trump
You may have made some mistakes, and you may not be where you want to be, but that has NOTHING to do with your future.
- Zig Ziglar
Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.
- Peter Thiel
People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.
- Andrew Carnegie
It would be nice to design a real briefcase – you open it up and it’s your computer but it also stores your books.
- Steve Wozniak
Even if you do something that others might consider wrong, you should at least be willing to talk about it and tell your parents what you’re doing because you believe it’s right.
- Steve Wozniak
If you can dream it, you can do it. -Walt Disney
- Walt Disney
Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.
- Richard Branson
Washington is unpredictable these days.
- Stephen Wynn
I’m a normal guy.
- Jack Ma
I have always believed that if we do well, we must also do something to help others in society.
- Henry Sy
Use technology to remind people that we are really human and civilization is meant to connect together. Civilization is meant to be easy, and the technology to completely disappear. And should be easy to pick up.
- Jack Dorsey
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
- Peter Drucker
I would hope that , where possible, the newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is some news that does more harm than good. The risk is that it threatens the commercial or industrial interests of our country.
- Serge Dassault
We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticising a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to the other person’s pride. Whereas a few minutes’ thought, a considerate word or two, a genuine understanding of the other person’s attitude, would go so far toward alleviating the sting!
- Dale Carnegie
I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.
- Jack Ma
We build dwellings and thereafter they build us.
- Winston Churchill
If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.
- Sir Isaac Newton
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
One out of every five page views in the United States is on Facebook!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I’m glad to see that BMW is bringing an electric car to market. That’s cool.
- Elon Musk
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.
- Winston Churchill
Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions, with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy and pride.
- Dale Carnegie
I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years.
- Howard Schultz
If humanity doesn’t land on Mars in my lifetime, I would be very disappointed.
- Elon Musk
I’m concerned a little bit with the culture of celebrating the fundraise. My dad taught me that when you borrow money it’s the worst day of your life.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
There are GMO skeptics more in Europe maybe than in other places, but not exclusively.
- Bill Gates
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
- Andrew Carnegie
In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.
- Ben Horowitz
Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines, the one who actually talk to the customer, are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble within it, you must listen to what your associates are telling you.
- Sam Walton
My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.
- Sara Blakely
Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.
- Peter Drucker
I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.
- Tony Robbins
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- Walt Disney
You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to those situations.
- Zig Ziglar
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
- Jack Welch
One who works the same reactive 40 hours per week and takes the same amount of sick days and holidays off as his or her employees, yet expects to make significantly more than everyone else simply because they have the title of owner and are thus making the loan payments and the lease payments.
- Clay Clark
Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.
- Joel Olsteen
If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that’s not much – unless you’ve been warned that if you’re even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.
- Zig Ziglar
I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort.
- Sergey Brin
It’s hard to make a living when you are in school…
- Michael Dell
Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day.
- Peter Thiel
We’re on our way to Greece, in the hands of a confused, foolish government. It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.
- Stephen Wynn
Any time a company grows as fast as Wal-Mart has, pockets of duplication are going to build up, and there will be areas of the business which we may no longer need. No boss or employee really likes to dwell on such matters; it’s only human nature not to want to have your job, or the jobs of the people who work for you, eliminated. But it is absolutely the responsibility of a company’s top management to be thinking about this issue all the time – to ensure the sound future for the overall company.
- Sam Walton
I believe the scripture says that being gay is a sin.
- Joel Olsteen
They told you to get your résumé in order, to punch your ticket, to fit in, and to follow instructions. They told you to swallow your pride, not to follow your dream. They promised trinkets and prizes and possibly riches if you would just suck it up and be part of the system, if you would merely do what you were told and conform. They sold you debt and self-storage and reality TV shows. They sold your daughters and sons, too.All in exchange for what would happen later, when it was your turn. It’s your turn.
- Seth Godin
Developing a customer who loves the business so much that they become an unpaid and passionate marketer for the company.
- Clay Clark
You have to act and act now.
- Larry Ellison
As companies move to web-based computing they get a lot more servers, which are difficult to manage and control. All kinds of problems can arise – security, quality and worms.
- Ben Horowitz
Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of SURPRISE.
- Winston Churchill
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
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Use every customer point of contact to weave stories about who you are and what your brand stands for.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
That’s why encouragement is a much more effective teaching device than punishment.
- Dale Carnegie
I’ve come to see institutional decline like a staged disease: harder to detect but easier to cure in the early stages, easier to detect but harder to cure in the later stages. An institution can look strong on the outside but already be sick on the inside,”
- James C. Collins
If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.
- Dale Carnegie
We’re still in a recession. We’re not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.
- Warren Buffett
I want to fight poverty and ignorance and give opportunity to those people who are locked out
- Russell Simmons
