Notable Quotables

Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.

- Ben Horowitz

I DECLARE it is not too late to accomplish everything God has placed in my heart. I have not missed my window of opportunity. God has moments of favor in my future. He is preparing me right now because He is about to release a special grace to help me accomplish that dream. This is my time. This is my moment. I receive it.

- Joel Olsteen

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

- Bill Gates

Winning ‘Motor Trend’ Car of the year is probably the closest thing to winning the Oscar or Emmy of the car industry.

- Elon Musk

Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.

- Peter Drucker

God, You said You would restore health unto me and heal me of my wounds. You said I would live and not die. You said what is impossible with men is possible with God. When you pray.

- Joel Olsteen

With tech companies, whoever’s the leader is always questioned, you know. They say, ‘Is this the end of them?’ And – there’s more – more times people think that’s the case than it really is the case.

- Bill Gates

In every organization everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear.

- Seth Godin

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

- Steve Martin

The internet had yet to take off, partly because its commercial use was restricted until late 1992 and partly due to the lack of user-friendly web browsers.

- Peter Thiel

In my opinion, education is the finest gift an individual can give a young person.

- Donald Bren

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.

- Winston Churchill

Getting every employee’s mind into the game is a huge part of what the CEO job is all about. Taking everyone’s best ideas and transferring them to others it the secret. Nothing is more important.

- Jack Welch

We all know far too many stories where the third generation just destroys everything that the first two have built up, and I certainly hope my family are different because I’ve worked too hard and my father has worked too hard for it to be given away.

- Gina Rinehart

Don’t marry too early in life. It’s better to work hard when young and establish a career first.

- Lee Shau Kee

If you want to understand what drives Cisco, look at our approach to customers. The manner in which we serve our customers defines our company values and demonstrates our priorities. Cisco is proud to be honored with this important certification that recognizes the foundation of our culture — the importance that we place on ensuring our customers are successful with Cisco technology.

- John Chambers

In 2008, Box had a good way for companies to store their data safely and accessibly in the cloud. But people didn’t know they needed such a thing—cloud computing hadn’t caught on yet. That summer, Blake was hired as Box’s third salesperson to help change that. Starting with small groups of users who had the most acute file sharing problems, Box’s sales reps built relationships with more and more users in each client company. In 2009, Blake sold a small Box account to the Stanford Sleep Clinic, where researchers needed an easy, secure way to store experimental data logs. Today the university offers a Stanford-branded Box account to every one of its students and faculty members, and Stanford Hospital runs on Box. If it had started off by trying to sell the president of the university on an enterprise-wide solution, Box would have sold nothing. A complex sales approach would have made Box a forgotten startup failure; instead, personal sales made it a multibillion-dollar business.

- Peter Thiel

(after listening to people gripe and complain just smile and remember) Crows can’t hang with eagles.

- Joel Olsteen

We thought this [downturn] would last for two quarters, … Now we are saying that it will last for at least – at least ? three quarters.

- John Chambers

Strive to make every person feel special. After all, every person you meet is made in the image of God.

- Joel Olsteen

I’ve taken those pharmacists and asked them to reach out to doctors. Doctors still misprescribe very often. They leave gaps with care. People with asthma, they don’t take their inhalers, they wait until they’re sick, and by then, it’s too late. Now we’re already running up the bills and going to emergency rooms. We’re using our pharmacist to do the things they were educated to do, not to count pills. That’s not where the value is.

- George Paz

We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

- Dale Carnegie

Optimists are those who go after Moby dick in a row boat with a bucket of tarter sauce.

- Zig Ziglar

The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.

- Seth Godin

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

- Steve Jobs

In tennis, you strike a ball just after the rebound for the fastest return. It’s the same with investment.

- Masayoshi Son

Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.

- Thomas Edison

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.

- Henry Ford

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

- Bill Gates

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.

- Napoleon Hill

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

- Oprah Winfrey

In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.

- Peter Thiel

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.

- Timothy Ferriss

My friends are people who like building cool stuff. We always have this joke about people who want to just start companies without making something valuable. There’s a lot of that in Silicon Valley.

- Mark Zuckerberg

A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.

- Seth Godin

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

- Russell Simmons

I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

- George Soros

Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.

- Jack Welch

A key component of the Soft Sell is asking questions that require the Buyer to think and reach inside for the answer so as to reveal needs the Seller can fulfill with a product or service.

- Jerry Vass

A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.

- Yoda

When my partners and I meet with entrepreneurs, the two key characteristics that we look for are brilliance and courage. In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

- Ben Horowitz

If you pay that price daily by planning and preparing and working to become the right kind of person, then you can legitimately expect to have all that life has to offer.

- Zig Ziglar

Well, clearly Apple is a role model of the American innovation whereby it produced all these products – iPod, iPhone, iPad – that are really now dominating all the technology arena in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP.

- Peter Thiel

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If Vancouver did not succeed as Starbucks from ’87 on, our entire international business, which is now thousands of stores and a significant amount of growth and profit, may not have existed.

- Howard Schultz

The beauty of this deal is bringing a clinical expertise. Medco had developed therapeutic resource centers, where they got their pharmacist to have specialties in things like diabetes, heart problems and asthma. Express Scripts took a different approach. We tried to understand why people do what they do with behavioral economics, which is: What drives human behaviors? What drives people to do what they did? By combining those two pieces, we get that much stronger.

- George Paz

With the right pitch, you’ll get no argument. This is where the salesmanship comes in…It requires of you a substantial degree of self-confidence to pull it off, but your belief in your own project will help you muster that.

- Michael Levine

One of my biggest personal holdings is Rotana. That company has a very dominant force in the Middle East. It has around 45% of all the movie industry and around 75% of all the music.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

We all know now that the 747 became the flagship jumbo jet of the airline industry, but the decision looks much different from the perspective of the late 1960s. Yet—and this is the key point—Boeing was willing to make the bold move in the face of the risks. As in Boeing’s case, the risks do not always come without pain.

- James C. Collins

Success must never be measured by how much money you have.

- Zig Ziglar

The slowdown in futures orders clearly signals that revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 1998 will be below our previous expectations. This is largely a result of the slowdown in the Asia Pacific market, where we now anticipate more moderate revenue growth in fiscal 1998 after increasing 84 percent on a constant dollar basis in fiscal 1997.

- Phil Knight

If you try to make such projects, unseen by others, as perfect as any human could, you’ll develop skills that other professionals don’t have.

- Steve Wozniak

Life isn’t fair. It’s true, and you still have to deal with it. Whining about it rarely levels the playing field, but learning to rise above it is the ultimate reward.

- Harvey Mackay

Early must I rise. Leave now you must!

- Yoda

I am a tightwad. That’s one of the main reasons I completed a long questionnaire for a crispy $1 bill. Why else would I spend two or three hours being personally interviewed by these authors? They paid me $100, $200, or $250. Oh, they made me another offer–to donate in my name the money I earned for my interview to my favorite charity. But I told them, I am my favorite charity.

- Thomas J Stanley

Actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles.

- Peter Thiel

The local property market remained volatile throughout the period under review due to negative developments occurring both in the local as well as overseas markets.

- Lee Shau Kee

Well, I am a Republican, and I would run as a Republican. And I have a lot of confidence in the Republican Party. I don’t have a lot of confidence in the president. I think what’s happening to this country is unbelievably bad. We’re no longer a respected country.

- Donald Trump

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

Ethical decisions ensure that everyone’s best interests are protected. When in doubt, don’t.

- Harvey Mackay

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

- Napoleon Hill

What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I support health care for people. I want people well taken care of. But I also want health care that we can afford as a country. I have people and friends closing down their businesses because of Obamacare.

- Donald Trump

Teaching is the only major occupation of man for which we have not yet developed tools that make an average person capable of competence and performance. In teaching we rely on the ‘naturals’, the ones who somehow know how to teach.

- Peter Drucker

It’s not like I’m anti-China. I just think it’s ridiculous that we allow them to do what they’re doing to this country, with the manipulation of the currency, that you write about and understand, and all of the other things that they do.

- Donald Trump

The flexibility of Hong Kong businessmen should soon twist a way to success again.

- Cheng Yu-tung

For the employee, the goal is to have full access to necessary information and as much independent decision-making ability as possible. For the entrepreneur, the goal is to grant as much information and independent decision-making ability to employees or contractors as possible.

- Timothy Ferriss

The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it.

- Winston Churchill

How dare you settle for less when the world has made it so easy for you to be remarkable?

- Seth Godin

If you don’t change the direction you are going, then you’re likely to end up where you’re heading…

- John C. Maxwell

The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places,

- Peter Thiel

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.

- Jeff Bezos

Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the element it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individual . . . Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude – the attitude of courage, frankness, and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.

- Dale Carnegie

How has being realistic” or responsible” kept you from the life you want? How has doing what you should” resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else?

- Timothy Ferriss

On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’

- Michael Bloomberg

It’s a libel to say that I use my newspapers to support my other business interests. The fact is, I haven’t got any other business interests.

- Rupert Murdoch

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

- Bill Gates

If you’re not seeing God move in your life right now, one of two possibilities must be considered. Either your requests are not God’s best and will probably not be answered the way you’d like or it must not be the right time. If God were to answer that prayer the way you are hoping, it could interfere with his ideal plan for you.

- Joel Olsteen

When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.

- James C. Collins

You can make a positive out of the most negative if you work at it hard enough.

- Sam Walton

When I was growing up my dad would encourage my brother and me to fail. We would be sitting at the dinner table and he would ask, so what did you guys fail at this week? If we didn’t have something to contribute, he would be disappointed. When I did fail at something, he’d high-five me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that he was completely reframing my definition of failure at a young age. To me, failure means not trying; failure isn’t the outcome. If I have to look at myself in the mirror and say, I didn’t try that because I was scared, that is failure.

- Sara Blakely

I’m not a big believer in trying to jam stuff down somebody’s throat: ‘You’re going to do it my way.’ I’d rather show by example and live my life and have people say, ‘You know what, I want to live like Joel has. He’s got peace and joy, and he seems content.’

- Joel Olsteen

I was never the smartest guy in the room. From the first person I hired, I was never the smartest guy in the room. And that’s a big deal. And if you’re going to be a leader – if you’re a leader and you’re the smartest guy in the world – in the room, you’ve got real problems.

- Jack Welch

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

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.

- Seth Godin

What we want to watch is whether this is a short-term bump or not.

- John Chambers

You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.

- Zig Ziglar

A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast. Good news travels slow.

- Ben Horowitz

One thing that most comic artists avoid is showing decisions. They show action, sure, and they show results, but they don’t show (because it’s difficult to show) the hero or the villain making a choice.

- Seth Godin

We are fastidious investors. On average, we investnearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year. Most of us invest at least 15 percent. Seventy-nine percent of us have at least one account with a brokerage company. But we make our own investment decisions.

- Thomas J Stanley

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