Notable Quotables

I’m constantly amazed that owners and managers of all businesses don’t train their people to call the person who pays by credit card by name. It definitely makes the customer feel good and will be a factor in bringing them back to your place of business.

- Zig Ziglar

With an export-driven economy, Hong Kong is unavoidably affected by any hiccup in the outside world.

- Cheng Yu-tung

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

- Bill Gates

They said it was only a ground shark, but I was not wholly reassured. It is as bad to be eaten by a ground shark as by any other.

- Winston Churchill

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

- Warren Buffett

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

The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.

- Zig Ziglar

I just want to retire before I go senile because if I don’t retire before I go senile, then I’ll do more damage than good at that point.

- Elon Musk

Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.

- Cheng Yu-tung

I tell my employees that we’re in the service business, and it’s incidental that we fly airplanes.

- Herb Kelleher

I consider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment…..the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy. A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only “postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.

- Peter Drucker

Faith in your new apprentice, misplaced may be. As is your faith in the dark side of the Force.

- Yoda

If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.

- Bill Gates

Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.

- Jack Welch

IN A NUTSHELL FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

Around the survivors a perimeter create.

- Yoda

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

- Winston Churchill

One person seeking glory doesn’t accomplish very much.

- Sam Walton

Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen.

- Winston Churchill

When you do things the right way, you have nothing to lose because you have nothing to fear.

- Zig Ziglar

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

- Jack Nadel

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.

- Peter Drucker

The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies had a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great. There is an important.

- James C. Collins

We have an ideal location for a couple of organic wineries on the island. But the reintroduction of commercial agriculture to Lanai is 100% dependent upon increasing the available water on the island. So we’re going to use solar energy to convert seawater to fresh water.

- Larry Ellison

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

- Jeff Bezos

We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.” It’s a simple saying, but it’s deep. “Taking care of the people” is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it, the other two won’t matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work.

- Ben Horowitz

Los líderes son vulnerables, no controladores, y nos llevan a un lugar nuevo, no a la seguridad barata, rápida y sumisa.

- Seth Godin

On the Internet you get continuous innovation, so every year the streams are a little better.

- Reed Hastings

Don’t be afraid to assert yourself, have confidence in your abilities, and don’t let the bastards get you down.

- Michael Bloomberg

I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point.

- Steve Martin

A product is viral if its core functionality encourages users to invite their friends to become users too.

- Peter Thiel

I read a lot of history, biographies, science, and novels ushering a reporter out the door with a hint of relief. I do not read management or economics.

- Peter Drucker

If a job doesn’t excite you on some level—just because of the stuff of it—don’t settle.

- Jack Welch

Business in Russia was not being done like in the West, with contracts. In Russia, hundreds of millions of dollars were going forward and backward by word of mouth.

- David Reuben

Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.

- Michael Gerber

Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.

- Steve Martin

When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.

- Josh James

[In January 2011] We have built the simplest way to accept credit cards. It’s a little tiny device that we give away for free, and you just download some softwares from the app store and plug it in to your mobile phone or iPad and suddenly you can take credit cards. So if you’re a tax accountant or a lawyer or doctor or even a hair stylist, you can now accept credit cards.

- Jack Dorsey

You have to keep your goal in mind and never lose sight of it. I envisioned myself winning the heavyweight title for ten years before I actually captured it. If you’re not driven to do your best, you’ll never reach the level of excellence in your life.

- George Foreman

Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.

- Jack Welch

Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad.

- Donald Trump

Writing a long and substantial book is like having a friend and companion at your side, to whom you can always turn for comfort and amusement, and whose society becomes more attractive as a new and widening field of interest is lighted in the mind.

- Winston Churchill

You can’t build any kind of organization if you’re not going to surround yourself with people who have experience and skill base beyond your own.

- Howard Schultz

A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The rest of their generation was left behind, but the wealthy Boomers who shape public opinion today see little reason to question their naïve optimism.

- Peter Thiel

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

You want to have a future where you’re expecting things to be better, not one where you’re expecting things to be worse.

- Elon Musk

The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work.

- Seth Godin

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

I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

- Thomas Jefferson

Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).

- Seth Godin

You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you’re an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party… My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

It may look like the difficulty is going to defeat you. But you need to keep telling yourself, This sickness can’t take my life.” This cancer can’t defeat me.” No bad break, no disappointment, no accident can shorten one second of my divine destiny.

- Joel Olsteen

If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.

- Oprah Winfrey

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

With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.

- Zig Ziglar

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

- Bill Gates

That’s an issue dear to my heart, because I was born in the Soviet Union during the communist era.

- Sergey Brin

If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.

- Warren Buffett

He listened closely to what people said and filed away as much information as he could, repeating valuable information to himself until it was memorized. There was humility in this eagerness to learn. As he said, It is very important to remember what other people tell you, not so much what you yourself already know.

- Ron Chernow

We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere… can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.

- Elon Musk

Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.

- Mark Zuckerberg

At first, we couldn’t be establishment, because we didn’t have any money. We were guerrilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit. But, as we became No. 1 in our industry, we’ve had to modify our culture and become a bit more planned.

- Phil Knight

…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day… If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased… I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do… I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. …Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.

- Thomas Edison

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

- Bill Gates

Records are made to be broken. It is in man’s nature to continue to strive to do just that.

- Richard Branson

You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.

- Peter Thiel

Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it, and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve.

- Dale Carnegie

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

- Joel Olsteen

I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.

- Oprah Winfrey

What options expensing will determine is job creation and job loss, … This is why we are debating it so strongly and I’m proud to champion it.

- John Chambers

I have lots of sources of information about what’s going on at the company. I think I have a pretty good pulse on where we are and what people are thinking.

- Steve Ballmer

The love of a foster mother for her charge appears absolutely irrational.

- Winston Churchill

It is important that all of us, however old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us. A mindset that is characterized by creativity and initiative, harnessed by focus and discipline. In our company, this mindset is requisite and indelible.

- Cheng Yu-tung

You know, if it’s a three-way race, the public has more choice than if it’s a two-way race, and has more choice in a two-way race than a one-way race.

- Michael Bloomberg

[On the first twitter tweet] The first tweet that was actually written by a human was by me and it was inviting co-workers.

- Jack Dorsey

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.

- Winston Churchill

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

- Harvey Mackay

Shaw once remarked: If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.

- Dale Carnegie

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don’t say that disrespectfully, but they’ve been shown a God that you can’t measure up to.

- Joel Olsteen

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

- Winston Churchill

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