I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
Notable Quotables
When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.
- Howard Schultz
Life’s too short to hang out with people who aren’t resourceful.
- Jeff Bezos
My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.
- Winston Churchill
The danger of the Web is that you can go from idea to public announcement in under ten minutes.
- Seth Godin
Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in business and politics, it works in family life as well.
- Dale Carnegie
People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.
- Walt Disney
Heretics must believe. More than anyone else in an organization, it’s the person who’s challenging the status quo, the one who is daring to be great, who is truly present and not just punching a clock who must have confidence in her beliefs.Can you imagine Steve Jobs showing up for the paycheck? It’s nice to get paid. It’s essential to believe.
- Seth Godin
Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional. We understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right. When this process works, it means our failures are relatively small in size (most experiments can start small), and when we hit on something that is really working for customers, we double-down on it with hopes to turn it into an even bigger success.
- Jeff Bezos
No newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, or nonmusic radio. Music is permitted at all times. No news websites whatsoever (cnn.com, drudgereport.com, msn.com,10 etc.). No television at all, except for one hour of pleasure viewing each evening. No reading books, except for this book and one hour of fiction11 pleasure reading prior to bed. No web surfing at the desk unless it is necessary to complete a work task for that day. Necessary means necessary, not nice to have.
- Timothy Ferriss
EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.
- Jack Ma
One definition of hope is happy anticipation of something good.
- Joel Olsteen
Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs.
- The Millionaire Next Door
Most people have never thought through how they’re going to allocate their time. You need to make a decision in advance.
- Clayton M. Christensen
What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.
- Zig Ziglar
I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a ‘gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.’ Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.
- Winston Churchill
We have a big opportunity in China. We think the number of stores here can rival the number in North America.
- Howard Schultz
You’ve got to take a big jump to make it. You’ve got to have great big balls.
- Forrest Ray
How about we agree upon what our common American values are, which is let’s make this a true land of opportunity.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
- Reed Hastings
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
- Warren Buffett
Civilization is meant to be easy…
- Jack Dorsey
Leaders think like a revolutionary not a bureaucrat.
- Napoleon Hill
When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.
- Harvey Mackay
Try not to become a man of success, but rather a man of value.
- Albert Einstein
If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive.
- Dale Carnegie
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
- Timothy Ferriss
When I hire someone, I try to get beneath the surface and go deep. The first question I ask is, Has this person demonstrated any leadership potential? I ask for specifics and probe carefully to find out exactly what that person contributed. After all, success has many fathers.’ I also look for enthusiasm, people who lean forward in their chairs, who get up on their haunches a little but when they talk about what they’ve done. I like to see the passion and the excitement because that’s what will allow someone to inspire others. The next thing I look for is an avid learners, someone who is curious, who has an ability to make connections, to pick up on trends, and to apply what’s going on in the rest of the world to his or her business career. You obviously need smart people with a proven track record, but the real stars are passionate about what they do and are avid learners. Those two things make people continually raise the bar on performance.
- David Novak
Diversification does not mean that we have lost confidence in the long term prospects of the property market. Just the contrary is true.One year after the hand-over of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, the people in Hong Kong and around the world have witnessed the successful implementation of the ‘One Country, Two System.’
- Cheng Yu-tung
Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose…
- Thomas Edison
We thought we ought to put that in because it’s the truth but the (like-for-like) number even with those factors taken into account is still very disappointing.
- Simon Wolfson
I’ve seen executives improve their performance and skill sets, I’ve never seen one lose the support of the organization and then regain it.
- Ben Horowitz
Residential property prices will pick up steadily.
- Lee Shau Kee
Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.
- Ben Horowitz
Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you complain you will remain, if you praise you will be raised.
- Joel Olsteen
Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations… They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they call them ‘operators’ or ‘programmers.’
- Peter Drucker
If values do not affect daily life, they are not values.
- Marty St. George
We’ve shown the world that New York can never be defeated, because of its dynamic and diverse population and because it embodies the spirit of enterprise and the love of liberty. And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.
- Michael Bloomberg
Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.
- Seth Godin
Being a good company is an end in itself.
- Ben Horowitz
If you’re not one or two in the market, you don’t make money. The market leaders make the money.
- Jack Welch
Unfavorable Environment Influences During Childhood.
- Napoleon Hill
Safari, so goody.
- Winston Churchill
I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.
- Elon Musk
Religion is all bunk.
- Thomas Edison
The future is in green energy, it’s in making steel for energy-efficient cars.
- Alexei Mordashov
My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.
- Richard Branson
Be ready for problems–you’ll have them every day. Keep open to new ideas–that’s where innovation begins.
- Donald Trump
Clear your mind must be, if you are to find the villains behind this plot.
- Yoda
Leadership isn’t something that people hand to you. … [i]t’s a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that’s something we can teach.
- Seth Godin
China’s open-door policy, the favourable local exchange rates, the growing affluence and changing lifestyles in South Asian countries and burgeoning economic activities in the Asia-Pacific Rim are all conducive factors to the continuing tourism boom.
- Cheng Yu-tung
As long as a person doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, he doesn’t grow.
- John Maxwell
To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.
- John C. Maxwell
People don’t want to embrace culture shifts because it’s not going to happen in the next 20 minutes.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.
- Bill Gates
Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.
- Bill Gates
Look at Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. They have all entered many sectors, and actually, in many of those sectors, they weren’t as early as Tencent.
- Ma Huateng
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
Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right.
- Henry Ford
Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s true that I run a multi-national group but I have no interests in India. So please tell me, what should my identity be?
- Lakshmi Mittal
It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.
- Ben Horowitz
The best investments are on main street, not Wall Street.
- Robert P. Miles
Edison failed 10,000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.
- Napoleon Hill
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.
- John Naisbitt
I don’t know how you can justify leaving any engagement behind in the social Web of 2011.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We are consolidating our position as one of the leading technology companies in the automotive industry. Research and development expenditure of another 6 percent of our sales or around €2.1 billion is fueling our capacity for innovation. There are very few companies in the industry that are able to operate in these dimensions.
- Elmar Degenhart
In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone.
- Peter Thiel
For some reason I get this key position of being one of two people that started the company that started the revolution.
- Steve Wozniak
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
Be candid with everyone. Candor is the biggest dirty little secret in business?
- Jack Welch
The clothes you wear influence you; thereby they form a part of your environment. Soiled or shabby clothes depress you and lower your self-confidence, while clean, modest and refined clothes give you a sort of inner feeling of courage that causes you to quicken your step as you walk
- Napoleon Hill
Investing in Chicago property is just Wanda’s first move into the U.S. real estate market.
- Wang Jianlin
Today, we’re very dependent on cheap energy. We just take it for granted – all the things you have in the house, the way industry works.
- Bill Gates
It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.
- Winston Churchill
No, markets weren’t “efficient” at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion—often the wrong conclusion.
- Ben Horowitz
Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.
- Seth Godin
People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.
- Joel Olsteen
You can’t worry about the mistakes, because you’re going to make a lot of them. You’ve got to be thinking about your next move.
- Ben Horowitz
Sustaining faith is what sets you through those dark nights of the soul when you don’t know where to go or what to do, and it seems that you can’t last another day…but because of your faith in God, you do.
- Joel Olsteen
The cold harsh reality is that we have to balance the budget.
- Michael Bloomberg
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
In this sense, if nothing about our society changes for the next 100 years, then the future is over 100 years away.
- Peter Thiel
Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.
- John D. Rockefeller
America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.
- Elon Musk
When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
- Ben Horowitz
We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners.
- Phil Knight
The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.
- Warren Buffett
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.
- Sam Walton
That’s the true spirit of Christmas, people being helped by people other than me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Throw it all up on the wall and see what sticks.
- Timothy Ferriss
The first four months of 2001 were extremely challenging, … This may be the fastest deceleration any company of our size has ever experienced.
- John Chambers
People ask me all the time, ‘How can I become a successful entrepreneur?’ And I have to be honest: It’s one of my least favorite questions, because if you’re waiting for someone else’s advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you’re not one.
- Michael Dell
In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.
- Bill Gates
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
- Henry Ford
Being overwhelmed is often as unproductive as doing nothing, and is far more unpleasant. Being selective – doing less – is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.
- Timothy Ferriss
