Notable Quotables

A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.

- George Soros

The majority of people begin to drift as soon as they meet with opposition, and not one out of ten thousand (people) will keep on trying after failing two or three times.

- Napoleon Hill

My first job. Ah, the memories. I’m hired for minimum wage as the cleaner at an ice cream parlor and quickly realize that the big boss’s methods duplicate effort. I do it my way, finish in one hour instead of eight, and spend the rest of the time reading kung-fu magazines and practicing karate kicks outside. I am fired in a record three days, left with the parting comment, Maybe someday you’ll understand the value of hard work.” It seems I still don’t.

- Timothy Ferriss

When I hear something going wrong, I insist on it being put right.

- Rupert Murdoch

Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.

- Peter Thiel

A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.

- Herb Kelleher

The future may be made up of many factors but where it truly lies is in the hearts and minds of men. Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain, but unleashes your passion for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and humanity of mankind.

- Li Ka-shing

When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.

- Howard Schultz

Flavor is, counterintuitively, less than 10% taste and more than 90% smell.

- Timothy Ferriss

New information makes new and fresh ideas possible.

- Zig Ziglar

Every monopoly is unique, but they usually share some combination of the following characteristics: proprietary technology, network effects, economies of scale, and branding.

- Peter Thiel

…People have lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first and then build you actions on the backs of their lessons.

- Gary Keller

In the ’30s, the Keynesian stuff worked at least in the sense that you could print money without inflation because there was all this productivity growth happening. That’s not going to work today.

- Peter Thiel

The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.

- Jack Welch

I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.

- Bill Gates

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.

- Elon Musk

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival. But I take my task with buoyancy and hope. Come, then, let us go forward with our united strenght.

- Winston Churchill

The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.

- Peter Drucker

Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.

- Seth Godin

Customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.

- Peter Thiel

Small businesses don’t exist without the nucleus.

- Bryan Smith

Definiteness of purpose is the starting point from which one must begin. He recognized, too that definiteness of purpose of takes on animation, life, and power when backed by a burning desire to translate that purpose into its material equivalent. – Napoleon Hill (on leadership and vision)

- Napoleon Hill

To grow your company explosively you must have leaders, not just efficient managers.

- John Maxwell

Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

- Harry Truman

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.

- Richard Branson

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.

- John D. Rockefeller

An early lesson I learned in my career was that whenever a large organization attempts to do anything, it always comes down to a single person who can delay the entire project.

- Ben Horowitz

The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.

- Elon Musk

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

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

- Thomas Edison

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.

- Og Mandino

We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.

- Seth Godin

Dividers seek to make themselves look or feel better by making others feel worse. They damage relationships, fracture teams and organizations, and create havoc in people’s lives.”

- John C. Maxwell

Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.

- Sergey Brin

It would take six months to get to Mars if you go there slowly, with optimal energy cost. Then it would take eighteen months for the planets to realign. Then it would take six months to get back, though I can see getting the travel time down to three months pretty quickly if America has the will.

- Elon Musk

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.

- Winston Churchill

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.

- Winston Churchill

I’ve always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best.

- Hakeem Olajuwon

The Group will continue to press ahead steadily with an open mindset, a practical attitude, a broad vision and a unique insight, adhering to its ultimate objective of serving the nation and the wider community in the changing landscape.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Nine times out of ten, an argument ends with each of the contestants more firmly convinced than ever that he is absolutely right.

- Dale Carnegie

It’s the power of the brand. We’ve never formally advertised.

- Sara Blakely

The worst way of flying, I think, is standby. It never works. That’s why they call it standby. You end up standing there going, ‘Bye!’

- Jerry Seinfeld

If the Starbucks secret is a smile when you get your latte… ours is that the Web site adapts to the individual’s taste.

- Reed Hastings

It was definitely kind of surprising to see us come out and run the ball because we usually like to pass to start the game and put up some quick points. But tonight, we had real good balance offensively. We ran and passed the ball well, which kept them off balance all night.

- Jack Taylor

Often any decision, even the wrong decision, is better than no decision.

- Ben Horowitz

Your first projects aren’t the greatest things in the world, and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere, but that is how you learn – you put so much effort into making something right if it is for yourself.

- Steve Wozniak

In business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.

- Peter Thiel

We have a big opportunity in China. We think the number of stores here can rival the number in North America.

- Howard Schultz

Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn’t bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: Wouldn’t you like to have that? Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?

- Dale Carnegie

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s through curiosity and looking at opportunities in new ways that we’ve always mapped our path at Dell. There’s always an opportunity to make a difference.

- Michael Dell

I’ve worked very hard, but my life’s always been fun.

- Reed Hastings

Like biological evolution, ‘survival of the fittest’ during the course of reformation is to adapt to changes in the surrounding environment and make changes accordingly.

- Cheng Yu-tung

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

- Jack Welch

I’ve been fascinated with technology since I was a boy banging around on my father’s adding machine. Back then I’d type in an equation, the device made some cool noises, and out came my answer. I was hooked.

- Michael Dell

Magnesium and calcium are easiest to consume in pill form, and 500 milligrams of magnesium taken prior to bed will also improve sleep.

- Timothy Ferriss

What kind of business world are we living in?

- Jack Ma

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‘Well gee, let’s not mess this up.’ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

- Jerry Seinfeld

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’

- Jerry Seinfeld

The optimist sees opportunity in every danger, the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.

- Winston Churchill

My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.

- Peter Drucker

Gratitude is the single greatest treasure I will take with me from this experience.

- Oprah Winfrey

The reason why rivers and seas receive the homage of a hundred mountain streams is that they keep below them. Thus they are able to reign over all the mountain streams. So the sage, wishing to be above men, putteth himself below them; wishing to be before them, he putteth himself behind them. Thus, though his place be above men, they do not feel his weight; though his place be before them, they do not count it an injury.

- Dale Carnegie

As a general rule, everyone you involve with your company should be involved full-time. Sometimes you’ll have to break this rule; it usually makes sense to hire outside lawyers and accountants, for example. However, anyone who doesn’t own stock options or draw a regular salary from your company is fundamentally misaligned.

- Peter Thiel

If you’re going to build a lean enterprise, you can test and measure how often the company ships iterations, how often it fails, how often it is putting things in front of people that don’t work.

- Seth Godin

Our goal is very simply to become the desktop for e-businesses.

- Larry Ellison

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

- Winston Churchill

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

- Winston Churchill

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

- George Bernard Shaw

We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city.

- Michael Bloomberg

The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.

- Anthony Robbins

Do not look like you are playing the fiddle while Rome is burning….stay focussed – Paraphrased from

- David Novak

Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it.

- Rick Warren

One incident preserved by General Ismay in an apocryphal and somewhat lively form may be allowed to lighten the narrative. His orderly, a Royal Marine, was shown the sights of Moscow by one of the Intourist guides. “This,” said the Russian, “is the Eden Hotel, formerly Ribbentrop Hotel. Here is Churchill Street, formerly Hitler Street. Here is the Beaverbrook railway station, formerly Goering railway station. Will you have a cigarette, comrade?” The Marine replied, “Thank you, comrade, formerly bastard!” This tale, though jocular, illustrates none the less the strange atmosphere of these meetings.

- Winston Churchill

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‘Oh nom it’s on the house.’

- Richard Branson

In 20 years from now we will all be able to click and watch TV.

- Reed Hastings

The question you should be asking isn’t, What do I want? or What are my goals? but What would excite me?

- Timothy Ferriss

Andrew Carnegie believed the formula (of Think & Grow Rich) should be taught in all public schools and colleges, and expressed the opinion that if it were properly taught it would so revolutionize the entire education system that the time spent in school could be reduced to less than half….As far as (formal) schooling is concerned, many of the (great american business) men had very little.

- Napoleon Hill

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

- Napoleon Hill

A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.

- Peter Thiel

That’s the goal, isn’t it? For every crack to be filled with your ideas and innovations and creativity? The only way to achieve this, though, is to be prepared for many of them to fail, to land on pavement, to be perfect yet cease to grow. We can cry about these failures, but that will lead us to hold back on the next idea. Or we can celebrate them, realizing that it’s proof that we’re being promiscuous in our shipping, putting the best work we can into the world, regardless of whether this particular idea actually works. When was the last time you set out to be promiscuous in your failures?

- Seth Godin

Save someone’s face once and your influence with him rises. Save his face every time you can, and there is practically nothing he won’t do for you.

- Dale Carnegie

You can dramatize your ideas in business or in any other aspect of your life. It’s easy.

- Dale Carnegie

Founding Fathers of U.S. set up processes, checks and balances designed to insure that their values lived on long after their passing.

- Jim Collins

Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.

- Og Mandino

NO PURCHASE SHOULD EVER BE MADE IN A BUSINESS UNLESS IT IS JUSTIFIED BY AN INCREASE IN SALES.

- Robert Kiyosaki

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