$1,000,000 in the bank isn’t the fantasy. The fantasy is the lifestyle of complete freedom it supposedly allows.
- Timothy Ferriss
Notable Quotables
It is not good to demonstrate your luxury and your wealth: to rub it in the faces of others is insulting. So you should be modest, try not to insult people by showing that you can do what they cannot.
- Vladimir Potanin
The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O.
- Ben Horowitz
I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.
- Jeff Bezos
One has to live with the fact that some corporate decisions are going to be wrong. As long as most of the decisions are right.
- Michael Otto
Regardless of who you are or what you have been, you can be what you want to be.
- W. Clement Stone
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.
- Dale Carnegie
Passion can overcome fear – the fear of losing, of failing, of being traditional.
- Seth Godin
There’s a finite market for DVD-by-mail, and the growth over the next 10 years will be in streaming.
- Reed Hastings
Jeremy Stoppelman started Yelp. Max Levchin started Slide. I started LinkedIn. It was a mininova explosion of folks jumping out to doing other entrepreneurial activities.
- Reid Hoffman
The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
- Timothy Ferriss
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.
- 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
Learn to listen and think.
- Jack Nadel
Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.
- Warren Buffett
Waiting isn’t easy, which is precisely why it is so effective when engaging with other people.
- Seth Godin
Always remember, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
- Winston Churchill
In Riyadh, there’s going to be a huge project that will house at least 12,000 units with inhabitants of approximately 150,000 people. It’s like a city within a city.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I’m just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.
- Ray Dalio
The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?
- Mark Zuckerberg
Your business has to work when it’s small in order to survive to the point where it gets big.
- Seth Godin
Seeing is not always believing.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.
- Tom Landry
Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
If you start today to do the right thing, you are already a success even if it doesn’t show yet.
- John C. Maxwell
Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.
- Richard Branson
The organizational architecture is really that a centipede walks on hundred legs and one or two don’t count. So if I lose one or two legs, the process will go on, the organization will go on, the growth will go on.
- Mukesh Ambani
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
- Colin Powell
We could definitely make a flying car – but that’s not the hard part. The hard part is, how do you make a flying car that’s super safe and quiet? Because if it’s a howler, you’re going to make people very unhappy.
- Elon Musk
If you are satisfied with the results you are now getting, why change? If you are not satisfied, why not experiment?
- Dale Carnegie
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Albert Einstein
For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.
- James C. Collins
My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.
- Jack Welch
Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.
- George Soros
If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.
- Elon Musk
College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.
- Peter Thiel
Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done.
- Ben Horowitz
The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.
- James C. Collins
The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
It will be disastrous when a leader or manager shows up with one attitude one day and treats people with a different attitude the next day.
- Zig Ziglar
If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.
- Winston Churchill
I didn’t follow up on the exchanges we had on Time Warner Cable (TWC) that were mentioned in the media because we were not ready.
- Patrick Drahi
My relationship with money is that it’s a tool to be self-sufficient, but it’s not something that is a part of who I am.
- Laurene Powell Jobs
If failure is not an option, then neither is success.
- 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
I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.
- Elon Musk
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. …
- Dale Carnegie
You cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.
- Zig Ziglar
To be awake is to be fully present, no noise, just you and God. Most of us only have seconds of full consciousness. To live in a state of Samadhi – that’s what we’re here for.
- Russell Simmons
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. Why are we such fools—such tragic fools?
- Dale Carnegie
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
- Bill Gates
I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, ‘Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,’ and he would high-five me and say, ‘Way to go.’
- Sara Blakely
Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.
- Elon Musk
Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.
- Peter Drucker
EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
Make good decisions based on facts.
- David Novak
If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online, you’re going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there’s no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I’m fine with the consequences.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.
- Jack Ma
-It is possible to vastly compress most learning. In a surprising number of cases, it is possible to do something in 1-10 months that is assumed to take 1-10 years.-The more you compress things, the more physical limiters become a bottleneck. All learning is physically limited. The brain is dependent on finite quantities of neurotransmitters, memories require REM and non-REM (NREM) sleep for consolidation, etc. The learning graph is not unlike the stress-recovery-hyperadaptation curves of weight training.-The more extreme your ambition, just as in sports, the more you need performance enhancement via unusual schedules, diet, drugs, etc.-Most important: due to the bipolar nature of the learning process, you can forecast setbacks. If you don’t, you increase the likelihood of losing morale and quitting before the inflection point.
- Timothy Ferriss
The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
- Peter Thiel
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
Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
There’s a sucker born every minute.
- P.T. Barnum
Americans want students to get the best education possible. We want schools to prepare children to become good citizens and members of a prosperous American economy.
- Bill Gates
Of course I needed somebody to run my new store, and I didn’t have much money, so I did something that I would do for the rest of my run in the retail business without any shame or embarrassment whatsoever: nose around other people’s stores searching for good talent. That’s when I made my first real hire, the first manager, Willard Walker.
- Sam Walton
His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.
- Ron Chernow
Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.
- Jack Ma
If you want to earn more, learn more.
- Zig Ziglar
Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
- Dale Carnegie
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.
- Seth Godin
With sustained recovery of the local economy, marked improvement in consumer spending and increasing tourist arrivals from Mainland China, these led to the expansion of certain local retail trades including cosmetics, audio-visual products and jewellery which in turn boosted the demand for retail shop spaces.
- Lee Shau Kee
It’s vital that you accept yourself and learn to be happy with who God made you to be. If you want to truly enjoy your life, you must be at peace with yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
- Ben Horowitz
People should pursue what they’re passionate about. That will make them happier than pretty much anything else.
- Elon Musk
The idea would be in my mind – and I know it sounds strange – is that the most important advances in medicine would be made not by new knowledge in molecular biology, because that’s exceeding what we can even use. It’ll be made by mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists, figuring out a way to get all that information together.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
If you ask where Nike came from, I would say it came from a kid who had that world-class shock administered at age seventeen by Bill Bowerman.
- Phil Knight
We have to find our way back to a definite future.
- Peter Thiel
Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.
- Winston Churchill
We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Edison
A person convinced against their will Is of the same opinion still.
- Dale Carnegie
[In February 2011 on Square.] Starting a startup after twitter is so much easier than before.
- Jack Dorsey
Whatever the trend in exchange rates or whatever the external factors, a manufacturing company is always faced with the mission of transforming itself into a company that can produce higher value-added to absorb the increase in the cost of living in the country it’s operating in.
- Fujio Mitarai
Success is determined by your daily agenda
- John Maxwell
For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.”
- John C. Maxwell
I value self-discipline, but creating systems that make it next to impossible to misbehave is more reliable than self-control.
- Timothy Ferriss
The student who elects to risk it all—which is nothing—to establish an online video rental service that delivers $5,000 per month in income from a small niche of Blu-ray aficionados, a two-hour-per-week side project that allows him to work full-time as an animal rights lobbyist.
- Timothy Ferriss
But each country has to advance and move at its own speed.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
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
The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.
- Elon Musk
I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.
- Walt Disney
Being able to see an activity log of where a kid has been going on the Internet is a good thing.
- Bill Gates
You can make a positive out of the most negative if you work at it hard enough.
- Sam Walton
Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.
- Bill Gates
If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.
- Dave Ramsey
If he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.
- Peter Thiel
