China is a government-oriented economy. No one can say he can run his business entirely without government connections. Anybody who says that he or she can do things alone… is a hypocrite.
- Wang Jianlin
Notable Quotables
My little girls are the most beautiful women in the world. I am a lucky, lucky man. I will spend every day making sure that they know this.
- Russell Simmons
Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.
- Steve Jobs
First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
- Professor Harry A. Overstreet
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
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
In 1984, the Sino-British talks on the future of Hong Kong triggered a confidence crisis. Daunted by the uncertainties over the colony’s future, most developers shied away from construction projects that took considerable time to complete. In that year the Group recognized what the community needed and actively responded to the government’s call for a landmark convention and exhibition venue of international standard to be built in Hong Kong. The Group turned out to be the only developer willing to take financial and operating risks on a long-term basis, thereby laying a solid foundation for Hong Kong to host international conventions and exhibitions. Coupled with its excellent services, Hong Kong soon secured world-wide recognition as an ideal spot of conferences and exhibitions.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.
- John C. Maxwell
Steve Jobs had very strong feelings about what makes a company great, what makes products great. He more or less chose Tim Cook to be in that role, in that position.
- Steve Wozniak
Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.
- John D. Rockefeller
You have to get lost in the woods of your own doing and discover a way out. You have to find the right path over the creek, under the rock-whatever mechanism is good for your body’s size and your stride and your cadence and your tolerance for wet or cold or humid weather. That kind of learning comes from having a tolerance for failure, and extracting lessons from your failures.
- Marc Ecko
Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.
- Jack Welch
Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.
- Bill Gates
I’ve become an animal rights activist.
- Stephen Wynn
The secret of happiness is renunciation.
- Andrew Carnegie
To me, job titles don’t matter. Everyone is in sales. It’s the only way we stay in business.
- Harvey Mackay
Did you eat half an Oreo cookie? No problem. If you’re a 220-pound male, you just need to climb 27 flights of stairs to burn it off.
- Timothy Ferriss
No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.
- Winston Churchill
Cisco’s collaboration with AT&T and GI will result in a New World network that will fundamentally change the way communications services are delivered to the consumer market.
- John Chambers
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.
- Winston Churchill
The ‘Billionaire’ song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It’s funny.
- Bill Gates
There’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.
- Ben Horowitz
Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.
- Sam Walton
If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?
- Timothy Ferriss
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
- Dale Carnegie
Stubborn isn’t a word I would use to describe myself, pigheaded is more appropriate.
- Michael Bloomberg
The 1990’s sure aren’t like the 1980’s.
- Donald Trump
When you’ve got a strong enough why, you can always find the how.
- Zig Ziglar
In the Soviet Union I was the head of all oil production. And you know in the Soviet Union, you didn’t get that job unless you were really worth it.
- Vagit Alekperov
It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.
- Reed Hastings
The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.
- Anthony Robbins
Maintaining a consistent platform also helps improve product support – a significant problem in the software industry.
- Bill Gates
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.
- Bill Gates
Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.
- Timothy Ferriss
Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.
- Napoleon Hill
Excellence is the best deterrent to racism or sexism.
- Oprah Winfrey
That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.
- Peter Thiel
One reason to buy a watch (or a book) is because you want to possess it, show it off, give it to your grandchildren. Holding a book is a luxury, one for which you pay a premium.
- Seth Godin
You are going to survive. And good things are going to start to happen again. And one day you are going to look back and this will not even be such a bad thing.
- Dale Carnegie
Danger: if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
If we say it long enough eventually we’re going to reap a harvest. We’re going to get exactly what we’re saying.
- Joel Olsteen
The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.
- Thomas Edison
It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.
- John C. Maxwell
What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.
- Michael Bloomberg
Treasure the love you have received above all. It will survive long after your gold and good health have vanished.
- Og Mandino
Never, never, never give up.
- Winston Churchill
I started NetSuite. NetSuite was my idea. I called up Evan Goldberg and said, ‘We’re going to do ERP on the Internet, software-as-a-service.’ Six months later Marc Benioff, finding out what NetSuite was doing, and kind of copied it.
- Larry Ellison
of preparing for defeat, prepare for victory. Prepare for increase. Prepare for God’s favor. You have to set the tone at the start of each day.
- Joel Olsteen
Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity.
- Og Mandino
Changes that used to occur over quarters are literally occurring over months.
- John Chambers
Not if anything to say about it I have.
- Yoda
Be humble.
- Jack Dorsey
I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. When I would have willingly displayed my knowledge, they sought to expose my ignorance. This sort of treatment had only one result: I did not do well in examinations.
- Winston Churchill
Being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you. It’s much better to be the last mover—that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.
- Peter Thiel
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
If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
- Bill Gates
Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.
- Joel Olsteen
They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. Rather they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.
- Peter Drucker
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
- Winston Churchill
A Prius is not a true hybrid, really. The current Prius is, like, 2 percent electric. It’s a gasoline car with slightly better mileage.
- Elon Musk
As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies. At my companies, our position is that we hire someone in spite of an MBA, not because of one.
- Elon Musk
Here’s how I work: It’s 2013, and most marketers are operating like it’s 2009. I’m always trying to market like it’s 2015, but not like it’s 2020. A lot of my contemporaries who understand where the world is going, go too far out, and aren’t practical. I have always prided myself on being visionary, with a heavy practicality.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, – it largely increases the product.
- P.T. Barnum
The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.
- Michael Bloomberg
Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.
- Michael Dell
But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1.
- Peter Thiel
Fear is the Fatal killer of Desire.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s hard to make a living when you are in school…
- Michael Dell
Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you, you will be neither successful nor happy.
- Napoleon Hill
No lover ever studied every whim of his mistress as I did those of President Roosevelt.
- Winston Churchill
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
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
Properly run startups place a great deal of emphasis on recruiting and the interview process in order to build their talent base. Too often the investment in people stops there.
- Ben Horowitz
He has always been like this. His mind works ten times faster than everybody’s else’s. I mean he just gets going and stays two or three jumps ahead, and he’s quick to go with what’s on his mind. If he gets something in his mind that needs to be done – regardless of what else might have been planned – the new idea takes priority, and it has to be done now. Everybody has their angenda already scheduled, and then bang! He just calls a meeting on something. (on CEO leadership and management with speed)
- Loretta Boss Parker
In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem.
- Ben Horowitz
The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work.
- Seth Godin
What you receive is directly connected to what you believe.
- Joel Olsteen
On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.
- Bill Gates
Every company starts only once.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t mind saying, you know, that I don’t take a salary from the church, and God has blessed me with more money than I could imagine from my books. It’s been printed all over, so I don’t feel like I am hiding anything.
- Joel Olsteen
New information makes new and fresh ideas possible.
- Zig Ziglar
I do have my ducks in line if I want to do it, but I’d love to see the Republicans pick somebody that was going to win and take over this country and frankly, to use the expression, ‘Make America great again.’
- Donald Trump
Use money to make money. Save your ‘first bucket of gold.’ or small fortune – but then use it for investments. Don’t just park money in the bank.
- Lee Shau Kee
There is no doubt that as an economy grows in a great way like India has, that you have to step back and change your tax systems, because you start to get more disparities of wealth.
- Bill Gates
Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
- Napoleon Bonaparte
This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.
- John Chambers
I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.
- Joel Olsteen
I was so mad I ran a personal record.
- Phil Knight
There’s been so much corruption and so much cronyism in the taxi industry and so much regulatory capture, that if you ask for permission upfront for something that’s already legal, you’ll never get it.
- Travis Kalanick
Focus on your people – Without employees and customers, your’re going nowwhere.
- David Green
Value and purpose are about understanding the specific benefits you will help people receive if they receive what you have for them.
- Zig Ziglar
Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war. Stir up the mighty men. Let all the warriors draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong.
- Joel 3:9
Would you believe that in 2011 and 2012, Nigeria paid $30 billion in subsidy, money which would have been used to build at least 20 refineries?
- Aliko Dangote
Stealing Coach Wooden’s sets of three, I have come up with a formula for success no matter what kind of business you happen to be in: 1) Make sure you have the right people around you; 2) Have fun and drive results by recognizing the achievements of others; and 3) Be a passionate learner, and pass on what you know to others. Not only will this make you a success in business, but it will make you a success in life.
- David Novak
In South Africa, being Chinese meant I wasn’t white and I wasn’t black. I trained in Baragwanath Hospital, the largest black hospital in South Africa. That was around 1976, the time of the Soweto Uprising, when police fired on children and students who were protesting. I was part of the group of interns who volunteered to treat them.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Media companies focused on things like creating great stories whereas technology companies focused on creating a better way of doing things. We began to think about new ideas and about forming a new company.
- Ben Horowitz
There should be order if the development of the cyber world is to be sustainable.
- Ma Huateng
