Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
- Elon Musk
Notable Quotables
Never, never, never give in!
- Winston Churchill
Enjoyment is an incredible energizer to the human spirit.
- John C. Maxwell
Bill Campbell developed an excellent methodology for measuring executives in a balanced way that will help you achieve this. He breaks performance down into four distinct areas.
- Ben Horowitz
Be fair. You have to be able to see their point of view.
- Michael Levine
For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.
- Peter Thiel
Motivation doesn’t last, neither does shower. That why we need it everyday.
- Zig Ziglar
The accumulation of great fortunes calls for POWER and power is acquired through highly organized and intelligently directed specialized knowledge, but that knowledge does not necessarily have to be in the possession of the man who accumulates the fortune.
- Napoleon Hill
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
Why should I clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I acquire.
- Henry Ford
Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He’s always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.
- Steve Wozniak
greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.
- James C. Collins
Ultimately, the goal of any public relations campaign is to either reorient or solidify the perception of a product, client, policy or event. From there nature takes its course. If the public perceives the product as good, the movie stars as sexy, the pet rock as indispensable, then the public will fork over its money. One will succeed in a P.R. campaign only if the perception fostered truly resonates with the public. People respect wisdom but obey pain.
- Michael Levine
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.
- John C. Maxwell
It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.
- Steve Jobs
You need to live every day like it could be your last.
- Joel Olsteen
There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.
- Peter Drucker
It is easy to think that the things that bother you will upset your people more. That’s not true. The opposite is true. Nobody takes the losses harder than the person most responsible. Nobody feels it more than you.
- Ben Horowitz
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
- Sergey Brin
Find something that you enjoy doing
- Jack Nadel
I actually do think you’re seeing this trend towards organizations just caring more about their brand and engaging. And so I think Home Depot will want to humanize itself. I think that’s a lot of why companies are starting blogs, are just giving more insight into what’s going on with them.
- Mark Zuckerberg
For myself I am an optimist – it does not seem to be much use to be anything else.
- Winston Churchill
For good or for ill, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power and fleets and armies, however vital and important, must accept a subordinate rank.
- Winston Churchill
People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, ‘Soave,’ and say, ‘Oh, O.K., cool.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
- Sid Caesar
The reason we love our parents is because they loved us first. Every single company should take this advice.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Once Microsoft lost its grip on developers, it became only a matter of time before it lost its monopoly on operating systems.
- Ben Horowitz
Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that’s really powerful.
- Reid Hoffman
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
The basic problem with the computer in business is not that computer technicians do not understand the managers’ needs. It is that the managers do not take the time and trouble to think through their needs and to communicate them to the computer people.6 How the computer people satisfy the needs of the manager is their business. What the needs are is the manager’s business. To expect the computer people to define the information needs of the managers is abdication.
- Peter Drucker
If I was a businessman, or saw myself as a businessman, I would have never gone into the airline business.
- Richard Branson
When we bought it, Spiegel was in a difficult situation; it made a loss at that time. We invested in it and then it turned around, and then we bought Eddie Bauer and Newport News.
- Michael Otto
Be a coach, instead of being a boss. Rather than tell people what to do, a leader helps team members figure it out for themselves. That way, when it’s time for them to take the training wheels off, they’ll have some experience to draw on. That’s the way it was with me and Andy. We were working together, I felt like I was making all the decisions even though he had the title
- David Novak
I encourage all my key people to bring their mobiles when they travel.
- Raymond Kwok
Eating words has never given me indigestion.
- Winston Churchill
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Fortune favors the bold.
- Virgil
I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
- Jeff Bezos
Culture manages when management is not there.
- Joe Jordan
We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone.
- Richard Branson
I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat.
- Winston Churchill
Historians will record 1998 as a time when the impossible happened in Asia
- Cheng Yu-tung
Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. They also fund basic research, which is a crucial component of the innovation that improves life for everyone.
- Bill Gates
A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, ‘You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish!’ They won. Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.
- Napoleon Hill
The screwball. Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.
- Michael Levine
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
No one ever wants to see his or her name linked to anything bad. Conscience is like a baby. It has to go to sleep before you can.
- Harvey Mackay
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.
- Jim Collins
Pouring espresso is an art, one that requires the barista to care about the quality of the beverage.
- Howard Schultz
When you look at the dark side, careful you must be. For the dark side looks back.
- Yoda
One of my goals is to inspire everyone I meet to become a better person.
- George Foreman
What you tolerate you can not change.
- Joel Olsteen
I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, ‘That’s the company that honoured me, even though I don’t have an education’. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience.
- Howard Schultz
Leadership is influence.
- John C. Maxwell
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’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.
- Peter Thiel
Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
- Winston Churchill
Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.
- Elon Musk
The interesting thing is when we design and architect a server, we don’t design it for Windows or Linux, we design it for both. We don’t really care, as long as we’re selling the one the customer wants.
- Michael Dell
Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
- Timothy Ferriss
Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.
- Steve Jobs
If we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes, we will never invest in things that are radical.
- Jeff Clavier
I would prefer not to be involved in party politics.
- George Soros
Figure out what the impact areas are in your business.
- Chet Holmes
People with the right kind of ambition would not likely use the word play to describe their effort to work as a team to build something substantial. Finally, people who use the “me” prism find it natural and obvious to speak in terms of “building out my résumé” while people who use the “team” prism find such phrases to be somewhat uncomfortable and awkward, because they clearly indicate an individual goal that is separate from the team goal.
- Ben Horowitz
Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.
- Elon Musk
It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.
- Bill Gates
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
- Winston Churchill
Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.
- Yoda
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.
- Timothy Ferriss
The team with the best players wins.
- Jack Welch
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
When you throw dirt at people, you’re not doing a thing but losing ground.
- Zig Ziglar
Trust but Verify.
- Ronald Reagan
Most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that makes it to the top.
- Seth Godin
I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.
- James C. Collins
The techniques that worked so extraordinarily well when applied to sustaining technologies, however, clearly failed badly when applied to markets or applications that did not yet exist.
- Clayton M. Christensen
There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.
- Zig Ziglar
When you acknowledge God, He will go before you and make the crooked places straight.
- Joel Olsteen
The cold harsh reality is that we have to balance the budget.
- Michael Bloomberg
This shows you are never too old to get surprised.
- Jack Welch
Failure is an event not a person.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you (and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does.
- Seth Godin
See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.
- Joel Olsteen
The most terrifying phrase in the English language is ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’
- Ronald Reagan
If failure is not an option, then neither is success.
- Seth Godin
Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.
- Timothy Ferriss
Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?”
- Ben Horowitz
I refused to do a lot on mobile Internet until around 2009. But because we didn’t start early, it took us some time to figure out what’s the important thing, what’s the most relevant thing for Baidu.
- Robin Li
If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.
- Jack Welch
As soon as we associate reading with a test, we’ve missed the point.
- Seth Godin
The interview process takes twelve to fifteen hoursof your team’s time. This process is expensive for your team, so you should vet people in advance. A technique I use is to email the references and say, Rate this person one to ten. No one’s going to reply a five or a three by email; that means they hate the candidate. Call me is usually the response for a sub-seven rating. At the same time, nobody is going to reply with a ten. What you’re really looking for is a bunch of eights and nines. This is an exceptionally quick referencing system when you’re trying to triage a list.
- Reid Hoffman
Follow these five decision steps when hiring someone: Understand the job, consider three to five people, study candidates performance records to find their strengths, talk to the candidates’ colleagues about them, and once hired, explain the assignment to the new employee.
- Peter Drucker
A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.
- Joel Olsteen
As we go forward, I hope we’re going to continue to use technology to make really big differences in how people live and work.
- Sergey Brin
