the world belongs to the man or woman who got up today and did something
- Jim Stovall
Notable Quotables
If Wanda can control more than 20 per cent of the world’s three most important film markets – the United States, Europe and China – then it will have an empire with great voice in the industry.
- Wang Jianlin
I’m not a public official. I’m a businessman, I’m a builder, I’m a planner.
- Donald Bren
People have come to me over the years and said to me: ‘I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?’ I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
- Howard Schultz
I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.
- Oprah Winfrey
If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.
- Peter Thiel
Friend, there’s no greater investment in life than in being a people builder. Relationships are more important than our accomplishments.
- Joel Olsteen
All my friends ask me, ‘Am I number one in the world in [receiving] dividend payments?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, ask Forbes.’
- Lee Shau Kee
Faith doesn’t always instantly deliver you, but it always carries you through.
- Joel Olsteen
One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
- Ben Horowitz
We’re on our way to Greece, in the hands of a confused, foolish government. It’s got to stop. It’s got to stop.
- Stephen Wynn
…The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.
- Seth Godin
In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.
- Winston Churchill
This is a fantastic time to be entering the business world, because business is going to change more in the next 10 years than it has in the last 50.
- Bill Gates
Winners expect to win, they expect victory, and they expect success!
- Zig Ziglar
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
It is a well known fact that Henry Ford began his business career under the handicap of poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance. It is an equally well known fact that, within the inconceivably short period of ten years, Mr. Ford mastered these three handicaps, and that within twenty-five years he made himself one of the richest men in America. Connect with this fact, the additional knowledge that Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticeable, from the time he became a personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, and you will begin to understand what the influence of one mind upon another can accomplish.
- Napoleon Hill
If you look at coffee, tea, food and juice, we think there are inherent opportunities. If you look at health bars or grab-and-go products that are in our stores, we think we can significantly enhance them and make them more widely available.
- Howard Schultz
You have to get all agreements in writing.
- Jack Nadel
If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.
- Jack Welch
With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.
- Zig Ziglar
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
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
I was lucky to be involved and get to contribute to something that was important, which is empowering people with software.
- Bill Gates
Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.
- Henry Ford
Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.
- James C. Collins
School districts in the US don’t adopt technology very quickly.
- Reed Hastings
Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man’s character.
- Thomas Edison
If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.
- Jeff Bezos
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.
- Peter Drucker
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
- Dale Carnegie
The level of analysis that is done when you see laws created, whether it’s the city or state or federal level – it’s much more horse-trading than analysis.
- Michael Bloomberg
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
- Thomas Edison
Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike”, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain
Many businesses forget that a crucial part of cash flow is managing your own bill paying. Make sure you pay your bills promptly. Ask for extended terms up front. After you have paid timely for two or three months, ask for additional extensions on your payable terms. A supplier will usually extend credit for 30 to 90 days to a good customer.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have it depends solely on what you think.
- Dale Carnegie
If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something.
- Rupert Murdoch
Don’t fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else’s expense.
- Harvey Mackay
Think and Thank. Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
- Dale Carnegie
China is the new horizon.
- Cheng Yu-tung
The work relationship has to be based on mutual respect. Psychological despotism is basically contemptuous—far more contemptuous than the traditional Theory X. It does not assume that people are lazy and resist work, but it assumes that the manager is healthy while everybody else is sick. It assumes that the manager is strong while everybody else is weak. It assumes that the manager knows while everybody else is ignorant. It assumes that the manager is right, whereas everybody else is stupid. These are the assumptions of foolish arrogance.
- Peter Drucker
Recovery continues to gain momentum on a global basis.
- John Chambers
The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.
- Joel Olsteen
Rule No.1: Never lose money.Rule No.2: Never forget rule No.1.
- Warren Buffett
technology is important—you can’t remain a laggard and hope to be great. But technology by itself is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline.
- James C. Collins
As knowledge is acquired it must be organized and put into use, for a definate purpose, through practical plans. Knowledge has no value except that which be gained from its application toward some worthy end.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.
- Bill Gates
Wouldn’t it be great to be gifted? In fact… It turns out that choices lead to habits. Habits become talents. Talents are labeled gifts. You’re not born this way, you get this way.”
- Seth Godin
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
- Warren Buffett
In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
- Donald Trump
If you’re only willing to do what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you’re willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy.
- T. Harv Eker
There’s nothing funnier than the human animal.
- Walt Disney
Safari, so goody.
- Winston Churchill
Politicians make decisions in favor of their interest groups or their supporters back in their hometowns.
- Tadashi Yanai
My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.
- Steve Jobs
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.
- Winston Churchill
If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.
- Napoleon Hill
In line with the objective to diversify the business of your Group, Henderson Cyber was established to focus on businesses in the telecommunications and information technology fields.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
[On signing up Michael Jordan in 1984 when he was just 21 years old] We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.
- Phil Knight
God has amazing things in your future.
- Joel Olsteen
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
- Brian Tracy
If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.
- Sara Blakely
My son is trying to be a sports writer, and my daughter is a college student. She wants to be a comedy writer, and she’s at film school. I discouraged both of them early on from getting involved in Starbucks. I didn’t think it would be fair; plus, they didn’t have any interest anyway.
- Howard Schultz
The smarter the journalists are, the better off society is. For to a degree, people read the press to inform themselves – and the better the teacher, the better the student body.
- Warren Buffett
If I go public, I’ll stick to it.
- David Novak
One thing that most comic artists avoid is showing decisions. They show action, sure, and they show results, but they don’t show (because it’s difficult to show) the hero or the villain making a choice.
- Seth Godin
As an entrepreneur, I try to push the limits. Pedal to the metal.
- Travis Kalanick
The public is mad, frustrated, but what the public wants is progress.
- Michael Bloomberg
the average person is more interested in his or her own name than in all the other names on earth put together.
- Dale Carnegie
Our culture works hard to prevent change.
- Seth Godin
These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country, and they are the reason why it is so expensive, or one of the reasons, it’s so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run.
- Michael Bloomberg
I was working with stem cells as part of a NASA programme. We realised that the science of stem-cell proliferation was also fundamental to cancer cells when cancer enters the phase of metastasis.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.
- Napoleon Hill
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
- Napoleon Hill
Of course, the challenge of being the initiator is that you’ll be wrong. You’ll pick the wrong thing, you’ll waste time, you’ll be blamed. This is why being an initiator is valuable. Most people shy away from the challenge. They’ve been too abused, they’re too fearful, they hold back, they’re happy to let someone else take the heat. Initiative is scarce. Hence valuable. Ditch digging is not scarce. It’s not hard at all to find manual labor at minimum wage, which is precisely why manual labor gets paid minimum wage. It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence, because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.
- Seth Godin
You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
Lose money for the firm and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless.
- Warren Buffett
You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you’re an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party… My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
It’s the little things that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
- John Wooden
Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.
- Elon Musk
We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.
- Richard Branson
Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.
- Dale Carnegie
It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.
- Joel Olsteen
When people come to Twitter and they want to express something in the world, the technology fades away. It’s them writing a simple message and them knowing that people are going to see it.
- Jack Dorsey
[In June 2011] I mean, what is Twitter? Ask 100 people, ‘what is the world?’ and you’ll get a thousand different answers. The same is true for Twitter. It’s different things to different people. Twitter is the world.
- Jack Dorsey
Bloodshed, gentlemen, no doubt is lamentable. I have seen some of it–more perhaps than many of those who talk about it with such levity. But there are worse things than bloodshed, even on an extreme scale. . . . The trampling down of law and order which, under the conditions of a civilised state, assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–all this would be worse than bloodshed.
- Winston Churchill
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
History is written by the victors.
- Winston Churchill
We may get knocked down on the outside, but the key to living in victory is to learn how to get up on the inside.
- Joel Olsteen
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
What I’m trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.
- Elon Musk
The Successful leader must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power and power calls for cooperation.
- Napoleon Hill
I support Democrats and Republicans. And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.
- Stephen Wynn
Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.
- Zig Ziglar
Entrepreneurs, by definition, shift resources from areas of low productivity and yield to areas of higher productivity and yield.
- Peter Drucker
The world is changing… I don’t, as a consumer, want advertising that’s not relevant. If we’re going to take a side, let’s take the side of the consumer.
- Charles Ergen
