EVERY MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social network. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
Everyone must have a shot at the American Dream.
- Howard Schultz
God knows your value; He sees your potential. You may not understand everything you are going through right now. But hold your head up high, knowing that God is in control and he has a great plan and purpose for your life. Your dreams may not have turned out exactly as you’d hoped, but the bible says that God’s ways are better and higher than our ways, even when everybody else rejects you, remember, God stands before you with His arms open wide. He always accepts you. He always confirms your value. God sees your two good moves! You are His prized possession. No matter what you go through in life, no matter how many disappointments you suffer, your value in God’s eyes always remains the same. You will always be the apple of His eye. He will never give up on you, so don’t give up on yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.
- Steve Martin
I’ve been very lucky. I come from a very close family.
- Richard Branson
Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.
- Larry Page
Only men of character are trusted.
- Zig Ziglar
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
There’s an old saying: To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. That’s the nature of the Law of Connection. Always touch a person’s heart before you ask for a hand.
- Michael Levine
God would not have put a dream in your heart if He had not already given you everything you need to fulfill it.
- Joel Olsteen
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.
- Steve Martin
In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there’s such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.
- Bill Gates
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
- George Soros
The thing about fashion – it’s like ducks going quack, quack quack. It’s being dictated from above, and it just makes me want to rebel against it.
- Sara Blakely
The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it’s a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art ‘the work.’ It’s possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that’s how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.
- Seth Godin
We’d like to believe that efficient, useful, cost-effective products and services are the way to succeed. That hard work is its own reward. Most marketers carry around a worldview that describes themselves as innovators, not storytellers.
- Seth Godin
I never worry because I know who I am and I know Whose I am.
- Zig Ziglar
The Value of a Smile at Christmas It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends.
- Dale Carnegie
Being aware of your fear is smart. Overcoming it is the mark of a successful person.
- Seth Godin
PR is gift-wrapping. If you package a bracelet in a Tiffany box, it will have a higher perceived value than if you presented it in a Kmart box.
- Michael Levine
In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
The conditions of suffering that exist today in our impoverished communities are not acceptable. The reflection of those conditions are less concerning to me. And I work everyday about changing the conditions.
- Russell Simmons
Games is probably the biggest industry today that has gone really social, right. I mean, the incumbent game companies are really being disrupted and are quickly trying to become social. And you have companies like Zynga.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The Cul-de-Sac ( French for “dead end” ) … is a situation where you work and work and work and nothing much changes.
- Seth Godin
We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.
- Napoleon Hill
As kids, we all worked for the company in one way or another. I got to work behind the candy counter or run the popcorn stand when I was five years old. The business was part of life, and it was always included in the dinner conversation. We learned a lot about the debt it took to open new stores, and I worried about it. I remember confiding to my girlfriend one time – crying and saying, I don’t know what we’re going to do. My daddy owes so much, and he won’t quit opening.
- Alice Walton
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
- Dale Carnegie
To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.
- Michael Bloomberg
If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire.
- Winston Churchill
If there is a Swedish style, I cannot identify it.
- Stefan Persson
The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That’s approaching evil.
- Jeff Bezos
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
We are waiting for the long-promised invasion. So are the fishes.
- Winston Churchill
I can’t stress enough the essential nature of really hearing what someone has to say even if it is totally contradictory to your own beliefs, and I wish this was a lesson I only had to learn once.
- David Novak
You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.
- Henry Ford
Rewards await you if you stay steadfast in your faith.
- Joel Olsteen
The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed.
- Ben Horowitz
I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.
- Elon Musk
When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie
Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.
- James C. Collins
My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers. I only started the company when I realized I could be an engineer forever.
- Steve Wozniak
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Peter Drucker
Access to play should be a kid’s inalienable right.
- Phil Knight
If we do not have time to do it right the first time when will we have time to come back and do it right again later?
- Lee Cockerell
It is very clear that the Republicans do not want to raise taxes.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.
- John C. Maxwell
I enjoy the hunt much more than the ‘good life’ after the victory.
- Carl Icahn
But this “spray and pray” approach usually produces an entire portfolio of flops, with no hits at all. This is because venture returns don’t follow a normal distribution overall. Rather, they follow a power law: a small handful of companies radically outperform all others. If you focus on diversification instead of single-minded pursuit of the very few companies that can become overwhelmingly valuable, you’ll miss those rare companies in the first place.
- Peter Thiel
Starbucks is committed to evolving and enhancing our customer experience with innovative and wholesome food offerings.
- Howard Schultz
Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act.
- Jack Welch
And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: … man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / … Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.
- Dale Carnegie
When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power of a particular individual’s context as determined by chance. But they miss the even bigger social context for their own preferred explanations: a whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning. Gladwell at first appears to be making a contrarian critique of the myth of the self-made businessman, but actually his own account encapsulates the conventional view of a generation.
- Peter Thiel
The Group launched the ‘Create a New World for Children’ Corporate Alliance Campaign with UNICEF in August 2003 to help and ease the plight of the underprivileged in our society. We both share the same commitment in creating a better environment for disadvantaged children and improving their education opportunities.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Value is achieved primarily through frontline employees who are satisfied, loyal, and productive, in part because of the high degree of capability they possess to deliver results to customers
- Service Profit Chain
Boadicea then turned upon Verulamium (St Albans). Here was another trading centre, to which high civic rank had been accorded. A like total slaughter and obliteration was inflicted. “No less”, according to Tacitus, “than seventy thousand citizens and allies were slain” in these three cities. “For the barbarians would have no capturing, no selling, nor any kind of traffic usual in war; they would have nothing but killing, by sword, cross, gibbet, or fire.” These grim words show us an inexpiable war like that waged between Carthage and her revolted mercenaries two centuries before. Some high modern authorities think these numbers are exaggerated; but there is no reason why London should not have contained thirty or forty thousand inhabitants, and Colchester and St Albans between them about an equal number. If the butcheries in the countryside are added the estimate of Tacitus may well stand. This is probably the most horrible episode which our Island has known. We see the crude and corrupt beginnings of a higher civilisation blotted out by the ferocious uprising of the native tribes. Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.
- Winston Churchill
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
- Winston Churchill
One of the great things about Lanai is that the weather is always fabulous. Always 82 degrees and sunny. The problem is that, like California now, Lanai needs more water.
- Larry Ellison
I will everyday as just a blow from my blade against a mighty oak…strike until it falls quote.
- Og Mandino
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Konosuke Matsushita was a visionary entrepreneur. He started working very young as a teenager, and he eventually created Panasonic to become a truly global company.
- Tadashi Yanai
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
- Albert Schweitzer
Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.
- George Lucas
No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.
- Napoleon Hill
You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.
- Winston Churchill
I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that’s the reason so many liked him and did business in his store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. (on role of managing partner)
- Inez Threet
When launching something new, you have to go for it—“playing not to lose” can never be an option.
- Jack Welch
We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.
- Tadashi Yanai
Brevity is the soul of wit.
- William Shakespeare
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
- Muhammad Ali
Where I get my energy is: ‘How can I make it better?’
- Sara Blakely
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
There are things money can’t buy and hard work can’t win. One of them is happiness.
- Ray Kroc
Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.
- Napoleon Hill
I’m not an actor who appears on the stage and gives people advice on how to live or what to do and entertains them. It is not my specialty.
- Vagit Alekperov
In 1973 when the Hong Kong stock market witnessed an unprecedented slump with the Hang Seng Index plunging by over 90% in a year, the Group built the New World Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong through the acquisition of Holt’s Wharf. In doing so we broke the dominance of the UK-based conglomerates and, as if [being given] a shot in the arm, initiated the course of weaving the companies with Chinese capital into the economic fabric of Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Do you know why the nose of the bull dog is sloped backwards? So it can keep on breathing without ever letting go.
- Winston Churchill
You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.
- Joel Olsteen
Once I did bad and that I heard ever. Twice I did good, but that I heard never.
- Dale Carnegie
Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
- Dale Carnegie
If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.
- Elon Musk
If some people are so hungry for a feeling of importance that they actually go insane to get it, imagine what miracle you and I can achieve by giving people honest appreciation this side of insanity.
- Dale Carnegie
God has already done everything He’s going to do. The ball is now in your court. If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.
- Joel Olsteen
Plan, organize, integrate, motivate, and measure.
- Peter Drucker
I kept saying, Sam, we’re making a good living. Why go out why expand so much more? The stores are getting farther and farther away. After the seventeenth store, though, I realized there wasn’t going to any stopping it.
- Helen Walton
I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.
- Mark Zuckerberg
A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.
- Winston Churchill
When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmmm?
- Yoda
If I go public, I’ll stick to it.
- David Novak
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Our business is about technology, yes. But it’s also about operations and customer relationships.
- Michael Dell
Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day.
- Peter Thiel
You may be sitting around waiting for God to change your circumstances. Then you’re going to be happy, then your’re going to have a good attitude, then you’re going to give God praise. But God is waiting on you to get up on the inside. When you do your part, He’ll begin to change things and work supernaturally in your life.
- Joel Olsteen
Thank you is probably the most important thing that a leader can say.
- David Novak
Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.
- Seth Godin
We are each responsible for our own life – no other person is or even can be.
- Oprah Winfrey
And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.
- Winston Churchill
Every time I went on stage I was so terrified I almost threw up.
- Sara Blakely
The fishing is best where the fewest go, and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone else is aiming for base hits. There is just less competition for bigger goals.
- Timothy Ferriss
I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.
- Bill Gates
