Notable Quotables

I usually describe myself as an engineer. That’s basically what I’ve been doing since I was a kid.

- Elon Musk

When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.

- Ray Dalio

I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years – part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.

- Peter Thiel

When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.

- Zig Ziglar

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

I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.

- Elon Musk

Get through your fears and the world will open up. Give in to your fears and your world will get smaller every year.

- Robert Kiyosaki

With an export-driven economy, Hong Kong is unavoidably affected by any hiccup in the outside world.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate?

- Larry Page

I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.

- Elon Musk

When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world

- George Washington Carver

If we can put a man on the moon, we can make pantyhose comfortable.

- Sara Blakely

30 MAJOR CAUSES OF FAILURE: – Napoleon Hill (on leadership and management)

- Napoleon Hill

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

The onset of global financial turmoil in the second half of 2008 and the resultant wait-and-see attitude adopted by some homebuyers put the property market into the doldrums, with a general decline in both transaction volume and transacted prices.

- Lee Shau Kee

Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution. It just needs clarity.

- Ben Horowitz

When state funding for Irvine public schools began to diminish some time ago, my Irvine Company colleagues helped me to provide private funding support for continuation of basic science, art and music programs that had been eliminated by lack of state funding.

- Donald Bren

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.

- Warren G. Bennis

We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.

- Dale Carnegie

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

- Warren Buffett

Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.

- David Packard

China is likely to sustain its pace of economic growth for the next decade.

- Cheng Yu-tung

So, the judgment that you have to make is (a) is this market really much bigger (more than an order of magnitude) than has been exploited to date? and (b) are we going to be number one? If the answer to either (a) or (b) is no, then you should consider selling.

- Ben Horowitz

95% financing arrangement offered by Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited in a period of sustained low interest have added impetus to secondary trading activities in the property market.

- Lee Shau Kee

I want to challenge you today to get out of your comfort zone. You have so much incredible potential on the inside. God has put gifts and talents in you that you probably don’t know anything about.

- Joel Olsteen

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

If you try to make such projects, unseen by others, as perfect as any human could, you’ll develop skills that other professionals don’t have.

- Steve Wozniak

I tell college students, when you get to be my age you will be successful if the people who you hope to have love you, do love you.

- Warren Buffett

[On working at Nike for 48 years] In those 48 years, I have never had a promotion. but it had its other benefits.

- Phil Knight

Dreamline Questions:What are you good at?What could you be the best at?What makes you happy?What excites you?What makes you feel accomplished and good about yourself?What are you most proud of having accomplished in your life? Can you repeat this or further develop it?What do you enjoy sharing or experiencing with other people?

- Timothy Ferriss

We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.

- Jeff Bezos

I have many children, as you seek you may find that this the last one till he must die before he must reach the becoming of mankind. Many men have failed but i have surpassed their expectation of being a Jedi master.

- Yoda

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

- Bill Gates

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

The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty.

- Francois Pinault

What shall I do with all my books?’ was the question, and the answer, ‘Read them,’ sobered the questioner. But if you cannot read them, at the very least handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open as they will. Read on from the first sentence that turns the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.

- Winston Churchill

(In reference to one of his first advertising sales mentors Howard Davis)… He was 6 foot 4 with silver hair…the quintessential advertising guy. He had a glass topped desk in his office because, as he put it, he like to be able to look down and see his Guccis while he worked. Howard taught me to get things done. He was very smart but he was also an animal. He exuded power and he could be very intimidating, and he knew how to use his power to get results while still managing to be a good guy. Howard’s personal style was very different from my own, but what he did teach me was how to create a sense of urgency, how to motivate performance by getting everyone’s heart pounding.

- David Novak

Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.

- Jerry Seinfeld

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.

- Steve Jobs

In boxing, you get hit, it’s painful, then you sit on the stool when the adrenaline is gone and you feel that pain. And then you fight the next round.

- Ben Horowitz

Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.

- Peter Drucker

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

- Dale Carnegie

They (the competition) need to avoid coming at us head-on, and do their own thing better than we do ours. It doesn’t make any sense to try to underprice Wal-Mart (DJC) on something like toothpaste (DJ Prices). That’s not what the customer is looking to a small store for anyway. Most independents are best off, I think, doing what I prided myself on doing for many years as a storekeeper, getting out on the floor and meeting everyone of the customers. Let them know how much you appreciate them, and ring that cash register yourself. That little personal touch is so important for an independent merchant because no matter how hard Wal-Mart tries to duplicate – and we try awfully hard – we can’t really do it.

- Sam Walton

We see no indications in the marketplace that the radical Internet business transformation in practices like customer service, supply-chain management, employee training, empowerment, and e-commerce that is taking place around the world today is slowing — in fact, we believe it is accelerating globally.

- John Chambers

In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.

- Bill Gates

The spread of online information isn’t just good for charities. It’s also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.

- Bill Gates

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

People don’t believe what you tell them.They rarely believe what you show them.They often believe what their friends tell them.They always believe what they tell themselves.

- Seth Godin

Getting over the war was biggest adversity I have ever faced.

- Jack Nadel

I’m not a businessman — I’m a business, man.

- Jay-Z

If I’m in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what’s possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that’s a valuable thing.

- Ben Horowitz

Stubborn isn’t a word I would use to describe myself, pigheaded is more appropriate.

- Michael Bloomberg

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

- Joel Olsteen

Game-playing is more fun when it’s virtual because you’re more successful. … in reality, only one person gets to be LeBron

- Larry Ellison

The Waffle Trainer later became the best-selling training shoe in the United States.

- Phil Knight

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it.

- James C. Collins

Said another way, the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is. When The Entrepreneur creates the model.

- Michael Gerber

The proposed abolishment of estate duty by the Hong Kong Government will contribute to establish Hong Kong as a regional financial centre as well as an asset management hub.

- Lee Shau Kee

With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.

- Steve Martin

I don’t know what causes a person to be ambitious, but it is a fact that I have been overblessed with drive and ambition from the time I hit the ground.

- Sam Walton

It takes a leader to create momentum. Followers catch it. And managers are able to continue it once it has begun. But creating it requires someone who can motivate others, not who needs to be motivated. Harry Truman once said, If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But for leaders, that statement should be changed to, If you can’t make some heat, get out of the kitchen.

- John Maxwell

Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.

- Sam Walton

I think part of the reason we’re successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.

- Larry Page

We must restore the emotional relationship that people have to the idea of America, that no matter where you come from, no matter where you live, that you have access to the same opportunities that somebody who is born in privilege.

- Howard Schultz

The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo, the job is to invent the status quo.

- Seth Godin

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

Why would I spend $5 billion for something in order to wreck it?

- Rupert Murdoch

To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.

- Peter Thiel

Optimists are those who go after Moby dick in a row boat with a bucket of tarter sauce.

- Zig Ziglar

We are pleased to look back at another extremely successful financial year 2014 during which we achieved our targets.

- Elmar Degenhart

It was the nation and the race dwelling all round the globe that had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar.

- Winston Churchill

I see this as my humanitarian legacy. We’re prepared to pay billions.

- Sheldon Adelson

In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.

- Ben Horowitz

It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.

- Paul Graham

Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.

- Seth Godin

In addition to building better products, a more open world will also encourage businesses to engage with their customers directly and authentically. More than four million businesses have Pages on Facebook that they use to have a dialogue with their customers. We expect this trend to grow as well.

- Mark Zuckerberg

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

- Elon Musk

SpaceX has the potential of saving the U.S. government $1 billion a year. We are opposed to creating an entrenched monopoly with no realistic means for anyone to compete.

- Elon Musk

You need to be around people who know more than you and have more talent than you. Don’t be intimidated by them, be inspired.

- Joel Olsteen

The secret to being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal.

- Seth Godin

Most competitors quit long before they’ve created something that makes it to the top.

- Seth Godin

In our day Capital, Business Ability, and Manual Labor are the legs of a three-legged stool. While the three legs stand sound and firm, the stool stands; but let any one of the three weaken and break, let it be pulled out or struck out, down goes the stool to the ground. And the stool is of no use until the third leg is restored.

- Andrew Carnegie

If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.

- Mario Andretti

Wild Turkey whiskey and Philip Morris cigarettes are essential to the maintenance of human life!

- Herb Kelleher

Sooner or later, you will see a China-based company that really has a global impact, and I think Baidu has a chance to become one of those companies. We should be able to compete on a global basis.

- Robin Li

The challenge is to focus on the work, not on the fear that comes from doing the work.

- Seth Godin

If Google Books is successful, others will follow.

- Sergey Brin

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

- Winston Churchill

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