Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
Life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot “diversify” herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.
- Peter Thiel
People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Silicon Valley has some of the smartest engineers and technology business people in the world.
- Elon Musk
Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.
- Ben Horowitz
The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.
- Seth Godin
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
- George Soros
Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
In the end, you’re measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
- Donald Trump
To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not. In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are.
- Yoda
We did it Disneyland, in the knowledge that most of the people I talked to thought it would be a financial disaster – closed and forgotten within the first year.
- Walt Disney
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
- Bishop Desmond TuTu
Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.
- Seth Godin
The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.
- Napoleon Hill
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
- Socrates
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.
- Thomas Edison
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- Winston Churchill
When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.
- Winston Churchill
To me, failure means not trying; failure isnt the outcome. If i have to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘I didnt try that because I was scared,’ that is failure.
- Sara Blakely
Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.
- John C. Maxwell
Our minds become magnetized with the dominating thoughts we hold in our minds and these magnets attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.
- Napoleon Hill
I am what I am and, you know, I’m a very lucky guy.
- Michael Bloomberg
I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.
- Steve Wozniak
You can’t depend on polls.
- Michael Bloomberg
I think my story says that, when women are given the chance and the opportunity, that we can achieve a lot. We deliver.
- Sara Blakely
I still feel there are much smarter self-promoters out there than me. I am very methodical about my messaging, and I know how to gain attention very quickly.
- Timothy Ferriss
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.
- Jack Nadel
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
- Oprah Winfrey
The challenge of the retail business is the human condition.
- Howard Schultz
The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.
- George Lucas
Among the world’s 500 largest companies, not one has completely relied on its own growth to develop.
- Wang Jianlin
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- Winston Churchill
Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.
- Oprah Winfrey
There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
- Simon Sinek
You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, ‘See if you can blow this out.’
- Jerry Seinfeld
Risk, to some, is a bad thing, because risk brings with it the possibility of failure. It might be only a temporary failure, but that doesn’t matter so much if the very thought of it shuts you down. So, for some, risk comes to equal failure (take enough risks and sooner or later, you will fail). Risk is avoided because we’ve been trained to avoid failure.
- Seth Godin
In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity, or you can pick yourself up and say, ‘Listen, I have to be responsible for myself.’
- Howard Schultz
Nobody ever accused me of wisdom of any kind, let alone conventional.
- Phil Knight
If you’re looking for an abdominal exercise well-suited to power development without bulk, look no further than the Janda sit-up.
- Timothy Ferriss
The general upward trend in residential property prices seems to be continuing, with the luxury end of the residential market poised to show better performance in particular.
- Lee Shau Kee
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
- Oscar Wilde
You have to motivate yourself with challenges. That’s how you know you’re still alive.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.
- Joel Olsteen
Our teachers deserve better feedback.
- Bill Gates
Thinking (of how to improve your life and business) is the hardest thing there is. That is why so few people engage in it.
- Henry Ford
My belief and goal is that every professional in the world should be on a service liked LinkedIn.
- Reid Hoffman
You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
If what others say doesn’t match what God has put in your heart, let it go in one ear and out the other.
- Joel Olsteen
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
- Winston Churchill
We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
Success comes to those who have an entire mountain of gold that they continually mine, not those who find one nugget and try to live on it for fifty years.
- John C. Maxwell
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
- Winston Churchill
If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive.
- Dale Carnegie
It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculate a Web site’s importance.
- Larry Page
The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
- Ben Horowitz
No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.
- Brian Tracy
It takes up enough of my time and interest just working on comedy. I just enjoy it and love doing it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
There is never a bad time to start a business – unless you want to start a mediocre one.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.
- Colin Powell
Yes, iD is a machine vision and sensor browser for the physical world. That’s what we have been working on with Coca-Cola, Verizon, Bank of America and Disney to launch content when an image is recognised.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out.
- Seth Godin
The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Sometimes God gives instructions that go against conventional wisdom, such as treating people kindly when they’re hateful. Who really wants to do that? Instructions like that my not always make sense, so that’s why I need to trust and obey the One who inspired them.
- George Foreman
A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa.
- Dale Carnegie
Uber is efficiency with elegance on top. That’s why I buy an iPhone instead of an average cell phone, why I go to a nice restaurant and pay a little bit more. It’s for the experience.
- Travis Kalanick
We all sort of do want incentives for creative people to still exist at a certain level. You know, maybe rock stars shouldn’t make as much; who knows? But you want as much creativity to take place in the future as took place in the past.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft
- Bill Gates
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
Will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer, instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.
- Peter Thiel
I’m so optimistic, I’d go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me.
- Zig Ziglar
This country provides opportunities. If you don’t take advantage of them, it’s your own fault.
- Sam Huff
If you ask where Nike came from, I would say it came from a kid who had that world-class shock administered at age seventeen by Bill Bowerman.
- Phil Knight
You will either look back in life and say, I wish I had, or, I’m glad I did.
- Zig Ziglar
Success is doing what you want, where you want, when you want, with whom you want and as much as you want.
- Tony Robbins
There’s a sucker born every minute.
- P.T. Barnum
He was probably America’s first capitalist.
- Travis Kalanick
The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.
- Peter Thiel
Hope is the power that gives a person the confidence to step out and try.
- Zig Ziglar
When men are fighting for their lives they are not often disposed to be complimentary to those who are trying to kill them.
- Winston Churchill
People think, ‘Jack, you do too much.’
- Jack Ma
My own answer to the contrarian question is that most people think the future of the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more.
- Peter Thiel
Never fear to negotiate, but never negotiate out of fear.
- Jack Nadel
This generation… they have a different attitude. Instead of sitting and watching something, they want to be a part of it – they’re very hedonistic and sensual.
- Stephen Wynn
Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.
- John C. Maxwell
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
- Napoleon Hill
Love to learn—hate to be taught.
- Winston Churchill
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings.
- Timothy Ferriss
Developing a customer who loves the business so much that they become an unpaid and passionate marketer for the company.
- Clay Clark
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
We believe that the business system only is the key to success. It’s no miracle, only day-to-day work in the appropriate way.
- Alexei Mordashov
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
- Jeff Bezos
Surround yourself with the right people
- Tony Hsieh
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
SpaceX is only 12 years old now. Between now and 2040, the company’s lifespan will have tripled. If we have linear improvement in technology, as opposed to logarithmic, then we should have a significant base on Mars, perhaps with thousands or tens of thousands of people.
- Elon Musk
Failure to me became not trying versus not succeeding.
- Sara Blakely
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
- Henry Ford
If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you.
- Peter Thiel
It isn’t until you come to a spiritual understanding of who you are – not necessarily a religious feeling, but deep down, the spirit within – that you can begin to take control.
- Oprah Winfrey
