Notable Quotables

Don’t try to create a new market prematurely. The only way to know you have a real business is to start with an already existing customer, so you should build your company by improving on recognizable products already offered by successful competitors.

- Peter Thiel

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

- Henry Ford

This is why so many small and medium-sized businesses don’t use tools that bigger firms take for granted. It’s not that small business proprietors are unusually backward or that good tools don’t exist: distribution is the hidden bottleneck.

- Peter Thiel

Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.

- Zig Ziglar

Your faith is very important. I have done the math, and you are going to be dead a whole lot longer that you will be alive.

- Zig Ziglar

How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.

- Seth Godin

Only 17 percent of us or our spouses ever attended a private elementary or private highschool. But 55 percent of our children are currently attending or have attended private schools.

- Thomas J Stanley

I DECLARE God is going before me making crooked places straight. He has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities and solutions to problems I haven’t had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment, can stop His plan. What he promised will come to pass.

- Joel Olsteen

Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.

- Ben Horowitz

Journalists should think of themselves as outside the Establishment, and owners can’t be too worried about what they’re told at their country clubs.

- Rupert Murdoch

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

- Joel Olsteen

The industrialist (your boss, perhaps) demands that everything be proven, efficient, and risk free. The artist seeks none of these. The value of art is in your willingness to stare down the risk and to embrace the void of possible failure.

- Seth Godin

This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.

- Seth Godin

Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy.

- Seth Godin

A lot of preachers’ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.

- Joel Olsteen

Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof when your own doorstep is unclean.

- Confucius

You’ll never find a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

- Winston Churchill

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.

- Jack Welch

I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.

- Gina Rinehart

To integrate the new information into your existing network, you need to do three things: prioritize, organize and follow up on your contacts. You will follow your own inclinations, preferences and criteria for accomplishing each of these tasks, but the end result of your efforts should always be to strengthen, extend and enhance the effectiveness of your network of contacts.

- Ivan Misner

Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.

- Howard Schultz

Sales is what you do in person, one on one. Marketing is sales done via a system. Most (Self-Employed) S quadrant businesspeople are very good at one-on-one sales. For them to make the transition to the B quadrant, they need to learn how to sell through a system which is called marketing.

- Robert Kiyosaki

From the start, I wanted PayPal to be tightly knit instead of transactional.

- Peter Thiel

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

That old law about ‘an eye for an eye’ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I DECLARE that God has a great plan for my life. He is directing my steps. And even though I may not always understand how, I know my situation is not a surprise to God. He will work out every detail to my advantage. In His perfect timing, everything will turn out right. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, ‘Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,’ and he would high-five me and say, ‘Way to go.’

- Sara Blakely

t’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

- Warren Buffett

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

- Albert Einstein

We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.

- Phil Knight

Sometimes, your friend can influence you more than your mother.

- Lee Shau Kee

Even if we laid off 100 percent of the employees, the infrastructure costs would still kill us without a sharper sales ramp.

- Ben Horowitz

I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.

- Steve Martin

Research what they did, how they did it and how you can do it better.

- Jack Nadel

Canon is basically a very aggressive company. Our company works on competitive principles. It does not treat people equally, but it does treat them fairly.

- Fujio Mitarai

Google’s motto—“Don’t be evil”—is in part a branding ploy, but it’s also characteristic of a kind of business that’s successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence.

- Peter Thiel

It’s easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.

- Seth Godin

Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.

- James C. Collins

There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.

- Richard Branson

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

- James C. Collins

“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it eventually, just do it and correct course along the way.

- Timothy Ferriss

Winelibrary.tv was about building personal brand equity. It was a business move. Now, it was totally surrounded by a passion for wine, but I very much gave a lot of thought to doing a sports-video blog instead.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…(Yoda pinches Luke’s shoulder)…not this crude matter. (a sweeping gesture) You must feel the Force around you. (gesturing) Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!

- Yoda

The Chinese government still would like to see U.S. Internet companies explore the Chinese market, providing they are willing to abide by Chinese law. I think companies like Facebook should think about the Chinese market.

- Robin Li

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

For now, if the Hong Kong environment doesn’t change, then in the long term, investing in Hong Kong is best.

- Lee Shau Kee

I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.

- Zig Ziglar

It really matters whether people are working on generating clean energy or improving transportation or making the Internet work better and all those things. And small groups of people can have a really huge impact.

- Larry Page

I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.

- Bill Gates

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.

- Walt Disney

He wants to do something amazing in your life. Get in agreement and say, God, this is for me today. I’m raising my expectations. I’m shaking off doubt, negativity, disappointments, self-pity, little dreams, and little goals, and God, I will make room for a flood of Your goodness.

- Joel Olsteen

There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.

- Bill Gates

If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.

- Oprah Winfrey

Use your life to serve the world, and you will find that it also serves you.

- Oprah Winfrey

Maybe you’ve invested a lot of time, effort, money, emotion, and energy in a relationship; you did your best to make it work out. But for some reason, things got off course. And now you feel as though you have been robbed. When we focus on or disappointments, we stop God from ringing fresh new blessing into our lives.

- Joel Olsteen

My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It’s their work that I’m supporting. So it’s not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.

- George Soros

We have an average household net worth of $3.7 million. Of course, some of our cohorts have accumulated much more. Nearly 6 percent have a net worth of over $10 million. Again, these people skew our average upward. The typical (median, or 50th percentile) millionaire household has a net worth of $1.6 million.

- Thomas J Stanley

I think my whole life, because of where I came from, I had a fear of failure.

- Howard Schultz

…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

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

- Napoleon Hill

Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they’re on the same side.

- Zig Ziglar

Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.

- Peter Thiel

Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.

- Warren Buffett

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.

- Bill Gates

We have two turbines in our company: One is engineering, and the other is operations. And so our business people are on equal footing with our engineering and technology culture. Cars are moving because of what we do, so there’s an imperative to go beyond just the technology.

- Travis Kalanick

Stones of judgment, discouragement or doubt may be thrown at you. You can’t stop them, but you can make the choice to keep your walls up and not let them affect you.

- Joel Olsteen

People are basically the same the world over. Everybody wants the same things – to be happy, to be healthy, to be at least reasonably prosperous, and to be secure. They want friends, peace of mind, good family relationships, and hope that tomorrow is going to be even better than today.

- Zig Ziglar

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.

- Siddhartha Gautama

Although DJ Clay may never sleep, all of his dreams come true!

- Blake Fraley

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

- Winston Churchill

The market is fast-moving, fast-growing. Things that are true today may not be true tomorrow.

- Robin Li

Every culture has a myth of decline from some golden age, and almost all peoples throughout history have been pessimists. Even today pessimism still dominates huge parts of the world. An indefinite pessimist looks out onto a bleak future, but he has no idea what to do about it. This describes Europe since the early 1970s, when the continent succumbed to undirected bureaucratic drift. Today the whole Eurozone is in slow-motion crisis, and nobody is in charge. The European Central Bank doesn’t stand for anything but improvisation: the U.S. Treasury prints “In God We Trust” on the dollar; the ECB might as well print “Kick the Can Down the Road” on the euro. Europeans just react to events as they happen and hope things don’t get worse.

- Peter Thiel

Any of us can be happy and have a good attitude when everything is going our way. But I believe it’s the real test of your character and of your faith to say, ‘Things are not going our way, but I’m still being good to people; I’m still attending church; I still have a good attitude.’

- Joel Olsteen

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

- Mark Twain

Growth is the great separator between those who succeed and those who do not. When I see a person beginning to separate themselves from the pack, it’s almost always due to personal growth.

- John C. Maxwell

[On someone with a new idea.] The first thing is to draw it out, program it, play with it and get other people playing with it so you can get feedback right away… Once you get that feedback you know if it’s something you should pursue and give more of your attention to, or if it’s something you should put on the shelf for another da

- Jack Dorsey

Change is powerful, but change always comes with the possibility of failure as its partner. “This might not work” isn’t merely something to be tolerated; it’s something you must seek out.

- Seth Godin

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

- William Arthur Ward

I learned thirty years ago that it is foolish to scold. I have enough trouble overcoming my own limitations without fretting over the fact that God has not seen fit to distribute evenly the gift of intelligence.

- John Wanamaker

The industrial age is ending, and a new one is beginning. It produces art instead of stuff and it rewards gracefulness.

- Seth Godin

People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they’re not all growing in their faith, they’re not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior.

- Joel Olsteen

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

- Albert Einstein

Ever since Justin Timberlake portrayed him in The Social Network, Sean has been perceived as one of the coolest people in America. JT is still more famous, but when he visits Silicon Valley, people ask if he’s Sean Parker.

- Peter Thiel

What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.”

- James C. Collins

I mean, we’ve built a lot of products that we think are good, and will help people share photos and share videos and write messages to each other. But it’s really all about how people are spreading Facebook around the world in all these different countries. And that’s what’s so amazing about the scale that it’s at today.

- Mark Zuckerberg

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

- Dale Carnegie

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