I have to be ever vigilant to remain open to other people’s points of view. Just because I’m enthusiastic doesn’t necessarily mean I’m right. I have to always keep the doors open for honest communication or I could enthusiastically lead everyone right over the cliff.
- David Novak
Notable Quotables
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’ve come too far to stop now. I may be knocked down, but I’m not knocked out. I’m going to get back up again. I know I’m a victor, not a victim.
- Joel Olsteen
You only have to succeed the last time.
- Phil Knight
In the old generation, if one kid bought a PlayStation 2 and the other kid bought an Xbox, at his house you played PlayStation, at your house you played Xbox. Now that it’s online, all those early buyers who… you want to play with, they’ve got their reputation online of who they are and how good they are at these games.
- Bill Gates
When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.
- Walt Disney
One of the things that school is for is to teach our children to understand and relish the idea of intellectualism, to develop into something more than a purpose-driven tool for the industrial state.
- Seth Godin
Put everything you’ve got into what you’re doing. Be totally focused–nothing should be haphazard.
- Donald Trump
If values do not affect daily life, they are not values.
- Marty St. George
In the face of challenging economic and market conditions of the past 12 months, our diversified portfolio of multiple earnings streams has served us well.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.
- Sam Walton
I decline utterly to be impartial between the fire brigade and the fire.
- Winston Churchill
We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
- Dale Carnegie
Soon is not as good as now.
- Seth Godin
We must remember that our children are very much what we make them.
- Dale Carnegie
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.
- Thomas Edison
Once you’ve engaged with an organization or a relationship or a community, you owe it to your team to start. To initiate. To be the one who makes something happen. To do less is to steal from them. If you hide your spark, bury your ideas, keep your questions and notions from the team, you have hurt them as badly as if you had stolen a laptop and fenced it on eBay.
- Seth Godin
I’ve always been interested in science – one of my favourite books is James Watson’s ‘Molecular Biology of the Gene.
- Bill Gates
In setting goals and executing a strategy, Wanda is sophisticated. We have good systems and departments. If targets are not reached, a yellow light goes off.
- Wang Jianlin
There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.
- Zig Ziglar
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
- General George S. Patton
Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.
- Winston Churchill
People don’t want lots and lots of single purpose devices. They do not want to have to learn how to set up something for photos, another thing for music, another thing for video.
- Bill Gates
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle
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
The Arab League tells us to go in and take out Qaddafi. We’ve spent billions of dollars already with respect to the Arab League. Billions of dollars, because they told us to do it. Why aren’t they paying for it? They don’t like Qaddafi, Qaddafi’s been a terrible thorn in their side.
- Donald Trump
I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian – or just being in show business, is really more accurate.
- Steve Martin
True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.
- P.T. Barnum
Think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass…if we do not take [tasks] one at a time and let them pass…slowly and evenly, then we are bound to break our own…structure.
- Dale Carnegie
Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge.
- Winston Churchill
Maintain a pragmatic approach, keep up with the multitude of trials and strive to remain its level of attainment in order for achieving sound performance and scaling new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
They were going to get it all right the first time right… Open to change.
- Jack Dorsey
We’re seeing an explosion in new approaches, new models and new forms of interaction. This growth comes from change, insight and exploration, not obedience.
- Seth Godin
Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.
- Donald Trump
I’m less interested in how people are following each other and more interested in how they are following topics and tweets themselves. People are following more key words and concepts and more ideas and acting on those rather than individuals or organizations.
- Jack Dorsey
[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.
- Phil Knight
Start calling yourself healed, happy, whole, blessed, and prosperous. Stop talking to God about how big your mountains are, and start talking to your mountains about how big your God is!
- Joel Olsteen
Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.
- Herb Kelleher
The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.
- Jeff Bezos
The bigger we get as a company, the more important it becomes for us to shift responsibility and authority toward the front lines, toward the department manager who’s stocking the shelves and talking to the customer. When we were much smaller, I probably wasn’t as quick to catch on to this idea as I do should have been. But as an avid student of management theory, back in the mid-seventies I started reading the work of W. Edwards Deming, the famous statistician who taught so much to the Japanese about improving their productivity and competitiveness.
- Sam Walton
Doing the wrong thing daily, compounds over time.
- John C. Maxwell
Learn to slow down. Get lost intentionally. Observe how you judge both yourself and those around you.
- Timothy Ferriss
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.
- Elon Musk
Hay una divinidad que forja nuestros fines, por mucho que queramos alterarlos.
- Dale Carnegie
The Group has always adhered to prudent financial management principles.
- Lee Shau Kee
Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
- Warren Buffett
The first is the result of a decision to act—to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold. The second is the result of a decision of sloth—to not do something—wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences.
- Timothy Ferriss
Your margin is my opportunity.
- Jeff Bezos
Never Cease to Proclaim in Fearless Tones the Great Principles of Freedom
- Winston Churchill
Because there have been no settlements reached for the securities action with any of the less-involved banks, it is difficult to know what reserves are prudent.
- Ed Clark
If you pay people peanuts, you will get monkeys.
- Andy Pearson
[In January 2011] We take a cut of every transaction. So we charge 2.75 percent and 15 cents on the transaction. Which we then pay the credit card companies out of. So the user only has to pay that 2.75 percent. They don’t pay any credit card fees. They don’t have to have a setup charged. They don’t have to pay for the hardware or even the software.
- Jack Dorsey
Napoleon was criticized for giving toys” to war-hardened veterans, and Napoleon replied, Men are ruled by toys.
- Dale Carnegie
If you’re low-income in the United States, you have a higher chance of going to jail than you do of getting a four-year degree. And that doesn’t seem entirely fair.
- Bill Gates
[On the Swoosh] It was 1971 and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million. So I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State
- Phil Knight
Anger is a waste of energy. Steam which is used to blow off a safety valve would be better used to drive an engine.
- Winston Churchill
60% of the bonus was based on financials and 40% on Six Sigma (quality) results.
- Jack Welch
Our favorite holding period is forever.
- Warren Buffett
I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.
- George Soros
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
No one’s going to be able to operate without a grounding in the basic sciences. Language would be helpful, although English is becoming increasingly international. And travel. You have to have a global attitude.
- Rupert Murdoch
God wants us to live consistently, He wants us to enjoy every single day of our lives.
- Joel Olsteen
A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to ‘managers’ or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders – people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.
- Jack Welch
Enduring great companies don’t exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed, in a truly great company, profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point of life.
- James C. Collins
I think our leadership team is a highly accountable leadership team.
- Steve Ballmer
To achieve stable growth, an enterprise must live up to its conviction.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.
- Henry Ford
You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
Hire the best staff you can find develop them as much as you can, and hand off everything you possibly you can to them…The power of this can be seen in explosive growth.
- Napoleon Hill
We will invest 1.1 billion dollars in India, of which 150 million dollars would be for providing leasing and financial solutions to the company’s customers and partners.
- John Chambers
Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands
- David Novak
Ally yourself with a group of as many people as you may need for the creation and carrying out of your plan or plans for the accumulation of money…Compliance with this instruction is absolutely essential. Do not neglect it.
- Napoleon Hill
I learned about why startups should train their people when I worked at Netscape. People at McDonald’s get trained for their positions, but people with far more complicated jobs don’t. It makes no sense.
- Ben Horowitz
I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted ‘Mary had a little lamb’, etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.
- Thomas Edison
Write your life story as if it has already happened and live it out using your faith in yourself, and in the reality that you are embracing.
- Clay Clark
Walking in circles Dr. Jan Souman, of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, studied what happens to us when we have no map, no compass, no way to determine landmarks. I’m not talking about a metaphor—he researched what happens to people lost in the woods or stumbling around the Sahara, with no north star, no setting sun to guide them. It turns out we walk in circles. Try as we might to walk in a straight line, to get out of the forest or the desert, we end up back where we started. Our instincts aren’t enough. In the words of Dr. Souman, “Don’t trust your senses because even though you might think you are walking in a straight line when you’re not.” Human nature is to need a map. If you’re brave enough to draw one, people will follow.
- Seth Godin
thoughtless reliance on technology is a liability.
- James C. Collins
It is becoming increasingly clear that the global economy is improving, … As customers feel more confident to invest, we believe that we are well positioned to provide compelling value as a strategic business adviser and technology partner.
- John Chambers
I’ve actually not read any books on time management.
- Elon Musk
Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. HEBREWS 11:1.
- Joel Olsteen
Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.
- Napoleon Hill
Acquiring Sunseeker deepens Wanda’s international influence and represents an important step forward for the development of the business.
- Wang Jianlin
My own center, my Kingdom Center, which is the highest priced tower in Saudi Arabia, was vacated twice because of terrorist attacks, terrorist threats.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
99.5 percent of the people that walk around and say they are a social media expert or guru are clowns. We are going to live through a devastating social media bubble.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I never took a day off in my twenties. Not one. And I’m still fanatical, but now I’m a little less fanatical.
- Bill Gates
Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.
- Bill Gates
I go to yoga every day. I meditate every morning.
- Russell Simmons
As a general thing, I have not ‘duped the world’ nor attempted to do so… I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told.
- P.T. Barnum
The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.
- Thomas Edison
Fears are nothing more than states of mind.
- Napoleon Hill
There are abundant business opportunities to bring about the recovery of the local economy.
- Lee Shau Kee
As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in.
- Howard Schultz
I think alot about money when I do not have it.
- Stacy Thorn
If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.
- Peter Drucker
A remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.
- Winston Churchill
You’re not being responsible with what God gave you if you’re hanging out with time wasters who have no goals and no dreams.
- Joel Olsteen
