Heretics must believe. More than anyone else in an organization, it’s the person who’s challenging the status quo, the one who is daring to be great, who is truly present and not just punching a clock who must have confidence in her beliefs.Can you imagine Steve Jobs showing up for the paycheck? It’s nice to get paid. It’s essential to believe.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
We sold ‘Seinfeld’ all over the world but it was a very specific kind of show. In some countries it went down really well, in others they hated it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I own my business. My business doesn’t own me.
- Cherie Ve Ard
The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event.
- Elon Musk
Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, ‘the United States of America.’But it is hardly strange.Paine’s teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind.We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen.Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty.I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine’s writings, and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of it.Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied. Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore time must balance the scales. The Declaration and the Constitution expressed in form Paine’s theory of political rights. He worked in Philadelphia at the time that the first document was written, and occupied a position of intimate contact with the nation’s leaders when they framed the Constitution.Certainly we may believe that Washington had a considerable voice in the Constitution. We know that Jefferson had much to do with the document. Franklin also had a hand and probably was responsible in even larger measure for the Declaration. But all of these men had communed with Paine. Their views were intimately understood and closely correlated. There is no doubt whatever that the two great documents of American liberty reflect the philosophy of Paine….Then Paine wrote ‘Common Sense,’ an anonymous tract which immediately stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at Albany, and a night meeting was voted to answer this unknown writer with his clarion call to liberty. The Assembly met, but could find no suitable answer. Tom Paine had inscribed a document which never has been answered adversely, and never can be, so long as man esteems his priceless possession.In ‘Common Sense’ Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again. It must be remembered that ‘Common Sense’ preceded the declaration and affirmed the very principles that went into the national doctrine of liberty. But that affirmation was made with more vigor, more of the fire of the patriot and was exactly suited to the hour… Certainly [the Revolution] could not be forestalled, once he had spoken.
- Thomas Edison
I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say what is and what is definitely not possible.
- Henry Ford
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If you want to create and capture lasting value, don’t build an undifferentiated commodity business.
- Peter Thiel
My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I’ve given.
- Russell Simmons
There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.
- Zig Ziglar
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that good ones slip through.
- Seth Godin
Life’s a fight. It’s a good fight of faith.
- Joel Olsteen
New customers are silver…loyal customers are gold.
- Anonymous
Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don’t base your self-esteem on their opinions.
- Harvey Mackay
With a population of more than 600 million people, an emerging middle class that is driving strong consumption, and a robust and resilient economy, Southeast Asia presents a compelling growth opportunity for Starbucks.
- Howard Schultz
Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.
- Elon Musk
There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.
- Seth Godin
2006, I started ‘WineLibrary TV.’ To build ‘WineLibrary TV,’ I started using Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter in 2008.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you will remain at rest and hold your peace, then the battle is not yours, but the battle is the Lord’s.
- Joel Olsteen
On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It’s very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
- Jeff Bezos
That’s not a Puma, that’s a Nike. [‘What’s a Nike?’] A new brand.
- Phil Knight
I remember clearly when the financial plan – If i may call it so – of my life was formed. It was out in Ohio, under the ministration of a dear old minister who preached, Get money; get it honestly, and then give it away wisely. I wrote that down in a little book.
- Ron Chernow
The beauty of this deal is bringing a clinical expertise. Medco had developed therapeutic resource centers, where they got their pharmacist to have specialties in things like diabetes, heart problems and asthma. Express Scripts took a different approach. We tried to understand why people do what they do with behavioral economics, which is: What drives human behaviors? What drives people to do what they did? By combining those two pieces, we get that much stronger.
- George Paz
We’ll see how that evolves. Obviously, it doesn’t mean we’ll just be willing to do anything that’s requested of us.
- Sergey Brin
Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.
- Sergey Brin
Intemperance.
- Napoleon Hill
I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.
- Elon Musk
I’m considered homophobic and crazy about these things and old fashioned. But I think that the family – father, mother, children – is fundamental to our civilisation.
- Rupert Murdoch
I love comedy. That’s what got me into the arts. I don’t even know how to categorize myself anymore.
- Steve Martin
The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
- Napoleon Hill
The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.
- Winston Churchill
I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.
- Jerry Seinfeld
A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing.
- Phil Knight
If any of my competitors were drowning, I’d stick a hose in their mouth
- Ray Kroc
You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m moving on with my life.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s clearly more fun to make the rules than to follow them.
- Seth Godin
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
- Dale Carnegie
I believe we are in at least a two-quarter slowdown.
- John Chambers
I don’t want to kill ads. I think advertising is great, and I’m very aware that there’s multiple revenue streams in television, subscription and advertising. But I also don’t want to put my head in the sand, and I think the world is changing.
- Charles Ergen
Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed.
- Dale Carnegie
Dr. Franklin says “it is the eyes of others and not our own eyes which ruin us. If all the world were blind except myself I should not care for fine clothes or furniture.
- P.T. Barnum
Husbands and wives, first be faithful to each other. Second, keep the romance going all of your life by courting each other every day.
- Zig Ziglar
I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.
- Winston Churchill
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
You must focus on WIN. What’s important now.
- Lee Cockerell
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked, leadership is defined by results not attributes.
- Peter Drucker
There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track… We and the consumer were one and the same.
- Phil Knight
I came over from Wal-Mart to help set up Sam’s. Since we were patterned after PRICE CLUBS, sometimes we copied them without exactly knowing what we were doing. We were bringing a West Coast idea to the Midwest, and we didn’t know how it would be received. I remember one idea that didn’t transfer too well. Price Club had a huge stack of wine in front of its stores. We bought the same amound for our stores in the Midwest and we learned the hard way that Midwesterners aren’t exactly wine drinkers. (on competition)
- Ron Loveles
The Chinese market is a very good expansion opportunity for us, and we will continue looking to buy stakes and make acquisitions.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Well we know that people in Austrailia love the idea of both Impulse and Virgin Blue getting up and adding a bit of competition, and it’s fun to be able to deliver it.
- Richard Branson
The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.
- Bill Gates
mean that you can’t do anything else but pray. But it does mean that you are always ready and willing to go before God with any concern or praise. Nothing is too small or too big for prayer. Prayer is simply opening your heart and connecting with God. It’s taking His promises and applying them to your life. Prayer processes the plan of God. You should bathe your life in prayer. Pray for wisdom, peace, and patience. Pray for your relationships, your job, and your children. Pray for your country and leaders. Pray with others, knowing that when two or more are gathered in His name, He is there.
- Joel Olsteen
I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.
- Oprah Winfrey
Letting the other person feel that the idea is his or hers not only works in business and politics, it works in family life as well.
- Dale Carnegie
Online I see people committing ‘social media suicide’ all the time by one of two ways. Firstly by responding to all criticism, meaning you’re never going to find time to complete important milestones of your own, and by responding to things that don’t warrant a response.
- Tim Ferris
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
- John D. Rockefeller
We’re living in what I like to call the ‘Thank You Economy,’ because only the companies that can figure out how to mind their manners in a very old-fashioned way – and do it authentically – are going to have a prayer of competing.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.
- Joel Olsteen
Does it make sense to go to college, or should I instead be a plumber?
- Michael Bloomberg
Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.
- Ben Horowitz
Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.
- Larry Page
I was the night foreman of a galvanizing factory, which is hot and smelly and dirty and miserable.
- Ronald Perelman
I don’t use my brain about the creative thing. From a business standpoint, I instinctively do things: when I get something right, it’s never because I use my brain
- Russell Simmons
When I was 7, I came up with the idea of ‘charm socks.’ My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.
- Sara Blakely
There is little success where there is little laughter.
- Andrew Carnegie
From an operational perspective, this quarter was a home run.
- John Chambers
Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It’s really that easy – and that’s what I do.
- Timothy Ferriss
I worry about losing a real talent. I hate losing a great leader more than anything. I also hate it when I have to manager out a good person for poor performance or for simply doing something that is not in sync with our values. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life and I’ve had to do it more than once, is fire a friend.
- David Novak
Like my friend Warren Buffett, I feel particularly lucky to do something every day that I love to do. He calls it ‘tap-dancing to work.
- Bill Gates
Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
People who enjoy what they are doing invariably do it well.
- Joe Gibbs
A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.
- Joel Olsteen
Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.
- John D. Rockefeller
People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.
- Henry Ford
I support Democrats and Republicans. And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.
- Stephen Wynn
Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.
- Bill Gates
On average, our total annual realized income is less than 7 percent of our wealth. In other words, we live on less than 7 percent of our wealth.
- Thomas J Stanley
The basic problem with the computer in business is not that computer technicians do not understand the managers’ needs. It is that the managers do not take the time and trouble to think through their needs and to communicate them to the computer people.6 How the computer people satisfy the needs of the manager is their business. What the needs are is the manager’s business. To expect the computer people to define the information needs of the managers is abdication.
- Peter Drucker
Your thoughts about your circumstances have you down. On the other hand, you can be in one of the biggest battles of your life, and still be filled with joy and peace and victory – if you simply learn how to choose the right thought. It’s time to think about what you’re thinking about.
- Joel Olsteen
The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion – others pray in church. It’s a banality, but you don’t possess art, it possesses you. It’s like falling in love.
- Francois Pinault
…What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day… If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased… I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do… I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. …Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.
- Thomas Edison
The market’s going to move with tremendous speed. If there is such a thing as a killer app, video is it.
- John Chambers
As CEO, you should have an opinion on absolutely everything. You should have an opinion on every forecast, every product plan, every presentation, and even every comment. Let people know what you think. If you like someone’s comment, give her the feedback. If you disagree, give her the feedback. Say what you think. Express yourself.
- Ben Horowitz
In the case of Apple, they did originally do production internally, but then along came unbelievably good outsourced manufacturing from companies like Foxconn. We don’t have that in the rocket business. There’s no Foxconn in the rocket business.
- Elon Musk
I know I could be the host of ‘SportsCenter’ in two years if I changed my show today to sports.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Planning is arrogant and inflexible. Instead you should try things out.
- Peter Thiel
We’re at maybe 1% of what is possible. Despite the faster change, we’re still moving slow relative to the opportunities we have. I think a lot of that is because of the negativity… Every story I read is Google vs someone else. That’s boring. We should be focusing on building the things that don’t exist.
- Larry Page
When I’m bored or tired of being blonde, I’ll throw on a wig. It’s a lot less of a permanent way to change your look, and I have about 10 – all different colors, shapes, bobs, long hair, short, feathered.
- Sara Blakely
In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
- Winston Churchill
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.
- John D. Rockefeller
I have no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.
- Walt Disney
The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.
- Rupert Murdoch
A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.
- P.T. Barnum
I’ve learned that people will seldom let you down if they understand that your destiny is in their hands, and vice versa.
- Harvey Mackay
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
Often, organizations need bold, grand gestures to galvanize people towards a new mission or refocus their attention.
- Howard Schultz
Apple has a complex suite of proprietary technologies, both in hardware (like superior touchscreen materials) and software (like touchscreen interfaces purpose-designed for specific materials).
- Peter Thiel
He possessed a sense of calling in both religion and business, with Christianity and capitalism forming the twin pillars of his life.
- Ron Chernow
