Notable Quotables

You are at the top when: You have made friends with your past, are focused on the present, and are optimistic about your future.

- Zig Ziglar

I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them-nine-tenths of them never happened.

- Andrew Carnegie

The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness upon the part of the leader to do more than he requires of his followers.

- Napoleon Hill

Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.

- Peter Drucker

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

God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you’ve experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God’s word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen.

- Joel Olsteen

So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it…Fortunate indeed is the person who has discovered how to give sex emotion an outlet through some form of creative effort, for he has by that discovery lifted himself to the status of a genius…The majority of men lower themselves through misunderstanding and misuse of this great force to the status of the lower animals…Highly sexed people always have a plentiful supply of magnetism…Highly sexed people move briskly and with grace and ease…The public speaker, orator, preacher, laywer or salesman who is lacking in sex energy is a flop as far as being able to influence others is concerned…The salesman who knows how to take his mind off the subject of sex, and direct it in sales effort with as much enthusiasm and determination as he would apply to its original purpose, has acquired the art of sex transmutation, whether he knows it or not….Intemperance in sex habits is just as detrimental as intemperance in habits of drinking and eating…A sex-mad is not essentially different than a dope-mad man! Both have lost control over their their faculties of reason and will-power…When driven by his desire to please a woman based upon the motive of sex alone, a man may steal , cheat and even committ murder. But when the emotion of LOVE is mixed with the emotion of sex, that same sme man will guide his actions with more sanity, balance, and reason…The emotion of love, when mixe dwith the emotion of sex softens, modifies, and beautifies the facial expression. No character analyst is needed to tell you this, you may observe it for yourself.

- Napoleon Hill

MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS Some things that you want to encourage will be quantifiable, and some will not. If you report on the quantitative goals and ignore the qualitative ones, you won’t get the qualitative goals, which may be the most important ones. Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers—it’s strictly for amateurs. At HP, the company wanted high earnings now and in the future. By focusing entirely on the numbers, HP got them now by sacrificing the future. Note that there were many numbers as well as more qualitative goals that would have helped: Was our competitive win rate increasing or declining? Was customer satisfaction rising or falling? What did our own engineers think of the products? By managing the organization as though it were a black box, some divisions at HP optimized the present at the expense of their downstream competitiveness. The company rewarded managers for achieving short-term objectives in a manner that was bad for the company. It would have been better to take into account the white box. The white box goes beyond the numbers and gets into how the organization produced the numbers. It penalizes managers who sacrifice the future for the short term and rewards those who invest in the future even if that investment cannot be easily measured. CLOSING THOUGHT It is easy to see that there are many ways for leaders to be misinterpreted. To get things right, you must recognize that anything you measure automatically creates a set of employee behaviors. Once you determine the result you want, you need to test the description of the result against the employee behaviors that the description will likely create. Otherwise, the side-effect behaviors may be worse than the situation you were trying to fix.

- Ben Horowitz

Most of our wives are planners and meticulous budgeters. In fact, only 18 percent of us disagreed with the statement Charity begins at home. Most of us will tell you that our wives are a lot more conservative with money than we are.

- Thomas J Stanley

Establish a core value that drives the business and helps promote it in perpetuity.

- Ben Horowitz

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

- Winston Churchill

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.

- Bill Gates

The Field of Dreams conceit is especially popular in Silicon Valley, where engineers are biased toward building cool stuff rather than selling it. But customers will not come just because you build it. You have to make that happen, and it’s harder than it looks.

- Peter Thiel

My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.

- Steve Jobs

Many of the truths that we cling to depend on our point of view.

- Yoda

Husbands and wives, have fun with each other. I’m convinced it makes all the difference in the world.

- Zig Ziglar

The IRS! They’re like the Mafia, they can take anything they want!

- Jerry Seinfeld

The entrepreneur builds an enterprise, the technician builds a job.

- Michael Gerber

They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.

- Larry Ellison

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

A person convinced against their will Is of the same opinion still.

- Dale Carnegie

You must capture and keep the heart of the original and supremely able man before his brain can do its best.

- Andrew Carnegie

My two primary areas of focus have been open-space conservation and education, and I expect those to remain my priorities in the future. The Irvine open space and parklands provide serenity and balance to our unique Orange County lifestyle.

- Donald Bren

Tip #17 – Perceived value is what sells. Real value is what repeats.

- Jack Nadel

The Indian community in Canada has integrated much better than the Indian community in United States. They’ve become really Canadian at the same time as keeping all their Indian characters and customs and social groups.

- Azim Premji

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

- Bill Gates

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.

- Napoleon Hill

Nine out of ten businesses fail, so I came up with a foolproof plan — create ten businesses.

- Robert Kiyosaki

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

Proposition 19 already is a winner no matter what happens on election day. The mere fact of its being on the ballot has elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana and marijuana policy in ways I could not have imagined a year ago.

- George Soros

Seeing his education soley in utilitarian terms, he studied hard, but showed no intellectual playfulness.

- Ron Chernow

Stock market bubbles don’t grow out of thin air. They have a solid basis in reality, but reality as distorted by a misconception.

- George Soros

We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.

- Larry Page

New ideas can be gained through reviewing past experience. Inspirations and thoughts may even come from failures in the past. This is because modern and advanced technologies as well as new knowledge are able to make up the shortcomings of and add value to old methods.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Buoyant consumer confidence will continue to underpin retial spending and hence rental growth for shopping centres. The office market is expected to perform well on the back of tight supply being met by keen demand from companies looking for expansion opportunities.

- Lee Shau Kee

I was afraid of the internet… because I couldn’t type.

- Jack Welch

In the game of life, before you get anything out, you must put something in!

- Zig Ziglar

Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.

- Mary Kay Ash

Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice.

- Dale Carnegie

Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.

- Peter Drucker

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.

- Ben Horowitz

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

- Winston Churchill

I get calls from everybody asking if I know of any drivers, anybody they can hire.

- Jack Taylor

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

- John C. Maxwell

My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.

- Jack Ma

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

- Dale Carnegie

Bloodshed, gentlemen, no doubt is lamentable. I have seen some of it–more perhaps than many of those who talk about it with such levity. But there are worse things than bloodshed, even on an extreme scale. . . . The trampling down of law and order which, under the conditions of a civilised state, assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–all this would be worse than bloodshed.

- Winston Churchill

God, I’m ready. I’m taking the limits off of You. I’m enlarging my vision. I may not see a way but I know You have a way. I declare I’m coming into a shift.

- Joel Olsteen

Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without [integrity], you really want them to be dumb and lazy.

- Warren Buffett

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.

- Winston Churchill

There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire. If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain – do something to make more money yourself.

- Gina Rinehart

Good thinkers always prime the pump of ideas. They always look for things to get the thinking process started, because what you put in always impacts what comes out.

- John C. Maxwell

I still get up fairly early around six, but I work out for an hour every morning, I read often while excercising and give myself some private team. I’ll speak with administrative my administrative assistant, Donna Hughes, who is an organizational genus on the way into the office and go through the day, so by the time I get to the office around 8:30 or 9:00 I can hit the ground running…In both my workday and my life, what I try to achieve is balance.

- David Novak

The fallout from the US sub-prime issue, turbulence on global financial markets and the resulting credit tightening, slow-down in the global economies and increasing inflationary pressure all threaten to pose a drag on the economic growth in Hong Kong.

- Lee Shau Kee

I like all kinds of music. I listen to Abigail Washburn, the Punch Brothers, and Marc Johnson, the great clawhammer player. I also listen a lot to Sirius Radio, there’s a lot of bluegrass there.

- Steve Martin

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

- Thomas Edison

I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky

- Oprah Winfrey

I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.

- Jack Ma

Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.

- Tom Landry

On the Internet you get continuous innovation, so every year the streams are a little better.

- Reed Hastings

I vividly remember a conversation I had many years ago in 1974, which marked a turning point in my leadership journey. I was sitting at a Holiday Inn with my friend, Kurt Campmeyer, when he asked me if I had a personal growth plan. I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even know you were supposed to have one.

- John C. Maxwell

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

- Bill Gates

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

- Albert Einstein

Cultural industries will be the next engine for growth after real estate, and Wanda will make cultural industries our long-term focus.

- Wang Jianlin

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

- Og Mandino

No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.

- Harvey Mackay

By my count, more business leaders have failed and derailed because of arrogance than any other character flaw.

- Harvey Mackay

Indeed, the real question is not, Why greatness?” but What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, Why should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough?” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work.

- James C. Collins

I think long term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the U.S. and in Asia.

- Elon Musk

When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Try to build bridges of understanding. Don’t build higher barriers of misunderstanding.

- Dale Carnegie

In 2008, Box had a good way for companies to store their data safely and accessibly in the cloud. But people didn’t know they needed such a thing—cloud computing hadn’t caught on yet. That summer, Blake was hired as Box’s third salesperson to help change that. Starting with small groups of users who had the most acute file sharing problems, Box’s sales reps built relationships with more and more users in each client company. In 2009, Blake sold a small Box account to the Stanford Sleep Clinic, where researchers needed an easy, secure way to store experimental data logs. Today the university offers a Stanford-branded Box account to every one of its students and faculty members, and Stanford Hospital runs on Box. If it had started off by trying to sell the president of the university on an enterprise-wide solution, Box would have sold nothing. A complex sales approach would have made Box a forgotten startup failure; instead, personal sales made it a multibillion-dollar business.

- Peter Thiel

Thinking about what might happen if we ran completely out of money—laying off all the employees that I’d so carefully selected and hired, losing all my investors’ money, jeopardizing all the customers who trusted us with their business—made it difficult to concentrate on the possibilities. Marc Andreessen attempted to cheer me up with a not-so-funny-at-the-time joke: Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.

- Ben Horowitz

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

- Elon Musk

People buy titles, and not contents of books. By merely changing the name of one book that was not moving his sales on that book jumped upward more a million copies. The inside of the book was no changed in any way. He merely ripped off the cover bearing the title that did not sell, and put on new cover with a title that had box-office value.

- Napoleon Hill

The London property market has excellent investment opportunities.

- Wang Jianlin

I don’t think it’s a big deal to show opera glasses to someone searching for binoculars that you somehow infer is a woman. But you don’t want to pop up ads for H.I.V. drugs on someone’s page, because you inferred they have H.I.V., when their boss is standing there looking at their computer

- Sergey Brin

I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.

- Larry Ellison

There’s this myth that has been exacerbated by others that Starbucks means a $4 cup of coffee, which is not true.

- Howard Schultz

On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’

- Michael Bloomberg

I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.

- Og Mandino

It’s not enough to use information for something”—it needs to be immediate and important.

- Timothy Ferriss

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

- Steve Jobs

A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

- Winston Churchill

Litigation is the basic legal right which guarantees every corporation its decade in court.

- David Porter

A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die without publicizing it, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another….

- Thomas Edison

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

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