Notable Quotables

It was definitely kind of surprising to see us come out and run the ball because we usually like to pass to start the game and put up some quick points. But tonight, we had real good balance offensively. We ran and passed the ball well, which kept them off balance all night.

- Jack Taylor

My dad encouraged us to fail. Growing up, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn’t have something, he would be disappointed. It changed my mindset at an early age that failure is not the outcome, failure is not trying. Don’t be afraid to fail.

- Sara Blakely

American running shoes were still made by offshoots of the tire companies, cheap and terrible. They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters…

- Phil Knight

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

- Joel Olsteen

If you’re not seeing God move in your life right now, one of two possibilities must be considered. Either your requests are not God’s best and will probably not be answered the way you’d like or it must not be the right time. If God were to answer that prayer the way you are hoping, it could interfere with his ideal plan for you.

- Joel Olsteen

If that doesn’t seem dominant enough, consider the fact that the word “google” is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary—as a verb.

- Peter Thiel

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

- Walt Disney

It’s a mystery to me the way that contemporary art galleries function.

- Steve Martin

They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

- Aldous Huxley

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

- Bill Gates

The fight against AIDS in China is already well underway. The Chinese government and other funders are providing major support, and they’ll continue to bear primary responsibility for delivering prevention and treatment.

- Bill Gates

No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.

- Winston Churchill

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.

- Zig Ziglar

Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.

- Zig Ziglar

The most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest.

- Bill Gates

We won’t change at all, … We feel consolidation will continue. We’re seeing more and more movement to fewer networking vendors.

- John Chambers

Everybody was writing about computers and electronics, but all I really knew about was running. It’s what I’ve chosen to do with my life.

- Phil Knight

If you really believe that you’re making a difference and that you can leave a legacy of better schools and jobs and safer streets, why would you not spend the money? The objective is to improve the schools, bring down crime, build affordable housing, clean the streets – not to have a fair fight.

- Michael Bloomberg

Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurt his sense of importance and arouses resentment.

- Dale Carnegie

Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.

- Timothy Ferriss

If you go out looking for friends, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.

- Zig Ziglar

Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.

- Bill Gates

Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?

- Winston Churchill

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.

- Ben Horowitz

In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.

- Bill Gates

The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated.

- Jeff Bezos

Science investigates religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power religion gives man wisdom which is control.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I have always respected education, which is why I actually went back secretly and taught school for eight years.

- Steve Wozniak

Tweeting is really only good for one thing – it’s just good for tweeting… It is rewarding, because it’s just its own reward. It’s sort of like heaven.

- Steve Martin

For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.

- Jeff Bezos

A plan is always successful if the plan is good.

- Zig Ziglar

If you’ve found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.

- Bill Gates

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn’t want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

- Bill Gates

You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it

- Peter Thiel

A corporation’s primary goal is to make money. Government’s primary role is to take a big chunk of that money and give it to others.

- Larry Ellison

The interview process takes twelve to fifteen hoursof your team’s time. This process is expensive for your team, so you should vet people in advance. A technique I use is to email the references and say, Rate this person one to ten. No one’s going to reply a five or a three by email; that means they hate the candidate. Call me is usually the response for a sub-seven rating. At the same time, nobody is going to reply with a ten. What you’re really looking for is a bunch of eights and nines. This is an exceptionally quick referencing system when you’re trying to triage a list.

- Reid Hoffman

What kind of people do they think we are? Is it possible they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?

- Winston Churchill

Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.

- Seth Godin

David Novak CEO of YUM Brands (on crisis management)

- David Novak

I really believed that I said then, and I still do. But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop. The way I approached managing the business, I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision – usually flying around to take a look at our stores on a regular basis. But from the very beginning, even on my paper routes in college, I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage the stores. That’s been the case since back in Newport….We’re big now. We’re really big. That’s not something I like to focus on. I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not necessarily the biggest…(being big poses opportunities), but being big also poses big dangers. It has ruined many a fine company – including some giant retailers – who started out strong and got bloated or out of touch or were slow to react to the needs of their customers. Here’s the point: the biggest Wal-Mart gets, the more essential it is that we think small. Because that is exactly how we have become a big corporation.

- Sam Walton

The problems forced us to take a hard look at what we were doing, what was going wrong, what we were good at, and where we wanted to go.

- Phil Knight

There are many different kinds of PCs. You have fixed, virtual, tablets, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops, workstations. What you find in commercial PCs, business PCs, is that there’s a really long tail of usage on client devices.

- Michael Dell

The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more things you’ll have to express gratitude for.

- Zig Ziglar

It’s obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.

- Elon Musk

When you walk in God’s favor, His blessings will chase you down and overtake you.

- Joel Olsteen

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family that would have killed for each other – and we still are. x

- Richard Branson

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

- Napoleon Hill

You don’t build a business –you build people– and then people build the business.

- Zig Ziglar

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.

- Dale Carnegie

Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.

- Peter Thiel

Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.

- Dale Carnegie

A great business is seldom if ever built up, except on lines of the strictest integrity. A reputation for cuteness and sharp dealing is fatal in great affairs. Not the letter of the law, but the spirit, must be the rule. The standard of commercial morality is now very high. A mistake made by any one in favor of the firm is corrected as promptly as if the error were in favor of the other party. It is essential to permanent success that a house should obtain a reputation for being governed by what is fair rather that what is merely legal. A rule which is adpoted and adhered to has given greater returns than one would believe possible, namely; always give the other party the benefit of the doubt. This course does not apply to the speculative class (the stock market). An entirely different atmosphere pervades that world. Men are only gamblers there. Stock gambling and honorable business are incompatible. In recent years it must be admitted that the old fashioned banker, like Julius S. Morgan of London has become rare.

- Andrew Carnegie

God, I’m not going to look at what I don’t have. I’m looking unto you. I know in my weakness, you show up the strongest.

- Joel Olsteen

Nobody wanted to believe Jack Ma.

- Jack Ma

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.

- Winston Churchill

I love comedy. That’s what got me into the arts. I don’t even know how to categorize myself anymore.

- Steve Martin

We have tried to define precisely what it means to be a force for good – always do the right, ethical thing. Ultimately, ‘Don’t be evil’ seems the easiest way to summarize it.

- Sergey Brin

You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.

- Zig Ziglar

Much to learn you still have…my old padawan… This is just the beginning!

- Yoda

A first-generation fortune is the most likely to be given away, but once a fortune is inherited it’s less likely that a very high percentage will go back to society.

- Bill Gates

My big advantage was to have my father accept me as first-generation.

- Mukesh Ambani

You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

- Zig Ziglar

Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.

- Ben Horowitz

KNOWLEDGE will not attract money, unless it is organized, and intelligently directed, through practical PLANS OF ACTION, to the DEFINITE END of ac- cumulation of money. Lack of understanding of this fact has been the source of confusion to millions of people who falsely believe that knowledge is power. It is nothing of the sort! Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.

- Napoleon Hill

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

Facing a market which awaited exploration and development, the Group decided to become a pioneer in its economic reform by taking up the responsibility to engage in the development of the Mainland.

- Cheng Yu-tung

It’s disappointing, but it’s still a really good book. I’m glad Kenny did it, and I’m glad it’s going to get out. … I still endorse the book. I think everybody should buy it. I think he did a great job on a very complicated topic.

- Phil Knight

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

- Seth Godin

Don’t be intimidated as you design your pitch. The fact is that nobody will come to you at first. You must be the aggressor, or you will not be heard.

- Michael Levine

I very much believe that creating a sense of fun and keeping up everyone’s energy level is part of my job description. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands

- David Novak

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.

- Peter Drucker

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

- Rosalynn Carter

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.

- Elon Musk

The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.

- Seth Godin

The culture was strong enough to transcend the original company.

- Peter Thiel

But no parties could live under such labels as Petitioners and Abhorrers. Instead of naming themselves they named each other. The term “Whig” had described a sour, bigoted, canting, money-grubbing Scots Presbyterian. Irish Papist bandits ravaging estates and manor-houses had been called “Tories”.

- Winston Churchill

I wish there were a hundred services with which I could easily look at such a book; it would have saved me a lot of time, and it would have spared Google a tremendous amount of effort.

- Sergey Brin

Don’t do the natural thing, the impulsive thing. That is usually wrong.

- Dale Carnegie

There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization, and then there are people who are very analytic or focused on strategy. Those two types don’t usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.

- Mark Zuckerberg

I like the book. Do you have a problem with that? … I just think it’s a great story of somebody who stood up for what they believe in.

- Travis Kalanick

Courage is on display every day, and only the courageous wring the most out of life.

- Zig Ziglar

There is one thing I would break up over, and that is if she caught me with another woman. I won’t stand for that.

- Steve Martin

I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.

- Richard Branson

Like it or not, life is a series of competitions. You may be competing for a grade, a spot on a team, a job, or the largest account in town. The higher your self-esteem is, the better you get along with yourself, with others, and the more you’ll accomplish.

- Harvey Mackay

If you always think about your dreams or goals, work steadfastly towards them and continue to challenge yourself, you will definitely be able to realise those dreams or goals.

- Tadashi Yanai

Of course I needed somebody to run my new store, and I didn’t have much money, so I did something that I would do for the rest of my run in the retail business without any shame or embarrassment whatsoever: nose around other people’s stores searching for good talent. That’s when I made my first real hire, the first manager, Willard Walker.

- Sam Walton

Would you believe that in 2011 and 2012, Nigeria paid $30 billion in subsidy, money which would have been used to build at least 20 refineries?

- Aliko Dangote

They don’t understand that Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.

- Seth Godin

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