In the end, Mockler and the board were proved right, stunningly so. If a shareflipper had accepted the 44 percent price premium offered by Ronald Perelman on October 31, 1986, and then invested the full amount in the general market for ten years, through the end of 1996, he would have come out three times worse off than a shareholder who had stayed with Mockler and Gillette.20 Indeed, the company, its customers, and the shareholders would have been ill served had Mockler capitulated to the raiders, pocketed his millions, and retired to a life of leisure.
- James C. Collins
Notable Quotables
You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.
- Sergey Brin
What material success does is provide you with the ability to concentrate on other things that really matter. And that is being able to make a difference, not only in your own life, but in other people’s lives.
- Oprah Winfrey
Few people are logical. Most of us are prejudiced and biased. Most of us are blighted with preconceived notions, with jealousy, suspicion, fear, envy and pride.
- Dale Carnegie
When we face with a steady eye the difficulties which lie before us, we may derive new confidence from remembering those we have already overcome.
- Winston Churchill
Eventually, all companies are replaced.
- Bill Gates
The responsibility of the leader is to define reality and create hope.
- David Novak
When I was 12 years old, I got interested in learning English.
- Jack Ma
A movement is thrilling. It’s the work of many people, all connected, all seeking something better.
- Seth Godin
Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. That would be you.
- Seth Godin
Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money
- Warren Buffett
There is a certain amount of dissatisfaction that goes with knowing your time, talent and abilities are not being properly used.
- Zig Ziglar
Infrastructure web services had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
I think Les Moonves is the most highly overrated person in television.
- Donald Trump
Positive thinking won’t allow you to do anything, but it will allow you to do everything better than negative thinking will.
- Zig Ziglar
I would say this for Montserrat? one of its credit weaknesses is that it’s in a zone that depends greatly on external savings.
- John Chambers
[On stopping working and focussing 100% on his company Nike] I was still teaching accounting, but the next year, I told Penny [married in 1968] if we sell $300,000 worth of product, I’m going to go full-time. She was pregnant and a little anxious. We hit $290,000. I said, that ‘s close enough.
- Phil Knight
When an entrepreneur has an object in his line of vision, he should dismiss all other considerations from his mind, abandon all other activities, and charge directly at that object, continuing to charge until the object has been secured.
- Paul Johnson
A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
- Warren Buffett
Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.
- Oprah Winfrey
Find something that you enjoy doing
- Jack Nadel
I discourage passive skepticism, which is the armchair variety where people sit back and criticize without ever subjecting their theories or themselves to real field testing.
- Timothy Ferriss
Some people are averse to change, but the advertising model is going to change with or without the Hopper. What we’re saying to the broadcasters is, ‘There’s a way for you not to put your head in the sand.’
- Charles Ergen
I am what I am and, you know, I’m a very lucky guy.
- Michael Bloomberg
One who buys things to write them off for their business whether they need them or not and who borrows massive sums of money to buy frozen yogurt and cupcake franchises that cannot possibly generate enough money to produce a livable wage, much less anything approaching prosperity.
- Clay Clark
Effort is grossly underrated.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I was hooked and I would make reward and recognition one of my primary focuses as a leader
- David Novak
Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night must fall.
- Yoda
It truly levels the playing field and puts all the emphasis on the content. And all the emphasis on the merit of the idea.
- Jack Dorsey
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you’ve got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don’t give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
- Jack Ma
As long as people are clear on what they need to do and what’s going on, you’re very likely to succeed. When nobody is clear, then you’re guaranteed to fail.
- Ben Horowitz
If somebody can do something 80 percent as good as you think you would have done it yourself, then you’ve got to let it go.
- Sara Blakely
MAY 13 Guard Against Pessimism For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. ROMANS 14:17 NLT I HEARD A STORY ABOUT TWO FARMERS. When the rain fell, one farmer said, Thank You, Lord, for watering our crops.” But the other farmer said, Yeah, but if the rain keeps up, it’s going to rot the roots.” When the sun came out, the positive farmer said, Thank You, Lord, that our crops are getting the vitamins and minerals they need. We’ll have a wonderful harvest this year.” But the negative farmer said, Yeah, but if it keeps up, it’s going to scorch those plants. We’re never going to make a living.” Don’t you know people who are always focused on the negative? Be sure to guard against their negative attitudes infecting your thinking! Stay focused on the positive things in life.
- Joel Olsteen
I am a man who has always needed heros.
- Phil Knight
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
- Winston Churchill
You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.
- Russell Simmons
Sometimes, “never let them see you sweat,” is truly bad advice. The work of an individual who cares often exposes the grit and determination and effort that it takes to be present.Perfecting your talk, refining your essay and polishing your service until all elements of you disappear might be obvious tactics, but they remove the thing we were looking for: you.
- Seth Godin
Too often, sales reps simply regurgitate their presentations and expect to land the sale. It doesn’t work.
- Harvey Mackay
The mission announces exactly where you are going, and the values describe the behaviors that will get you there.
- Jack Welch
Passion isn’t project-specific. It’s people-specific.
- Seth Godin
Time can be an ally or an enemy. What it becomes depends entirely upon you, your goals, and your determination to use every available minute.
- Zig Ziglar
In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.
- Lee Shau Kee
I had a terrible time hiring rich people. It sounds funny, but the problem is when things go wrong they can ask, ‘Why am I doing this?’ You don’t ever want anybody asking that question. You want them to say, ‘I know why I’m doing it, I need the money, let’s go’ or whatever it is that draws them.
- Ben Horowitz
Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
- Winston Churchill
When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
- Ben Horowitz
We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
- Jeff Bezos
The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work if you won’t.
- Zig Ziglar
I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.
- Winston Churchill
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
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
EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things, you’re an artist.
- Seth Godin
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
- Winston Churchill
Levi Strauss headed for the gold fields of California to strike it rich in mining. However, he was not a good miner, so he instead began sewing pants out of canvas for the miners who were successful. Today I think most of the world has heard of Levi’s pants.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Mr. Morgan buys his partners. I grow my own.
- Andrew Carnegie
Hong Kong has, throughout it’s history, experienced periods of uncertainties… I believe that the virtues of Hong Kong people – diligent, flexible and entrepreneurial – will once again overcome the obstacles before us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a might oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.
- Og Mandino
A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.
- Henry Ford
Today the financial market is no good, but the money is there.
- Jack Ma
Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.
- Bill Gates
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.
- James C. Collins
Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire.
- Dale Carnegie
It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem – which only restores the equilibrium of yesterday.
- Peter Drucker
Improvement is to invent something completely new.
- Peter Thiel
No leader enjoys making the tough decision. We constantly faced severe resistence from even the best people in our organization. I’ve struggled with this problem myself and have often been guilty of not being rigorous enough. Every impulse is to look the other way.
- Jack Welch
Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
- Steve Ballmer
Henceforth, I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a mighty oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today. I will be likened to the raindrop, which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth; the slave who builds a pyramid. I will build my castle one brick at a time for I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking. I will persist until I succeed.
- Og Mandino
President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.
- George Soros
In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.
- Ray Dalio
You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for.
- Napoleon Hill
There are two synergistic approaches for increasing productivity that are inversions of each other: 1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20). 2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law). The best solution is to use both together: Identify the few critical tasks that contribute most to income and schedule them with very short and clear deadlines.
- Timothy Ferriss
Mike suggested that we might want to turn our stockholders’ meetings into an event, and we went along with him.
- Sam Walton
People that call old leads, drive old cars.
- Jason Bailey
Obama does not like the issue of where he was born.
- Donald Trump
I do think this next century, hopefully, will be about a more global view. Where you don’t just think, yes my country is doing well, but you think about the world at large.
- Bill Gates
Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.
- Peter Thiel
Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.
- Zig Ziglar
Freely chosen, discipline is absolute freedom.
- James C. Collins
He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
- Winston Churchill
I used to have this debate with Steve Jobs, and he would always say, ‘You guys are doing too much stuff.’ He did a good job of doing one or two things really well. We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.
- Larry Page
I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.
- John D. Rockefeller
I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.
- Bill Gates
Leaders don’t rise to the pinnacle of success without developing the right set of attitudes and habits, they make every day a masterpiece.
- John C. Maxwell
I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’ve always wanted to be a businessman. No other ambitions, I just wanted to be in business, even when I was a child in Fujian province, south China.
- Henry Sy
Respect your parents. What they tell you is true. Hard work, dedication and faith will get you anything. Imagination will drive itself. You can get anything you want, but you have to have faith behind all your ideas. Stick to your goals and have an undying faith.
- Russell Simmons
If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you’re going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to ‘be different’.
- Larry Ellison
With an export-driven economy, Hong Kong is unavoidably affected by any hiccup in the outside world.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Part of being a winner is knowing when enough is enough. Sometimes you have to give up the fight and walk away, and move on to something that’s more productive.
- Donald Trump
From a global CEO and government leader perspective, we remain in a `show- me’ economy.
- John Chambers
Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws, so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.
- George Soros
It’s Never Over ’till it’s over! Never Give Up! Never.
- Winston Churchill
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald’s the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had, they didn’t want to be bothered with more risks and more demands.
- Ray Kroc
The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. … The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?
- Larry Ellison
Steve Jobs didn’t really set the direction of my Apple I and Apple II designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would change the world. I don’t deny that.
- Steve Wozniak
Good advertising should give the reader essential facts about the product or company advertised and should do so engagingly without trickery or hogwash.
- Leo Burnett
I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take.
- Sergey Brin
Google’s search algorithms, for example, return results better than anyone else’s. Proprietary technologies for extremely short page load times and highly accurate query autocompletion add to the core search product’s robustness and defensibility.
- Peter Thiel
