The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.
- Timothy Ferriss
Notable Quotables
This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
- James C. Collins
You have in the U.S. around two million new diagnoses of cancer a year, and 13 million survivors, so you have about 10,000 patients that require analysis every day. That’s about five petabytes that need to be transmitted and computed on a daily basis.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty.
- Timothy Ferriss
We have an average household net worth of $3.7 million. Of course, some of our cohorts have accumulated much more. Nearly 6 percent have a net worth of over $10 million. Again, these people skew our average upward. The typical (median, or 50th percentile) millionaire household has a net worth of $1.6 million.
- Thomas J Stanley
The first thing to recognize is that no startup has time to do optional things.
- Ben Horowitz
Whatever your views on thermodynamics, it’s a powerful metaphor: in business, equilibrium means stasis, and stasis means death.
- Peter Thiel
Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
Remember, a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Luke… Luke… do not… do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor or suffer your father’s fate you will. Luke, when gone am I… the last of the Jedi will you be. Luke, the Force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned, Luke. There is… another… Sky… walker.
- Yoda
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
- Henry Ford
When I used to play sports, I’d be the one cheering the team on, ‘Come on, we can beat these guys!’ That’s just in me.
- Joel Olsteen
Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we’ve had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you’re really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.
- Steve Ballmer
Surround yourself with the right people
- Tony Hsieh
There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.
- Elon Musk
I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America.
- Sam Walton
The word ‘Spanx’ was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.
- Sara Blakely
This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
- Bill Gates
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
- Henry Ford
Cupcakes The first time you bake cupcakes, you will certainly follow the recipe with rigor. The third time, you might improvise and screw up. Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can. At this point, by the fifth time, some people actually learn to bake. They improvise successfully. They understand the science and the outcomes. They develop a kind of gracefulness in the kitchen. Others merely plod along. They’re cooks, not chefs. A cook follows a recipe. A chef invents one. We have too many cooks. The world is begging for chefs.
- Seth Godin
Even when change is elective, it will disorient you. You may go through anxiety. You will miss aspects of your former life. It doesn’t matter. The trick is to know in advance of making any big change that you’re going to be thrown off your feet by it. So you prepare for this inevitable disorientation and steady yourself to get through it. Then you take the challenge, make the change, and achieve your dream.
- Harvey Mackay
Quit worrying about how everything is going to turn out. Live one day at a time; better yet, make the most of this moment. It’s good to have a big – picture outlook, to set goals, to establish budgets and make plans, but if you’re always living in the future, you’re never really enjoying the present in the way God wants you to.
- Joel Olsteen
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
- Peter Drucker
I’m just saying that if you understand how the economic machine works, it just works like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships.
- Ray Dalio
I’m a huge believer in clarity.
- Ben Horowitz
We have a very wide range of content, but the brand-newest movies, what’s happening with those is a $30 pay-per-view option – not from Netflix but from DirecTV and others – of movies that are in the theater.
- Reed Hastings
To succeed in business, you must build a brand and never destroy it.
- Aliko Dangote
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
- Timothy Ferriss
You have everything to gain and nothing to lose by trying. Success is achieved and maintained by those who keep trying with a positive mental attitude.
- Napoleon Hill
The typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.
- Michael Gerber
Time well spent results in more money to spend, more money to save, and more time to vacation.
- Zig Ziglar
The minute there’s a map, there is no art. Paint by numbers is not art. Paint by numbers is a mechanical activity.
- Seth Godin
BLAMING IDIOTS FOR interruptions is like blaming clowns for scaring children—they can’t help it. It’s their nature. Then again, I had (who am I kidding—and have), on occasion, been known to create interruptions out of thin air. If you’re anything like me, that makes us both occasional idiots. Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse. This is infinitely easier when you have a set of rules, responses, and routines to follow.
- Timothy Ferriss
The reason the social-networking phenomenon is something that I invested in early and massively – I led the Series A financing for Friendster; I founded a company called Socialnet in 1997; I founded LinkedIn; and I was part of the first round of financing in Facebook – it sounds trivial, but people matter.
- Reid Hoffman
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You’ve got to listen to what God’s telling you and not to what other people may tell you. People will try to talk you out of the dream in your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Today is life – the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.
- Dale Carnegie
Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.
- Peter Drucker
If African farmers can use improved seeds and better practices to grow more crops and get them to market, then millions of families can earn themselves a better living and a better life.
- Bill Gates
It is true that integrity alone won’t make you a leader, but without integrity you will never be one.
- Zig Ziglar
Bordeaux would be naive not to recognize that Robert Parker was driving the brand equity. If the next generation doesn’t care about Chateau Pichon-Lalande, then you have a problem.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
You have to act and act now.
- Larry Ellison
Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.
- Zig Ziglar
To me, the idea and expectation that the day is slowly and surely coming when we will be able to honestly say we are our brother’s keeper and not his oppressor is very beautiful .
- Thomas Edison
Spare the conquered and confront the proud.
- Winston Churchill
innovation without discipline leads to disaster.
- James C. Collins
The torch relay is an excellent embodiment of all that the Olympic Games have come to symbolise – a celebration of the human spirit. Personally to me, it represents striving to be the best in whatever we do, never giving up despite the odds, and a commitment to health and fitness.
- Lakshmi Mittal
By the end of the war (the civil war) John D. Rockefeller had established the foundations of his personal and professional life and was set to capitalize on the extraordinary opportunities beckoning him in postwar America. From this point forward, there would be no zigzags, or squandered energy, only a single-minded focus on objectives that would make him both the wonder and terror of American business.
- Ron Chernow
[On Twitter and Japan] We’ve had massive success in Japan… In Japan, it’s not 140 characters, it’s 140 words. So you could write a little mini-novel. This is a whole story in the universe.
- Jack Dorsey
Some conflicts are simply territorial. For instance, I’ve rarely met a marketing person who wanted to raise prices and I’ve rarely met a finance person who wanted to lower prices.
- David Novak
When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.
- Bill Gates
I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.
- Oprah Winfrey
A waitress goes up to Winston Churchill and says, ‘Sir, your drunk.’ To which he replies, ‘I may be drunk, miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.
- Winston Churchill
If you’re going to be thinking, you may as well think big.
- Donald Trump
Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.
- Bill Gates
The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people. Bringing the right people on board saves you thousands, and your business will run smoothly and efficiently.
- Brian Tracy
Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
- Peter Thiel
You can make an internet company with 10 people and it can have billions of users. It doesn’t take much capital and it makes a lot of money — a really, really lot of money — so it’s natural for everyone to focus on those kinds of things.
- Larry Page
I like the idea of putting your Christmas wish list up and letting people share it.
- Bill Gates
People are the key to success or extraordinary success.
- Azim Premji
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
If something is expensive to develop, and somebody’s not going to get paid, it won’t get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?
- Bill Gates
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
- Peter Drucker
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
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
- Winston Churchill
I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
We are approaching a new age of synthesis. Knowledge cannot be merely a degree or a skill… it demands a broader vision, capabilities in critical thinking and logical deduction without which we cannot have constructive progress.
- Li Ka-shing
Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.
- Bill Gates
It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.
- Peter Thiel
Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?
- Ray Kroc
Good talkers often choose to become sales professionals. Unfortunately, they don’t understand that selling well means listening well.
- Jerry Vass
Being able to see an activity log of where a kid has been going on the Internet is a good thing.
- Bill Gates
A penguin cannot become a giraffe, so just be the best penguin you can be.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results.
- Seth Godin
Security has to happen at the infrastructure.
- John Chambers
Potential means that you haven’t done it yet.
- David Novak
I’m a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.
- Carl Icahn
Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.
- Henry Ford
I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.
- Bill Gates
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.’ That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So, naturally, we are glad to see them.
- Dale Carnegie
There are two types of people in the world. One type is known as leaders and the other as followers. Decide at the outset whether you intend to become a leader in your chose calling or remain a follower. The difference in compensation is vast. The follwer cannot reasonably expect the compensation to which a leader is entitled, although many followers make the mistake of expecting such pay.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s [the internet] like the flu – it just spreads like crazy.
- Jack Welch
People have come to me over the years and said to me: ‘I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?’ I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
- Howard Schultz
You may be at a crossroads in your life. You may have issues to deal with; people you need to forgive. You can go one of the two ways. You can ignore what you now know to be true and keep burying that bitterness in your life, pushing it deeper and allowing it to poison and contaminate you and those around you. Or you can make a much better choice by getting it out in the open and asking God to help you to totally forgive and let it all go.
- Joel Olsteen
Consensus decisions about executives almost always sway the process away from strength and toward lack of weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
No one drifts to success.
- Napoleon Hill
I’m often asked how I define success. It’s an overused term, but I fundamentally view this elusive beast as a combination of two things – achievement and appreciation. One isn’t enough: Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.
- Timothy Ferriss
This shows you are never too old to get surprised.
- Jack Welch
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
My education was interrupted only by my schooling.
- Winston Churchill
China is investing in factories in Eastern Europe, not because their labor costs are lower, but because they want to be closer to their markets.
- Michael Bloomberg
You are responsible for your life. If you’re sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time. Only you have the power to move your life forward.
- Oprah Winfrey
People can be really smart or have skills that are directly applicable, but if they don’t really believe in it, then they are not going to really work hard.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Use what you have to get what you want.
- Jack Nadel
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
I will study and prepare myself, and someday the opportunity will come.
- Abraham Lincoln
Once you start doing only what you’ve already proven you can do, you’re on the road to death.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.
- Howard Schultz
Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
- Colin Powell
Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn’t an artist, he was a plumber.
- Seth Godin
