I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.
- Thomas Edison
Notable Quotables
There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.
- Dale Carnegie
Getting over the war was biggest adversity I have ever faced.
- Jack Nadel
When you acknowledge God, He will go before you and make the crooked places straight.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m not a macroeconomics person.
- Bill Gates
On Facebook, the definition of great content is not the content that makes the most sales, but the content that people most want to share with others.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
There is no right or wrong way of giving. People in Los Angeles have made major contributions in different ways to the city: Eli Broad to art. David Geffen to hospitals. I’m not judgmental.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
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
Every company starts only once.
- Peter Thiel
Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.
- Seth Godin
I really don’t think in the past. I sit down with many friends at dinner, and they like to talk about the good old days. I’m respectful of the good old days, but I find myself spending very little time reminiscing. I’m really looking forward.
- Donald Bren
Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.
- Dave Barry
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.
- Joel Olsteen
We are the most powerful nation on earth. No external power, no terrorist organization, can defeat us. But we can defeat ourselves by getting caught in a quagmire.
- George Soros
For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.
- James C. Collins
It’s true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime.
- John C. Maxwell
The only thing I understand deeply, because in my teens I was thinking about it, and every year of my life, is software. So I’ll never be hands-on on anything except software.
- Bill Gates
You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate.
- Harvey Mackay
Going the extra mile is the action of rendering more and better service than that for which you are presently paid. When you go the extra mile, the Law of Compensation comes into play.
- Napoleon Hill
Write like you talk. Often.
- Seth Godin
Too many companies think they want to do a video blog to sell merchandise, but if you turn your site into QVC, you lose. I have an audience that trusts me. It’s about building a global brand – not selling four more bottles of Pinot Grigio.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We obviously are getting to be one of the largest players in the industry, so it’s hard to grow faster than that number, … But we’re very, very pleased with the last quarter results of 53 percent year-over-year. That’s on the upside, so I wouldn’t get too optimistic when it goes above 50 percent, just like we encouraged people two years ago, when it went below 30 percent growth for us, not to get too pessimistic.
- John Chambers
It’s only lonely at the top if you forget all the people you met along the way and fail to acknowledge their contributions to your success.
- Harvey Mackay
Every dream I’ve ever had in life has come true ten times over.
- Steve Wozniak
Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
- Confucius
Excellence isn’t achieved without inspiration and perspiration. You’ve got to have both.
- George Foreman
Only engage in mutually beneficial relationships.
- Clay Clark
Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!
- Yoda
Men want to make women happy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.
- Ben Horowitz
Apart from consolidating our position as a major property developer in Hong Kong, we have also been diversifying into other activities such as hotel businesses, construction and engineering, container terminal services and television industry…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Much like us, our customers are rigorously working to improve their profitability and capacity for innovation. For us, this means doing everything possible when it comes to efficiency, effectiveness, and innovations – and all that on the basis of the highest quality. After all, quality creates trust – and trust creates orders. In short, we need to constantly become better and better at the high level we are already operating at.
- Elmar Degenhart
Lack of A Well Defined Power of Decision.
- Napoleon Hill
The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
- Timothy Ferriss
The most valuable companies in the future won’t ask what problems can be solved with computers alone. Instead, they’ll ask: how can computers help humans solve hard problems?
- Peter Thiel
Everybody understands the market in this area is consolidating.
- John Chambers
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
- Andrew Carnegie
I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I’m working at it.
- Steve Martin
Globally, business and government leaders are beginning to dramatically transform their traditional business models into Internet economy business models, … Customers are increasingly seeking Cisco’s expertise to help them through this transformation.
- John Chambers
I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.
- Joel Olsteen
The flexibility of Hong Kong businessmen should soon twist a way to success again.
- Cheng Yu-tung
One of the jobs of a manager is to instill confidence, pump confidence into your people. And when you’ve got somebody who’s raring to go and you can smell it and feel it, give ’em that shot.
- Jack Welch
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
Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.
- John D. Rockefeller
What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate.
- Donald Trump
Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it’s the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers. And once they arrive at Goldman, they find that even inside finance, everything is indefinite. It’s still optimistic—you wouldn’t play in the markets if you expected to lose—but the fundamental tenet is that the market is random; you can’t know anything specific or substantive; diversification becomes supremely important.
- Peter Thiel
Leadership isn’t something that people hand to you. … [i]t’s a gradual process, one where you take responsibility years before you are given authority. And that’s something we can teach.
- Seth Godin
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exup
Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.
- Winston Churchill
Great investments may look crazy but really may not be.
- Peter Thiel
The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
- Winston Churchill
Productivity is grounded in the PC. Where does the computing power come from? How would you run ‘USA Today’ without PCs? Run a hospital without PCs? People don’t want products, they want solutions.
- Michael Dell
Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.
- Napoleon Hill
Being a good company is an end in itself.
- Ben Horowitz
Too often we judge people based on our own backgrounds and experiences, but when you understand people’s stories, it’s easier to understand their demeanor.
- Joel Olsteen
I’ve taken those pharmacists and asked them to reach out to doctors. Doctors still misprescribe very often. They leave gaps with care. People with asthma, they don’t take their inhalers, they wait until they’re sick, and by then, it’s too late. Now we’re already running up the bills and going to emergency rooms. We’re using our pharmacist to do the things they were educated to do, not to count pills. That’s not where the value is.
- George Paz
Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.
- Bill Gates
Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.
- Bill Gates
The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves.
- Peter Drucker
One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.
- Seth Godin
Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that’s really powerful.
- Reid Hoffman
Get closer than ever to your customers. So close, in fact, that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.
- Steve Jobs
We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it.
- Winston Churchill
Do more than you are being paid to do, and you’ll eventually be paid more for what you do.
- Zig Ziglar
Globalization has made copper and other minerals more valuable, and Ghana and Kenya have recently discovered mineral resources.
- Bill Gates
In taking Dell private, we plan to go back to our roots, focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dell one of the fastest-growing and most successful companies in history.
- Michael Dell
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
- Warren Buffett
Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked.
- Steve Wozniak
How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.
- Seth Godin
Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is made by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
- George Soros
On scores of occassions, when I have faced emergencies, some of them so grave that my life was in jeopardy, I have been miraculously guided past these difficulties through the influence of my Invisible Counselors. My original purpose in conducting Council meetings with imaginary beings, was soley that of impressing my own subconscious mind, through the principle of auto-suggestion, with certain characteristcs which I desired to acquire. In more recent years, my experimentation has taken on a different trend. I now go to my imaginary counselors with every difficult problem which confronts me and my clients. The results are often astonishing, although I do not depend entirerely on this form of counsel.
- Napoleon Hill
Too often, we have tended to fall into a trap of creating plain hamburgers.
- Tadashi Yanai
A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.
- Peter Thiel
Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.
- Henry Ford
Still round the corner there may wait A new road or a secret gate, And though we pass them by today, Tomorrow we may come this way And take the hidden paths that run Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
- Peter Thiel
Set your target and keep trying until you reach it.
- Napoleon Hill
Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.
- Bill Gates
No hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t consider myself enigmatic, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.
- Phil Knight
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 space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn’t even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we’d never have had the light bulb.
- Elon Musk
Treat your life like a game.
- Ray Dalio
You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
- Sam Walton
I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s different when you’re trying to turn something around, especially something that you built, at a time when so many constituents – the media, Wall Street, competitors, ex-employees – are all saying that Starbucks’s best days are behind it, and that Schultz is never going to be able to bring it back.
- Howard Schultz
It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.
- Thomas Edison
The jet stream is a very strong force and pushing a balloon into it is like pushing up against a brick wall, but once we got into it, we found that, remarkably, the balloon went whatever speed the wind went.
- Richard Branson
My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.
- Joel Olsteen
We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
- Bill Gates
Riches does not mean money. You can never have enough money. By following the principles of God he will provide you with what you need materially and internal committment.
- Ben Meinhardt
I feel good about being able to take bluegrass on to television like ‘Letterman’ and ‘The View,’ and I’ve heard nice things about being able to do that. I really haven’t felt any negativity toward me or my music.
- Steve Martin
Those whose work and pleasure are one… are… Fortune’s favoured children.
- Winston Churchill
I had learned that for any big idea you had to sell, sell, sell to move the needle at all.
- Jack Welch
The more we share what’s happening around us, the more we understand how someone lives their life. The greater the understanding we have, the more empathy we have for each other. By and large, that reduces conflicts.
- Jack Dorsey
There will be no government that will be against business, so you can go ahead and invest.
- Aliko Dangote
What destroys more self-confidence than any other educational thing in America is being assigned to some remedial math when you get into some college, and then it’s not taught very well and you end up with this sense of, ‘Hey, I can’t really figure those things out.’
- Bill Gates
I’m optimistic about the country. I’m optimistic about the American people.
- Howard Schultz
I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.
- Warren Buffett
I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
