Notable Quotables

The Silver Spoon, the best-selling Italian cookbook of the last 50 years.

- Timothy Ferriss

A disagreement or incident involving someone who’s not that important to you, like a guy who cut you off in traffic or a rude cashier, is something that should roll off your shoulders. Save the effort for resolving conflicts with the people you cherish.

- Joel Olsteen

The [Henderson] Group possesses substantial recurrent income.

- Lee Shau Kee

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

- Zig Ziglar

If someone’s criticism is completely unfounded on data, then I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.”

- Timothy Ferriss

Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.

- James C. Collins

Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen.

- Winston Churchill

I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.

- Walt Disney

Animation is different from other parts. Its language is the language of caricature, Our most difficult job was to develop the cartoon’s unnatural but seemingly natural anatomy for humans and animals.

- Walt Disney

Too few people in computer science are aware of some of the informational challenges in biology and their implications for the world. We can store an incredible amount of data very cheaply

- Sergey Brin

According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.

- Bill Gates

Real entrepreneurs have what I call the three Ps (and, trust me, none of them stands for ‘permission’). Real entrepreneurs have a ‘passion’ for what they’re doing, a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved, and a ‘purpose’ that drives them forward.

- Michael Dell

The better at communicating you are, and the more people you communicate to, the better your cash flow will be.

- Robert Kiyosaki

‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.

- Bill Gates

Don’t kill competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you – the entrepreneur – on your toes.

- Aliko Dangote

I learned early on that one of the secrets of campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them I would call them by name, but even if I didn’t I would still speak to them.

- Sam Walton

My dad is like a cactus – introverted and tough. I’m a people person, like my mom, but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He’s my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.

- Bill Gates

It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.

- Warren Buffett

For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.

- Elon Musk

In all the difficult decisions that I made through the course of running Loudcloud and Opsware, I never once felt brave. In fact, I often felt scared to death. I never lost those feelings, but after much practice, I learned to ignore them. That learning process might also be called the courage development process.

- Ben Horowitz

Art is a way to express yourself and through that you can escape a bad situation.

- Russell Simmons

Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.

- Zig Ziglar

We just tried to get our shoes on the feet of runners.

- Phil Knight

As long as a person doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, he doesn’t grow.

- John Maxwell

What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.

- Reid Hoffman

My first account was Neiman Marcus. I cold-called them just like I had cold-called businesses when I was selling fax machines for seven years.

- Sara Blakely

Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question.

- Russell Simmons

The greatest business people I’ve met are determined to get it right no matter what the cost.

- Michael Gerber

Any time a company grows as fast as Wal-Mart has, pockets of duplication are going to build up, and there will be areas of the business which we may no longer need. No boss or employee really likes to dwell on such matters; it’s only human nature not to want to have your job, or the jobs of the people who work for you, eliminated. But it is absolutely the responsibility of a company’s top management to be thinking about this issue all the time – to ensure the sound future for the overall company.

- Sam Walton

Be candid with everyone. Candor is the biggest dirty little secret in business?

- Jack Welch

I really good at simplifying things. I think that’s my main strength. Taking something that’s fairly complex down to it’s essence. That’s what I love doing. That’s what I love thinking about.

- Jack Dorsey

Given how few young people actually read the newspaper, it’s a good thing they’ll be reading a newspaper on a screen.

- Bill Gates

The courage take tough yes-or-no decisions. Look, the world is filled with gray. Anyone can look at an issue from every different angle. Some smart people can –and will-analyze those angles indefinitely. But effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information.

- Jack Welch

Hire sales people who are really smart problem solvers, but lack courage, hunger and competitiveness, and your company will go out of business.

- Ben Horowitz

About two-thirds of us work between forty-five and fifty-five hours per week.

- Thomas J Stanley

To do the most good requires saying no to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.

- Peter Drucker

My philosophy is that if I have any money I invest it in new ventures and not have it sitting around.

- Richard Branson

Wal-Mart became Wal-Mart by ordinary people joined together to accomplish extraordinary things.

- Sam Walton

You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.

- Zig Ziglar

I read a lot of obscure books and it is nice to open a book.

- Bill Gates

Obstacles can’t stop you. Problems can’t stop you. Most of all, other people can’t stop you. Only you can stop you.

- J. Gitomer

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

- Richard Branson

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

The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.

- Bill Gates

And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.

- Reid Hoffman

It’s the power of the brand. We’ve never formally advertised.

- Sara Blakely

Young people, when they’re left alone, always want to have compassion, and they always want to give. They always want to help people who are less fortunate.

- Russell Simmons

“High expectations are the key to everything.”

- Sam Walton

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people have their say” so that they could buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.

- James C. Collins

Every setback means you’re one step closer to seeing the dream come to pass.

- Joel Olsteen

People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.

- Peter Thiel

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

Creative leaders inherently know when rules need to be challenged, and they can see when a more flexible approach should be taken.

- John C. Maxwell

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 like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks.

- Steve Martin

Who you attract is not determined by what you want. It’s determined by who you are.

- John Maxwell

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

- Bill Cosby

What we do not see, what most of us never suspect of existing, is the silent but irresistible power which comes to the rescue of those who fight on in the face of discouragement.

- Napoleon Hill

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.

- Winston Churchill

We have to realize that our lives could be gone in a moment. There are no guarantees that we will be here at this time next year. Learn to live each day to the fullest. Don’t complain. Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Be grateful for the opportunity to experience each day.

- Joel Olsteen

Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.

- Jack Welch

I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.

- Steve Martin

About one in five of us is retired. About two-thirds of us who are working are self-employed. Interestingly, self-employed peoplemake up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires.

- Thomas J Stanley

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

- Richard Branson

It is better to act too quickly than it is to wait too long.

- Jack Welch

Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.

- Og Mandino

It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.

- Winston Churchill

The Internet offers opportunities that are more unique than ever before. With TV, I know I’m making 22 minutes; I know there’s a commercial in the middle. With the Internet, no one knows anything. No rules.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.

- Larry Ellison

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

- Jack Taylor

Google’s motto—“Don’t be evil”—is in part a branding ploy, but it’s also characteristic of a kind of business that’s successful enough to take ethics seriously without jeopardizing its own existence.

- Peter Thiel

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

- Walt Disney

Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present, good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future.

- Peter Thiel

Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.

- Elon Musk

In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally.

- Ben Horowitz

The world is changing… I don’t, as a consumer, want advertising that’s not relevant. If we’re going to take a side, let’s take the side of the consumer.

- Charles Ergen

Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation.

- Travis Kalanick

If we’re going to bring out the best in people, we, too, need to sow seeds of encouragement.

- Joel Olsteen

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

- Albert Einstein

Let me remind everyone in this room that we are not changing guidance.

- John Chambers

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