My kids probably started drinking coffee in their late teens.
- Howard Schultz
Notable Quotables
Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards–and living up to them–is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.
- Seth Godin
[On Twitter] We believe that fundamentally we are building a utility.
- Jack Dorsey
Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It’s something you have to learn. It’s a very lonely job.
- Ben Horowitz
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
- Og Mandino
When your head of sales interviews for her next job, she won’t want to say that despite the fact that she ran a global sales force with hundreds of employees, her title was “Dude.”
- Ben Horowitz
Sometimes, we’re so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing.
- Seth Godin
You need to be better not bitter.
- Nate Waters
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
There is nothing in this world that can compare with the Christian fellowship, nothing that can satisfy but Christ.
- John D. Rockefeller
Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.”
- Ben Horowitz
If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.
- Bill Gates
In between personal sales (salespeople obviously required) and traditional advertising (no salespeople required) there is a dead zone.
- Peter Thiel
Anyone would fight for things that matter, true heroes take their personal honor so seriously they will fight for things that don’t matter
- Peter Thiel
Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.
- P.T. Barnum
Vision without execution is just hallucination.
- Thomas Edison
I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.
- Bill Gates
Fascinatingly, as companies begin to struggle, the third category always seems to grow much faster than the first. In addition, the sudden wave of “semi-performance-related attrition” usually happens in companies that claim to have a “super-high talent bar.” How do all these superstar employees suddenly go from great to crap?
- Ben Horowitz
My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven, he got injured on a job. That was a very important point – because of the injury, he couldn’t walk, and the company he was working for did not pay him. There was no compensation. So there was no money and no food.
- Howard Schultz
Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle…
- Napoleon Hill
Your job is not to judge. Your job is not to figure out if someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, to restore the broken, and to heal the hurting.
- Joel Olsteen
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.
- Seth Godin
The information about your project is objective, but your presentation is subjective. When your own subjectivity collides with that of the media, there’s plenty of room for confusion,misinterpretation and disinterest. That is why you must know precisely how to pitch before you make that first phone call or mail a press release.
- Michael Levine
Create a vision and personalize it. People need to say, I understand it, I’m excited about it, and I can make it happen.
- David Novak
I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
- Thomas Edison
There’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives.
- Tony Dungy
Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret.
- George Soros
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
If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.
- Dale Carnegie
When I was in college, I was debating to try my hand at show business, or to become a professor. I just thought of the risk of not going into show business and always wondering if I would’ve had a chance. Because that’s where my real heart was.
- Steve Martin
The team with the best players wins.
- Jack Welch
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You create your own universe as you go along.
- Winston Churchill
I learned this early on in the variety business: You’ve got to give folks responsibility, you’ve got to trust them, and then you’ve got to check on them.
- Sam Walton
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.
- Charles M. Schwab
The investor of today does not profit from yesterday’s growth.
- Warren Buffett
My biggest concern is that America is drifting towards mediocrity and that people don’t recognize – and by people I’m meaning Washington – don’t recognize the sense of urgency and the fact that I don’t think this is a crisis anymore. I think it’s an emergency.
- Howard Schultz
The third way is less common and certainly less of a layup—a culture of integrity, meaning a culture of honesty, transparency, fairness, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. In such cultures, there can be no head fakes or winks. People who break the rules do not leave the company for “personal reasons” or to “spend more time with their families.” They are hanged—publicly—and the reasons are made painfully clear to everyone.
- Jack Welch
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
- Napoleon Hill
Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.
- Napoleon Hill
I’m an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring.
- Bill Gates
The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.
- Seth Godin
Differentiation favors people who are energetic and extroverted and undervalues people who are shy and introverted, even if they are talented.
- Jack Welch
We are stripped bare by the curse of plenty.
- Winston Churchill
The Successful leader must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power and power calls for cooperation.
- Napoleon Hill
In 20 years from now we will all be able to click and watch TV.
- Reed Hastings
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’re always going to get what you’ve always gotten.
- Zig Ziglar
What’s happening is that the two groups assume that the nature of the debate is really a matter of disagreement about their own sides’ core issues. Each side is assuming that people in the other group oppose what they hold most dear to themselves – what’s most important to their side – but in fact their adversaries really don’t oppose them.
- John Chambers
About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.
- Reed Hastings
It is very likely that Hong Kong has reached the end of the tunnel and the bright sunshine is not far from us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them” (Matthew 25:29).
- Peter Thiel
Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
- Dale Carnegie
Ebooks had to happen.
- Jeff Bezos
The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it’s a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art ‘the work.’ It’s possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that’s how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.
- Seth Godin
It took thirty-eight years before 50 million people gained access to radios. It took television thirteen years to earn an audience that size. It took Instagram a year and a half.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A magnificent blueprint, a loyal team and a well-coordinated organization… the same applies from ruling a country to maintaining a family.
- Cheng Yu-tung
And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…(Yoda pinches Luke’s shoulder)…not this crude matter. (a sweeping gesture) You must feel the Force around you. (gesturing) Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!
- Yoda
Eventually, all companies are replaced.
- Bill Gates
Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool.
- Phil Knight
…Treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.
- Seth Godin
I’m surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms.
- Steve Wozniak
You can’t jump to vegan if you’re not. Some people are absolute. Some people are able to be gradual.
- Russell Simmons
I want to sit with 80- and 90-year-old people more than anyone. They have played this game before. Not one of them has told me, ‘I wish I had more money.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Look, the whole world wants to modernize, and when you look to what they mean by modernizing, they mean Americanize. Would a modern Greek prefer to live in Orange County than Piraeus? Yes. Absolutely.
- Rupert Murdoch
Right now, with social networks and other tools on the Internet, all of these 500 million people have a way to say what they’re thinking and have their voice be heard.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Americans move more than 10 times over the course of a lifetime.
- Bill Gates
Note to self: It’s a good idea to ask, “What am I not doing?”
- Ben Horowitz
You don’t ever want to sell, you want customers to sell.
- Clay Clark
Records are made to be broken. It is in man’s nature to continue to strive to do just that.
- Richard Branson
[On a small business class taught at university by Frank Shallenberger] Shallenberger started by defining the type of person who was an entrepreneur, and I realized he was talking to me.
- Phil Knight
The biggest difference is that cults tend to be fanatically wrong about something important. People at a successful startup are fanatically right about something those outside it have missed.
- Peter Thiel
An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.
- Jack Dorsey
In our day Capital, Business Ability, and Manual Labor are the legs of a three-legged stool. While the three legs stand sound and firm, the stool stands; but let any one of the three weaken and break, let it be pulled out or struck out, down goes the stool to the ground. And the stool is of no use until the third leg is restored.
- Andrew Carnegie
Disruptive technology should be framed as a marketing challenge, not a technological one.
- Clayton M. Christensen
Hong Kong is a good fashion city. The interest is enormous. There’s good potential in the Asian market.
- Stefan Persson
The first sign of greatness is when a man does not attempt to look and act great. Before you can call yourself a man at all, Kipling assures us, you must not look too good nor talk too wise.
- Dale Carnegie
The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to ‘managers’ or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders – people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.
- Jack Welch
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The Group sold an attributable HK$3,434.6 million worth of properties in Hong Kong as compared with HK$6,810.9 million for the year before. In light of the then cautious market sentiment, the Group decided to defer the launch of a few new developments…
- Lee Shau Kee
I have never met a geologist or leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change.
- Gina Rinehart
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- Winston Churchill
You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
- Oprah Winfrey
When you are the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you are basically saying, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong.’ That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilaration and the same time an invitation to be attacked.
- Larry Ellison
[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.
- Phil Knight
The Government simply cannot make up their mind or they cannot get the prime minister to make up his mind. So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful for impotency. And so we go on preparing more months more years precious perhaps vital for the greatness of Britain for the locusts to eat. – Speaking in the Address in Reply debate, after giving some specific instances of Germany’s war preparedness.
- Winston Churchill
Superstition of Prejudice.
- Napoleon Hill
The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.
- Bill Gates
I believe that God has put gifts and talents and ability on the inside of every one of us. When you develop that and you believe in yourself and you believe that you’re a person of influence and a person of purpose, I believe you can rise up out of any situation.
- Joel Osteen
Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.
- Peter Drucker
Where you start is not as important as where you finish.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I hate writing about personal stuff. I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don’t use them.
- Elon Musk
There’s this myth that has been exacerbated by others that Starbucks means a $4 cup of coffee, which is not true.
- Howard Schultz
Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
…[if you] use discrimination in the selection of your Master Mind group, your objective will have been half-way reached, even before you begin to recognize it.
- Napoleon Hill
The Italians live well. They have problems, like all countries, but they are well-dressed, the women are pretty.
- Francois Pinault
Only engage in mutually beneficial relationships.
- Clay Clark
If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was ‘satisfactory,’ I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?
- Bill Gates
