Notable Quotables

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

- Winston Churchill

Life’s a journey. It’s a journey about discovering limits.

- Larry Ellison

I am not interested in power for power’s sake, but I’m interested in power that is moral, that is right and that is good.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

I know I could be the host of ‘SportsCenter’ in two years if I changed my show today to sports.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

The real benefit of having goals is what you become by reaching them.

- Zig Ziglar

I’m an HBO subscriber, and I watch a bunch of great shows on HBO.

- Reed Hastings

Younglings, younglings gather ’round.

- Yoda

An extreme representative of this view is Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was a child prodigy who enrolled at Harvard at 16. He went on to get a PhD in math and become a professor at UC Berkeley. But you’ve only ever heard of him because of the 17-year terror campaign he waged with pipe bombs against professors, technologists, and businesspeople. In late 1995, the authorities didn’t know who or where the Unabomber was. The biggest clue was a 35,000-word manifesto that Kaczynski had written and anonymously mailed to the press. The FBI asked some prominent newspapers to publish it, hoping for a break in the case. It worked: Kaczynski’s brother recognized his writing style and turned him in. You might expect that writing style to have shown obvious signs of insanity, but the manifesto is eerily cogent. Kaczynski claimed that in order to be happy, every individual “needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.” He divided human goals into three groups: 1. Goals that can be satisfied with minimal effort; 2. Goals that can be satisfied with serious effort; and 3. Goals that cannot be satisfied, no matter how much effort one makes. This is the classic trichotomy of the easy, the hard, and the impossible. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done. So Kaczynski’s idea was to destroy existing institutions, get rid of all technology, and let people start over and work on hard problems anew. Kaczynski’s methods were crazy, but his loss of faith in the technological frontier is all around us. Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.

- Peter Thiel

The idea that everyone should slavishly work so they do something inefficiently so they keep their job – that just doesn’t make any sense to me. That can’t be the right answer.

- Larry Page

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.

- Winston Churchill

People define Christianity differently. I think a large portion of our population are Christians, they’re not all growing in their faith, they’re not all active, but I believe that a lot of people believe in Jesus and believe that he is their Lord and Savior.

- Joel Olsteen

The “non-profit” institution neither supplies goods or services not controls. Its “product” is neither a pair of shoes nor an effective regulation. Its product is a changed human being. The non-profit institutions are human-change agents. Their “product” is a cured patient, a child that learns, a young man or woman grown into a self-respecting adult; a changed human life altogether.

- Peter Drucker

Google’s done a super good job on search. Apple’s done a great job on the iPod.

- Bill Gates

Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s A Separate Peace: “The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.

- Michael Gerber

The bulk of the universities are about teaching kids.

- Bill Gates

Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.

- Ben Horowitz

I actually think every individual is now an entrepreneur, whether they recognize it or not.

- Reid Hoffman

I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.

- Steve Wozniak

The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known trials, have known struggles, have known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

- Winston Churchill

I’d like to dial it back 5% or 10% and try to have a vacation that’s not just e-mail with a view.

- Elon Musk

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

- Bill Gates

I would get records by Earl Scruggs… I would tune my banjo down and I’d pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking… And I kind of worked out my own style of playing.

- Steve Martin

I started getting more and more active around immigration reform because this was such a waste of lives, such a waste of potential, such a waste for our country not to have the human capital that we developed – geared toward improving our entire society.

- Laurene Powell Jobs

Well, clearly Apple is a role model of the American innovation whereby it produced all these products – iPod, iPhone, iPad – that are really now dominating all the technology arena in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

An analysis of several hundred people who had accumulated fortunes well beyond the million dollar mark, disclosed the fact that every one of theme had the habit of reaching decisions promptly, and changing these decisions slowly if and when they were changed…The major weaknes of all educational systems is that they neither teach nor encourage the habit of DEFINITE DECISION…Most individuals lack the will-power to reach decisions promptly, and to stand by them after they have been made, even during normal business conditions.

- Napoleon Hill

One thing is certain in business. You and everyone around you will make mistakes.

- Richard Branson

I could either watch it happen or be a part of it.

- Elon Musk

Look – this is the terror of being a founder & CEO. It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do – ultimately, you’re at the end.

- Ben Horowitz

Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.

- Zig Ziglar

Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

- Richard Branson

China’s movie industry is growing a lot faster than that of the U.S.

- Wang Jianlin

Good action today will produce good living tomorrow.

- Zig Ziglar

I also have in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. —HENRY DAVID THOREAU (1817–1862)

- Timothy Ferriss

Being a great leader means sometimes pissing people off.

- Colin Powell

I predict at least one of the rookie drivers will win a race this year. With this strong of a group, two or three of them will likely win.

- Ed Clark

I’m not afraid to call a wine that tastes like Skittles or green peppers mixed with orange marmalade. I’ll say, ‘It tastes like chicken.’ I mean, that’s not what people think of when they think of wine, but that’s what it tastes like to me and it hits home.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I read the paper every day and the Bible every day, that way I know what both sides are up to.

- Zig Ziglar

Some things are much easier to see in others than in yourself

- Ben Horowitz

Will this business still be around a decade from now? Numbers alone won’t tell you the answer, instead you must think critically about the qualitative characteristics of your business.

- Peter Thiel

hombre que conozco es superior a mí en algún sentido. En ese sentido, aprendo de él.

- Dale Carnegie

And you know, I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.

- Richard Branson

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

I… had no need for cheering dreams,” he wrote. Facts are better than dreams.

- James C. Collins

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.

- Dale Carnegie

By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.

- Bill Gates

Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

- Bill Gates

There has never been a statue erected in honor of a critic.

- Zig Ziglar

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business. Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

- P.T. Barnum

When Ford sells a car, a dealer isn’t allowed to take out the engine and put a different one in. When a newsstand sells the Washington Post, no one can go to the newsstand and pay them to rip out the classified section and put their own classified section in – if they could, they would do so.

- Bill Gates

Taking complete ownership of your outcomes by holding no one but yourself responsible for them is the most powerful thing you can do to drive your success.

- Gary Keller

Possession of Power That Was Not Acquired Through Self Effort.

- Napoleon Hill

You want your customers to value your service.

- Jeff Bezos

Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.

- Ben Horowitz

You have a real chance to make an impact, but you have to do it in the first 90 days. Otherwise they’ll think it’s going to be business as usual.

- David Novak

Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected. I try to live by that on a daily basis.

- Jack Dorsey

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

- Napoleon Hill

Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.

- Winston Churchill

Mankind has never been in this position before. Without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination. That is the point in human destinies to which all the glories and toils of men have at last led them. They would do well to pause and ponder upon their new responsibilities. Death stands at attention, obedient, expectant, ready to serve, ready to shear away the peoples en masse; ready, if called on, to pulverise, without hope of repair, what is left of civilisation. He awaits only the word of command. He awaits it from a frail, bewildered being, long his victim, now—for one occasion only—his Master.

- Winston Churchill

The three most charismatic leaders in this century inflicted more suffering on the human race than almost any trio in history: Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. What matters is not the leader’s charisma. What matters is the leader’s mission.

- Peter Drucker

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

- Andrew Carnegie

A company needs lots of smart, super-engaged employees who can identify its particular weaknesses and help it improve them.

- Ben Horowitz

Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.

- John C. Maxwell

This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

- Peter Drucker

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

- Benjamin Franklin

Given the uncertainty going into the Y2K quarter, we are very pleased with our quarterly results.

- John Chambers

No one person controls Microsoft. The board and the shareholders decide whether they want to have me as CEO.

- Bill Gates

A great business has to have a conscience. You have to know who you are and who you are not.

- Howard Schultz

It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.

- Bill Gates

Two out of every five people on Earth today owe their lives to the higher crop outputs that fertilizer has made possible.

- Bill Gates

The most fundamental reason that even businesspeople underestimate the importance of sales is the systematic effort to hide it at every level of every field in a world secretly driven by it.

- Peter Thiel

No company should depend on one person no matter how that person is smart or genius, whether it’s Apple or News Corp, or Citibank or any other company in the world.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they’re still boring.

- Seth Godin

Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.

- Yoda

A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.

- Peter Drucker

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

I saw them before you were born. I came here first in 1900. [Reporter: “Do they look the same?”] Well, the principle seems the same. The water still keeps falling over. 1943, NIAGARA FALLS.

- Winston Churchill

God will lead you from where you are right now to where He wants to you to be, if you’ll let Him.

- George Foreman

So to hype up PolyGram we placed fake orders for the record into their system by telling retailers and wholesalers to order the 12 inch through PolyGram. PolyGram didn’t own it yet, but we created an appetite for Christmas Rappin that led them to buy it…So in the fall of 1979 Kurtis Blow signed with Mercury Records a division of Polygram Records, making him the first rapper on a major label…Christmas eve 1979 was the first time that I heard Christmas Rappin’ on the radio; I was upstairs at my family’s house. Frankie Crocker the biggest radio DJ in New York played it on WBLS.

- Russell Simmons

One of my biggest personal holdings is Rotana. That company has a very dominant force in the Middle East. It has around 45% of all the movie industry and around 75% of all the music.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.

- Reed Hastings

So, if you look at what’s common among some of the companies I have, including the Four Seasons, NewsCorp, George V, the Plaza, these are all irreplaceable brands in their own fields.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Losing an A is a sin. Love ‘em, hug ‘em, kiss ‘em, don’t lose them! We conduct postmortems on every A we lose and hold management accountable for losses.

- Jack Welch

If you don’t have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don’t take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It’s crazy.

- Jack Welch

There is no business in America that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions.

- Michael Bloomberg

Every enterprise requires commitment to common goals and shared values. Without such commitment there is no enterprise; there is only a mob. The enterprise must have simple, clear, and unifying objectives. The mission of the organization has to be clear enough and big enough to provide common vision. The goals that embody it have to be clear, public, and constantly reaffirmed. Management’s first job is to think through, set, and exemplify those objectives, values, and goals. Management.

- Peter Drucker

Competitiveness is really what it costs you per man-hour to get you what you want. In other words, there’s an education level that plays into the mix and so if it’s inexpensive to buy an hour of real good education in places like China versus the U.S., that factors in.

- Ray Dalio

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