It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.
- John C. Maxwell
Notable Quotables
Wonder what your customer really wants? Ask. Don’t tell.
- Lisa Stone
My parents got one bedroom, my three sisters got the other bedroom, and my brother and I made do with a rollaway in the kitchen.
- David Green
I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.
- Lawrence Bossidy
Once a decision is made…problems have to be solved.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Fact: If standard of living is your number one objective, quality of life almost never improves. But if quality of life is your number one objective, standard of living invariably improves.
- Zig Ziglar
If my job would have been to sell someone something they didn’t need, I would not have been very good at it.
- Pat McGovern
Bloodshed, gentlemen, no doubt is lamentable. I have seen some of it–more perhaps than many of those who talk about it with such levity. But there are worse things than bloodshed, even on an extreme scale. . . . The trampling down of law and order which, under the conditions of a civilised state, assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–all this would be worse than bloodshed.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t argue when people say that my message is simple, but I believe Jesus’ message was simple. Jesus didn’t go around condemning people.
- Joel Olsteen
Change isn’t made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.
- Seth Godin
You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Imagine if you had baseball cards that showed all the performance stats for your people: batting averages, home runs, errors, ERAs, win/loss records. You could see what they did well and poorly and call on the right people to play the right positions in a very transparent way.
- Ray Dalio
We don’t mature momentarily, but over the long-term.
- John C. Maxwell
When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.
- Seth Godin
I will everyday as just a blow from my blade against a mighty oak…strike until it falls quote.
- Og Mandino
Promise what no others can: the opportunity to do irreplaceable work on a unique problem alongside great people. You probably can’t be the Google of 2014 in terms of compensation or perks, but you can be like the Google of 1999 if you already have good answers about your mission and team.
- Peter Thiel
The only guarantee for failure is to stop trying
- John C. Maxwell
It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good
- Ron Chernow
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
I’m a voracious reader.
- Howard Schultz
We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren’t that many things people use twice a day.
- Larry Page
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
- Seth Godin
Perhaps your challenge isn’t finding a better project or a better boss. Perhaps you need to get in touch with what it means to feel passionate. People with passion look for ways to make things happen.
- Seth Godin
A joke is a very serious thing.
- Winston Churchill
Why does a 67-year-old guy who got his start running an athletic shoe company think he can enter a field famous for gobbling up fortunes.
- Phil Knight
Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
- Thomas J Stanley
Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.
- Herb Kelleher
A genius looks at something that others are stuck on and gets the world unstuck.So the question is: Have you ever done that?
- Seth Godin
Freedom does not come automatically, it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound
- Rollo May
t’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
- Warren Buffett
One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.
- Bruce Lee
Danger: if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
Of course motivation is not permanent. But then, neither is bathing; but it is something you should do on a regular basis.
- Zig Ziglar
The sudden attacks on the United States of America brought about adverse effects on the global economy in the short term. However, Mainland China has until now been able to maintain its economic growth on a steady course.
- Lee Shau Kee
The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.
- Zig Ziglar
Of all the things I’ve done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.
- Walt Disney
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
- John F. Kennedy
I was always a huge fan of E. E. Cummings. He did a series of lectures at Harvard or Princeton, and they were recorded. And they were incredibly moving.
- Steve Martin
Social entrepreneurs aim to combine the best of both worlds and “do well by doing good.” Usually they end up doing neither.
- Peter Thiel
Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut, no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you’re generally better off sticking with what you know. And the third is that sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make.
- Donald Trump
[On the Swoosh] It was 1971 and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million. So I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State
- Phil Knight
You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.
- Zig Ziglar
In those days he was wiser than he is now, he used to frequently take my advice.
- Winston Churchill
I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not a politician.
- Robin Li
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
- George Eliot
The most common cause of fear of old age is associated with the possibility of poverty.
- Napoleon Hill
Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map—these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.
- Seth Godin
A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.
- Joel Olsteen
We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.
- Dale Carnegie
Until you have learned to be tolerant with those who do not always agree with you, you will be neither successful nor happy.
- Napoleon Hill
Silicon Valley has evolved a critical mass of engineers and venture capitalists and all the support structure – the law firms, the real estate, all that – that are all actually geared toward being accepting of startups.
- Elon Musk
The abundance mindset makes it easier to be graceful.
- Seth Godin
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.
- Seth Godin
When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: Try to bear lightly what needs must be. Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and resignation that touched the hem of divinity.
- Dale Carnegie
Capitalism has worked very well. Anyone who wants to move to North Korea is welcome.
- Bill Gates
Anyone who says failure is not an option has also ruled out innovation.
- Seth Godin
Egotism and Vanity.
- Napoleon Hill
The Franchise Prototype is also the place where all assumptions are put to the test to see how well they work before becoming operational in the business.
- Michael Gerber
Too much, too many, and too often of what you want becomes what you don’t want.
- Timothy Ferriss
The possession of a perfect knowledge of your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success.
- P.T. Barnum
It’s easy to dream about it … Much harder to execute it ….Work!
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
- Timothy Ferriss
Great design = getting people to do what you want.
- Seth Godin
What most people know but don’t realize they know is that the world is almost entirely solar-powered already. If the sun wasn’t there, we’d be a frozen ice ball at three degrees Kelvin, and the sun powers the entire system of precipitation. The whole ecosystem is solar-powered.
- Elon Musk
Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.
- Ray Kroc
But each country has to advance and move at its own speed.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: ‘Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?’ From what I’ve seen, it’s not likely.
- Timothy Ferriss
Good policies without the right people will achieve nothing.
- Aliko Dangote
The thing for you is a burial permit. You have only to speak and I will see that you get it.
- Dale Carnegie
Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It’s just always all in the way you use it. So there’s no – you can’t really blame anything on the technology. It’s just the way people use it, and it always has been.
- Steve Martin
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.
- Thomas Edison
Alibaba is an ecosystem that helps small business to grow.
- Jack Ma
[On Square in July 2011] We’re going to make it amazing.
- Jack Dorsey
If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are … a different game you should play.
- Yoda
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
- Warren Buffett
Japanese businesspeople and companies are lacking in individuality.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
- Steve Martin
Short words are best, and old words when short are best of all.
- Winston Churchill
The tablet is not mainstream. Reading off the screen is not mainstream.
- Bill Gates
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
In Silicon Valley, when you’re a private company, the entrepreneur can do no wrong.
- Ben Horowitz
Every crowd has a silver lining.
- P.T. Barnum
Definiteness of purpose is the starting point from which one must begin. He recognized, too that definiteness of purpose of takes on animation, life, and power when backed by a burning desire to translate that purpose into its material equivalent. – Napoleon Hill (on leadership and vision)
- Napoleon Hill
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.
- Seth Godin
Do it, and then you will feel motivated to do it.
- Zig Ziglar
If you want to be obsessed to be your best, you must get ride of the negative things that are weighing you down.
- George Foreman
Really, truly, try to figure out what your palate is all about. If you’ve determined that you don’t like dirty old stinky wine – old-world flavors – you probably like new-world fruit bombs. Stick to Shirazes and California Cabernets or Zinfandels.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
To reach your full potential, you have to set goals that will stretch you.
- Zig Ziglar
Starbucks has stores in America in many, many communities that are governed by many, many different municipalities. Starbucks cannot dictate to a municipality in Cincinnati or Kansas City or Sacramento how or why or when there should be a recycling program.
- Howard Schultz
People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.
- Dale Carnegie
Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.
- John D. Rockefeller
Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.
- Dale Carnegie
I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you’re an idiot.
- Steve Martin
How we respond to the opportunities and challenges of the outside world now determines how much the outside world values us.
- Seth Godin
As a group, we feel that our daughters are financially handicapped in comparison to our sons. Men seem to make much more money even within the same occupational categories. That is why most of us would not hesitate to share some of our wealth with our daughters. Our sons, and men in general, have the deck of economic cards stacked in their favor. They should not need subsidies from their parents.
- Thomas J Stanley
In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.
- Elon Musk
The person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power.
- Dale Carnegie
Remain close to government and away from politics. It means deal more with the authorities. And less with individuals.
- Wang Jianlin
