Notable Quotables

I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.

- Sara Blakely

We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.

- Bill Gates

People are skeptical of many televangelists, and I’m sensitive to that.

- Joel Olsteen

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

- James C. Collins

Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows? Maybe just like that little baby, putting your arm around somebody and letting him or her know that you care can help begin to heal that person’s heart. Maybe you can give a rescuing hug.

- Joel Olsteen

The mistake that’s so easy to make is to get greedy as you choose your hive, to say, “this product is for everyone” or “anyone can benefit from this idea.” Well, there are seven billion people on the planet, so it’s unlikely your comment is correct; even if it is, there’s little chance that a virus would spread across a hive that big.

- Seth Godin

The typical factory-centric organization places a premium on not-wrong, and spends no time at all weeding out those who don’t start. In the networked economy, the innovation-focused organization has no choice but to obsess about those who don’t start. Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.

- Seth Godin

Before you take on the media, you have to know something about The Pitch.

- Michael Levine

It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.

- Seth Godin

So now, having learned from machines, organizations are applying the same logic to people. Letting people in the organization use their best judgment turns out to be faster and cheaper—but only if you hire the right people and reward them for having the right attitude.

- Seth Godin

They (the competition) need to avoid coming at us head-on, and do their own thing better than we do ours. It doesn’t make any sense to try to underprice Wal-Mart (DJC) on something like toothpaste (DJ Prices). That’s not what the customer is looking to a small store for anyway. Most independents are best off, I think, doing what I prided myself on doing for many years as a storekeeper, getting out on the floor and meeting everyone of the customers. Let them know how much you appreciate them, and ring that cash register yourself. That little personal touch is so important for an independent merchant because no matter how hard Wal-Mart tries to duplicate – and we try awfully hard – we can’t really do it.

- Sam Walton

You can’t jump to vegan if you’re not. Some people are absolute. Some people are able to be gradual.

- Russell Simmons

Music plays a very important role in my life. I’m a frustrated musician. I play the drums.

- Ronald Perelman

If we’re going to have any chance of sending stuff to other star systems, we need to be laser-focused on becoming a multi-planet civilisation.

- Elon Musk

You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.

- Og Mandino

Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.

- Zig Ziglar

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

I’m much more concerned about America than the Democratic Party.

- Howard Schultz

A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

- Mark Zuckerberg

If you want to know how to make people shun you and laugh at you behind your back and even despise you, here is the recipe: Never listen to anyone for long. Talk incessantly about yourself. If you have an idea while the other person is talking, don’t wait for him or her to finish: bust right in and interrupt in the middle of a sentence.

- Dale Carnegie

How much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes?

- Peter Thiel

The Pitch is your mechanism for persuasion. Persuasion is the goal. You’re trying to convince them of someone or something, and they might initially be resistant. This isn’t a nice casual conversation; it’s the Guerrilla P.R. version of a first strike.

- Michael Levine

You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.

- Sergey Brin

We are pleased to report the 33rd consecutive quarter of revenue and earnings growth. We are especially pleased with the balanced growth rate across almost all countries in both Europe and the Americas.

- John Chambers

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

- Dale Carnegie

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

- Joel Olsteen

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

- Reid Hoffman

We must not let our standards be determined by the gentlemen of the oposition.

- Winston Churchill

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? I will speak ill of no man,” he said, … and speak all the good I know of everybody.

- Dale Carnegie

Success in the United States is not an entitlement in China. You have to go there and earn it, and earn it the right way.

- Howard Schultz

The one thing coaches cannot tolerate… is the individual who grows arrogant because he excelled at a lower level and believes he has nothing else to learn.

- Zig Ziglar

I worked with such concentration and focus and I had hundreds of obscure engineering or programming things in my head. I was just real exceptional in that way.

- Steve Wozniak

I once asked General Eisenhower’s son, John, if his father ever nourished resentments. No,” he replied, Dad never wastes a minute thinking about people he doesn’t like.

- Dale Carnegie

When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, ‘Let’s get a better board’ can be helpful.

- Ben Horowitz

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

I very much believe that creating a sense of fun and keeping up everyone’s energy level is part of my job description. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands

- David Novak

I believe the scripture says that being gay is a sin.

- Joel Olsteen

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

- Bill Gates

Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.

- Thomas Edison

Take the first step in faith, you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

We are currently not planning on conquering the world.

- Sergey Brin

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If somebody’s going on your board, and you’re going to be C.E.O., it will help if that person knows how to be C.E.O., who has done it before.

- Ben Horowitz

…People have lived before you. You’re not the first person to dream big, so you’d be wise to study what others have learned first and then build you actions on the backs of their lessons.

- Gary Keller

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.

- P.T. Barnum

We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.

- Jeff Bezos

What products in the marketplace are similar? Who else in the marketplace is doing this successfully? How big is the market?

- Jack Nadel

That is what every successful person loves: the game. The chance for self-expression. The chance to prove his or her worth, to excel, to win. That is what makes foot-races, and hog-calling, and pie-eating contests. The desire to excel. The desire for a feeling of importance.

- Dale Carnegie

A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.

- Thomas Edison

Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion.

- Seth Godin

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

- Henry Ford

Yields will rise with prices, and this will generate steady income.

- Lee Shau Kee

Starbucks is in my blood. It is such a part of me that letting it unravel simply was not an option.

- Howard Schultz

Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.

- Rupert Murdoch

It seems like a good cause. I’ve been watching it on TV and, it makes me want to help.

- Ed Clark

When I started the diamond business, no black person, period, was in it to do what we’re trying to do to change the industry. So I like to do things that I see clearly that are in my, you know, scope. And then, I had to figure how I get talented or smart business people around me to execute. That’s what I have to do.

- Russell Simmons

Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.

- Michael Dell

It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.

- Zig Ziglar

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

- John Maxwell

He wants to do something amazing in your life. Get in agreement and say, God, this is for me today. I’m raising my expectations. I’m shaking off doubt, negativity, disappointments, self-pity, little dreams, and little goals, and God, I will make room for a flood of Your goodness.

- Joel Olsteen

I always wanted to find oil. It was always an irresistible calling.

- Harold Hamm

Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.

- Reid Hoffman

If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.

- Elon Musk

We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, … We have just completed a very successful management transition and I’ve never been more confident about the company’s future.

- Jack Welch

I think the positive competition between states in India is one of the most positive dynamics that the country has.

- Bill Gates

No question about it, alot of my attitude towards money stems from growing up during a pretty hardscrabble time in our country’s history: the Great Depression.

- Sam Walton

Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. 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.

- Peter Thiel

Funny is the world I live in. You’re funny, I’m interested. You’re not funny, I’m not interested.

- Jerry Seinfeld

One reason to buy a watch (or a book) is because you want to possess it, show it off, give it to your grandchildren. Holding a book is a luxury, one for which you pay a premium.

- Seth Godin

Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.

- Henry Ford

For more than a decade, I led an organization that put on an elaborate Christmas program each December. It was a big production, with over 250 people participating in more than 20 performances. By the end of the season, everyone who participated was exhausted.”

- John C. Maxwell

You have to have a dream, whether big or small. Then plan, focus, work hard and be very determined to achieve your goals.

- Henry Sy

It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.

- Reed Hastings

Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it’s cute but boring and expensive.

- P.J. O'Rourke

Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

- Seth Godin

[In February 2011 on Square.] Starting a startup after twitter is so much easier than before.

- Jack Dorsey

I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.

- Joel Olsteen

I want to get involved in things that makes a difference in peoples lives and lifts them up. I don’t want to be a part of anything that’s not inspiring or helpful to the community that I’m serving.

- Russell Simmons

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‘I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.’

- Jerry Seinfeld

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.

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

- Peter Drucker

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