When my partners and I meet with entrepreneurs, the two key characteristics that we look for are brilliance and courage. In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.
- Ben Horowitz
Notable Quotables
I have a calendar life that is complicated, so I use BusyCal and Google Calendar. I keep two different browsers open to avoid some confusion.
- Steve Wozniak
I DECLARE that God has a great plan for my life. He is directing my steps. And even though I may not always understand how, I know my situation is not a surprise to God. He will work out every detail to my advantage. In His perfect timing, everything will turn out right. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
The goal is to get the buyer to like and trust you.
- Clay Clark
The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it’s Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.
- Bill Gates
The British nation is unique in this respect. They are the only people who like to be told how bad things are, who like to be told the worst.
- Winston Churchill
It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you’re in boom times.
- Jeff Bezos
We allow no geniuses around our Studio.
- Walt Disney
Our mail product, Hotmail, is the market leader globally.
- Steve Ballmer
We’ve always had a pretty competitive and pretty ferocious battle with British Airways… It’s lasted now about 14 years, and we’re very pleased to have survived it.
- Richard Branson
In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
- Warren Buffett
I believe people have to follow their dreams – I did.
- Larry Ellison
Bill Gates wants people to think he’s Edison, when he’s really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn’t right… wealth isn’t the same thing as intelligence.
- Larry Ellison
I think failure is nothing more than life’s way of nudging you that you are off course. My attitude to failure is not attached to outcome, but in not trying. It is liberating. Most people attach failure to something not working out or how people perceive you. This way, it is about answering to yourself.
- Sara Blakely
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.
- Warren Buffett
We’re all obsessed with ideas because ideas, not products, are the engine of our new economy.
- Seth Godin
A man who succeeds in life must sometimes go against the current.
- Ron Chernow
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
- Winston Churchill
A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design.
- Peter Thiel
If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.
- Benjamin Hooks
Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.
- Seth Godin
(Physics is) a good framework for thinking. … Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.
- Elon Musk
Play the game for more than you can afford to lose . . . only then will you learn the game.
- Zig Ziglar
If you run a business, if you are responsible for a lot of people, you come to grips with the reality that you have to have discipline. You have to protect the enterprise in order to take care of the employees. So, therefore, you can’t be wasteful. You can’t squander things, or you jeopardize other people.
- Stephen Wynn
Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket.
- Andrew Carnegie
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare.
- Winston Churchill
You’ve got to visualize where you’re headed and be very clear about it. Take a polaroid picture of where you’re going to be in a few years
- Sara Blakely
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
- John C. Maxwell
Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.
- Seth Godin
Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris.
- Peter Thiel
Concentrate all of your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought into focus.
- Alexander Graham Bell
Every day I meet people who have so much to give but have been bullied enough or frightened enough to hold it back. It’s time to stop complying with the system and draw your own map. You have brilliance in you, your contribution is essential, and the art you create is precious. Only you can do it, and you must.
- Seth Godin
What tribes are, is a very simple concept that goes back 50 million years. It’s about leading and connecting people and ideas. And it’s something that people have wanted forever.
- Seth Godin
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
- Warren Buffett
There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.
- P.T. Barnum
With residential property prices having dropped by around two-thirds from their peak in 1997 and local interest rates dropping to their historic lows, mortgage payments currently falls below rental payment. This positive carry has led to property purchases by both home purchasers as well as investors. Further, with the local stock market becoming active again and reaching its highest level in the past 17 months, this has resulted in an increase in the number of transactions and a price for the luxury properties.
- Lee Shau Kee
Success always demands a greater effort.
- Winston Churchill
Give your subconscious a chance to work by turning your brain off from time to time. Don’t focus on work or solving problems constantly.
- Harvey Mackay
You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.
- Bill Gates
Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately.
- Andrew Carnegie
I’m skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.
- Jeff Bezos
If you let pride stop you, you will hate life.
- Timothy Ferriss
Broadcast TV is like the landline of 20 years ago.
- Reed Hastings
Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they are looking for ideas.
- Paula Poundstone
An overburdened, overstretched executive is the best executive, because he or she doesn’t have the time to meddle, to deal in trivia, to bother people.
- Jack Welch
Good product managers know the market, the product, the product line, and the competition extremely well and operate from a strong basis of knowledge and confidence. A good product manager is the CEO of the product. Good product managers take full responsibility and measure themselves in terms of the success of the product.
- Ben Horowitz
Love doesn’t sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new.
- Og Mandino
It is always important that we have transparency, that we have shareholder protection. Then again, I think it is important that there are not so many regulations that management can’t make a decision without asking a lawyer whether he can do it.
- Michael Otto
You know what your problem is, it’s that you haven’t seen enough movies – all of life’s riddles are answered in the movies.
- Steve Martin
You cannot push any one up a ladder unless he be willing to climb a little himself.
- Andrew Carnegie
When I was a kid a long time ago, when the sun rose, I was outside on my bike. If my parents were lucky – poor parents! – I would be home before it got dark.
- Larry Ellison
Remember you’re not entitled to anything. You have to earn your success every day, and you will make mistakes like everyone else.
- Harvey Mackay
The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.
- John D. Rockefeller
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
- Thomas Edison
If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores. That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success.
- Sam Walton
Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.
- John C. Maxwell
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.
- James C. Collins
I run a bunch of charities and I say this line to people: ‘I am somebody who has always been helped.’ A little thing like that can make people believe it.
- Russell Simmons
Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.
- Herb Kelleher
Japanese tend to put sales and market share first. They make many products with the aim of raising sales. But then profits decline, and companies find themselves falling into debt… I changed the mindset at Canon by getting people to realize that profits come first.
- Fujio Mitarai
I don’t consider myself enigmatic, but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.
- Phil Knight
It’s not going out to people who aren’t going to go shopping. You’ve already got the people who are shopping.
- Jack Taylor
I have no use for people who throw their weight around as celebrities, or for those who fawn over you just because you are famous.
- Walt Disney
Ego stops you from getting things done and getting people to work with you. That’s why I firmly believe that ego and success are not compatible.
- Harvey Mackay
Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.
- Ben Horowitz
I’m for the Wall Street Occupiers. But will they accept me when they find out I sell packaged mortgage default instruments to children?
- Steve Martin
“Someday” is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you. Pro and con lists are just as bad. If it’s important to you and you want to do it eventually, just do it and correct course along the way.
- Timothy Ferriss
The general upward trend in residential property prices seems to be continuing, with the luxury end of the residential market poised to show better performance in particular.
- Lee Shau Kee
For those that have fixed exchange-rate regimes, you will need a greater amount of foreign reserves. That’s the case in Belize, it’s the case in the Eastern Caribbean zone and it’s also the case in Barbados. In those cases, the level of reserve coverage is one of credit weakness. Where you have a bit more flexibility in the exchange rate ? for instance, Jamaica ? you would require a smaller amount of international reserves.
- John Chambers
Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.
- Ben Horowitz
If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.
- Joel Olsteen
Your faith is very important. I have done the math, and you are going to be dead a whole lot longer that you will be alive.
- Zig Ziglar
I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.
- Elon Musk
A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.
- Winston Churchill
We should be able to significantly improve health-care outcomes. The government is needing that. When you look at ACOs [accountable care organizations] and look at what the Obama administration is talking about, in trying to improve quality, that’s exactly what Express Scripts does.
- George Paz
We know more about the physics of faraway stars than we know about human nutrition.
- Peter Thiel
I didn’t used to wear a watch. Now I have a SPOT watch, which I wear all the time.
- Bill Gates
There is no such thing as Something for nothing.
- Napoleon Hill
The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.
- Mark Zuckerberg
You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war. – To Neville Chamberlain
- Winston Churchill
The misconception that aid falls straight into the hands of dictators largely stems from the Cold War era.
- Bill Gates
It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word ‘pessimist’ was not in our vocabulary at that time. It’s a modern ‘invention’ which I believe we should ‘dis-invent.’
- Zig Ziglar
According to Ethiopian custom, parents wait to name a baby because children often die in the first weeks of life.
- Bill Gates
This the real world, homie, school finished They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.
- Kanye West
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’ve actually made a prediction that within 30 years a majority of new cars made in the United States will be electric. And I don’t mean hybrid, I mean fully electric.
- Elon Musk
Each morning before breakfast, Rockefeller led the family in prayer, charging out a penny fine to latecomers.
- Ron Chernow
If you want to increase your success rate, double your rate of failure.
- Thomas J Watson
Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.
- Bill Gates
There are not many companies in China that dare to say in public, ‘We don’t offer bribes’, or companies that operate only by market rules.
- Wang Jianlin
It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you’re not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it’s actually space that’s moving.
- Elon Musk
We all must recognize that homeland security funds should be allocated by threat and no other reason.
- Michael Bloomberg
The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition.
- Peter Thiel
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
What I know for sure is that what you give comes back to you.
- Oprah Winfrey
Even though I’m a hype man myself, I like the practicality of it all. People who understand how to turn a profit. At the end of the day, this is still business so I’m looking for real practical knowledge of how to actually make money, not necessarily raise it.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
