Notable Quotables

The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.

- Yoda

Remain close to government and away from politics. It means deal more with the authorities. And less with individuals.

- Wang Jianlin

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

1. Limit tasks to the important to shorten work time (80/20).2. Shorten work time to limit tasks to the important (Parkinson’s Law).

- Timothy Ferriss

Don’t waste your energy trying to convince people to understand you. Your time is too valuable to try to prove yourself to people.

- Joel Olsteen

The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.

- Ma Huateng

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

- Bill Gates

I think my father is nearly perfect. I think he’s quite handsome, except a bit fat.

- Gina Rinehart

Other people’s successes are good news – for them and for you. Good for you because they show you a way to go.

- Stephen Wynn

Men of genius are admired, men of wealth are envied, men of power are feared, but only men of character are trusted.

- Zig Ziglar

Freedom does not come automatically, it is achieved. And it is not gained in a single bound

- Rollo May

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things.

- Zig Ziglar

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

- Napoleon Hill

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

- Andrew Carnegie

Watered-down feedback can be worse than no feedback at all because it’s deceptive and confusing to the recipient.

- Ben Horowitz

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

- John C. Maxwell

Well, you know, News Corp is the only real media global – that has a global presence that’s involved in TV production, in movies, in publishing, in newspapers, digital media, et cetera. So for a company like that to function, clearly it does not depend only on Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

“Pick me, pick me” acknowledges the power of the system and passes responsibility to someone else to initiate. Even better, “pick me, pick me” moves the blame from you to them. If you don’t get picked, it’s their fault, not yours. If you do get picked, well, they said you were good, right? Not your fault anymore. Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.

- Seth Godin

A story is at its best when it’s not intrusive, when it brings value to a platform’s consumers, and when it fits in as a natural step along the customer’s path to making a purchase.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.’

- Richard Branson

Many of the people that you lay off will have closer relationships with the people who stay than you do, so treat them with an appropriate level of respect.

- Ben Horowitz

Those two priceless abilities: first, the ability to think. Second, the ability to do things in the order of their importance.

- Dale Carnegie

Short cycle business are being impacted by credit, and are being impacted by gasoline prices, food, distribution businesses, chemical business.

- Jack Welch

The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

- Seth Godin

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

- Bill Gates

Certainly, other people can pray for you, they can believe for you, they can quote the scripture to you, but you must exercise faith for yourself. If you are always depending on somebody else to keep you happy, somebody else to encourage you or to get you out of trouble, you will live in perpetual weakness and disappointment. You must make a decision that you are going to be a believer. Take charge of your life and decide, No matter what comes against me, I believe in God. I’m going to have a positive outlook for my life! Other people’s faith can indeed bolster yours. But your own faith will bring you a miracle much faster than anybody else’s. What you believe has a much greater impact on your life than what anybody else believes.

- Joel Olsteen

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

- John C. Maxwell

I just believe that the way that young people’s minds develop is fascinating. If you are doing something for a grade or salary or a reward, it doesn’t have as much meaning as creating something for yourself and your own life.

- Steve Wozniak

Once you hit the critical mass, you can’t push it much further. Otherwise the meaning gets fuzzy and confused, and before long, the brand is on the way out.

- Phil Knight

But what do average people do? The exact opposite. If they don’t like a thing, they bawl out their subordinates; if they do like it, they say nothing.

- Dale Carnegie

In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren’t management books out there that could help me.

- Ben Horowitz

To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.

- Peter Thiel

If Wanda can control more than 20 per cent of the world’s three most important film markets – the United States, Europe and China – then it will have an empire with great voice in the industry.

- Wang Jianlin

When I hire someone, I try to get beneath the surface and go deep. The first question I ask is, Has this person demonstrated any leadership potential? I ask for specifics and probe carefully to find out exactly what that person contributed. After all, success has many fathers.’ I also look for enthusiasm, people who lean forward in their chairs, who get up on their haunches a little but when they talk about what they’ve done. I like to see the passion and the excitement because that’s what will allow someone to inspire others. The next thing I look for is an avid learners, someone who is curious, who has an ability to make connections, to pick up on trends, and to apply what’s going on in the rest of the world to his or her business career. You obviously need smart people with a proven track record, but the real stars are passionate about what they do and are avid learners. Those two things make people continually raise the bar on performance.

- David Novak

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

- P.J. O'Rourke

I didn’t invent the hamburger. I just took it more seriously than anyone else…We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.

- Ray Kroc

We saw that a thousand results weren’t necessarily as useful as 10 good ones.

- Sergey Brin

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

- Henry Ford

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

- Mark Zuckerberg

We can’t wait for Washington. Business leaders are going to have to galvanize their own constituencies and do everything they can to demonstrate confidence in the economy, and I think that can be contagious.

- Howard Schultz

The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim.

- Napoleon Hill

Hong Kong has gone through countless difficult moments in the past. Our belief in our abilities and our determination to work for a better future have helped us overcome all obstacles.

- Cheng Yu-tung

There are ways of fighting for your interests. I never do something in business that I wouldn’t do in life.

- Vladimir Potanin

If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.

- Elon Musk

If you sell business-to-business, get a letter off to your client within an hour or two of your meeting…Start with something personal from the meeting and include a compliment.

- Chet Holmes

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

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

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.What makes someone an artist? I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

- Seth Godin

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The onset of global financial turmoil in the second half of 2008 and the resultant wait-and-see attitude adopted by some homebuyers put the property market into the doldrums, with a general decline in both transaction volume and transacted prices.

- Lee Shau Kee

Try to maximize the number of people that can benefit from an individual contribution.

- Lee Shau Kee

Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines. I believe in playing one against the other. I believe in doing everything and anything short of illegal or immoral to get the damned deal done.

- Ben Horowitz

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator.

- Winston Churchill

The ultimate goal for a business owner is to build a company that he or she can one day sell, continue to scale, or even own passively. Most business owners reach for growth by working harder and personally trying to produce more. This is a flawed model that at best will lead to only moderate growth. At worst this strategy can literally put your entire company at risk.

- Jeff Hoffman

The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There’s an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win.

- Seth Godin

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.

- Andrew Carnegie

The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realise in some subtle way that you realise their importance, and recognise it sincerely.

- Dale Carnegie

It doesn’t matter who likes you or doesn’t like you, all that matters is that God likes you. He accepts you, he approves of you.

- Joel Olsteen

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.

When I hear a man say that his childhood was the happiest time of his life, I think (puff) my friend, you have had a pretty poor life.

- Winston Churchill

And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: … man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / … Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.

- Dale Carnegie

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

- John C. Maxwell

So the rare individual who unselfishly tries to serve others has an enormous advantage.

- Dale Carnegie

I had a disc giving me a lot of trouble, and I had four surgeries. Then I had a staph infection, so they had to open me up five times in four months… It was in the bottom of my back, the same incision. They should have put a zipper on it.

- Stephen Wynn

They are, therefore, not overly impressed by speed in decision-making. Rather they consider virtuosity in manipulating a great many variables a symptom of sloppy thinking. They want to know what the decision is all about and what the underlying realities are which it has to satisfy. They want impact rather than technique, they want to be sound rather than clever.

- Peter Drucker

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline–a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.

- James C. Collins

Being a great leader means sometimes pissing people off.

- Colin Powell

The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared.

- Howard Schultz

Only a company with great integrity and the resources to fight for what’s right can afford to take on the government.

- Jack Welch

Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.

- Winston Churchill

Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world.

- Sergey Brin

If you aren’t willing to own a stock for ten years, don’t even think about owning it for ten minutes. Put together a portfolio of companies whose aggregate earnings march upward over the years, and so also will the portfolio’s market value

- Warren Buffett

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

- Charles Darwin

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

- John Wooden

The U.S. automotive industry has been selling cars the same way for over 100 years, and there are many laws in place to govern exactly how that is to be accomplished.

- Elon Musk

The essential thing to know about the Dip is that it’s there. Knowing that you’re facing a Dip is the first step in getting through it.

- Seth Godin

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

- Richard Branson

If you can dream it, you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

- Zig Ziglar

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.

- Henry Ford

I’m not big on to-do lists. Instead, I use e-mail and desktop folders and my online calendar. So when I walk up to my desk, I can focus on the e-mails I’ve flagged and check the folders that are monitoring particular projects and particular blogs.

- Bill Gates

At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.

- George Paz

Consensus decisions about executives almost always sway the process away from strength and toward lack of weakness.

- Ben Horowitz

Everything about my journey to get Spanx off the ground entailed me having to be a salesperson – from going to the hosiery mills to get a prototype made to calling Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. I had to position myself to get five minutes in the door with buyers.

- Sara Blakely

As you begin changing your thinking, start immediately to change your behavior. Begin to act the part of the person you would like to become. Take action on your behavior. Too many people want to feel, then take action. This never works.

- John C. Maxwell

Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.

- Zig Ziglar

However old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us.

- Cheng Yu-tung

We hold nearly 20 percent of our household’s wealth in transaction securities such as publicly traded stocks and mutual funds. But we rarely sell our equity investments. We hold even more in our pension plans. On average, 21 percent of our household’s wealth is in our private businesses.

- Thomas J Stanley

A few years ago there was a poll in china to name the greatest man ever. The winner was Mao, but there was a tie for second between [revolutionary hero] Zhou Enlai and Michael Jordan of the Chicago Red Oxen!

- Phil Knight

Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.

- John C. Maxwell

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively. Forget “minimum viable products”—ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others’ successes.

- Peter Thiel

If you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.

- Ray Kroc

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