Notable Quotables

In the years to come, that lure of partnership helped us attract a lot of good managers, but I don’t believe that we ever had one who bought more stock than Willard. And of course he feels pretty good about it today. – Sam Walton (on human resources, hiring, early history of Wal-Mart)

- Sam Walton

Gratitude is the single greatest treasure I will take with me from this experience.

- Oprah Winfrey

Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.

- Bill Gates

Yesterday ended last night. Today is a brand new day and it’s yours.

- Zig Ziglar

If I complain about a traffic jam, I have no one to blame but myself.

- Stephen Wynn

It marks a big step in a man’s development when he comes to realize that other men can be called in to help him do a better job than he can do alone.

- Andrew Carnegie

The first thing I would do for anyone who’s trying to lose body fat, for instance, would be to remove foods from the house that he or she would consume during lapses of self-control.

- Timothy Ferriss

Look at the way celebrities and politicians are using Facebook already. When Ashton Kutcher posts a video, he gets hundreds of pieces of feedback. Maybe he doesn’t have time to read them all or respond to them all, but he’s getting good feedback and getting a good sense of how people are thinking about that and maybe can respond to some of it.

- Mark Zuckerberg

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

- Bill Gates

We are witnessing a seismic change in consumer behavior. That change is being brought about by technology and the access people have to information.

- Howard Schultz

When you are tempted to get discouraged, remind yourself that according to God’s word, your future is getting brighter; you are on your way to a new level of glory. You may think you’ve got a long way to go, but you need to look back at how far you’ve already come. You may not be everything you want to be but atleast you can thank God that you’re not what you used to be.

- Joel Olsteen

One challenge is the Peter Principle. Coined by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book of that name, the Peter Principle holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their “level of incompetence”), and there they remain being unable to earn further promotions.

- Ben Horowitz

Americans reading the paper, listening to the news every single day, and all you hear is things are getting worse and worse. And that has a psychological effect on consumer confidence. That’s what consumer confidence is.

- Howard Schultz

A true entrepreneur is someone who seeks to profitably solve a problem that the world has in exchange for enough monetary compensation to achieve their dreams.

- Clay Clark

A product needs to be sufficiently innovative to distinguish itself from the pack, but not so forward thinking as to alienate the user.

- Reid Hoffman

Software substitution, whether it’s for drivers or waiters or nurses – it’s progressing. Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set.

- Bill Gates

We just want to have great people working for us.

- Sergey Brin

STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.

- Peter Thiel

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

- Bill Cosby

A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.

- Jack Welch

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

- Mark Twain

For a while… to be an evangelical meant you were a white Republican, and you were against this and against that. I don’t want to be put into that mold, because then people judge you before they even listen… I don’t want to divide the very people I am trying to reach.

- Joel Olsteen

Conformity no longer leads to comfort. But the good news is that creativity is scarce, and more valuable than ever. So is choosing to do something unpredictable and brave: make art. Being an artist isn’t a genetic disposition or a specific talent. It’s an attitude we can all adopt. It’s a hunger to seize new ground, make connections, and work without a map. If you do those things you’re an artist, no matter what it says on your business card.

- Seth Godin

Money doesn’t change you, it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.

- Timothy Ferriss

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.

- Winston Churchill

The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.

- Zig Ziglar

Specifically, the following things that cause no trouble when you are small become big challenges as you grow: Communication Common knowledge Decision making.

- Ben Horowitz

If you do everything that everyone else does in business, you’re going to lose. The only way to really be ahead, is to ‘be different’.

- Larry Ellison

Desire is what takes the hot water of mediocrity and turns it into the steam of outstanding success.

- Zig Ziglar

I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.

- Harry Truman

People don’t want to believe that technology is broken. Pharmaceuticals, robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology – all these areas where the progress has been a lot more limited than people think. And the question is why.

- Peter Thiel

Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers.

- Napoleon Hill

There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.

- Norman Vincent Peale

Fact is, the first 100 years of our country’s history were about who could build the biggest, most efficient farm. And the second century focused on the race to build factories. Welcome to the third century, folks. The third century is about ideas.

- Seth Godin

What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.

- Admiral Jim Stockdale

I believe that those who stay in faith are highly favored. You need to prepare for an exceeding, abundant, above-and-beyond life; a life where people go out of their way for no reason to be good to you; a life where you get promoted even though you weren’t the most qualified; a life where you find yourself in the right place at the right time.

- Joel Olsteen

This book, then, is a product of the last fifteen years, as well as a product of the fifteen years that preceded them. It was almost exactly eight years before The E-Myth was published that I founded our company, E-Myth Worldwide, which has provided the fuel and experience for the point of view I have shared with those of you who have read The E-Myth, and with those.

- Michael Gerber

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

- Henry Ford

The truth is, I had always wanted to be a comedian, but I really didn’t have that kind of personality, and it’s a terrifying thing to say.

- Jerry Seinfeld

To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.

- Winston Churchill

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

- Steve Jobs

Put time limits on each item. Set an agenda for your meeting and your trips to Disney World.

- David Robinson

What this industry is about is back to the basics in the new Internet economy; and the basics are profitability, cash flow, productivity and market-share gains.

- John Chambers

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

- Bill Gates

I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.

- Bill Gates

People who are using it to sell things on Craigslist to holding garage sales – campaigns – the Obama campaign and the Romney campaign both used Square to raise funds.

- Jack Dorsey

Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody else has ever done.

- Peter Thiel

To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different; it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination, and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.

- Bill Gates

Transparency in the traditional school might destroy it.

- Seth Godin

The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.

- Winston Churchill

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

- Marilyn vos Savant

From wherever you are, you can go anywhere you want to go if you pick the right roads to travel.

- Zig Ziglar

We’re not going to outgrow our need for information.

- Seth Godin

I believe it’s important that we use names of endearment that reflect a special feeling for the individual involved.

- Zig Ziglar

I am concerned about any attrition in customer traffic at Starbucks, but I don’t want to use the economy, commodity prices or consumer confidence as an excuse. We must maintain a value proposition to our customers as well as differentiate the Starbucks Experience. That is the key.

- Howard Schultz

Humility is becoming a lost art, but it’s not difficult to practice. It means that you realize that others have been involved in your success.

- Harvey Mackay

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

- Winston Churchill

What you need to keep most in the U.S. is the entrepreneurial spirit.

- Alexei Mordashov

I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience.

- Yoda

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

Like fire across the galaxy the Clone Wars spread. In league with the wicked Count Dooku, more and more planets slip. Against this threat, upon the Jedi Knights falls the duty to lead the newly formed army of the Republic. And as the heat of war grows, so, to, grows the prowess of one most gifted student of the Force.

- Yoda

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

- Winston Churchill

Our customers call and e-mai us to say that’s how it feels when a Zappos box arrives. And that’s how we view this company.

- Tony Hsieh

To lead a meaningful life, one must build trust with others. To enjoy peace, a nation must win the confidence and support of its people. To achieve stable growth, an enterprise must live up to its conviction.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.

- Jack Dorsey

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you maycome to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

- Winston Churchill

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

- Zig Ziglar

I don’t know why you should be proud of something. It doesn’t make you any better or worse. You are what you are.

- Michael Bloomberg

Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson.

- Winston Churchill

The [Henderson] Group possesses substantial recurrent income.

- Lee Shau Kee

As long as you’re living in regret, focused on the negative things of the past, you won’t move ahead to the bright future God has in store. You need to let go of what didn’t work out. Let go of your hurts and pains. Let go of your mistakes and failures. You can’t do anything about the past, but you can do something about right now.

- Joel Olsteen

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

- Bill Gates

The led must not be compelled. They must be able to choose their own leader.

- Albert Einstein

Well, today the Grammys is much much better than the Oscars. I think the differences in the shows are that the Grammys are much wilder. The Oscars is much more people in the industry. And people dress wilder, I think, at the Grammys.

- Steve Martin

Enforce functional training by withholding new employee requisitions. As Andy Grove writes, there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. Therefore, training should be the most basic requirement for all managers in your organization. An effective way to enforce this requirement is by withholding new employee requisitions from managers until they’ve developed a training program for the TBH, “To Be Hired.”

- Ben Horowitz

My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.

- Jack Dorsey

Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them. Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consulting and investment banking. For the privilege of being turned into conformists, students (or their families) pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in skyrocketing tuition that continues to outpace inflation. Why are we doing this to ourselves?

- Peter Thiel

We provide food that customers love, day after day after day. People just want more of it.

- Ray Kroc

Un cambio de actitud Lo que diferencia a los individuos exitosos de aquellos que languidecen es exactamente lo mismo que separa a las organizaciones innovadoras y en crecimiento de aquellas que se estancan y mueren. Los ganadores han convertido la iniciativa en una pasión y en una práctica. Adelante, prepara una lista de las personas y organizaciones a las que admiras. Apuesto a que el séptimo imperativo es lo que las hace destacar. Como ves, el reto no consiste en perfeccionar tu capacidad de saber cuándo empezar o cuándo mantenerte al margen, sino en adoptar la costumbre de empezar.

- Seth Godin

China traditionally has been a tea-drinking country but we turned them into coffee drinkers.

- Howard Schultz

Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs.

- P.T. Barnum

If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook. And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone. If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault. That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. ‘I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.’ What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.

- Seth Godin

The final relationship that cannot be ignored is with disrupters: They are individuals who cause trouble for sport – inciting opposition to management for a variety of reasons, most of them petty. Usually these people have good performance – that’s their cover – and so they are endured or appeased. A company that manages people well takes disrupters head-on. First they give them very tough evaluations, naming their bad behaviour and demanding it change. Usually it won’t. Disrupters are a personality type. If that’s the case, get them out of the way of people trying to do their jobs. They’re poison.

- Jack Welch

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