You have to get lost in the woods of your own doing and discover a way out. You have to find the right path over the creek, under the rock-whatever mechanism is good for your body’s size and your stride and your cadence and your tolerance for wet or cold or humid weather. That kind of learning comes from having a tolerance for failure, and extracting lessons from your failures.
- Marc Ecko
Notable Quotables
Make no mistake about why these babies are here – they are here to replace us.
- Jerry Seinfeld
A wartime C.E.O. may not delegate. They make every decision based on the next product release. They may use a lot of profanity.
- Ben Horowitz
The reason you might choose to embrace the artist within you now is that this is the path to (cue the ironic music) security.
- Seth Godin
Be fair. You have to be able to see their point of view.
- Michael Levine
Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it’s a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline.
- Harvey Mackay
To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.
- Michael Bloomberg
Antitrust is the way that the government promotes markets when there are market failures. It has nothing to do with the idea of free information.
- Bill Gates
I’m an entrepreneur first and a wine critic second.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Live creatively, friends. . . . Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others” (Galatians 6:1, 4).
- Zig Ziglar
I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.
- Bill Gates
Research indicates that employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company.
- Zig Ziglar
Catering to a mass audience usually backfires. Instead the key thing is to stay in your lane, and if you are good enough and interesting enough, people move to you…If you never compromise, your core audience will come with you as you grow. Then you build on their loyalty and bring in other people.
- Russell Simmons
Consumers are spontaneous and if you can catch their attention, that’s going to increase the chance that they will look at your product.
- Jack Taylor
Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.
- Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles
But entrepreneurs should take cultures of extreme dedication seriously.
- Peter Thiel
You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.
- Bill Gates
We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
- Peter Drucker
Be humble.
- Jack Dorsey
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
- Seth Godin
I think there are people out there writing original bluegrass songs, but it’s hard to get them out on the air.
- Steve Martin
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
- Winston Churchill
For me, my role is about unleashing what people already have inside them that is maybe suppressed in most work environments.
- Tony Hsieh
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
You may think using Google’s great, but I still think it’s terrible.
- Larry Page
If I complain about a traffic jam, I have no one to blame but myself.
- Stephen Wynn
I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.
- Elon Musk
Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?
- Winston Churchill
The hazards of imitative competition may partially explain why individuals with an Asperger’s-like social ineptitude seem to be at an advantage in Silicon Valley today.
- Peter Thiel
Differentiate yourself! Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
In the early days, I really felt the pain of not being able to find information easily. I guess that helped me to develop an urge to write things like a search engine.
- Robin Li
Hire the best staff you can find develop them as much as you can, and hand off everything you possibly you can to them…The power of this can be seen in explosive growth.
- Napoleon Hill
As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs. MBA programs don’t teach people how to create companies. At my companies, our position is that we hire someone in spite of an MBA, not because of one.
- Elon Musk
Young people, when they’re left alone, always want to have compassion, and they always want to give. They always want to help people who are less fortunate.
- Russell Simmons
Nature is truly wonderful. Only man is truly foul.
- Thomas Edison
Money motivates neither the best people nor the best in people.
- Dee Hock
When the economy does pick up, … so will … spending.
- John Chambers
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge….
- Thomas Edison
It takes a leader to create momentum. Followers catch it. And managers are able to continue it once it has begun. But creating it requires someone who can motivate others, not who needs to be motivated. Harry Truman once said, If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. But for leaders, that statement should be changed to, If you can’t make some heat, get out of the kitchen.
- John Maxwell
Where there is no vision, there is no hope.
- George Washington Carver
You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.
- Elon Musk
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice.
- Seth Godin
I think if you look at people, whether in business or government, who haven’t had any moral compass, who’ve just changed to say whatever they thought the popular thing was, in the end they’re losers.
- Michael Bloomberg
Without courage all other virtues lose their meaning.
- Winston Churchill
Anything that’s not necessary for you to do personally should be delegated or eliminated.
- John Maxwell
Victorious leaders, share an inability to accept defeat.
- Napoleon Hill
If you don’t love what you’re doing with unbridled passion and enthusiasm, you’re not going to succeed when you hit obstacles.
- Howard Schultz
The lesson of the Ford story is that managers and management are the specific need of the business enterprise, its specific organ, and its basic structure. We can say dogmatically that enterprise cannot do without managers. One cannot argue that management does the owner’s job by delegation. Management is needed not only because the job is too big for any one man to do himself, but because managing an enterprise is something essentially different from managing one’s own property.
- Peter Drucker
It is a well known fact that Henry Ford began his business career under the handicap of poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance. It is an equally well known fact that, within the inconceivably short period of ten years, Mr. Ford mastered these three handicaps, and that within twenty-five years he made himself one of the richest men in America. Connect with this fact, the additional knowledge that Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticeable, from the time he became a personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, and you will begin to understand what the influence of one mind upon another can accomplish.
- Napoleon Hill
The era of cornucopian hope was relabeled as an era of crazed greed and declared to be definitely over.
- Peter Thiel
Let us work together to take Hong Kong to new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
When I first joined the Irvine Company, I realized that less than 11,000 acres were designated as open space in the original master plan, and that just didn’t seem adequate to me. So, I began the lengthy process working with public and community organizations to add more open space.
- Donald Bren
If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.
- Napoleon Hill
You have to be responsible when you’re running an organization, and firing people who are your friends is part of that responsibility.
- Ben Horowitz
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
- Andrew Carnegie
When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.
- Howard Schultz
As he brooded over how to raise the money, he was informed by his father that he had always intended to give each of his children $1,000.00 at age twenty-one, and he now offered to advance John the money. But, John, he added lest his son expect miracles, the rate is ten. Having just retrieved a thousand dollars from Hewitt, Bill might have been looking for a high return on these idle funds. John knew his father too well to plead for a gift and accepted the 10 percent loan, which was higher than the prevailing rate. So on April 1, 1858 backed up by this borrowed money, John D. Rockefeller left Isaac Hewitt and joined the partnership of Clark and Rockefeller at 32 River Street (in Cleveland). At eighteen, he was catapulted to a partner’s rank in a commission house. It was a great thing to be my own employer, said Rockefeller. Mentally I swelled with pride – a partner in a firm with $4,000 capital! The moment was fraught with meaning for him and after his first day at work, he went back to the Cheshire Street house, fell to his knees, and implored the Lord to bless his new enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
Every twenty-four hours God has a fresh new supply of grace, of favor, of wisdom, of forgiveness.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Be careful with whom you associate, especially when you feel emotionally vulnerable, because negative people can steal the dream right out of your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.
- Thomas Edison
Gain alignment every step of the way. Again, no involvement means no committment. Skip a layer and you will ultimately pay the price.
- David Novak
When men are fighting for their lives they are not often disposed to be complimentary to those who are trying to kill them.
- Winston Churchill
If you can get better at your job, you should be an active member of LinkedIn, because LinkedIn should be connecting you to the information, insights and people to be more effective.
- Reid Hoffman
But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill
A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn’t exactly been one of moderation.
- Donald Trump
What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.
- Larry Ellison
I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.
- Ray Kroc
I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn’t turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.
- Steve Martin
I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Failures are life’s way of nudging you and letting you know you are off course. Trying new things and not being afraid to fail along the way are more important than what you learn in school.
- Sara Blakely
Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.
- Bill Gates
Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.
- Winston Churchill
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
The number of units that were sold by the Group including those for which the Group acted as sales agent summed up to 2,960 residential units, amounting to approximately HK$9.2 billion in total sales proceeds.
- Lee Shau Kee
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link of the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
- Winston Churchill
We’ll make cloud computing announcements because, you know, if orange is the new pink, we’ll make orange blouses. I mean, I’m not gonna fight this thing … well, maybe we’ll do an ad. Uh, I don’t understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud computing, other than market … you know, change the wording on some of our ads.
- Larry Ellison
When you acknowledge God, He will go before you and make the crooked places straight.
- Joel Olsteen
I should be only paying for things that matter. I shouldn’t be paying for things that don’t matter. And, if Walgreen wants a premium, and they’re not doing anything different, why should I pay them more?
- George Paz
A company is stronger if it is bound by love rather than by fear.
- Herb Kelleher
For me, it’s a purity thing about the joke itself. It’s a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that’s a legitimate item you have there. For me, it’s nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It’s just not what I’m in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
- Bill Cosby
From wherever you are, you can go anywhere you want to go if you pick the right roads to travel.
- Zig Ziglar
You’d believe that a patient with hypertension, if you know you have hypertension or diabetes, you would take your drug every day. The compliance rate is more like 30% or 40%. Which means that 60% of patients don’t take their drugs, and they actually go into these crises, end up in the hospital.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Different is better when it is more effective or more fun.
- Timothy Ferriss
On every occasion, we were able to rely on our unique qualities – resourcefulness, perseverance, diligence and passion for excellence – to rise above our difficulties.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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
I don’t dislike anybody.
- Joel Olsteen
To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.
- Jerry Seinfeld
When sales people don’t know what to do, they talk. The ordinary salesperson vomits the presentation onto the Buyer’s desktop.
- Jerry Vass
I think my whole life, because of where I came from, I had a fear of failure.
- Howard Schultz
Actions speak louder than words, and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you.’ That is why dogs make such a hit. They are so glad to see us that they almost jump out of their skins. So, naturally, we are glad to see them.
- Dale Carnegie
Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.
- Larry Page
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
- Walt Disney
Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.
- Howard Schultz
Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me….
- Thomas Edison
I really like reading books
- Dale Carnegie
The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.
- Bill Gates
