I think that diversity is key for the next American entrepreneurs. They want to be a part of this society where there is so much diversity they have to have people from all the experiences.
- Russell Simmons
Notable Quotables
Most large mistakes in organizational design come from putting the individual ambitions of the people at the top of the organization ahead of the communication paths for the people at the bottom of the organization.
- Ben Horowitz
We won’t change at all, … We feel consolidation will continue. We’re seeing more and more movement to fewer networking vendors.
- John Chambers
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
- Wayne Gretzky
When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.
- Jerry Seinfeld
God can do what humanoids cannot.
- Clay Clark
The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing. I had started doing this just to simplify the task of managing people. But then I noticed a deeper result: defining roles reduced conflict. Most fights inside a company happen when colleagues compete for the same responsibilities.
- Peter Thiel
You don’t ever want to sell, you want customers to sell.
- Clay Clark
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
You have enough people against you… be for yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
- Peter Thiel
Certainly the caffeine in coffee, whether it’s Starbucks or generic coffee, is somewhat of a stimulant. But if you drink it in moderation, which I think four or five cups a day is, you’re fine.
- Howard Schultz
All my friends ask me, ‘Am I number one in the world in [receiving] dividend payments?’ I say, ‘I don’t know, ask Forbes.’
- Lee Shau Kee
Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.
- Ben Horowitz
What you study is more important than how you study. Students are subordinate to materials, much like novice cooks are subordinate to recipes. If you select the wrong material, the wrong textbook, the wrong group of words, it doesn’t matter how much (or how well) you study. It doesn’t matter how good your teacher is. One must find the highest-frequency material. Material beats method.
- Timothy Ferriss
Everything in our society is so purposeful.
- Sara Blakely
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
A record isn’t like a movie – you can get it together pretty fast.
- Steve Martin
When you are full of pride on the inside, it makes you stiff, stubborn, and creates strife with others.
- John C. Maxwell
I kicked but I also hugged.
- Jack Welch
I’ve always been interested in science – one of my favourite books is James Watson’s ‘Molecular Biology of the Gene.
- Bill Gates
Focus on something the customer wants, and then deliver it. “ 14. “Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity.
- Sam Walton
We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.
- Thomas Edison
The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.
- Zig Ziglar
The student who elects to risk it all—which is nothing—to establish an online video rental service that delivers $5,000 per month in income from a small niche of Blu-ray aficionados, a two-hour-per-week side project that allows him to work full-time as an animal rights lobbyist.
- Timothy Ferriss
EVERYBODY SELLS Nerds might wish that distribution could be ignored and salesmen banished to another planet. All of us want to believe that we make up our own minds, that sales doesn’t work on us. But it’s not true. Everybody has a product to sell—no matter whether you’re an employee, a founder, or an investor. It’s true even if your company consists of just you and your computer. Look around. If you don’t see any salespeople, you’re the salesperson.
- Peter Thiel
Choose a job that you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
- Confucius
Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone needs to be appreciated. Every person needs that blessing.
- Joel Olsteen
I learned that a long walk and calm conversation are an incredible combination if you want to build a bridge.
- Seth Godin
It’s almost always harder to raise capital than you thought it would be, and it always takes longer. So plan for that.
- Richard Harroch
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
You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like – they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts; words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home – all the more powerful because forbidden – terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words; they are afraid of the workings of the human mind. Cannons, airplanes, they can manufacture in large quantities; but how are they to quell the natural promptings of human nature, which after all these centuries of trial and progress has inherited a whole armoury of potent and indestructible knowledge?
- Winston Churchill
The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
- Bill Gates
Extraordinary benefits also accrue to the tiny majority with the guts to quit early and refocus their efforts on something new.
- Seth Godin
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
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as a CEO.
- Ben Horowitz
Now when I consider investing in a startup, I study the founding teams. Technical abilities and complementary skill sets matter, but how well the founders know each other and how well they work together matter just as much. Founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together—otherwise they’re just rolling dice.
- Peter Thiel
I tell my employees that we’re in the service business, and it’s incidental that we fly airplanes.
- Herb Kelleher
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
Think of Internet on the TV like the Web browser. The amount of time you spend on the PC in the browser is just going to grow continuously.
- Reed Hastings
Policies are many, Principles are few, Policies will change, Principles never do.
- John C. Maxwell
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.
- Steve Ballmer
I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering than ever before in the world.
- Winston Churchill
When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Nations that went down fighting rose again, but those who surrendered tamely were finished.
- Winston Churchill
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
- Bill Gates
Work hard and persevere.
- Lee Shau Kee
Perfect is an illusion, one that was created to maintain the status quo. The Six Sigma charade is largely about hiding from change, because change is never perfect. Change means reinvention, and until something is reinvented, we have no idea what the spec is.
- Seth Godin
Do more than you are being paid to do, and you’ll eventually be paid more for what you do.
- Zig Ziglar
When completed the new facility will have the capacity to accommodate approximately 3,000 staff.
- John Chambers
By fighting you never get enough, but by yielding you get more than you expected.
- Dale Carnegie
It seems like a good cause. I’ve been watching it on TV and, it makes me want to help.
- Ed Clark
To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.
- Ben Horowitz
When times are bad is when you want to build! Why wait for things to pick up so everything will cost more?
- Ray Kroc
I’m bored with it all.
- Winston Churchill
The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
- Bill Gates
I think my whole life, because of where I came from, I had a fear of failure.
- Howard Schultz
Our business is diversified across many sectors, be it supermarkets or finance. We can invest in many areas.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Most kids cannot ask questions. They can memorize, but they cannot learn.
- Terry Fischer
Productivity is grounded in the PC. Where does the computing power come from? How would you run ‘USA Today’ without PCs? Run a hospital without PCs? People don’t want products, they want solutions.
- Michael Dell
The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.
- Bill Gates
If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?
- John Wooden
When you are truly interested in other people, you will learn what they are interested in and if they have a need for your product. If they like you, and most people like folks who take an interest in them, they’ll help you find people who do need what you have to sell, even if they don’t.
- Zig Ziglar
A company can seize extra-ordinary opportunities only if it is very good at the ordinary operations.
- Marcel Herrmann Telles
You are here today because of a decision you made yesterday.
- Bryan Smith
Japanese businesspeople and companies are lacking in individuality.
- Tadashi Yanai
In the Soviet Union I was the head of all oil production. And you know in the Soviet Union, you didn’t get that job unless you were really worth it.
- Vagit Alekperov
The reason we love our parents is because they loved us first. Every single company should take this advice.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I broke into an industry that was completely money-focused. Nobody was paying attention to the women and thinking about how these undergarments felt, or how they fit…All of a sudden I showed up and charged more for one pair than anybody can comprehendand women lined up in droves to buy them. I think I left the industry in show, but I really believed that we needed to make it better not cheaper.
- Sara Blakely
We all must recognize that homeland security funds should be allocated by threat and no other reason.
- Michael Bloomberg
We appreciate size, but only if it is robust growth. Just to be big is not a target.
- Alexei Mordashov
I feel like money makes you more of who you already are.
- Sara Blakely
Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.
- Walt Disney
Going from PayPal, I thought: ‘Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?’ Not from the perspective, ‘What’s the best way to make money?
- Elon Musk
Know when to stop.
- Jack Dorsey
My goal is to simplify complexity. I just want to build stuff that really simplifies our base human interaction.
- Jack Dorsey
There is only one way… to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it.
- Dale Carnegie
These endless legal challenges that define elections in New York are a joke in this country, and they are the reason why it is so expensive, or one of the reasons, it’s so expensive to run here and why so many people decide not to run.
- Michael Bloomberg
What you receive is directly connected to what you believe.
- Joel Olsteen
Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP.
- Peter Thiel
Most people believe that results matter. The idea that results matter is one that you have to keep letting go of. And most of the time, I believe it.
- Russell Simmons
If I had been an Italian I am sure that I should have been whole-heartedly with you from the start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.
- Winston Churchill
India is more of an aid recipient than a provider of aid.
- Bill Gates
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
- Jim Rohn
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Dale Carnegie
Before spending time on a stress-inducing question or problem, consider this: If you can’t define it or act upon it, forget it.
- Timothy Ferriss
I never worry because I know who I am and I know Whose I am.
- Zig Ziglar
Secret, shall I tell you? Grand Master of Jedi Order am I. Won this job in a raffle I did, think you? “How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?” Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is.
- Yoda
I have stated that a democracy is always two years behind the dictator.
- Winston Churchill
Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.
- Jerry Seinfeld
This is the city of dreamers and time and again it’s the place where the greatest dream of all, the American dream, has been tested and has triumphed.
- Michael Bloomberg
Failure comes part and parcel with invention. It’s not optional. We understand that and believe in failing early and iterating until we get it right. When this process works, it means our failures are relatively small in size (most experiments can start small), and when we hit on something that is really working for customers, we double-down on it with hopes to turn it into an even bigger success.
- Jeff Bezos
I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.
- Jerry Seinfeld
And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America.
- Stephen Wynn
The better at communicating you are, and the more people you communicate to, the better your cash flow will be.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.
- Bill Gates
There is no middle ground: either don’t throw any punches, or strike hard and end it quickly.
- Peter Thiel
This isn’t stealing this is standing on the shoulders of giants.
- David Novak
