When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience, we’re stamping out the artist that lives within.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
- Bill Gates
Peter Drucker once observed that the drive for mergers and acquisitions comes less from sound reasoning and more from the fact that doing deals is a much more exciting way to spend your day than doing actual work.
- James C. Collins
When an employee asks why the company does things a certain way, and you can explain the logical reason, then the employee knows what she’s doing is valid.
- Harvey Mackay
We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.
- Richard Branson
The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.
- Ray Dalio
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.
- Bill Gates
Where did your art go while you were tweeting?
- Seth Godin
On balance, I am a supporter of the minimum wage going up. We’ve got to be very careful what we wish for because some employers – and there could be a lot of them – will be scared away from hiring new people or creating incremental hours for part-time people as a result of that wage going up.
- Howard Schultz
That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.
- Peter Thiel
Make it just like a Mac.
- Bill Gates
Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good
- Ron Chernow
I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Life is too short to spend every day doing something you don’t love.
- Jack Welch
The very important thing you should have is patience.
- Jack Ma
One thing I resent is the slur that I just support political candidates because of the business.
- Rupert Murdoch
My father worked all the time.
- Michael Bloomberg
I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.
- Oprah Winfrey
Use every customer point of contact to weave stories about who you are and what your brand stands for.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Too often, we have tended to fall into a trap of creating plain hamburgers.
- Tadashi Yanai
I’m an entrepreneur. I’m not a politician.
- Robin Li
In 2008, people who invested in hedge funds needed capital badly, but many of the funds would not return their money. However, I gave money back to any investor who requested it. It was the bottom of the market and a pretty tough time.
- Carl Icahn
When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say: Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
- Dale Carnegie
The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‘Oh nom it’s on the house.’
- Richard Branson
I believe that greatest things happen only when you give others the credit. That’s the law of EMPOWERMENT in action.
- Napoleon Hill
You may have made a lot of wrong choices, but you’ve also made a lot of choices that were right. Focus on your good qualities. Focus on your victories. Get off the treadmill of guilt.
- Joel Olsteen
In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.
- Bill Gates
China remains a market with unprecedented potential.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Our goal all along was that fans would come in and wouldn’t notice any loss of amenities there for them, and I’m very comfortable that’s going to be the case.
- Ed Clark
Anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble.
- Peter Thiel
Many persons call a doctor when all they want is an audience.
- Dale Carnegie
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.
- Seth Godin
So long as I can stay mentally alert – inquiring, curious – I want to keep going. I love my wife and my children, but I don’t want to sit around at home with them. We go on safaris and things like that. I can do that for a couple of weeks a year. I’m just not ready to stop, to die.
- Rupert Murdoch
Does it make sense to go to college, or should I instead be a plumber?
- Michael Bloomberg
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- Winston Churchill
I would get records by Earl Scruggs… I would tune my banjo down and I’d pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking… And I kind of worked out my own style of playing.
- Steve Martin
I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.
- Elon Musk
Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
- Benjamin Franklin
To make a ton of steel on and half tons of iron stone has to be mined, transported by rail a hundred miles to the Lakes, carried by boat hundreds of miles, transferred to cars, transported by rail 150 miles to Pittsburgh; one and a half tons of coal must be mined and manufactured into coke and carried 50 (odd) miles by rail; and one ton of limestone mined and carried 150 miles to Pittsburgh. How then could steel be manufactured and sold without loss at 3 pounds for 2 cents. This, I confess seemed to me incredible, and little less than miraculous, but it was so.
- Andrew Carnegie
Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.
- Bill Gates
Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
- Steve Martin
In my opinion, education is the finest gift an individual can give a young person.
- Donald Bren
You can achieve difficult things, but you can’t achieve the impossible.
- Peter Thiel
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard
Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.
- Warren Buffett
Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.
- Ben Horowitz
A wise man is a confirmed optimist.
- Andrew Carnegie
I have this old ’57 Porsche Speedster, and the way the door closes, I’ll just sit there and listen to the sound of the latch going, ‘cluh-CLICK-click.’ That door! I live for that door. Whatever the opposite of planned obsolescence is, that’s what I’m into.
- Jerry Seinfeld
My blogging life is basically goalless. I like the zen nature of that, and paradoxically, it improves results.
- Seth Godin
Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.
- Sam Walton
Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.
- Peter Thiel
You’re not being responsible with what God gave you if you’re hanging out with time wasters who have no goals and no dreams.
- Joel Olsteen
The Chinese people have always been determined to forge ahead.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic … It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine’s works in my boyhood … it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker’s views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine’s writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, ‘What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!’ My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.
- Thomas Edison
If you count E-mail, I’m on the Internet all day, every day.
- Bill Gates
Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. HEBREWS 11:1.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise, the more specific the better.
- Jack Welch
Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.
- Albert Einstein
They must be plans for learning rather than plans for implementation.
- Clayton M. Christensen
For me, my role is about unleashing what people already have inside them that is maybe suppressed in most work environments.
- Tony Hsieh
The Chinese government still would like to see U.S. Internet companies explore the Chinese market, providing they are willing to abide by Chinese law. I think companies like Facebook should think about the Chinese market.
- Robin Li
Customers tend to avoid a restaurant that’s going aswamp in its own sludge.
- Ray Kroc
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
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
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
It takes the same effort to think small than to think big. But to think big frees you from the insignificant details.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
Perks are good, but they are not culture.
- Ben Horowitz
Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
- Seth Godin
Transparency is terribly important in a situation like this, as a quick reaction time, because news today is not immediate. It travels globally on the Internet. In our YouTube culture, dramatic videos take on a life of their own, beyond anyone’s control. – (on crisis management)
- David Novak
I like football, but I think this is a very personal matter. I don’t see any negatives for some Russian rich man to buy a football club.
- Viktor Vekselberg
I was always fascinated by the decision-making process and the managerial process and just business in general.
- Ronald Perelman
It’s not like I’m anti-China. I just think it’s ridiculous that we allow them to do what they’re doing to this country, with the manipulation of the currency, that you write about and understand, and all of the other things that they do.
- Donald Trump
Let’s find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. …When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book The Origin Of Species he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.
- Dale Carnegie
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.
- Winston Churchill
Focus on your people – Without employees and customers, your’re going nowwhere.
- David Green
Always remember, that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
- Winston Churchill
I do think there are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.
- Michael Bloomberg
At the margin, they’ll be biased to claim value in the near term, not help you create more in the future. That’s why hiring consultants doesn’t work. Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided,
- Peter Thiel
When a man has accumulated a sum of money, accumulated it within the law, the Government has no right to share in its earnings.
- John D. Rockefeller
The information about your project is objective, but your presentation is subjective. When your own subjectivity collides with that of the media, there’s plenty of room for confusion,misinterpretation and disinterest. That is why you must know precisely how to pitch before you make that first phone call or mail a press release.
- Michael Levine
Profitability is a shallow goal if it doesn’t have a real purpose, and the purpose has to be share the profits with others.
- Howard Schultz
Every twenty-four hours God has a fresh new supply of grace, of favor, of wisdom, of forgiveness.
- Joel Olsteen
I don’t generally read a lot of fiction.
- Bill Gates
Los mitos y los sueños proceden del mismo lugar… Un mito es el sueño de una sociedad.
- Joseph Campbell
[In February 2011] We’ve not done a lot of marketing whatsoever. A lot of it has just been word of mouth.
- Jack Dorsey
To get rich is glorious. So is helping poor farmers.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.
- Matthew 7:12
One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.
- Seth Godin
Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
- John C. Maxwell
Every well built house started in the form of a definite purpose plus a definite plan in the nature of a set of blueprints.
- Napoleon Hill
Opening new stores outside of Japan is important, but training our employees is even more important.
- Tadashi Yanai
mean that you can’t do anything else but pray. But it does mean that you are always ready and willing to go before God with any concern or praise. Nothing is too small or too big for prayer. Prayer is simply opening your heart and connecting with God. It’s taking His promises and applying them to your life. Prayer processes the plan of God. You should bathe your life in prayer. Pray for wisdom, peace, and patience. Pray for your relationships, your job, and your children. Pray for your country and leaders. Pray with others, knowing that when two or more are gathered in His name, He is there.
- Joel Olsteen
Washington is unpredictable these days.
- Stephen Wynn
If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.
- Benjamin Hooks
There are GMO skeptics more in Europe maybe than in other places, but not exclusively.
- Bill Gates
My advice for an entrepreneur just starting out is to differentiate yourself. Why are you different? What’s important about you? Why does the customer need you?
- Sara Blakely
From age 16, I lived and breathed wine. I read every magazine and book about wine.
- Gary Vaynerchuk





