So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.
- Winston Churchill
Notable Quotables
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
Will flash cards invade the disk drive makers’ core markets and supplant magnetic memory? If they do, what will happen to the disk drive makers? Will they stay atop their markets, catching this new technological wave? Or will they be driven out?
- Clayton M. Christensen
In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.
- Jeff Bezos
Throughout this quarter of a century, the entrepreneurial outlook, versatility and vision of our employees have remained the crucial elements of our success…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Once we assembled the entire package, Mike named it Netscape SuiteSpot, as it would be the “suite” that displaced Microsoft’s BackOffice. We lined everything up for a major launch on March 5, 1996, in New York. Then, just two weeks before the launch, Marc, without telling Mike or me, revealed the entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is. We are getting killed killed killed out there. Our current product is radically worse than the competition. We’ve had nothing to say for months. As a result, we’ve lost over $3B in market capitalization. We are now in danger of losing the entire company and it’s all server product management’s fault. Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you, Marc I received this email the same day that Marc appeared barefoot and sitting on a throne on the cover of Time magazine. When I first saw the cover, I felt thrilled. I had never met anyone in my life who had been on the cover of Time. Then I felt sick. I brought both the magazine and the email home to Felicia to get a second opinion. I was very worried. I was twenty-nine years old, had a wife and three children, and needed my job. She looked at the email and the magazine cover and said, “You need to start looking for a job right away.” In the end, I didn’t get fired and over the next two years, SuiteSpot grew from nothing to a $400 million a year business. More shocking, Marc and I eventually became friends; we’ve been friends and business partners ever since. People often ask me how we’ve managed to work effectively across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.
- Ben Horowitz
When you do more than you’re paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do.
- Zig Ziglar
Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.
- Dale Carnegie
I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.
- Henry Ford
You can’t fault government for seizing that opportunity. But it has an impact on Barbados’ current account deficit and it does bring with it attended risks. And, therefore, you have to ask whether or not the tourism business that is going to be generated from the publicity around the cricket matches will be sustained after the cricket matches are over.
- John Chambers
Respect people’s wishes.
- Jack Dorsey
If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.
- Joel Olsteen
If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something.
- Rupert Murdoch
The success we are now taking in is the natural outcome of our adhesion to our principles to start with: an enterprise shall take care of the people’s livelihood, through thick and thin; an enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you are only big in China, you are only a local Chinese company.
- Wang Jianlin
In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.
- Reid Hoffman
Knowledge is only potential power. It becomes power only when, and if, it is organized into definite plans of action, and directed to a definite end.
- Napoleon Hill
One of the main reasons people fail to reach their full potential is because they are unwilling to risk anything. They are fearful of losing, failing, or getting hurt and just want to do the things they believe will keep them safe.
- Zig Ziglar
It is no ordindary desire that survives disappointment, discouragement, temporary defeat, criticism, and the constant reminding of waste of time. It is a burning desire an obsession! – Napoleon Hill (on leadership)
- Napoleon Hill
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
- Winston Churchill
I will consider each day’s effort as but one blow of my blade against a might oak. The first blow may cause not a tremor in the wood, nor the second, nor the third. Each blow, of itself, may be trifling, and seem of no consequence. Yet from childish swipes the oak will eventually tumble. So it will be with my efforts of today.
- Og Mandino
I’m a genetic optimist.
- Jeff Bezos
Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting.
- Peter Thiel
Don’t treat your customers like a bunch of purses and wallets.
- Chris Brogan
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
- Napoleon Hill
People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
- Winston Churchill
Love to learn—hate to be taught.
- Winston Churchill
More than trends, consumers need functionality. Everything needs an element of fashion, but that’s more like a spice.
- Tadashi Yanai
when the fierce, burning winds blow over our lives-and we cannot prevent them-let us, too, accept the inevitable. And then get busy and pick up the pieces.
- Dale Carnegie
the Mach3—leaving hundreds of millions of people to a more painful daily battle with stubble.19
- James C. Collins
We believed we could build a better search. We had a simple idea that not all pages are created equal. Some are more important.
- Sergey Brin
Nothing will work unless you do.
- Maya Angelou
The success of the Overseas Chinese is the result of bad times in China itself. The Chinese who left the mother country had to struggle, and that became a culture of its own, passed on from father to son through each generation. Because we have no social security, the Overseas Chinese habit is to save a lot and make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
Don’t be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.
- Dale Carnegie
Instead of condemning people, let’s try to understand them. Let’s try to figure out why they do what they do. That’s a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. To know all is to forgive all.
- Dale Carnegie
Our culture is friendly and intense, but if push comes to shove we’ll settle for intense.
- Jeff Bezos
There is little success where there is little laughter.
- Andrew Carnegie
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
- Henry Ford
You cannot get into business for the fashion of it.
- Azim Premji
We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone.
- Richard Branson
I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.
- Zig Ziglar
You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
- Zig Ziglar
We have more than six and one-half times the level of wealth of our non-millionaire neighbors, but, in our neighborhood, these non-millionaires outnumber us better than three to one. Could it be that they have chosen to trade wealth for acquiring high-status material possessions?
- The Millionaire Next Door
You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.
- John Maxwell
Before success comes in any man’s life, he’s sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and the most logical thing to do is to quit. That’s exactly what the majority of men do.
- Napoleon Hill
If you don’t set a baseline standard for what you’ll accept in life, you’ll find it’s easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that’s far below what you deserve.
- Anthony Robbins
Many people are unhappy and are not experiencing life to its fullest because they’ve closed their hearts to compassion, they are motivated by only what they want and what they think they need. They rarely do anything for anybody else unless they have an ulterior goal in mind. They are self-involved and self-centered.
- Joel Olsteen
Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.
- John C. Maxwell
At our computer club, we talked about it being a revolution. Computers were going to belong to everyone, and give us power, and free us from the people who owned computers and all that stuff.
- Steve Wozniak
The main rule to me is to honor God with your life. To life a life of integrity. Not be selfish. You know, help others. But that’s really the essence of the Christian faith.
- Joel Olsteen
The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.
- Bill Gates
Worrying is a waste of time. Worrying gets in the way of solving problems.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The world is changing… I don’t, as a consumer, want advertising that’s not relevant. If we’re going to take a side, let’s take the side of the consumer.
- Charles Ergen
You will never change what you tolerate.
- Joel Olsteen
Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don’t base your self-esteem on their opinions.
- Harvey Mackay
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
- Confucius
What we discovered, counter-intuitively, is that when you start killing a cancer cell, one of the things it does in order to survive is to spread even further. It causes itself to form new blood vessels. We’ve termed this ‘reactionary angiogenesis.’
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand”
- Dale Carnegie
I can’t stress enough the essential nature of really hearing what someone has to say even if it is totally contradictory to your own beliefs, and I wish this was a lesson I only had to learn once.
- David Novak
So to hype up PolyGram we placed fake orders for the record into their system by telling retailers and wholesalers to order the 12 inch through PolyGram. PolyGram didn’t own it yet, but we created an appetite for Christmas Rappin that led them to buy it…So in the fall of 1979 Kurtis Blow signed with Mercury Records a division of Polygram Records, making him the first rapper on a major label…Christmas eve 1979 was the first time that I heard Christmas Rappin’ on the radio; I was upstairs at my family’s house. Frankie Crocker the biggest radio DJ in New York played it on WBLS.
- Russell Simmons
Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
People who are able to lift up others and boost the morale in organization are invaluable, and they are always a tremendous asset to a leader’s inner circle.
- Napoleon Hill
Essentially, whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference, is going to be talked about.
- Mukesh Ambani
I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I had read about it. I knew there were other places, and there was another way of being.
- Oprah Winfrey
Building a better you is the first step to building a better America.
- Zig Ziglar
If you have a reputation as a big, stiff bureaucracy, you’re stuck.
- Jack Welch
The 1990s have a good image. We tend to remember them as a prosperous, optimistic decade that happened to end with the internet boom and bust. But many of those years were not as cheerful as our nostalgia holds. We’ve long since forgotten the global context for the 18 months of dot-com mania at decade’s end.
- Peter Thiel
The slower growth in revenues and continued pressure on margins will result in negative earnings comparison for at least the next two quarters, with fiscal 1998 earnings per share likely to be in the 2 to 2.15 range.
- Phil Knight
We don’t mature momentarily, but over the long-term.
- John C. Maxwell
If you go out looking for friends, you’re going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember Life is too short to be little.
- Dale Carnegie
The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.
- Napoleon Hill
They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.
- Thomas Edison
There is no business in America that would be prevented from taking results into account when making personnel decisions.
- Michael Bloomberg
It is expected that Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation will materialise in the near future and the country will see further growth in its economy unfolding at a faster pace.
- Lee Shau Kee
My politics are: I’m a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I’m pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It’s good for everybody; it’s not red or blue.
- Travis Kalanick
Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
- Henry Ford
You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
- Peter Drucker
A decade and a half ago an ‘Esquire’ magazine reporter, noting our advertising played up the heros as aspects of great atheletes asked the question, who is your hero? My answer was simple. My college track coach and partner, Bill Bowerman. He had won four national championships, coached more sub four minute milers than anyone when he retired. He was the 1972 Olympic coach yet he insisted he was not a track coach. He was a professor of competitive response.
- Phil Knight
Through the right people focusing on the right things, we can, in time, get on top of a lot if not most of the problems of this world. And that’s what a number of us are trying to do.
- Richard Branson
Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we’ve had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you’re really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.
- Steve Ballmer
I believe in God, family, and McDonald’s. And in the office, that order is reversed.
- Ray Kroc
How you look, talk, and market your business is what should be keeping everyone busy.
- Bryan Smith
Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
- Winston Churchill
Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.
- Bill Gates
Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.
- Zig Ziglar
I would counsel people to go to college, because it’s one of the best times in your life in terms of who you meet and develop a broad set of intellectual skills.
- Bill Gates
In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It’s a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems. A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.
- Ben Horowitz
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
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.
- Og Mandino
Common Core is a big win for education.
- Bill Gates
You create your own universe as you go along.
- Winston Churchill
It’s true that charisma can make a person stand out for a moment, but character sets a person apart for a lifetime.
- John C. Maxwell
If you believe as I do that you were born to win, you’re going to have to find your fears and start facing them.
- Zig Ziglar
The way to stay ahead was through product innovation. We happened to be great at it.
- Phil Knight
Well, real estate is always good, as far as I’m concerned.
- Donald Trump
I believe it’s less risky long-term to embrace change.
- Charles Ergen
Not victory , Obi- Wan. The shroud of the Dark Side has fallen. Begun, this Clone War has.
- Yoda
