Rockefeller’s supreme insight was that he could solve the oil industry’s problems by solving the railroad’s problems at the same time, creating a double cartel in oil and rails. One of Rockefeller’s strength in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and then crafted mutually advanteous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper, albeit in away that fortified his own position.
- Ron Chernow
Notable Quotables
Innovation could impact everything…
- Jack Dorsey
We have a number of difficulties facing our nation, but I believe fatherlessness is right at the top of the list.
- Tony Dungy
Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.
- Anatole France
If my life has had a theme, I suppose it has been a typical American theme in that, for most of it, I have been looking for happiness and success.
- Zig Ziglar
With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence?
- Timothy Ferriss
Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually.
- George Soros
Over 80% of America’s millionaires are self-made.
- Thomas J Stanley
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
We are gods in the chrysalis.
- Dale Carnegie
I think the move by Mr. Greenspan was welcomed by everyone here.
- Jack Welch
Money will buy you a bed, but not a good night’s sleep, a house, but not a home, a companion, but not a friend.
- Zig Ziglar
The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.
- Bill Gates
If you can’t be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.
- Seth Godin
What has sustained us through these years? Trust. Dedication. Discipline.
- Cheng Yu-tung
If you can be sure of being right only 55 percent of the time, you can go down to Wall Street and make a million dollars a day. If you can’t be sure of being right even 55 percent of the time, why should you tell other people they are wrong?
- Dale Carnegie
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
If you do not believe in your product or service enough to offer it to your own family and friends, then you should question the value of what you are selling.
- Zig Ziglar
Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
- Stephen King
One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.
- Seth Godin
“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.
- Sergey Brin
They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.
- Larry Ellison
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
I mean, there’s no arguing. There is no anything. There is no beating around the bush. ‘You’re fired’ is a very strong term.
- Donald Trump
Good shareholder activists have incredible interest in the company because they own a lot of it.
- Ben Horowitz
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
Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.
- Peter Drucker
When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.
- James C. Collins
Life’s too short to spend it trying to keep others happy. You can’t please everyone. To fulfill your destiny, stay true to your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Lots of companies don’t succeed over time. What do they fundamentally do wrong? They usually miss the future. I try to focus on that: What is the future really going to be? And how do we create it? And how do we power our organization to really focus on that and really drive it at a high rate?
- Larry Page
Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care … We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end … Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.
- Winston Churchill
As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t.
- Ben Horowitz
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.
- Sam Walton
Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn’t willing to.
- Bill Gates
I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don’t hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.
- Zig Ziglar
I do think a founder has special permission to make sweeping changes across an organization.
- Michael Dell
The arrival of the 21st century precedes the onslaught of turmoil and tsunami. The business environment has become unpredictable and the global economy even harsher…
- Cheng Yu-tung
People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.
- Bill Gates
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
- Henry Ford
I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.
- John D. Rockefeller
Property prices depend mainly on the supply and demand of a particular point in time, in much the same way as the price for a commodity is fixed.
- Lee Shau Kee
Mrs. Carnegie and I had dinner at a friend’s house in Chicago. While carving the meat, he did something wrong. I didn’t notice it; and I wouldn’t have cared even if I had noticed it. But his wife saw it and jumped down his throat right in front of us. John,” she cried, watch what you are doing! Can’t you ever learn to serve properly!” Then she said to us: He is always making mistakes. He just doesn’t try.” Maybe he didn’t try to carve; but I certainly give him credit for trying to live with her for twenty years. Frankly, I would rather have eaten a couple of hot dogs with mustard—in an atmosphere of peace—than to have dined on Peking duck and shark fins while listening to her scolding.
- Dale Carnegie
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
[Less than a week after founding the forerunner to Nike] I forgot to make it part of the original agreement, but I think it ought to be made explicit: There will be no pissing on partners in the shower.
- Phil Knight
This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
- James C. Collins
Nobody is so miserable as he who longs to be somebody and something other than the person he is in body and mind.
- Dale Carnegie
In order to become rich, you need to learn to build systems that can work without you. .
- Robert Kiyosaki
Anyone, even a child, can be taught to develop a positive mental attitude. The method is to repeat positive affirmations such as: Day by day, in every way, through the grace of God, I am getting better and better.
- Napoleon Hill
The Internet revolution will determine which companies survive and which get left behind, … Increasingly, the Internet is recognized as the key driver in our global economy.
- John Chambers
Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.
- Jack Ma
Great design = getting people to do what you want.
- Seth Godin
There are certain things I will automate, but when it comes to quality control, I want to keep a very close eye.
- Timothy Ferriss
I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.
- Joel Olsteen
People are more comfortable learning about wine because now they can just Google, you know, ‘Soave,’ and say, ‘Oh, O.K., cool.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I think Twitter is the future of communications and Square will be the payment network.
- Jack Dorsey
Buddha said: ‘Hatred is never ended by hatred but by love,’ and a misunderstanding is never ended by an argument but by tact, diplomacy, conciliation and a sympathetic desire to see the other person’s viewpoint.
- Dale Carnegie
The higher the level of leadership people want to reach, the greater the sacrifices they will have to make?
- John Maxwell
Don’t waste your time trying to win people over that can never be won over.
- Joel Olsteen
Many residents have grown more cynical about government, … Sure, I want my constituents to feel good about me as their legislator, but we have to do something to restore the public’s faith in government.
- Michael Gerber
The economy in Hong Kong remained on a declining path. Occurrence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (‘SARS’) in March this year led to a sharp drop in consumer spending and an increasing unemployment rate. The decline in the economy resulted in downward adjustment in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
My experiences have been, from the very beginning, cultural and creative. And my business has been a way of exposing the culture, exposing the artists so that the world could hear and see them.
- Russell Simmons
Be courageous! Whatever setbacks America has encountered, it has always emerged as a stronger and more prosperous nation…. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward!
- Thomas Edison
An individual artist needs only a thousand true fans in her tribe. It’s enough.
- Seth Godin
There is a good saying to the effect that when a new book appears one should read an old one.
- Winston Churchill
Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.
- Elon Musk
When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
- Winston Churchill
Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it’s the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. If they don’t go to law school, bright college graduates head to Wall Street precisely because they have no real plan for their careers. And once they arrive at Goldman, they find that even inside finance, everything is indefinite. It’s still optimistic—you wouldn’t play in the markets if you expected to lose—but the fundamental tenet is that the market is random; you can’t know anything specific or substantive; diversification becomes supremely important.
- Peter Thiel
I want to do transformational work to actually fix the world.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.
- Peter Thiel
Urm. Put a shield on my saber I must.
- Yoda
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
- Elon Musk
For PayPal to work, we needed to attract a critical mass of at least a million users. Advertising was too ineffective to justify the cost. Prospective deals with big banks kept falling through. So we decided to pay people to sign up. We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend. This got us hundreds of thousands of new customers and an exponential growth rate.
- Peter Thiel
The ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.
- Bill Gates
As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
- Henry Ford
Dinner would have been splendid…if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess.
- Winston Churchill
The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.
- Jeff Bezos
You don’t inherit cancer, you actually get it.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
I think the idea of getting money out of politics is critical.
- Russell Simmons
Desire is the catalyst that enables a person with average ability to compete and win against others with more natural talent.
- Zig Ziglar
I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.
- Zig Ziglar
My wealth is reflected in the price of Severstal, and the number of shares I have in my possession doesn’t have any impact on the company.
- Alexei Mordashov
No one learns as much about a subject as one who is forced to teach it.
- Peter Drucker
When you expect your employees to act like adults, they generally do. If you treat them like children, then get ready for your company to turn into one big Barney episode.
- Ben Horowitz
You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on… So it’s a fixer-upper of a planet.
- Elon Musk
I’ve got to keep breathing. It’ll be my worst business mistake if I don’t.
- Steve Martin
A riot is the language of the unheard.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more.
- Sam Walton
I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.
- Richard Branson
Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are commmon and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields – from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident: the volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably. Knowledge has both saved us and burdened us. That means we need a different strategy for overcoming failure, one that builds on experience and takes advantage of the knowledge people have but somehow also makes up for our inevitable human inadequacies. And there is such a strategy – though it will seem almost ridiculous in its simplicity, maybe even crazy to those of us who have spent years carefully developing ever more advanced skills and technologies. It is a checklist.
- Atul Gawande
True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller
Desire Is Born With Vision.
- Zig Ziglar
Cisco Systems Capital will be investing in companies working on networking technology.
- John Chambers
My parents were ordinary people, we lived in a small apartment.
- Viktor Vekselberg
People naturally follow those stronger than themselves.
- John Maxwell
Our approach as a Group is based on strong economic, social and environmental principles. We strive to create high quality, visually stimulating innovative new homes and commercial developments that enhance, as well as integrate with, their surrounding natural and built environments.
- Lee Shau Kee
Know what your people are like, and make sure they do their jobs excellently.
- Ray Dalio
I definitely think there’s some way to understand how people emotionally feel about somebody, but I don’t think data collects it. They’re not going to click your bit.ly link or click your TweetMeme retweet every time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
As much as you need a strong personality to build a business from scratch, you also must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me.
- Richard Branson
Faith is easy. I think people complicate it.
- Joel Olsteen
