There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
- Og Mandino
Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.
- Winston Churchill
The fuel cell is just a fundamentally inferior way of delivering electrical energy to an electric motor than batteries.
- Elon Musk
A motivated employee treats the customer well. The customer is happy, so (he keeps) coming back, which pleases the shareholder.
- Herb Kelleher
People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.
- Walt Disney
Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business—the creation of new value—cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.
- Peter Thiel
Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the population growth is very high, whereby you don’t have the mortgage low yet. Still the demand outstrips supply by much.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
- Mark Twain
I’m trying to change the culture in New York City, that’s hard enough!
- Michael Bloomberg
Continually get the word out about how you’re handling the situation.
- David Novak
Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it, and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
America gets its opinions from advertising.
- Phil Knight
Those people behind the mosque have to respect, have to appreciate and have to defer to the people of New York. The wound is still there. Just because the wound is healing you can’t say, ‘Let’s just go back to where we were pre-9/11.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
“High expectations are the key to everything.”
- Sam Walton
Who’s your Jedi master? WHO’S your Jedi Master?
- Yoda
The Minden prospect originated this past summer through a large acreage acquisition from a major oil company and Cabot now controls 3,500 acres over the area. We are pleased with our initial results and will remain active in this area throughout 2006. On forty-acre spacing, the prospect has the potential for 80 plus locations.
- Dan Dinges
Don’t treat your customers like a bunch of purses and wallets.
- Chris Brogan
His strategy would be to subjugate one part of the battlefield, consolidate his forces, then move briskly on to the next conquest. His victory over the Cleveland refiners would be the first but alos the most controversial compaign of his career.
- Ron Chernow
Tip #17 – Perceived value is what sells. Real value is what repeats.
- Jack Nadel
You should know now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, not by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it.
- Carlos Castaneda
We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
I was not strong enough to defeat him. Like his master before him, be destroyed, he must.
- Yoda
Monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.
- Peter Thiel
Many salespeople feel that selling is warfare: the buyer is the enemy and words are ammunition…The seller’s advances are turned aside because they are so predictable, amateurish and easily deflected.
- Jerry Vass
Nike was the great goddess of victory.
- Phil Knight
Seeing his education soley in utilitarian terms, he studied hard, but showed no intellectual playfulness.
- Ron Chernow
Me and my dad are the biggest promoters of an estate tax in the US. It’s not a popular position.
- Bill Gates
In boxing, you get hit, it’s painful, then you sit on the stool when the adrenaline is gone and you feel that pain. And then you fight the next round.
- Ben Horowitz
Do it. Try it. Fix it.
- Sam Walton
In order for the United States to do the right things for the long term, it appears to be helpful for us to have the prospect of humiliation. Sputnik helped us fund good science – really good science: the semiconductor came out of it.
- Bill Gates
You have to learn to follow your heart. You can’t let other people pressure you into being something that you’re not. If you want God’s favor in your life, you must be the person He made you to be, not the person your boss wants you to be, not even the person your parents or your husband wants you to be. You can’t let outside expectations keep you from following your own heart.
- Joel Olsteen
I influence anybody who is able to get through the chaos of my first impression.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I really don’t think in the past. I sit down with many friends at dinner, and they like to talk about the good old days. I’m respectful of the good old days, but I find myself spending very little time reminiscing. I’m really looking forward.
- Donald Bren
Competition can make people hallucinate opportunities where none exist.
- Peter Thiel
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
- Oprah Winfrey
There’s nothing like the endorphins from being fit, and the incredible endorphin rush that goes with that.
- Richard Branson
Slow Dance: Have you ever watched kids, On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain, Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance too fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day, On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed, With the next hundred chores, Running through your head? You’d better slow down, Don’t dance too fast. Time is short, The music won’t last. Ever told your child we’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die, Cause you never had time, To call and say Hi? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere, You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music, Before the song is over.
- Timothy Ferriss
I learned that people don’t buy anything from unknown stores.
- Tadashi Yanai
Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It’s just cultural. People just don’t want to do it.
- Jack Welch
Definite planning even went beyond the surface of this planet: NASA’s Apollo Program began in 1961 and put 12 men on the moon before it finished in 1972.
- Peter Thiel
I’ve always believed that businesses should be good citizens…
- Phil Knight
The knowledge worker is not poverty-prone. He is in danger of alienation, to use the fashionable word for boredom, frustration, and silent despair.
- Peter Drucker
There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.
- Phil Knight
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
Write your life story as if it has already happened and live it out using your faith in yourself, and in the reality that you are embracing.
- Clay Clark
Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly. If you are CEO, these choices will lead to a courageous or cowardly company.
- Ben Horowitz
I believe that continued strong consumer acceptance of our products at retail and the strengthening of our organization will enable us to manage through the challenges in our U. S. footwear business and lay the foundation for another round of growth.
- Phil Knight
Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.
- Ben Horowitz
I do love email. Wherever possible I try to communicate asynchronously. I’m really good at email.
- Elon Musk
If you pay that price daily by planning and preparing and working to become the right kind of person, then you can legitimately expect to have all that life has to offer.
- Zig Ziglar
What I’m trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there’s inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.
- Ray Dalio
One of [Bill] Bowerman’s more legendary innovations is the Waffle outsole, which he discovered by pouring rubber into a waffle iron.
- Phil Knight
I am a man of simple tastes easily satisfied with the best.
- Winston Churchill
If physical death is the price that I must pay to free my white brothers and sisters from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Encourage yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
New ideas can be gained through reviewing past experience. Inspirations and thoughts may even come from failures in the past. This is because modern and advanced technologies as well as new knowledge are able to make up the shortcomings of and add value to old methods.
- Cheng Yu-tung
I am very optimistic about china’s growth.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.
- Laszlo Bock
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
- Winston Churchill
If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.
- Sun Tzu
I’ve always been very happy. I’ve always been easy going and I’ve always been very encouraging, it’s just my personality.
- Joel Olsteen
We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.
- Bill Gates
If you want to spend time saying this is cool, you’re going to get your ass kicked.
- Phil Knight
Man’s only limitation within reason lies in his development and use of his imagination
- Napoleon Hill
I’m going to give away a lot more than half my money. I’d be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I’m giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.
- Ray Dalio
Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.
- Vida D. Scudder
The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.
- Seth Godin
In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.
- Lee Shau Kee
Be there for your kids. Later, when you need them, they’ll be there for you.
- Zig Ziglar
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
The top salesperson in the organization probably missed more sales than 90% of the sales people on the team, but they also made more calls than the others made.
- Zig Ziglar
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
- Bill Gates
I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.
- Bill Gates
Today a grand plan coming from a schoolteacher would be dismissed as crankery, and a long-range vision coming from anyone more powerful would be derided as hubris.
- Peter Thiel
Bill Milliken is a big hero of mine.
- Anne Cox Chambers
I think they are fine. I don’t think you have a choice between iPad models so that’s just saying that the iPad is good … that’s a very different statement (and contrary to the implication) that, if I chose not to upgrade now, less than a year after my last upgrade, then I, Woz, am saying that the new Apple iPad is bad.
- Steve Wozniak
New World Group believes that the desire to change and surmount the status quo will be the key to advancement and progression.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.
- Seth Godin
Of course I’m an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?
- Winston Churchill
Smith never wavered. Twenty-five years later, Kimberly-Clark owned Scott Paper outright and beat Procter & Gamble in six of eight product categories.12 In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.
- James C. Collins
One of the cornerstones of what I believe will be the future is wave after wave of applications.
- John Chambers
When enough people care about autism or diabetes or global warming, it helps everyone, even if only a tiny fraction actively participate.
- Seth Godin
Mickey Mouse is, to me, a symbol of independence. He was a means to an end.
- Walt Disney
Bottom line: God will not allow any person to keep you from your destiny. They may be bigger, stronger, or more powerful, but God knows how to shift things around and get you to where you’re supposed to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Certainly, the Windows share of servers is strong.
- Bill Gates
A modest little person, with much to be modest about.
- Winston Churchill
When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.
- Walt Disney
Pick a movement. Pick something you believe in. Pick something you want to have an impact in and then question every single thing and be a founder, and be an entrepreneur inside those organizations and inside that movement.
- Jack Dorsey
If I do you a favor you will reciprocate even in greater measure if possible. Through the proper use of this law / can get you to do whatever I wish you to do. If I wish you to dislike me and to lend your influence toward damaging me, I can accomplish this result by inflicting upon you the sort of treatment that I want you to inflict upon me through retaliation.
- Napoleon Hill
Unhappy Barnes & Noble filed a lawsuit three days before Amazon’s IPO, claiming that Amazon was unfairly calling itself a “bookstore” when really it was a “book broker”.
- Peter Thiel
There’s plenty of room at the top but not enough room to sit down.
- Zig Ziglar
My biggest crisis is that I don’t understand what young people like.
- Ma Huateng
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
I don’t know what would have happened to Wal-Mart if we had laid low and never stirred up the competition. My guess is that we would have remained a strictly regional operator.
- Sam Walton
My goal was never to just create a company. A lot of people misinterpret that, as if I don’t care about revenue or profit or any of those things. But what not being just a company means to me is not being just that – building something that actually makes a really big change in the world.
- Mark Zuckerberg
“Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.
- Ben Horowitz
If you want to reach the top, don’t run over others. Likely, the only way you’ll reach the top is to be carried there by others.
- John C. Maxwell
The typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.
- Michael Gerber
I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.
- Steve Wozniak
