Notable Quotables

Managing and navigating through a financial crisis is no fun at all.

- Howard Schultz

I grew up in a house where my father encouraged my brother and me to fail. I specifically remember coming home and saying, ‘Dad, Dad, I tried out for this or that and I was horrible,’ and he would high-five me and say, ‘Way to go.’

- Sara Blakely

MONOPOLY. Tesla started with a tiny submarket that it could dominate: the market for high-end electric sports cars. Since the first Roadster rolled off the production line in 2008, Tesla’s sold only about 3,000 of them, but at $109,000 apiece that’s not trivial. Starting small allowed Tesla to undertake the necessary R&D to build the slightly less expensive Model S, and now Tesla owns the luxury electric sedan market, too. They sold more than 20,000 sedans in 2013 and now Tesla is in prime position to expand to broader markets in the future.

- Peter Thiel

Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.

- Zig Ziglar

Art isn’t only a painting. Art is anything that’s creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator.What makes someone an artist? I don’t think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren’t artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally.That’s why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That’s why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam.Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He’s an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn’t care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it’s important, not because he expects you to pay him for it.Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does.Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.

- Seth Godin

Linchpins are the essential building blocks of tomorrow’s high-value organizations. They don’t bring capital or expensive machinery, nor do they blindly follow instructions and merely contribute labor. Linchpins are indispensable, the driving force of our future.

- Seth Godin

I encourage all my key people to bring their mobiles when they travel.

- Raymond Kwok

College students can become extremely skilled at a few specialties, but many never learn what to do with those skills in the wider world.

- Peter Thiel

To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.

- Bill Gates

Listen to everyone in your company. And figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front lines, the one who actually talk to the customer, are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know. This really is what total quality is all about. To push responsibility down in your organization, and to force good ideas to bubble within it, you must listen to what your associates are telling you.

- Sam Walton

It’s not what happens to you that matters, it’s how you respond to what happens to you that makes a difference.

- Zig Ziglar

(1) Define a to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list. In general terms, there are but two questions:

- Timothy Ferriss

The secret is not to give up hope. It’s very hard not to because if you’re really doing something worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness before you come through the other side.

- George Lucas

It’s easier for investors and bosses to spend time and money going after a proven market, even though proven markets are the hardest to break into.

- Seth Godin

We are focusing on the increasing need for mobility and growing demand from our industrial customers. The production volume for vehicles weighing up to six tons is expected to rise to between 100 million and 105 million vehicles. Furthermore, installation of electronics and software will continue to grow substantially, driven by growing demands from end-users and increasingly strict legal requirements for safety and energy consumption. It is partly on this basis that we are aiming for profitable sales of over €50 billion in 2020.

- Elmar Degenhart

After I met my partner, Mr. Protherow, we decided to start a banking project, and at the same time we started to think already about a business on a bigger scale. At the very beginning we thought more about gaining money, to have a normal life with our families, etc.

- Vladimir Potanin

Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.

- Joel Olsteen

Paper is no longer a big part of my day. I get 90% of my news online, and when I go to a meeting and want to jot things down, I bring my Tablet PC. It’s fully synchronized with my office machine, so I have all the files I need. It also has a note-taking piece of software called OneNote, so all my notes are in digital form.

- Bill Gates

Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.

- Zig Ziglar

Hold on to that new, enlarge vision of victory that God has given you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. Dare to boldly declare that you are standing strong against the forces of darkness.

- Joel Olsteen

Fatigue makes fools of us all. It robs you of your skills and your judgment, and it blinds you to creative solutions. It’s the best-conditioned athlete, not the most talented, who generally wins when the going gets tough.

- Harvey Mackay

If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.

- Bill Gates

My wife and I tried two or three times in the last 40 years to have breakfast together, but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.

- Winston Churchill

I’ll mix a lot of things. I’ll wear a Temperley dress with flip flops, or I might be in head-to-toe Gucci and have on a ring that I got from a gumball machine for 50 cents.

- Sara Blakely

You may not realize initially how many other opportunities are wrapped up inside the first one. After you go through the first door, you’ll then discover more doors automatically opening behind that one. One door leads you to another door, which leads to another door, and so one. It’s like ten other boxes packed inside one box. The initial door that God opens is your access to more opportunities. But you must be willing to walk through the first one to get to the other good things God has for you.

- George Foreman

I believe the true road to preeminent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.

- Andrew Carnegie

Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.

- Bill Gates

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

- John C. Maxwell

First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.

- Dale Carnegie

You need to follow your own heart in light of God’s word and do what you feel is right and good for you.

- Joel Olsteen

Always try to learn from other peoples mistakes, not your own – It is much cheaper that way!

- Donald Trump

The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

- John C. Maxwell

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

- Mark Zuckerberg

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

- Bill Gates

I have always respected education, which is why I actually went back secretly and taught school for eight years.

- Steve Wozniak

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.

- Bill Gates

I’m born into the cycle of giving that we’re all born into, and I recognize it. So just because something is a good business, I’m not a business guy. I’m a creative guy.

- Russell Simmons

The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it.

- Jeff Bezos

Some very poor countries run great vaccination systems, and some richer ones run terrible programs.

- Bill Gates

What do you need to start a business? Three simple things: know your product better than anyone, know your customer, and have a burning desire to succeed.

- Dave Thomas

Good product managers crisply define the target, the “what” (as opposed to the “how”), and manage the delivery of the “what.” Bad product managers feel best about themselves when they figure out “how.” Good product managers communicate crisply to engineering in writing as well as verbally. Good product managers don’t give direction informally. Good product managers gather information informally.

- Ben Horowitz

In 1973 when the Hong Kong stock market witnessed an unprecedented slump with the Hang Seng Index plunging by over 90% in a year, the Group built the New World Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong through the acquisition of Holt’s Wharf. In doing so we broke the dominance of the UK-based conglomerates and, as if [being given] a shot in the arm, initiated the course of weaving the companies with Chinese capital into the economic fabric of Hong Kong.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Don’t make excuses, don’t blame the past. The rest of your life can be the best of your life!

- Joel Olsteen

I know if I stopped hosting ‘Wine Library TV,’ we’d probably lose 75 percent of our audience, but the remaining 25 percent is still a big number.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

- Bill Gates

When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you.

- Zig Ziglar

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

We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life. And it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001.

- Michael Bloomberg

The best things that capture your imagination are ones you hadn’t thought of before and that aren’t talked about in the news all the time.

- Steve Wozniak

What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.

- Napoleon Hill

We must remember that our children are very much what we make them.

- Dale Carnegie

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

You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

- Dale Carnegie

In philosophy, politics, and business, too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.

- Peter Thiel

Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business.

- Dale Carnegie

“Everyone will think it’s stupid!””Everyone says it’s impossible.”Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong.

- Seth Godin

If failure is not an option, then neither is success.

- Seth Godin

We vote for a presidential candidate without saying, “Why not run the country for a month and then we’ll see . .

- Seth Godin

Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.

- Michael Gerber

When you network, your aim is to meet people who are going places in their lives. You want to meet people who are ahead of you in their careers and in their organizations. You want to meet people you can look up to with pride. You want to meet people who can be friends, guides and mentors.

- Brian Tracy

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.

- Bill Gates

We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’

- Warren Buffett

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

Failure is a great teacher, and I have been its student on more than one occasion. – CEO David Novak of Yum! Brands

- David Novak

Man will occasionally stumble upon the truth but most times he will pick himself up and continue on.

- Winston Churchill

I am not trying to say that I am poor and that I don’t like beautiful things. But I don’t like luxury for luxury sake or in the sense of showing off luxury.

- Vladimir Potanin

The cost of praising someone is nil – but every psychological study shows the payoff is huge.

- Harvey Mackay

Still, it is the primary right of men to die and kill for the land they live in, and to punish with exceptional severity all members of their own race who have warmed their hands at the invaders’ hearth.

- Winston Churchill

Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.

- Yoda

The ‘morality of compromise’ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.

- Andrew Carnegie

3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we’re getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we’ve ever had before.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft

- Bill Gates

Law of Clarity – If you can’t explain what you sell to a ten-year old child then you don’t know what you sell.

- Jerry Vass

We’ve all been guilty at one point or another in our careers of boasting of perfect hindsight. It’s a terrible sin. If you don’t make sure your questions and concerns are acted upon, it doesn’t count.

- Jack Welch

Even though people are under economic pressure, they still want to support those brands with values that are compatible with their own.

- Howard Schultz

If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.

- Napoleon Hill

Marc: “Do you know the best thing about startups?” Ben: “What?” Marc: “You only ever experience two emotions: euphoria and terror. And I find that lack of sleep enhances them both.”

- Ben Horowitz

My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.

- Jack Ma

You know, if it’s a three-way race, the public has more choice than if it’s a two-way race, and has more choice in a two-way race than a one-way race.

- Michael Bloomberg

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

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

So you need two professions: the one you have studied all this time, and your other profession the profession of persuasion that allows you to make good use of all those years of education, practice and dues-paying.

- Jerry Vass

Rockets are cool. There’s no getting around that.

- Elon Musk

Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.

- Mary Kay Ash

Happiness is not a tangible thing, it’s a byproduct – a byproduct of achievement.

- Ray Kroc

Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.

- Winston Churchill

[Medco] had a different culture with respect to spending money. I believe health care demands that we be as frugal as possible and pay money for things that matter. We’re pretty frugal. Everybody has the same size offices. Everybody has the same size cube. There are no perks.

- George Paz

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

Unless you have perfectly conventional beliefs, it’s rarely a good idea to tell everybody everything that you know. So who do you tell? Whoever you need to, and no more. In practice, there’s always a golden mean between telling nobody and telling everybody—and that’s a company. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside.

- Peter Thiel

Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.

- Wayne Gretzky

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