Notable Quotables

This the real world, homie, school finished They done stole your dreams, you dunno who did it.

- Kanye West

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

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

Self-disciplined begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.

- Napoleon Hill

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

I really believed that I said then, and I still do. But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop. The way I approached managing the business, I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision – usually flying around to take a look at our stores on a regular basis. But from the very beginning, even on my paper routes in college, I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage the stores. That’s been the case since back in Newport….We’re big now. We’re really big. That’s not something I like to focus on. I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not necessarily the biggest…(being big poses opportunities), but being big also poses big dangers. It has ruined many a fine company – including some giant retailers – who started out strong and got bloated or out of touch or were slow to react to the needs of their customers. Here’s the point: the biggest Wal-Mart gets, the more essential it is that we think small. Because that is exactly how we have become a big corporation.

- Sam Walton

Most fears of rejection rest on the desire for approval from other people. Don’t base your self-esteem on their opinions.

- Harvey Mackay

Nothing remains permanent in the world, change is just the eternal fact.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Some of the biggest failures I’ve ever met, are people that have never failed.

- Robert Kiyosaki

I am looking to buy companies that are run by painters. Most great artists have a hard time letting go of their paintings. That’s because the joy is not in the finished work, the joys is in the painting. They are constantly adding a dab of color here, a little more texture there. I’m looking for the boss who is always tweaking his company, constantly trying to make it better. No matter how successful he may have already been, what he still sees is a master-piece-in-progress.

- Warren Buffett

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.

- Dale Carnegie

Organizations that achieve both market and operating focus are nearly unbeatable Customers don’t buy products or services. They buy results. They were designed to break what Schlesinger and his colleagues called the cycle of failure practiced by many of Au Bon Pain’s competitors who paid their employees and managers low wages, offered them little training and other support, and suffered high turnover of employees and limited customer loyalty as a result.

- James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser and Leonard

You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts. The good-to-great companies operated.

- James C. Collins

On all open platforms, regardless of whether it’s Facebook or the Apple App Store, the largest segment is entertainment and games. It’s the largest revenue segment. And it’s the same for Tencent.

- Ma Huateng

You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.

- Russell Simmons

Where you start is not as important as where you finish.

- Zig Ziglar

Helping convene global stakeholders to establish a set of measurable, actionable and consensus-built goals focused on extreme poverty is invaluable.

- Bill Gates

A great business has to have a conscience. You have to know who you are and who you are not.

- Howard Schultz

If I have seen further it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.

- Sir Isaac Newton

It is important that all of us, however old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us. A mindset that is characterized by creativity and initiative, harnessed by focus and discipline. In our company, this mindset is requisite and indelible.

- Cheng Yu-tung

One has to live with the fact that some corporate decisions are going to be wrong. As long as most of the decisions are right.

- Michael Otto

When you are the first person whose beliefs are different from what everyone else believes, you are basically saying, ‘I’m right and everyone else is wrong.’ That’s a very unpleasant position to be in. It’s at once exhilaration and the same time an invitation to be attacked.

- Larry Ellison

This isn’t stealing this is standing on the shoulders of giants.

- David Novak

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

- Antoine de Saint-Exup

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.

- Peter Drucker

Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.

- Thomas Edison

I’m not doing my philanthropic work, out of any kind of guilt, or any need to create good public relations. I’m doing it because I can afford to do it, and I believe in it.

- George Soros

Kickstarter isn’t a profit center, it’s an organizer and an instigator.

- Seth Godin

I hate politics. What they say and what they do is completely different.

- Tadashi Yanai

Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That’s pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement.

- Elon Musk

I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

- Jeff Bezos

The marriage partner is not really the problem. No other person can ultimately make you happy. You must learn how to be happy within yourself.

- Joel Olsteen

I’ve never preached one sermon on money, on just finances. I want to stay away from it.

- Joel Olsteen

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.

- Ben Horowitz

People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.

- Winston Churchill

Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.

- Peter Thiel

Yeah, well I think anyone who likes fast cars will love the Tesla. And it has fantastic handling by the way. I mean this car will crush a Porsche on the track, just crush it. So if you like fast cars, you’ll love this car. And then oh, by the way, it happens to be electric and it’s twice the efficiency of a Prius.

- Elon Musk

One evening, intending to ask my host mother to wake me the next morning (okosu), I ask her to violently rape me (okasu). She is very confused.

- Timothy Ferriss

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

Men sometimes stumble over the truth, but often pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists – proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.

- Thomas Edison

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.

- Winston Churchill

If I designed a computer with 200 chips, I tried to design it with 150. And then I would try to design it with 100. I just tried to find every trick I could in life to design things real tiny.

- Steve Wozniak

The real benefit of having goals is what you become by reaching them.

- Zig Ziglar

Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.

- Oprah Winfrey

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

- Haruki Murakami

Kids instinctively know – although they will argue to the contrary – that they really are not mature enough to make good decisions on some important issues.

- Zig Ziglar

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself, believe.

- Winston Churchill

We were old sinners – but when we came to Christ we are not sinners anymore.

- Joel Olsteen

If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.

- Jeff Bezos

People at McDonald’s get trained for their positions, but people with far more complicated jobs don’t. It makes no sense. Would you want to stand on the line of the untrained person at McDonald’s? Would you want to use the software written by the engineer who was never told how the rest of the code worked? A lot of companies think their employees are so smart that they require no training. That’s silly.

- Ben Horowitz

It is hard to realize today that “government” during the American Civil War a hundred years ago meant the merest handful of people. Lincoln’s Secretary of War had fewer than fifty civilian subordinates, most of them not “executives” and policy-makers but telegraph clerks. The entire Washington establishment of the U.S. government in Theodore Roosevelt’s time, around 1900, could be comfortably housed in any one of the government buildings along the Mall today.

- Peter Drucker

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

- Dale Carnegie

Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.

- Zig Ziglar

When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.

- Bill Gates

As kids, we all worked for the company in one way or another. I got to work behind the candy counter or run the popcorn stand when I was five years old. The business was part of life, and it was always included in the dinner conversation. We learned a lot about the debt it took to open new stores, and I worried about it. I remember confiding to my girlfriend one time – crying and saying, I don’t know what we’re going to do. My daddy owes so much, and he won’t quit opening.

- Alice Walton

The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world.

- Bill Gates

The question isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people?’ It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?

- Mark Zuckerberg

The foundations and the intent of the Affordable Care Act are laudable. The way it’s being implemented is a disaster.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

One of the cornerstones of what I believe will be the future is wave after wave of applications.

- John Chambers

Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.

- Harvey Mackay

While there’s always room for improvement, … we were very pleased with our results in what is a seasonally-challenging quarter.

- John Chambers

When we are not engaged in thinking about some definite problem, we usually spend about 95 percent of our time thinking about ourselves.

- Dale Carnegie

A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.

- Peter Thiel

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don’t actually improve their lives.

- Jeff Bezos

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.

- Jim Rohn

The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It’s in the blood.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Complaints are your best learning opportunity

- Bill Gates

My training of cold-calling and everyone under the sun telling me no, and my keeping going, was a huge part of the first two years of Spanx.

- Sara Blakely

It’s through curiosity and looking at opportunities in new ways that we’ve always mapped our path at Dell. There’s always an opportunity to make a difference.

- Michael Dell

Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, for your character is what you are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

- Dale Carnegie

Chance can allow you to accomplish a goal every once in a while, but consistent achievement happens only if you love what you are doing.

- Bart Conner

the ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I will pay more for that ability,” said John D., than for any other under the sun.

- Dale Carnegie

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.

- Dale Carnegie

The flexibility of Hong Kong businessmen should soon twist a way to success again.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Education comes from within, you get it by struggle and effort and thought.

- Napoleon Hill

You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.

- Jack Welch

Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people’s idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.

- Winston Churchill

It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested? Collin’s advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.

- James C. Collins

Owners don’t fire all the players. They fire the leader and bring in someone they hope the players will buy into.

- Napoleon Hill

The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.

- Napoleon Hill

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

- Elon Musk

After assessing the prospects of the various business segments of Henderson Cyber, the company, Henderson Investment, Hong Kong and China Gas and Henderson Cyber jointly announced in August 2005, the proposed privatisation of Henderson Cyber by Henderson Investment and Hong Kong and China Gas…

- Lee Shau Kee

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

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth.

- Stephen Wynn

Some people keep God in a Sunday morning box and say, ‘Hey, I did my religious duty.’ That’s fine, but the scripture says to pray without ceasing. And I think that means all through the day you’re talking to God. Even if it’s in your thoughts.

- Joel Olsteen

There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life. If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?

- Ben Horowitz

Benjamin Franklin, tactless in his youth, became so diplomatic, so adroit at handling people, that he was made American Ambassador to France. The secret of his success? I will speak ill of no man,” he said, … and speak all the good I know of everybody.

- Dale Carnegie

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