Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.
- Sam Walton
Notable Quotables
Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.
- Steve Ballmer
It’s God’s will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty. It’s God’s will for you to pay your bills and not be in debt.
- Joel Olsteen
The big question is: When will the term structure of interest rates change? That’s the question to be worried about.
- Ray Dalio
People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Any time is a good time to start a company.
- Ron Conway
I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.
- Jeff Bezos
Success is dependent upon the glands – sweat glands.
- Zig Ziglar
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Be factual. Lying is really, really a bad idea, mostly because they’ll find you out. And then you’ll never get another item in that outlet for as long as they remember you, which will be forever.
- Michael Levine
Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?
- Brian Tracy
you don’t need to understand any of the biology, just as you don’t need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you want to reap financial blessings, you have to sow financially.
- Joel Olsteen
should go out each day expecting good things, anticipating God’s blessings and favor. God has planned all of your days for good, not evil.
- Joel Olsteen
Most people who fail in their dream fail not from lack of ability but from lack of commitment.
- Zig Ziglar
Consumers are spontaneous and if you can catch their attention, that’s going to increase the chance that they will look at your product.
- Jack Taylor
I move onward, the only direction Can’t be scared to fail in search of perfection.
- Jay-Z
We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.
- Winston Churchill
Extolling the virtues of conservation of energy, Churchill advised, “Never stand when you can sit, and never sit when you can lie down.
- Winston Churchill
[On the Nike logo] I don’t love it, but it will grow on me.
- Phil Knight
Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.
- Bill Gates
To enjoy life, you don’t need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren’t as serious as you make them out to be.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s not going out to people who aren’t going to go shopping. You’ve already got the people who are shopping.
- Jack Taylor
You can’t be in neutral and hope to reach your full potential.
- Joel Olsteen
Don’t be intimidated as you design your pitch. The fact is that nobody will come to you at first. You must be the aggressor, or you will not be heard.
- Michael Levine
CREATIVE MONOPOLY means new products that benefit everybody and sustainable profits for the creator. Competition means no profits for anybody, no meaningful differentiation, and a struggle for survival.
- Peter Thiel
The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.
- Bill Gates
I think people will walk into the Starbucks store and overnight recognize the significant difference between what Starbucks represents day-in and day-out and all the other coffee companies that have been serving coffee in India for so many years.
- Howard Schultz
Our line of business structure has served us very well in the past, when customer segments and product requirements were very distinct. Today, the differences have blurred between these customer segments and Cisco is in a unique position to provide the industry’s broadest family of products united under a consistent architecture designed to help our customers improve productivity and profitability.
- John Chambers
Who you attract is not determined by what you want. It’s determined by who you are.
- John Maxwell
Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night must fall.
- Yoda
Time management is an oxymoron. Time is beyond our control, and the clock keeps ticking regardless of how we lead our lives. Priority management is the answer to maximizing the time we have.
- John C. Maxwell
I think my whole life, because of where I came from, I had a fear of failure.
- Howard Schultz
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
- Winston Churchill
Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It’s really that easy – and that’s what I do.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you think the people you attract could be better, then it’s time for you to improve yourself.
- Napoleon Hill
The issue of Palestine has been there since more than 60 years. But more important since 1967 when the war was, ended in the defeat of some Arab countries.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
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
Nobody is actually a natural C.E.O.
- Ben Horowitz
Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment.
- Seth Godin
Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.
- Seth Godin
Facing reality sounds simple, but it isn’t. I found it hard to get people to see a situation for what it is and not for what it was, or what they hoped it would be.
- Jack Welch
You can change everything about your business by changing your thinking about your business.
- Zig Ziglar
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
- Napoleon Hill
I think many start-ups make mistakes because they are focusing on things that are farther ahead, and they haven’t done the work that has built the foundation to support it.
- Howard Schultz
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
I think I’m less afraid of failure than some others.
- Russell Simmons
What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labor, but a third team, one that straddled elements of both? I think there’s a huge opportunity for a third kind of participant, a linchpin, and now there is an opportunity to change all the rules that we’ve lived with all our lives. There is a shortage of this third kind of worker, and that shortage means that the market needs you desperately. The con game is ending, at least for people passionate enough to do something about it.
- Seth Godin
[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
Acquiring Sunseeker deepens Wanda’s international influence and represents an important step forward for the development of the business.
- Wang Jianlin
Better to be called a cult—or even a mafia
- Peter Thiel
How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
I’ve learned that it doesn’t matter how many times you failed…You only have to be right once…I was an idiot lots of times, and I learned from them all.
- Mark Cuban
The wealthy class often looks down on the poor as those people. And deprived people view the rich as cold and heartless. The way to break down the barrier between the rich and poor is to asociate with each other and to help one another. Make a connection. If you can break down the barrier, it may pave the way to recovery for some person, a family, maybe an entire community.
- George Foreman
Always have something to say. The man who has something to say and who is known never to speak unless he has, is sure to be listened to.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m not a politician. I only want to help relieve the suffering in communities, and I want to help people see their community in each other.
- Russell Simmons
Residential property prices will pick up steadily.
- Lee Shau Kee
I think Starbucks created a platform and, ultimately, a runway for many other companies to emulate. I suspect if we had not achieved what we have, there would have been many regional brands that would have succeeded. But I’m not sure there would have been a national brand of the scope of Starbucks.
- Howard Schultz
A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill
Clearly, as a CEO, you have other functions that are managed by other people.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
When your art fails, make better art.
- Seth Godin
God is faithful to His word. All of His promises are Yes” and Amen.” That means if you will do your part and believe even though it looks impossible, and not let your mind, your emotions, or other people talk you out of it, then God promises in due season and at the right time He will bring it to pass. It may not happen the way you expect it or on your timetable, but God is a faithful God. It will happen.
- Joel Olsteen
Rich is my word for someone who can afford to make choices, who has enough resources to do more than merely survive.
- Seth Godin
It was always a challenge for me to prove that a Russian financial investor can be as successful in the West as back at home in Russia.
- Alisher Usmanov
In time, we lose our freshness and spontaneity of true conversation. These are areas in which everyone interested in self-improvement will seek to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
Many leaders of big organizations, I think, don’t believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you’re likely to have issues.
- Larry Page
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
- John C. Maxwell
Why does a 67-year-old guy who got his start running an athletic shoe company think he can enter a field famous for gobbling up fortunes.
- Phil Knight
One of the greatest failures to execute is the lack of follow-up. This seems so obvious, yet very few companies place as much emphasis on accountability as they do on figuring what they want to get done. Steve Reinemund, who was president of Pizza Hut when I was head of marketing there, is the best I’ve ever seen on this front. He always carried a three-by-five note card in his shirt pocket. When saw something that needed to be done, he’d pull out the card and write it down. Like everyone else who witnessed this, I quickly realized that I had better write down the same things because he’d surely be on me until they got done. Steve got results everywhere he went, whether it was as president of Pizzas Hut or Frito-Lay or chairman of PepsiCo, because he made a point of following up. People often lose track of what they’ve talked about in meetings of what they promised to do, but when you write it down, you won’t forget it.
- David Novak
I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life.
- Mark Zuckerberg
The more people I serve, the richer I become.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Our business is diversified across many sectors, be it supermarkets or finance. We can invest in many areas.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call today his own: He who, secure within, can say: Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today.
- Dale Carnegie
We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.
- Abraham Lincoln
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
To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
- P.T. Barnum
The first thing to recognize is that no startup has time to do optional things.
- Ben Horowitz
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
People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
- Peter Thiel
People have come to me over the years and said to me: ‘I admire the culture of Starbucks. Can you come give a speech and help us turn our culture around?’ I wish it were that easy. Turning a culture around is very difficult to do because it’s based on a series of many, many decisions, and the organization is framed by those decisions.
- Howard Schultz
I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.
- Steve Wozniak
I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.
- Howard Schultz
Fortune favors the bold.
- Virgil
Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction.
- Sam Walton
You know what, Steve Jobs is real nice to me. He lets me be an employee and that’s one of the biggest honors of my life.
- Steve Wozniak
A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.
- John C. Maxwell
My store, Wine Library, outsells big national chains. How do you think we do it? It started with hustle. I always say that our success wasn’t due to my hundreds of online videos about wine that went viral, but to the hours I spent talking to people online afterward, making connections and building relationships.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.
- Joel Olsteen
We know that if you just were to take the drugs that you were supposed to take for diabetes or hypertension, just take it, as opposed to not take it, we could save $7,000, $3,000 per patient per year.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
An extreme representative of this view is Ted Kaczynski, infamously known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski was a child prodigy who enrolled at Harvard at 16. He went on to get a PhD in math and become a professor at UC Berkeley. But you’ve only ever heard of him because of the 17-year terror campaign he waged with pipe bombs against professors, technologists, and businesspeople. In late 1995, the authorities didn’t know who or where the Unabomber was. The biggest clue was a 35,000-word manifesto that Kaczynski had written and anonymously mailed to the press. The FBI asked some prominent newspapers to publish it, hoping for a break in the case. It worked: Kaczynski’s brother recognized his writing style and turned him in. You might expect that writing style to have shown obvious signs of insanity, but the manifesto is eerily cogent. Kaczynski claimed that in order to be happy, every individual “needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.” He divided human goals into three groups: 1. Goals that can be satisfied with minimal effort; 2. Goals that can be satisfied with serious effort; and 3. Goals that cannot be satisfied, no matter how much effort one makes. This is the classic trichotomy of the easy, the hard, and the impossible. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done. So Kaczynski’s idea was to destroy existing institutions, get rid of all technology, and let people start over and work on hard problems anew. Kaczynski’s methods were crazy, but his loss of faith in the technological frontier is all around us. Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.
- Peter Thiel
Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you are only big in China, you are only a local Chinese company.
- Wang Jianlin
Here lies the body of William Jay, Who died maintaining his right of way – He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he’s just as dead as if he were wrong.
- Dale Carnegie
When you’re surrounded by people who share a passionate commitment around a common purpose, anything is possible.
- Howard Schultz
Buoyant consumer confidence will continue to underpin retial spending and hence rental growth for shopping centres. The office market is expected to perform well on the back of tight supply being met by keen demand from companies looking for expansion opportunities.
- Lee Shau Kee
When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
- Napoleon Hill
If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.
- Napoleon Hill
The microprocessor is a miracle.
- Bill Gates
Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used them….
- Thomas Edison
If we were motivated by money, we would have sold the company a long time ago and ended up on a beach.
- Larry Page
