Notable Quotables

They want good stories. They aren’t paid to say, no. They’re paid to say yes to the right stories.

- Michael Levine

I don’t think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good, but on a practical level having dealt with being abandoned by your father, being raised by your alcoholic mom and having severe physical disabilities even today, How do you choose to have the right thoughts?

- Oprah Winfrey

If you take a strong stance and have a clear opinion or statement on any subject online, you’re going to polarize people. And without that polarity, there’s no discussion. Discussion is what I want, which means that I’m fine with the consequences.

- Timothy Ferriss

It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you’re not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it’s actually space that’s moving.

- Elon Musk

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

- Theodore Roosevelt

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.

- Elon Musk

We feel like right now, computers are still pretty bad. You’re just messing around. You’re scrolling on your touchscreen phone, and trying to find stuff. You’re in a car. It’s bouncy, and you can’t– it doesn’t really work. I think the actual amount of knowledge you get out of your computer versus the amount of time you spend with it is still pretty bad. So I think our job is to solve that, and most of the things we’re doing make sense in that context.

- Larry Page

PEACETIME CEO/WARTIME CEO Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win. Peacetime CEO focuses on the big picture and empowers her people to make detailed decisions. Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. Peacetime CEO builds scalable, high-volume recruiting machines. Wartime CEO does that, but also builds HR organizations that can execute layoffs. Peacetime CEO spends time defining the culture. Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. Peacetime CEO always has a contingency plan. Wartime CEO knows that sometimes you gotta roll a hard six. Peacetime CEO knows what to do with a big advantage. Wartime CEO is paranoid. Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity purposefully. Peacetime CEO thinks of the competition as other ships in a big ocean that may never engage. Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. Peacetime CEO strives to tolerate deviations from the plan when coupled with effort and creativity. Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. Peacetime CEO does not raise her voice. Wartime CEO rarely speaks in a normal tone. Peacetime CEO works to minimize conflict. Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. Peacetime CEO strives for broad-based buy-in. Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus building nor tolerates disagreements. Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their asses shot off in the battle. Peacetime CEO has rules like “We’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number one or two.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number one or two and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.

- Ben Horowitz

In creating an ideavirus, the advertiser creates an environment in which the idea can replicate and spread. It’s the virus that does the work, not the marketer.

- Seth Godin

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

- Elon Musk

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

- Steve Martin

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.

- Zig Ziglar

Real entrepreneurs have what I call the three Ps (and, trust me, none of them stands for ‘permission’). Real entrepreneurs have a ‘passion’ for what they’re doing, a ‘problem’ that needs to be solved, and a ‘purpose’ that drives them forward.

- Michael Dell

Creative things have to sell to get acknowledged as such.

- Steve Wozniak

We are beginning to see the benefits of global consolidation.

- Lakshmi Mittal

A plan is always successful if the plan is good.

- Zig Ziglar

Step up to the front, select what you want, create your plan, put your plan into action, and follow through with Persistence. Capitalist America will not rest.

- Napoleon Hill

The secret of your success is found in your daily routine

- John Maxwell

I’m not even sure what it’s getting at … personalities are very wrong although mine is closer … don’t forget that my purpose was inspired by the values of the Homebrew Computer Club along with ideas of the value of such machines and Steve J. wasn’t around and didn’t attend the club so he was the one learning about such social impact of the future.

- Steve Wozniak

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

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

If I want a better-than-average career, I can’t simply ‘go with the flow’ and get it. Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome. If they would just do something most people would find that they get some version of the outcome they’re looking for. That’s been my secret. Stop wishing and start doing.

- Timothy Ferriss

Control your temper. Remember, you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry.

- Dale Carnegie

It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?

- James C. Collins

Getting every employee’s mind into the game is a huge part of what the CEO job is all about. Taking everyone’s best ideas and transferring them to others it the secret. Nothing is more important.

- Jack Welch

The main reason I write the daily observations is because I want to know where I’m wrong. So lots of times if somebody points something out it helps me, and I want to have a diversified bet of uncorrelated bets.

- Ray Dalio

Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who’s going to build.

- Larry Ellison

I believe it’s important that we use names of endearment that reflect a special feeling for the individual involved.

- Zig Ziglar

Young people, when they’re left alone, always want to have compassion, and they always want to give. They always want to help people who are less fortunate.

- Russell Simmons

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

I think part of the reason we’re successful so far is that originally we didn’t really want to start a business.

- Larry Page

“It’s clear there’s a lot of room for improvement, there’s no inherent ceiling we’re hitting up on.

- Sergey Brin

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

The one thing coaches cannot tolerate… is the individual who grows arrogant because he excelled at a lower level and believes he has nothing else to learn.

- Zig Ziglar

I’m less interested in how people are following each other and more interested in how they are following topics and tweets themselves. People are following more key words and concepts and more ideas and acting on those rather than individuals or organizations.

- Jack Dorsey

An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.

- Seth Godin

It’s absolutely a necessary and inevitable evolution in retailing (of Wal-Mart putting small stores out of business), as inevitable as the replacement of the buggy by the car, and the dissappearance of the buggy whip makers. The small stores (and DJs) were destined to dissappear, at least in the numbers they once existed., because the whole thing is driven by customers, who are free to choose where to shop.

- Sam Walton

I’m trying to change the culture in New York City, that’s hard enough!

- Michael Bloomberg

Tomorrow becomes never. No matter how small the task, take the first step now!

- Timothy Ferriss

If you want to be inventive — you have to be willing to fail.

- Jeff Bezos

By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.

- Bill Gates

We’re not in the fashion business, as the Wall Street Journal wrote the other day. We’re in the sports business, and there’s a big difference.

- Phil Knight

Measuring and establishing facts at every step of the process. Without facts, assumptions and misperceptions will defeat whatever reason and good judgment can be brought to effort

- Service Profit Chain

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

- Thomas Edison

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

- Winston Churchill

I’m not afraid to call a wine that tastes like Skittles or green peppers mixed with orange marmalade. I’ll say, ‘It tastes like chicken.’ I mean, that’s not what people think of when they think of wine, but that’s what it tastes like to me and it hits home.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Andrew Carnegie believed the formula (of Think & Grow Rich) should be taught in all public schools and colleges, and expressed the opinion that if it were properly taught it would so revolutionize the entire education system that the time spent in school could be reduced to less than half….As far as (formal) schooling is concerned, many of the (great american business) men had very little.

- Napoleon Hill

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

- Bill Gates

These are all commodity-focused issues. The old conceit of a retailer was that if you offered the right products at a fair price in a convenient location, you’d do fine if you watched your expenses. Today, the issues are totally different.

- Seth Godin

I really had a lot of dreams when I was a kid, and I think a great deal of that grew out of the fact that I had a chance to read a lot.

- Bill Gates

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.

- Jeff Bezos

(after listening to people gripe and complain just smile and remember) Crows can’t hang with eagles.

- Joel Olsteen

Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.

- Ray Kroc

It’s no surprise that these fields all attract disproportionate numbers of high-achieving Ivy League optionality chasers; what could be a more appropriate reward for two decades of résumé-building than a seemingly elite, process-oriented career that promises to “keep options open”?

- Peter Thiel

Sales is what you do in person, one on one. Marketing is sales done via a system. Most (Self-Employed) S quadrant businesspeople are very good at one-on-one sales. For them to make the transition to the B quadrant, they need to learn how to sell through a system which is called marketing.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there.People will follow.

- Seth Godin

When you do things the right way, you have nothing to lose because you have nothing to fear.

- Zig Ziglar

Poor people ride the bus, because they value money more than time.

- Robert Kiyosaki

We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.

- Jeff Bezos

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.

- Peter Thiel

Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.

- Dale Carnegie

In the most minimal sense, the future is simply the set of all moments yet to come.

- Peter Thiel

If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.

- Bill Gates

I can understand wanting to have millions of dollars; there’s a certain freedom, meaningful freedom, that comes with that.

- Bill Gates

To be awake is to be fully present, no noise, just you and God. Most of us only have seconds of full consciousness. To live in a state of Samadhi – that’s what we’re here for.

- Russell Simmons

If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible.

- Joel Olsteen

Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.

- Donald Trump

Democracy is more vindictive than cabinets, the wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

- Winston Churchill

Fortunately, problems are an everyday part of our life. Consider this: If there were no problems, most of us would be unemployed.

- Zig Ziglar

In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

- Winston Churchill

Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved. It deserves to be a huge priority.

- Bill Gates

If salespeople don’t probe well for background information, they don’t know how to launch the presentation.

- Jerry Vass

Chinese people today have strong demand for culture, but we need effective supply, and China needs innovative cultural products.

- Wang Jianlin

Most answers to the contrarian question are different ways of seeing the present, good answers are as close as we can come to looking into the future.

- Peter Thiel

I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. But I’d love to, right?

- Jack Ma

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

If Wanda can control more than 20 per cent of the world’s three most important film markets – the United States, Europe and China – then it will have an empire with great voice in the industry.

- Wang Jianlin

Newport Center has become a Mediterranean town. The climate here is the same as the Mediterranean’s, and so is the architecture. This center exudes a radiance, an energy. It will become a special way of life for everyone.

- Donald Bren

When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.

- Harvey Mackay

Always remember, a cat looks down on man, a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man right in the eye and see his equal.

- Winston Churchill

If you think you are leading and turn around to see no one following, then you are just taking a walk.

- Benjamin Hooks

It took Flickr two years to reach the milestone of 100 million uploaded pictures. It took Instagram eight months

- Gary Vaynerchuk

It may look impossible, but God can do the impossible. Just because you don’t see anything happening doesn’t mean God is not working.

- Joel Olsteen

It’s extremely difficult to find smart people willing to start useful projects. Because sometimes what you start doesn’t work. The fact that it doesn’t work every time should give you confidence, because it means you’re doing something that frightens others.

- Seth Godin

When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil.

- Dale Carnegie

It seems like when I was growing up there was more compromise, wanting to work with each other, and I think all of them – all of the lawmakers – have hearts to do what’s right, and they all are passionate about it.

- Joel Olsteen

There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.

- Jeff Bezos

Give me a highly successful unionized industry.

- Jack Welch

In a company, hundreds of decisions get made, but objectives and goals are thin.

- Ben Horowitz

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

- Jerry Seinfeld

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