I know how to make decisions and stand up to the criticism every day.
- Michael Bloomberg
Notable Quotables
JANUARY 16 Reach Out by Faith For she said to herself, If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well.” MATTHEW 9:21–22 NKJV ONE FELLOW WHOSE MARRIAGE was on the verge of dissolution told me, Joel, I’ve been this way for a long time. Nothing good ever happens to me. I don’t see how my marriage can be restored. We’ve always had these problems.” Those wrong attitudes will keep you from receiving the good things God wants to pour out in your life,” I told him. Stop dwelling on negative, destructive thoughts that keep you in a rut. Your life will change when you change your thinking.” God has so much more in store for him, and for you as well. If you want to see God’s far and beyond favor, you have to start believing it, seeing it, and speaking it.
- Joel Olsteen
I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product.
- Ben Horowitz
He was contradicting everything he’d taught us about not running sick and making it worse. I knew it was just to make me acknowledge that his word was law, no matter how arbitrary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take. I was so mad I ran a personal record.
- Phil Knight
The economy of Hong Kong was considerably stable in 2000. However, as the global economy experienced a slowdown since the beginning of 2001, the confidence of local home purchasers remained low notwithstanding that Hong Kong followed the footsteps of the United States of America in announcing consecutive reductions of interest rates as well as a series of measures implemented by the Government to stabilise local property prices.
- Lee Shau Kee
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
- Henry Ford
Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.
- Winston Churchill
Despite the recent volatility of the stock market, economic and political confidence still prevails in Hong Kong.
- Cheng Yu-tung
A person’s toothache means more to that person than a famine in China which kills a million people. A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa.
- Dale Carnegie
Drucker said: ‘If you weren’t already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?’ … Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.
- Jack Welch
…[if you] use discrimination in the selection of your Master Mind group, your objective will have been half-way reached, even before you begin to recognize it.
- Napoleon Hill
Every great business is built on friendship.
- JC Penney
President Obama is riding the wrong horse on energy.
- Harold Hamm
Don’t use your energy to worry. Use your energy to believe.
- Joel Olsteen
Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.
- Napoleon Hill
The Asian brand, which I admire for having become a global success, is Samsung. In comparison, we’re just starting, but I believe that we at Uniqlo will be the next Asian brand to do well globally.
- Tadashi Yanai
It is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.
- Warren Buffett
Most GE business leaders now have digital cockpits on their computer screens that update in real time all the important data to help them manager their businesses.
- Jack Welch
Ability can take you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.
- Zig Ziglar
In motivating people, you’ve got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example – and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved.
- Rupert Murdoch
When you encourage others, you in the process are encouraged because you’re making a commitment and difference in that person’s life. Encouragement really does make a difference.
- Zig Ziglar
Rockefeller preferred to own raw land. In 1873, he invested in seventy-nine scenic acres at Forest Hill, a lovely, thickly wooded spot, crisscrossed by steep ravines and gulleys, just four miles east of his Euclid Avenue home.
- Ron Chernow
Niklas Zennstroem has a thorough background as a successful entrepreneur with extensive expertise in areas such as IT and online.
- Stefan Persson
Luke: What’s in there? Yoda: Only what you take with you.
- Yoda
All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.
- Donald Trump
People everywhere love Windows.
- Bill Gates
Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.
- Bill Gates
I absolutely don’t have $20 billion. But I’d love to, right?
- Jack Ma
[In January 2011] I think the important thing for Twitter is that it works on any technology.
- Jack Dorsey
A broad trend I’m completely obsessed with is mobile commerce. Like completely. I’m completely convinced that everybody’s going to be buying from their mobile devices. Whoever can claim that space or be in that space, I’m very interested in.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill
I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to be Bruce Lee.
- Jack Dorsey
Darwin Smith stands as a classic example of what we came to call a Level 5 leader—an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will.
- James C. Collins
Exploring how you could make a bad situation worse can sometimes tell you what not to do.
- Harvey Mackay
When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‘Oh, it must be so hard.’ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.
- Jerry Seinfeld
The maxim, “Nothing prevails but perfection,” may be spelled PARALYSIS.
- Winston Churchill
Interestingly, self-employed people make up less than 20 percent of the workers in America but account for two-thirds of the millionaires. Also, three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs.
- The Millionaire Next Door
The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.
- John C. Maxwell
We’re extremely adroit at hiding our fear. Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we’re afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.
- Seth Godin
Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.
- Timothy Ferriss
I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.
- Andrew Carnegie
Of course, the challenge of being the initiator is that you’ll be wrong. You’ll pick the wrong thing, you’ll waste time, you’ll be blamed. This is why being an initiator is valuable. Most people shy away from the challenge. They’ve been too abused, they’re too fearful, they hold back, they’re happy to let someone else take the heat. Initiative is scarce. Hence valuable. Ditch digging is not scarce. It’s not hard at all to find manual labor at minimum wage, which is precisely why manual labor gets paid minimum wage. 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
If you have your health, if you have people in your life to love, you are blessed. Slow down and enjoy the simple things in life.
- Joel Olsteen
In the game of life, before you get anything out, you must put something in!
- Zig Ziglar
Newspaper readership is still growing in India.
- Bill Gates
Sometimes I say ‘Go to Joe’s Diner’ and [Siri] doesn’t know where Joe’s Diner is. And very often usually I find out that Android does.
- Steve Wozniak
I broke into an industry that was completely money-focused. Nobody was paying attention to the women and thinking about how these undergarments felt, or how they fit…All of a sudden I showed up and charged more for one pair than anybody can comprehendand women lined up in droves to buy them. I think I left the industry in show, but I really believed that we needed to make it better not cheaper.
- Sara Blakely
Like acting, sales works best when hidden. This explains why almost everyone whose job involves distribution—whether they’re in sales, marketing, or advertising—has a job title that has nothing to do with those things. People who sell advertising are called “account executives.” People who sell customers work in “business development.” People who sell companies are “investment bankers.” And people who sell themselves are called “politicians.
- Peter Thiel
The government used to be able to coordinate complex solutions to problems like atomic weaponry and lunar exploration. But today, after 40 years of indefinite creep, the government mainly just provides insurance; our solutions to big problems are Medicare, Social Security, and a dizzying array of other transfer payment programs. It’s no surprise that entitlement spending has eclipsed discretionary spending every year since 1975. To increase discretionary spending we’d need definite plans to solve specific problems. But according to the indefinite logic of entitlement spending, we can make things better just by sending out more checks.
- Peter Thiel
Being a great leader means sometimes pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
This includes daily newspapers, local TV shows and talk shows; local all-news or talk-radio programs, weekly entertainment guides; local bureaus of the wire services;public access and other local cable TV stations, city magazines, business newsletters and ethnic publications.
- Michael Levine
I hate writing about personal stuff. I don’t have a Facebook page. I don’t use my Twitter account. I am familiar with both, but I don’t use them.
- Elon Musk
[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
There comes a time when you ought to start doing what you want. Take a job that you love. You will jump out of bed in the morning. I think you are out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it will look good on your resume. Isn’t that a little like saving up sex for your old age?
- Warren Buffett
It’s important that the company be a family, that people feel that they’re part of the company, and that the company is like a family to them. When you treat people that way, you get better productivity.
- Larry Page
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
- Winston Churchill
I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.
- Sara Blakely
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
- John D. Rockefeller
I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.
- Steve Wozniak
This is like the Six Sigma approach to quality. Six Sigma refers to the quest for continuous improvement, ultimately leading to 3.4 defects per million units. The problem is that once you’re heading down this road, there’s no room left for amazing improvements and remarkable innovations. Either you rolled ten strikes or you didn’t. Organizations that earn dramatic success always do it in markets where asymptotes don’t exist, or where they can be shattered. If you could figure out how to bowl 320, that would be amazing. Until that happens, pick a different sport if you want to be a linchpin.
- Seth Godin
One of the tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon – instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
- Dale Carnegie
New customers are silver…loyal customers are gold.
- Anonymous
It’s almost unfathomable how much I still have to learn. Learning never ends…I always have another mountain to climb is what keeps you going.
- David Novak
The most impressive person I’ve ever met? Elaine Wynn is no slouch. She’s a much better person than me. But I’ve got her. Finders keepers, losers weepers. And it’s been forty-seven years.
- Stephen Wynn
Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy.
- Bill Gates
It was a big momentum deal, so when the bottom comes out from under it, you have to go back to the well and start the whole thing.
- Travis Kalanick
I am results-oriented.
- Bill Gates
The AIDS is a disease that is hard to talk about.
- Bill Gates
I hate recording all the shows for the week in one day, because I want to be able to mention current events and pop culture. If Madonna punches Britney in the face today, I want to reference that on ‘Wine Library TV’ tomorrow. Monday’s episode is always the best, because it’s hot off the press.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Contenerse es casi como robar.
- Neil Young
If you want to understand what drives Cisco, look at our approach to customers. The manner in which we serve our customers defines our company values and demonstrates our priorities. Cisco is proud to be honored with this important certification that recognizes the foundation of our culture — the importance that we place on ensuring our customers are successful with Cisco technology.
- John Chambers
Appreciate everything your associates do for the business.
- Sam Walton
A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
- Winston Churchill
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
When the friendly jailer gave Socrates the poison cup to drink, the jailer said: Try to bear lightly what needs must be. Socrates did. He faced death with a calmness and resignation that touched the hem of divinity.
- Dale Carnegie
There are several styles of pitching, but all have two principles in common: they appeal personally to the individual being contacted, even if he or she is a stranger and they rely on logic to make a case.
- Michael Levine
With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.
- Steve Martin
The thing that’s confusing for investors is that founders don’t know how to be CEO. I didn’t know how to do the job when I was a CEO. Founder CEOs don’t know how to be CEOs, but it doesn’t mean they can’t learn. The question is… can the founder learn that job and can they tolerate all mistakes they will make doing it?
- Ben Horowitz
Never forget, the real secret of giving advice is this: Once you’ve given it, don’t concern yourself with whether it is followed or not, and refrain from saying ‘I told you so.’
- Harvey Mackay
Let the good work go on. We must ever remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good
- Ron Chernow
Demand is best measured in terms of spending. You know, I think in traditional economics, it’s a mistake to measure it in terms of the quantity of goods.
- Ray Dalio
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
Little men with little minds and little imaginations go through life in little ruts, smugly resisting all changes which would jar their little worlds.
- Zig Ziglar
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
- Napoleon Hill
No genuine leader is ever too busy to do anything which may be required of him in his capacity as leader. When a man, whether he is a leader of followers, admits he is too busy to change his plans, or to give attention to any emergency, he admits his inefficiency. The successful leader must be the master of all details connected with his position.
- Napoleon Hill
I’ve always believed that there are funny people everywhere, but they’re just not comedians. In fact, some of my best comedic inspirations were not professional entertainers.
- Steve Martin
Well, clearly Apple is a role model of the American innovation whereby it produced all these products – iPod, iPhone, iPad – that are really now dominating all the technology arena in the world.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Stock ownership changes behavior.
- Jack Welch
As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.
- Zig Ziglar
Nothing good ever happens after 9:00 PM.
- Andy Pearson
We take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order.” It’s a simple saying, but it’s deep. “Taking care of the people” is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it, the other two won’t matter. Taking care of the people means that your company is a good place to work.
- Ben Horowitz
The question is not, ‘Do you have a problem?’ The question is, ‘Does the problem have you? ‘
- Joel Olsteen
Care more than others think wise.
- Howard Schultz
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
- Thomas Edison
I give away something up to $500 million a year throughout the world promoting Open Society. My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It’s their work that I’m supporting. So it’s not me doing it.
- George Soros
God has amazing things in your future.
- Joel Olsteen
Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.
- Jack Taylor
We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.
- Walt Disney
