Notable Quotables

You don’t have to choose between your business and your life. Rather, if you do it right, you get your business and your life. In fact, we strongly believe that the only way to build a truly scalable business is by radically reducing its reliance on you, the owner, and supporting that rapid growth through systems, team and internal business controls.

- Jeff Hoffman

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

- Dale Carnegie

The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization…. Such war-making weapons should be developed – but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.

- Thomas Edison

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

We modeled our employee stock ownership plan after Sam’s, and it worked well for us.

- Bernie Marcus

Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another.

- Bill Gates

New research shows that you will be dead longer than you will be alive.

- Zig Ziglar

There is no way of making a business successful that can vie with the policy of promoting those who render exceptional service.

- Andrew Carnegie

I think time management as a label encourages people to view each 24-hour period as a slot in which they should pack as much as possible.

- Timothy Ferriss

Most businesses get zero distribution channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.

- Peter Thiel

The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.

- Rupert Murdoch

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

- Albert Schweitzer

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

- Thomas Edison

My motivation for all my companies has been to be involved in something that I thought would have a significant impact on the world.

- Elon Musk

Foreplay, cuddling – a Jedi craves not these things.

- Yoda

China is investing in factories in Eastern Europe, not because their labor costs are lower, but because they want to be closer to their markets.

- Michael Bloomberg

God, You said Your favor is not for a season but for a lifetime.

- Joel Olsteen

The rest of their generation was left behind, but the wealthy Boomers who shape public opinion today see little reason to question their naïve optimism.

- Peter Thiel

Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you.

- Seth Godin

I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It’s hard to memorize objectives, but it’s easy to remember a story.

- Ben Horowitz

What I love about New York is just the electricity I feel right away.

- Jack Dorsey

The thing about information is that information is more valuable when people know it. There’s an exception for business information and super timely information, but in all other cases, ideas that spread win.

- Seth Godin

Many of our best opportunities were created out of necessity. The things that we were forced to learn and do, because we started out underfinanced and undercapitalized in these remote small communities, contributed mightily to the way we’ve grown as a company. Had we been capitalized, or had we been the offshoot of a large corporation the way I wanted to be, we might not ever have tried…

- Sam Walton

On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’

- Michael Bloomberg

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

- Bill Gates

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You can’t worry about the mistakes, because you’re going to make a lot of them. You’ve got to be thinking about your next move.

- Ben Horowitz

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.

- P.T. Barnum

Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.

- Peter Drucker

We’re absolutely going to have a better facility.

- Ed Clark

Information is useless if it is not applied to something important or if you will forget it before you have a chance to apply it.

- Timothy Ferriss

Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.

- Zig Ziglar

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

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.

- Mark Twain

[That was the case Wednesday night, when Cisco executives talked about results for the fiscal second quarter (which closed on Jan. 26). Chambers and chief financial officer Larry Carter spoke only about the next quarter, when revenue growth from the second fiscal quarter is expected to be nil or in the low single digits.] Our visibility is still very limited, … If there’s one lesson we’ve learned over the past year, it’s how quickly things can change.

- John Chambers

In Riyadh, there’s going to be a huge project that will house at least 12,000 units with inhabitants of approximately 150,000 people. It’s like a city within a city.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

It’s easy to get negative because you get beat down. You go through a few disappointments and it’s easy to stay in that negative frame of mind. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is a whole cliche, but your attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

- Joel Olsteen

You can make an internet company with 10 people and it can have billions of users. It doesn’t take much capital and it makes a lot of money — a really, really lot of money — so it’s natural for everyone to focus on those kinds of things.

- Larry Page

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

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

Facebook is inherently viral. There are lots of sites that include a contact importer, and for lots of them it doesn’t really make sense. For Facebook it fits so well. It wasn’t until a few years in that we started building some tools that made it easier to import friends to the site. That was a huge thing that spiked growth.

- Mark Zuckerberg

The banjo is truly an American instrument, and it captures something about our past.

- Steve Martin

Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt.

- Seth Godin

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ You won’t believe what you can accomplish by attempting the impossible with the courage to repeatedly fail better.

- Timothy Ferriss

The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.

- Yoda

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

Here’s the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don’t you hate that? I love that there’s no map.

- Seth Godin

A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.

- Peter Drucker

Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember Life is too short to be little.

- Dale Carnegie

I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don’t hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.

- Zig Ziglar

IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I’m far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read ‘Tech Crunch,’ ‘Ad Age.’ I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

If you have any more than three priorities, you have no priorities.

- Maggie Fox

Of this I am quite sure. If we open up a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.

- Winston Churchill

While we remain cautious about the implications of a brief pause in the current 10-year expansion of the U.S. economy, we believe that Cisco has never been better positioned to help our customers solve their two most important business issues: Increasing productivity and creating new sources of revenue.

- John Chambers

In view of the good progress made in respect of negotiations relating to Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation and the boost in local economic activities deriving from the emergence of the new economy, a great number of technology-related and international institutions have established and expanded their businesses in Hong Kong, bringing about substantial increases both in rentals as well as capital values for prime office properties and luxury residential properties.

- Lee Shau Kee

[As a child] I would just question things…

- Elon Musk

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop.

- Winston Churchill

No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it.

- Andrew Carnegie

I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.

- Joel Olsteen

Anatomy of a MovementSenator Bill Bradley defines a movement as having three elements: (1) A narrative that tells a story about who we are and the future we’re trying to build. (2) A connection between and among the leader and the tribe. (3) Something to do – the fewer limits the better. Too often organizations fail to do anything but the third.

- Seth Godin

If something is worth doing, it is worth doing right. I take that one step further. You shouldn’t do anything unless you do it right.

- George Foreman

When you’re building a business or joining a company, you have to be transparent; you can’t have two sets of information for two sets of people.

- Howard Schultz

If he actually looks like a salesman, he’s probably bad at sales and worse at tech.

- Peter Thiel

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

I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.

- Bill Gates

our skills and talent, but above all, be tenacious. See yourself as victorious–which means never giving up

- Donald Trump

What a computer is to me is the most remarkable tool that we have ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

- Steve Jobs

When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.

- Ray Dalio

BLAMING IDIOTS FOR interruptions is like blaming clowns for scaring children—they can’t help it. It’s their nature. Then again, I had (who am I kidding—and have), on occasion, been known to create interruptions out of thin air. If you’re anything like me, that makes us both occasional idiots. Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse. This is infinitely easier when you have a set of rules, responses, and routines to follow.

- Timothy Ferriss

Luck plays a role in business but whether you succeed or fail depends on many other factors. I haven’t really had a failure.

- Lui Che Woo

Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future..

- Yoda

An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others.

- Napoleon Hill

You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

- Zig Ziglar

I intentionally abandoned the hard stuff early on because not only do I think it’s useless, I think it’s a distraction.

- Seth Godin

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

God himself, sir, does not propose to judge man until the end of his days. Why should you and I?

- Dale Carnegie

India has the potential to be our biggest market in Asia, bigger than China, in as much as two to five years.

- John Chambers

Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism – and wars.

- Dale Carnegie

The problem with competition is that it takes away the requirement to set your own path, to invent your own method, to find a new way.

- Seth Godin

I think we are not serious about attacking the long-term debt problem, and that’s one of the things that he’s going to have to find a way to get on the agenda.

- Michael Bloomberg

If Google Books is successful, others will follow.

- Sergey Brin

I don’t know of any Internet service that opens on a regional basis.

- Reed Hastings

If you count E-mail, I’m on the Internet all day, every day.

- Bill Gates

If you’re going to have to swallow a frog, you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!

- Zig Ziglar

I guess Mr. Walton just had a personality that drew people in. He would yell at you from a block away, you know. He would just yell at everybody he saw, and that’s the reason so many liked him and did business in his store. It was like he brought in business by his being so friendly. (on role of managing partner)

- Inez Threet

Most poor people live in the poorest countries.

- Bill Gates

Unrestrained competition can drive people into actions that they would otherwise regret.

- George Soros

The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.

- Anthony Robbins

If you are going to be successful, you must develop persistence. How do you do that? It is not easily condensed in one simple statement, but one thing you can be sure of is that your must define your purpose.

- Zig Ziglar

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been

- Sam Walton

We understand the most important thing we do is market the product…

- Phil Knight

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

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