So the challenge, as you contemplate your next opportunity to be boring or remarkable, is to answer these two questions: (1) “If I get criticized for this, will I suffer any measurable impact? Will I lose my job, get hit upside the head with a softball bat, or lose important friendships?” If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you’ll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off. And then, once you’ve compared the bad feeling and the benefits, and you’ve sold yourself on taking the remarkable path, answer this one: (2) How can I create something that critics will criticize?
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
If you run a corporation, your job is to maximize the return on investment for your investors. Good for you. But by the same token, we have to remember that corporations have no compassion. That’s why legislation and regulations are necessary.
- Russell Simmons
All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you’re Woolworth’s.
- Jeff Bezos
Being productive gives people a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment that loafing never can.
- Zig Ziglar
You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.
- Reid Hoffman
Why do I drive a truck? What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls-Royce?
- Sam Walton
Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
- Zig Ziglar
There are more people dying of malaria than any specific cancer.
- Bill Gates
The choice is between two ways of life: between individual liberty and State domination, between concentration of ownership in the hands of the State and the extension of ownership over the widest number of individuals, between the dead hand of monopoly and the stimulus of competition, between a policy of increasing restraint and a policy of liberating energy and ingenuity, between a policy of levelling down and a policy of opportunity for all to rise upwards from a basic standard.
- Winston Churchill
If people look inward, they would see the opportunities for greatness.
- Aliko Dangote
The opposite of love is indifference, and the opposite of happiness is boredom.
- Timothy Ferriss
Unrelenting confidence was necessary.
- Ben Horowitz
Stone Age. Bronze Age. Iron Age. We define entire epics of humanity by the technology they use.
- Reed Hastings
Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success.
- John C. Maxwell
Twitter has been my life’s work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now.
- Jack Dorsey
To change somebody’s behavior, change the level of respect she receives by giving her a fine reputation to live up to. Act as though the trait you are trying to influence is already one of the person’s outstanding characteristics.
- Dale Carnegie
Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.
- Reid Hoffman
The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.
- Elon Musk
I run a bunch of charities and I say this line to people: ‘I am somebody who has always been helped.’ A little thing like that can make people believe it.
- Russell Simmons
What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs. And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost. That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.
- Michael Gerber
Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.
- Seth Godin
Ethics to me is very important.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
I really chess-play culture shifts. I’m really good at understanding what worldwide cell-phone use means. That’s what I do. I try to picture it three to four to five steps ahead.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We have built a company with a business mix and operating system that will allow us to deliver record results in any foreseeable economic climate, … We have just completed a very successful management transition and I’ve never been more confident about the company’s future.
- Jack Welch
We need to and must protect privacy. But I think that people will be willing and even eager to share medical information about themselves for the greater good of mankind.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Saudi Arabia has stability. The social contract and the political contract between the king and the rulers and the royal family and the ruled people in Saudi Arabia is very strong and the bondage is so solid.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.
- Brian Tracy
We have most of the software industry running Autonomy.
- Larry Ellison
You’d believe that a patient with hypertension, if you know you have hypertension or diabetes, you would take your drug every day. The compliance rate is more like 30% or 40%. Which means that 60% of patients don’t take their drugs, and they actually go into these crises, end up in the hospital.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
[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
Profit and cash flow are not the same thing.
- Robert Kiyosaki
My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….
- Thomas Edison
Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.
- Steve Jobs
Baseball is like cricket, and I grew up in a country where they had cricket. So I understand cricket, soccer and basketball. I played basketball at the club level and a little bit in college, so that’s why I’m a basketball fanatic.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
Some of the things I see around town are just disgusting.
- Jack Taylor
Age doesn’t matter, an open mind does.
- Timothy Ferriss
If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
For every sale you miss because you were too enthusiastic, you’ll miss a hundred because you weren’t enthusiastic enough.
- Zig Ziglar
Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.
- Bill Gates
Most people believe that results matter. The idea that results matter is one that you have to keep letting go of. And most of the time, I believe it.
- Russell Simmons
We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.
- Dale Carnegie
And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: … man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / … Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.
- Dale Carnegie
You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.
- Harry Truman
The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one. You only need one investor to say yes, so it’s best to ignore the other thirty who say “no.”
- Ben Horowitz
I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.
- Steve Martin
I consider myself a “social ecologist,” concerned with man’s man-made environment the way the natural ecologist studies the biological environment…..the discipline itself boasts an old and distinguished lineage. Its greatest document is Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. But no one is as close to me in temperament, concepts, and approach as the mid-Victorian Englishman Walter Bagehot. Living (as I have) in an age of great social change, Bagehot first saw the emergence of new institutions: civil service and cabinet government, as cores of a functioning democracy, and banking as the center of a functioning economy. A hundred years after Bagehot, I was first to identify management as the new social institution of the emerging society of organizations and, a little later, to spot the emergence of knowledge as the new central resource, and knowledge workers as the new ruling class of a society that is not only “postindustrial” but postsocialist and, increasingly, post-capitalist. As it had been for Bagehot, for me too the tension between the need for continuity and the need for innovation and change was central to society and civilization.
- Peter Drucker
New research shows that you will be dead longer than you will be alive.
- Zig Ziglar
I have the favor of God. I can do all things through Christ. I am blessed. I’m strong. I’m healthy.
- Joel Olsteen
Indecision is the seedling of fear.
- Napoleon Hill
The time to look for a new job is when you don’t need one. The time to switch jobs is before it feels comfortable.
- Seth Godin
[In January 2011] I think Twitter is so unique that we must stay independent.
- Jack Dorsey
Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
Life is struggle.” I believe that within that quote lies the most important lesson in entrepreneurship: Embrace the struggle.
- Ben Horowitz
In the early days, I really felt the pain of not being able to find information easily. I guess that helped me to develop an urge to write things like a search engine.
- Robin Li
The companies that work are the ones that people really care about and have a vision for the world so do something you like.
- Mark Zuckerberg
People who add value to others do so intentionally. I say that because to add value, leaders must give of themselves, and that rarely occurs by accident.
- John C. Maxwell
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
- Steve Jobs
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
[On working at Nike for 48 years] In those 48 years, I have never had a promotion. but it had its other benefits.
- Phil Knight
Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.
- Seth Godin
I have always respected education, which is why I actually went back secretly and taught school for eight years.
- Steve Wozniak
I’ve always taught that a poor economy is the best opportunity for salespeople because the naysayers and grumblers have already given up, leaving more territory, more opportunities to be successful than in a good economy when virtually all salespeople are out there, giving it their best.
- Zig Ziglar
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.” There’s a reason for these redescriptions: none of us wants to be reminded when we’re being sold.
- Peter Thiel
The way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions.
- Principle of the Bushido
You learn more in failure than you ever do in success.
- Jay-Z
It’s true that I run a multi-national group but I have no interests in India. So please tell me, what should my identity be?
- Lakshmi Mittal
Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
- Steve Ballmer
I’m very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There’s so much opportunity. Let’s just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.
- Steve Ballmer
Twitter in 2000 was something that was fun to play with but something I put on the shelf to play with for another day. And that day was 2006.
- Jack Dorsey
I always saw myself wanting to do something deemed successful and good at the same time.
- Howard Schultz
Do all you can to make your dreams come true.
- Joel Olsteen
Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs, Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain, Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves.
- Peter Thiel
President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.
- George Soros
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, or the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
- Charles Darwin
(1) Define a to-do list and (2) define a not-to-do list. In general terms, there are but two questions:
- Timothy Ferriss
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.
- Winston Churchill
What is Oracle? A bunch of people. And all of our products were just ideas in the heads of those people – ideas that people typed into a computer, tested, and that turned out to be the best idea for a database or for a programming language.
- Larry Ellison
It is expected that Mainland China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation will materialise in the near future and the country will see further growth in its economy unfolding at a faster pace.
- Lee Shau Kee
Never Cease to Proclaim in Fearless Tones the Great Principles of Freedom
- Winston Churchill
I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
People are afraid of failure – they don’t like to work so hard and have people keep saying, ‘No.’ I think that’s what people fear most.
- Russell Simmons
We think we’re going to be especially strong in platform where we have our two platform brands: our database brand is the Oracle Database 12c, and our programming language brand is this thing called Java.
- Larry Ellison
I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
- Ben Horowitz
A man has not right to occupy another man’s time unnnecessary
- Ron Chernow
With integrity, you have nothing to fear, since you have nothing to hide. With integrity, you will do the right thing, so you will have no guilt.
- Zig Ziglar
The beauty of this deal is bringing a clinical expertise. Medco had developed therapeutic resource centers, where they got their pharmacist to have specialties in things like diabetes, heart problems and asthma. Express Scripts took a different approach. We tried to understand why people do what they do with behavioral economics, which is: What drives human behaviors? What drives people to do what they did? By combining those two pieces, we get that much stronger.
- George Paz
Be frank. Reporters know when your story is all hype and no substance. Be honest with them.
- Michael Levine
The third way is less common and certainly less of a layup—a culture of integrity, meaning a culture of honesty, transparency, fairness, and strict adherence to rules and regulations. In such cultures, there can be no head fakes or winks. People who break the rules do not leave the company for “personal reasons” or to “spend more time with their families.” They are hanged—publicly—and the reasons are made painfully clear to everyone.
- Jack Welch
That doesn’t mean the opposite ideas are automatically true: you can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: how much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
- Peter Thiel
God wants you to have a good life, a life filled with love, joy, peace, and fulfillment. That doesn’t mean it will always be easy, but it does mean that it will always be good.
- Joel Olsteen
They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.
- Winston Churchill
I first thought maybe I’d do a banjo presentation record, where I’d play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.
- Steve Martin
I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.
- Thomas Edison
Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.
- Peter Thiel
The Benefits are about the Buyer’s stuff – what your products or services do for Buyers. Do the Benefits make them feel better about life – give them power; make them sexier, prettier, richer, more comfortable or secure, smarter, more competitive? Do they save time, money, fear or hassle?
- Jerry Vass
Obama has no solutions. Obama has failed the country and its great citizens, and they don’t like it when somebody such as myself speaks the truth about this – it hurts too much.
- Donald Trump
What you get by achieving your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
- Zig Ziglar
Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealously. The shadow of greed, that is.
- Yoda
I believe in innovation and that the way you get innovation is you fund research and you learn the basic facts.
- Bill Gates
