We don’t want disruption where we just move things around from point a to point b. We want a direction, we want a purpose.
- Jack Dorsey
Notable Quotables
Connectors understand the necessity of creating value for others. If you want to be in the middle of the action, you must seek ways to enhance the lives of those surrounding you. The best connectors I know are extremely generous with introductions where they make sense. One of my favorite questions is, What are you most excited about right now? From that answer, I know who I can hook that person up with.
- Forbes
A good engineering interview will include some set of difficult problems to solve. It might even require that the candidate write a short program. In addition, it will test the candidate’s knowledge of the tools she uses in great depth.
- Ben Horowitz
What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
- Steve Martin
Never surrender opportunity for security.
- Branch Rickey
Love to learn—hate to be taught.
- Winston Churchill
You have to manage money. Particularly with market economies. You may have a great product, but if your bottom line goes bust, then that’s it.
- Mukesh Ambani
Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.
- James C. Collins
If a hurricane strikes, we can blame the president for not being there; we can blame Congress and FEMA; we can blame the state governments; but in the end, it’s the mayors and the local city governments that have to be prepared for emergencies and be prepared to act.
- Michael Bloomberg
There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.
- Zig Ziglar
They have done great things within what you would call established American sports. Freddy has the potential to bring soccer almost for the first time into the public’s consciousness. Soccer in the United States isn’t really part of the culture. What it needs, I think, is a superhero, and he clearly could be it. Now, that’s putting a lot of pressure on him, but the kid’s got all the potential to do that.
- Phil Knight
Poverty and lack of knowledge must be challenged.
- Russell Simmons
One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision. Life is a whole, and luck is a whole, and no part of them can be separated from the rest.
- Winston Churchill
I love technology, and I love science. It’s just always all in the way you use it. So there’s no – you can’t really blame anything on the technology. It’s just the way people use it, and it always has been.
- Steve Martin
With the addition of these volumes, our Gulf Coast region is off to a good start for 2006 in its effort to grow its production. Combined, all regions are now showing growth in both production and reserves which is very attractive, especially considering the organic strategy on which we have predominately focused.
- Dan Dinges
The fact is, everyone is in sales.
- Jay Abraham
Hard times may have held you down, but they will not last forever. When all is said and done, you will be better off than before.
- Joel Olsteen
To me, this is about preserving history and making it available to everyone.
- Sergey Brin
Best wine if you’re stranded on a deserted island? 1982 Salon Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
We teach every young person the same subjects in mostly the same ways, irrespective.
- Peter Thiel
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
People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.
- Walt Disney
We can’t have democracy if we’re having to protect you and our users from the government over stuff we’ve never had a conversation about. We need to know what the parameters are, what kind of surveillance the government is going to do, and how and why.
- Larry Page
For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.
- Peter Thiel
We won’t change at all, … We feel consolidation will continue. We’re seeing more and more movement to fewer networking vendors.
- John Chambers
Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.
- Donald Trump
When I have spare time, I catch up on things I’ve had to postpone due to lack of time.
- Steve Wozniak
I tell people that we must have the courage to share what we feel, but no one follows me.
- Tadashi Yanai
Outside of your relationship with God, the most important relationship you can have is with yourself. I don’t mean that we are to spend all our time focused on me, me, me to the exclusion of others. Instead, I mean that we must be healthy internally—emotionally and spiritually—in order to create healthy relationships with others. Motivational pep talks and techniques for achieving success are useless if a person is weighed down by guilt, shame, depression, rejection, bitterness, or crushed self-esteem. Countless marriages land on the rocks of divorce because unhealthy people marry thinking that marriage, or their spouse, will make them whole. Wrong. If you’re not a healthy single person you won’t be a healthy married person. Part of God’s purpose for every human life is wholeness and health. I love the words of Jesus in John 10:10: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” God knows we are the walking wounded in this world and He wants the opportunity to remove everything that limits us and heal every wound from which we suffer. Some wonder why God doesn’t just “fix” us automatically so we can get on with life. It’s because He wants our wounds to be our tutors to lead us to Him. Pain is a wonderful motivator and teacher! When the great Russian intellectual Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was released from the horrible Siberian work camp to which he was sent by Joseph Stalin, he said, “Thank you, prison!” It was the pain and suffering he endured that caused his eyes to be opened to the reality of the God of his childhood, to embrace his God anew in a personal way. When we are able to say thank you to the pain we have endured, we know we are ready to fulfill our purpose in life. When we resist the pain life brings us, all of our energy goes into resistance and we have none left for the pursuit of our purpose. It is the better part of wisdom to let pain do its work and shape us as it will. We will be wiser, deeper, and more productive in the long run. There is a great promise in the New Testament that says God comes to us to comfort us so we can turn around and comfort those who are hurting with the comfort we have received from Him (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Make yourself available to God and to those who suffer. A large part of our own healing comes when we reach out with compassion to others.
- Zig Ziglar
I despise research. I think it’s a crutch.
- Howard Schultz
The Group is well positioned to meet the challenges ahead and will as ever continue to pursue higher growth.
- Cheng Yu-tung
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
Consensus decisions about executives almost always sway the process away from strength and toward lack of weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
I believe we are in a world where innovation in stuff was outlawed. It was basically outlawed in the last 40 years – part of it was environmentalism, part of it was risk aversion.
- Peter Thiel
In any new business, someone has to have a vision. You are as good as the people around you. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Identify your core community and go from there. Nothing happens the way it’s supposed to. In my experience it often takes as long as five years to make a business work. Partners can fail you. Staff may not execute properly. You could be too far ahead of the market. SO you have to be willing to hand in there and make it happen. From the founding of Phat Farm in 1992 until 1997, I lost money. By my account, I experienced $10 million in losses. But today Phat Farm is visible, it is imitated and it generates hundreds of millions of dollars. It took time, but good ideas often do need time to take off. Being an entrepreneur requires instinct, fortitude and the ability to accept that the world does not run on your schedule. Sometimes you just have to believe.
- Russell Simmons
You are what you are and you are where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You change what you are and you change where you are by changing what goes into your mind.
- Zig Ziglar
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be;
- Winston Churchill
Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.
- Jeff Bezos
Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.
- Vladimir Potanin
You have to respect your parents. They are giving you an at-bat. If you’re an entrepreneur and go into the family business, you want to grow fast. Patience is important. But respect the other party… My dad and I pulled it off because we really respect each other.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
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
It’s better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product. If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.
- Peter Thiel
There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.
- P.T. Barnum
If you need to conceal your true nature to get in the door, understand that you’ll probably have to conceal your true nature to keep that job.
- Seth Godin
When you are committed to doing what’s right, you are sowing seeds for God’s blessings. You will never go wrong by taking the high road and doing more that is required.
- Joel Olsteen
I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You’re playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It’s hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
- Steve Martin
I can be stressed, or tired, and I can go into a meditation and it all just flows off of me. I’ll come out of it refreshed and centered and that’s how I’ll feel and it’ll carry through the day.
- Ray Dalio
The Interros strategy toward various assets generally depends on the stage of their development and level of their maturity.
- Vladimir Potanin
You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.
- Joel Olsteen
Leading, not following We’ve been trained to follow. In fact, the very nature of training has following built right into it. We follow instructions. We follow the rules. We follow the leader. The challenge in a six-billion person world is that we don’t have a shortage of followers. Followers are easy to find, and the tools for compliance are more powerful (but less useful) than ever. Now the economy is demanding leaders. Human beings who can engage in what it really means to be a person—to forge connections, to see a path and to make a difference.
- Seth Godin
While technology is still important, the consumer has to lead innovation.
- Phil Knight
Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.
- John C. Maxwell
The malaria parasite has been killing children and sapping the strength of whole populations for tens of thousands of years. It is impossible to calculate the harm malaria has done to the world.
- Bill Gates
Since belief determines behavior, doesn’t it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?
- Zig Ziglar
It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.
- Bill Gates
We want to be the most predictable, boring growth company.
- John Chambers
I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.
- Joel Olsteen
People shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to get high-quality clothing.
- Tadashi Yanai
Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.
- Bill Gates
Some people keep God in a Sunday morning box and say, ‘Hey, I did my religious duty.’ That’s fine, but the scripture says to pray without ceasing. And I think that means all through the day you’re talking to God. Even if it’s in your thoughts.
- Joel Olsteen
Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.
- Dale Carnegie
Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.
- John D. Rockefeller
Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
I have this system where if I buy three or four new things, I give away three or four things. Sometimes, it’s a very painful system, but shopping is even better when you know that someone else who needs it will be getting. Keep the clothing karma going, I say.
- Sara Blakely
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
- Sergey Brin
What you get by achieving your goals is not nearly as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
- Zig Ziglar
I don’t need you to be funny. I don’t want to be entertained.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been lucky
- Oprah Winfrey
If you are against yourself, you will never reach your highest potential. And when you criticize yourself, you’re criticizing God.
- Joel Olsteen
We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.
- Ray Kroc
I have worked at Nike and its predecessor company for 48 years. Some might call me a short timer.
- Phil Knight
It seems like a good cause. I’ve been watching it on TV and, it makes me want to help.
- Ed Clark
In reality it is the focus on the first three D’s that ultimately gains you the data, and the dollars you need to become very, very rich…in other words the dollars are derived from having a dream, being dedicated, and having the drive to win.
- Robert Kiyosaki
It’s very beautiful over there.
- Thomas Edison
I DECLARE God is going before me making crooked places straight. He has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities and solutions to problems I haven’t had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment, can stop His plan. What he promised will come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.
- Bill Gates
Arrange to meet with the members of your Master Mind group at least twice a week, and more often if possible, until you have jointly perfected the necessary plan or plans for the accumulation of money.
- Napoleon Hill
Value is achieved primarily through frontline employees who are satisfied, loyal, and productive, in part because of the high degree of capability they possess to deliver results to customers
- Service Profit Chain
If you had to buy a new plane every time you flew somewhere, it would be incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
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
Nine out of ten businesses fail, so I came up with a foolproof plan — create ten businesses.
- Robert Kiyosaki
The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.
- John C. Maxwell
It’s surreal to think that I own this beautiful island. It doesn’t feel like anyone can own Lanai. What it feels like to me is this really cool 21st-century engineering project, where I get to work with the people of Lanai to create a prosperous and sustainable Eden in the Pacific.
- Larry Ellison
Some city-council people are really awesome, but most are uninspired. I meet with them as little as possible.
- Travis Kalanick
My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.
- Dale Carnegie
Hope is the engine of your attitude, and your attitude determines your altitude.
- Zig Ziglar
Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy
- Chris Humphrey
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.
It’s just not right that so many things don’t work when they should. I don’t think that will change for a long time.
- Steve Wozniak
You know, people talk about this being an uncertain time. You know, all time is uncertain. I mean, it was uncertain back in – in 2007, we just didn’t know it was uncertain. It was – uncertain on September 10th, 2001. It was uncertain on October 18th, 1987, you just didn’t know it.
- Warren Buffett
This shows you are never too old to get surprised.
- Jack Welch
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
- Jack Welch
The first key factor, I believe, is unity. If a family is not united, how then can we unite our colleagues? If we don’t love our brothers or our family, how then can we go ahead to love our colleagues. So our tradition really is about the human factor and talents, and we are dependent on the human factor. Therefore we have this corporate slogan – The markets of the world can belong to our corporation, and so can the world’s foremost human talents; The markets of the world belongs to us, and so are the world’s vast resources of raw materials. Similarly, if we can gain access to it, then the world’s financial funding belongs to us as well. Therefore, of foremost importance is access to human talents. Of course, a slogan is only something that we speak of. Of greater importance, is to truly have access to human talents. Towards that purpose, we must first be united and possess love. Our family is very united. And for the sake of the company, we innovated – we introduced western-style (corporate) culture into our company 30 years ago.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.
- Ben Horowitz
We’re really going after truly creating sustainability of a disease-free state, creating a complete system for managing cancer patients for life, so that you can manage from onset of disease all the way through.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
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
The Group recorded totals sales of around 3,300 property units from which approximately HK$6,810 million was generated from sales revenues attributable to the Group.
- Lee Shau Kee
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
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
Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
- Warren Buffett
