Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
- Albert Einstein
Notable Quotables
We had been kicked out of one bank… The second, it was touch and go…
- Phil Knight
I’ve changed my will to show my concern for animal rights.
- Stephen Wynn
The Chinese market is a very good expansion opportunity for us, and we will continue looking to buy stakes and make acquisitions.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
I’m on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
- Reed Hastings
If David our CEO, devotes so much of his time to this, then all this stuff about teamwork and learning how to be a great leader must be pretty important.
- David Novak
I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.
- Howard Schultz
Profit and growth are stimulated primarily by customer loyalty. Loyalty is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Satisfaction is largely influenced by the value of services provided to customers. Value is created by satisfied, loyal, and productive employees.
- Putting the Service-Profit Chain To Work - Ja
By altering our attitudes we can alter our lives.
- Zig Ziglar
All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
Insufficient Education (not formal education).
- Napoleon Hill
Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each of these three stages, there are two key concepts, shown in the framework and described below. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept we came to call the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great.
- James C. Collins
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.
- Jim Collins
You can’t build any kind of organization if you’re not going to surround yourself with people who have experience and skill base beyond your own.
- Howard Schultz
We saw that a thousand results weren’t necessarily as useful as 10 good ones.
- Sergey Brin
The evolving social and digital media platforms and highly innovative and relevant payment capabilities are causing seismic changes in consumer behavior and creating equally disruptive opportunities for business.
- Howard Schultz
Yes, they broke the law, but we can’t deport them. Let’s get over this pointing fingers and do something about that, whether it – they have to pay a fine, learn to speak English, the history, you can do that. And then you have to give visas for the skills we need.
- Michael Bloomberg
Maybe I was born to be a merchant, maybe it was fate. I don’t know about that. But I know this for sure: I loved retail from the very beginning.
- Sam Walton
Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy.
- Seth Godin
If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.
- Elon Musk
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds
- Warren Buffett
Eventually we’ll be able to sequence the human genome and replicate how nature did intelligence in a carbon-based system.
- Bill Gates
The tool that’s most associated with the recent progress against malaria is the long-lasting bed net. Bed nets are a fantastic innovation. But we can do even better. We can invent new ways to control the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite.
- Bill Gates
If you don’t believe in your product, or if you’re not consistent and regular in the way you promote it, the odds of succeeding go way down. The primary function of the marketing plan is to ensure that you have the resources and the where withal to do what it takes to make your product work.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
Marketing is every bit of contact your company has with anyone in the outside world. Every bit of contact. That means a lot of marketing opportunities. It does not mean investing a lot of money.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance, saying simply, I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job.
- James C. Collins
We remain confident about the market opportunity ahead of us over the next three to five years.
- John Chambers
Play like you’re ten points behind in the final quarter. I’ve always heard this defined as operational cadence – creating a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of doing business that drives the relentless pursuit of results. Whatever I’ve learned about creating a sense of urgency started when I worked for Howard Davis at Tracy Locke. He really knew how to push people. Everything had to be done yesterday. And I was one of the people who go pushed. Howard was a master of intimidation. Everyone knew if you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to find another way to get it, and if your weren’t part of the solution then you were part of the problem. The clients loved Howard because they knew he’d kill for them (and none of us wanted to be killed). It wasn’t always comfortable, but it taught me the value of constantly putting pressure on myself and the people who work for me. In corporate America, pressure is a way of life, so rather that resist it or merely accept it, you have to learn to use it as a personal motivator.
- David Novak
China is the new horizon.
- Cheng Yu-tung
My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Everybody at home speaks mandarin except me.
- Rupert Murdoch
I’ve always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize.
- Jeff Bezos
I believe that greatest things happen only when you give others the credit. That’s the law of EMPOWERMENT in action.
- Napoleon Hill
Deep knowledge from your manager goes a long way toward motivating you. And I have a pretty good capability for that.
- Larry Page
The seed of a bamboo tree is planted, fertilized and watered. Nothing happens for the first year. There´s no sign of growth. Not even a hint. The same thing happens – or doesn´t happen – the second year. And then the third year. The tree is carefully watered and fertilized each year, but nothing shows. No growth. No anything. For eight years it can continue. Eight years! Then – after the eight years of fertilizing and watering have passed, with nothing to show for it – the bamboo tree suddently sprouts and grows thirty feet in three months!
- Zig Ziglar
Ironically, the biggest obstacle to putting a training program in place is the perception that it will take too much time. Keep in mind that there is no investment that you can make that will do more to improve productivity in your company. Therefore, being too busy to train is the moral equivalent of being too hungry to eat. Furthermore, it’s not that hard to create basic training courses.
- Ben Horowitz
IN A NUTSHELL SIX WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU PRINCIPLE 1 Become genuinely interested in other people. PRINCIPLE 2 Smile. PRINCIPLE 3 Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. PRINCIPLE 4 Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. PRINCIPLE 5 Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. PRINCIPLE 6 Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
Trump has been very influential in helping me expand by vision. Sometimes I talk to Donald two or three times a day, and he’s taught me many things. The best thing was a story he tells me about buying a building. When he built Trump Tower he also bought the rights to use the Tiffany name on the building. It was gonna be Tiffany Tower. He late father said, Yeah right. When you change your name to Tiffany, you call it Tiffany Tower. But for now, you call it Trump. Over a period of years whenever he was in trouble, his name and his promotion of himself as a brand are what saved him. I keep that lesson in mind. I remember how connecting Def Comedy Jam to Def Jam records helped both entities – associating HBO with an established hip-hop brand helped get the show on the air, while linking the label to a hot TV show helped the label survive a cold period.
- Russell Simmons
You read these management books that say, ‘These are the hard things about running a company.’ But those aren’t really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt.
- Ben Horowitz
Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.
- Winston Churchill
I’d be happy to provide advice if anybody asked me no matter who the President is.
- Michael Bloomberg
Twenty years ago, the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 either dug something out of the ground or turned a natural resource (iron ore or oil) into something you could hold. Today, fewer than half of the companies on the list do that. The rest make unseemly profits by trafficking in ideas.
- Seth Godin
Sweden is famous for many things – but not fashion.
- Stefan Persson
When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.
- Thomas Edison
Don’t settle in the land of barely enough. That is where you are, it is not who you are. That’s your location, it’s not your identity. No matter what it looks like, have an abundant mentality.
- Joel Olsteen
Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions.
- Winston Churchill
Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.
- Jack Welch
One of the most important management lessons for a founder/CEO is totally unintuitive. My single biggest personal improvement as CEO occurred on the day when I stopped being too positive.
- Ben Horowitz
Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.
- Ben Horowitz
I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.
- Joel Olsteen
My father died during open-heart surgery on March 29 of my senior year in college. I was getting set to go to law school. I remember sitting in the waiting room when the doctor walked in. I said to myself, The worst possible thing just happened. What will you do?
- Stephen Wynn
We should remember the warning of the wise Grail knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: You must choose, but choose wisely, for as the true Grail will bring you life, the false Grail will take it from you.Choose the highest-yield material and you can be an idiot and enjoy stunning success. Choose poorly and, as the Grail knight implied, you’re screwed no matter what. You’ll chase your own tail for years.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.
- Joel Olsteen
It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.
- Paul Graham
The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
- Rupert Murdoch
You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.
- Seth Godin
hombre que conozco es superior a mí en algún sentido. En ese sentido, aprendo de él.
- Dale Carnegie
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m not looking to exclude people, I’m looking to include them.
- Joel Olsteen
In the end, I hope there’s a little note somewhere that says I designed a good computer.
- Steve Wozniak
Let’s simplify this entire world.
- Jack Dorsey
For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.
- Bill Gates
[On the cost to found Nike] Six hundred dollars each. Twelve hundred dollars total investment.
- Phil Knight
I was never much of a reader when I was a boy. Books bored me. I liked action. But I spent a lot of time thinking about things. I’d imagine all kinds of situations and how I would handle them.
- Ray Kroc
No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.
- Andrew Carnegie
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
Have the humility to learn from those around you.
- John C. Maxwell
If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.
- Woodrow Wilson
I don’t like paying taxes, but I like sleeping at night.
- Leonardo Del Vecchio
Be frank. Reporters know when your story is all hype and no substance. Be honest with them.
- Michael Levine
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie
Exercise is better than any medicine I can take, exercise and sleep.
- Aliko Dangote
I’ve seen executives improve their performance and skill sets, I’ve never seen one lose the support of the organization and then regain it.
- Ben Horowitz
If you show people the problems and you show people the solutions they will be moved to act.
- Bill Gates
Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.
- Yoda
The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.
- Bill Gates
Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It’s something you have to learn. It’s a very lonely job.
- Ben Horowitz
Anyone that makes me a quarter of a billion dollars, I like.
- Carl Icahn
Unemployment rates among Americans who never went to college are about double that of those who have a postsecondary education.
- Bill Gates
And well you should not. For my ally in the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. It’s energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…(Yoda pinches Luke’s shoulder)…not this crude matter. (a sweeping gesture) You must feel the Force around you. (gesturing) Here, between you…me…the tree…the rock…everywhere! Yes, even between this land and that ship!
- Yoda
If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.
- Peter Drucker
You know, I love all kinds of activism. I certainly think blacks deserve to have something whether it is affirmative action or an opportunity that should be opened up to them. But at the same time I believe that people of color are not the only poor people in America and all over the world.
- Russell Simmons
The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.
- Jim Rohn
Measles will always show you if someone isn’t doing a good job on vaccinations. Kids will start dying of measles.
- Bill Gates
I never thought much about success early on. I only thought about being a comedian – or just being in show business, is really more accurate.
- Steve Martin
The elevator to success is not running, you must climb the stairs.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m trying to change the culture in New York City, that’s hard enough!
- Michael Bloomberg
It makes no difference where you go, there you are. And it makes no difference what you have, there’s always more to want. Until you are happy with who you are, you will never be happy because of what you have.
- Zig Ziglar
I took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying.
- Sara Blakely
I DECLARE breakthroughs are coming in my life, sudden bursts of God’s goodness. Not a trickle. Not a stream. But a flood of God’s power. A flood of healing. A flood of wisdom. A flood of favor. I am a breakthrough person and I choose to live breakthrough minded. I am expecting God to overwhelm me with His goodness and amaze me with His favor. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.
- Bill Gates
I’m short on New York, long on Silicon Valley.
- Peter Thiel
Your net worth to the world is usually determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.
- Benjamin Franklin
I think they are fine. I don’t think you have a choice between iPad models so that’s just saying that the iPad is good … that’s a very different statement (and contrary to the implication) that, if I chose not to upgrade now, less than a year after my last upgrade, then I, Woz, am saying that the new Apple iPad is bad.
- Steve Wozniak
Every obnoxious act is a cry for help.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s the next opportunity that keeps us motivated.
- Zig Ziglar
Kickstarter eliminates the risk that publishers and booksellers face. They have limited resources and limited shelf space, and Kickstarter is proof to them that something is going to work.
- Seth Godin
Learn to say No to the good so that you can say Yes to your best.
- John Maxwell
Tesla is becoming a real car company.
- Elon Musk
