Notable Quotables

The greatest decision of all time, as far as any American citizen is concerned was reached in Philadelphia, July 4th 1776, when 56 men signed their names to a document, which they well knew would bring freedom to all Americans, or leave every one of the fifty-six hanging from the gallows. On July 4th 1776 Thomas Jefferson stood before the Assembly and fearlessly read the most momentus Decision ever placed upon paper.

- Napoleon Hill

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

- Joel Olsteen

I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean, if a few drops of ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

- Mahatma Gandhi

It isn’t enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box.

- Timothy Ferriss

There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.

- Phil Knight

Getting fired, despite sometimes coming as a surprise and leaving you scrambling to recover, is often a godsend. Most people aren’t lucky enough to get fired and die a slow spiritual death over 30-40 years of tolerating the mediocre.

- Timothy Ferriss

Entrepreneurs must protect themselves and the venture at all times by documenting your agreements.

- Jack Nadel

most cold calls didn’t get to the intended person for one reason: gatekeepers. If I simply made all my calls from 8:00–8:30 A.M. and 6:00–6:30 P.M., for a total of one hour, I was able to avoid secretaries and book more than twice as many meetings.

- Timothy Ferriss

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

- Andrew Carnegie

[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell — a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great — was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing — namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence — which is a noble thing. And when in after years my schoolfellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage. Naturally I am biased in favour of boys learning English. I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honour, and Greek as a treat. But the only thing I would whip them for would be not knowing English. I would whip them hard for that.

- Winston Churchill

Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.

- Jeff Bezos

This implies two very strange rules for VCs. First, only invest in companies that have the potential to return the value of the entire fund. This is a scary rule, because it eliminates the vast majority of possible investments. (Even quite successful companies usually succeed on a more humble scale.) This leads to rule number two: because rule number one is so restrictive, there can’t be any other rules.

- Peter Thiel

Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.

- Peter Drucker

Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.

- Seth Godin

The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little.

- Zig Ziglar

Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.

- John C. Maxwell

No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.

- Napoleon Hill

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

- John D. Rockefeller

From the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to the mid-20th century, luck was something to be mastered, dominated, and controlled; everyone agreed that you should do what you could, not focus on what you couldn’t. Ralph Waldo Emerson captured this ethos when he wrote: “Shallow men believe in luck, believe in circumstances.… Strong men believe in cause and effect.

- Peter Thiel

Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.

- James C. Collins

Be willing to make the mistakes and realizing that something can happen later – the patience are some of the things I would advise.

- Jack Dorsey

Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

We’ve only been wealthy in this country for 70 years. Who said we ought to have all this? Is it ordained?

- Jack Welch

We think of Starbucks not as a coffee company but a media company.

- Howard Schultz

[On signing up Michael Jordan in 1984 when he was just 21 years old] We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.

- Phil Knight

…The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.

- Seth Godin

Most salespeople won’t stop talking long enough to let the Buyer make a decision.

- Jerry Vass

Long-range planning does not deal with the future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

- Peter Drucker

Part-time employees don’t work. Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day. If you’re deciding whether to bring someone on board, the decision is binary. Ken Kesey was right: you’re either on the bus or off the bus.

- Peter Thiel

Measure, coach and reward the right things. Measure the vitally important. Reward the doers.

- David Novak

After you become a millionaire, you can give all of your money away because what’s important is not the million dollars; what’s important is the person you have become in the process of becoming a millionaire.

- Jim Rohn

Self-centered leaders manipulate when they move people for personal benefit. Mature leaders motivate by moving people for mutual benefit.

- John C. Maxwell

Churchill: The strangling of Bolshevism at its birth would have been an untold blessing to the human race.Mr. Seymour Cocks (Labor Party): “If that had happened we should have lost the 1939 -45 war”.Churchill: No, it would have prevented that war.

- Winston Churchill

and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand”

- Dale Carnegie

Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.

- Winston Churchill

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

I really believed that I said then, and I still do. But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop. The way I approached managing the business, I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision – usually flying around to take a look at our stores on a regular basis. But from the very beginning, even on my paper routes in college, I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage the stores. That’s been the case since back in Newport….We’re big now. We’re really big. That’s not something I like to focus on. I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not necessarily the biggest…(being big poses opportunities), but being big also poses big dangers. It has ruined many a fine company – including some giant retailers – who started out strong and got bloated or out of touch or were slow to react to the needs of their customers. Here’s the point: the biggest Wal-Mart gets, the more essential it is that we think small. Because that is exactly how we have become a big corporation.

- Sam Walton

Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.

- Jerry Seinfeld

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

TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE Principle 1—Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. Principle 2—Give honest and sincere appreciation. Principle 3—Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment.

- Elon Musk

Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticable from the time he became a personal friend of Thomas A. Edison, and you will begin to understand what the influence of one mind upon another can accomplish.

- Napoleon Hill

One of the greatest failures to execute is the lack of follow-up. This seems so obvious, yet very few companies place as much emphasis on accountability as they do on figuring what they want to get done. Steve Reinemund, who was president of Pizza Hut when I was head of marketing there, is the best I’ve ever seen on this front. He always carried a three-by-five note card in his shirt pocket. When saw something that needed to be done, he’d pull out the card and write it down. Like everyone else who witnessed this, I quickly realized that I had better write down the same things because he’d surely be on me until they got done. Steve got results everywhere he went, whether it was as president of Pizzas Hut or Frito-Lay or chairman of PepsiCo, because he made a point of following up. People often lose track of what they’ve talked about in meetings of what they promised to do, but when you write it down, you won’t forget it.

- David Novak

Chambers have numerous committees and serving on one of them provides numerous networking opportunities as well as professional leadership development.

- American Business Magazine

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

- Joel Olsteen

In philosophy, politics, and business, too, arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future.

- Peter Thiel

Remarkable visions and genuine insights are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths – whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it’s over. If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it’s unlikely to be worth the journey. Persist.

- Seth Godin

We will as ever continue to pursue growth opportunities that will further enhance our ability to capitalize on the investment opportunities and to face the challenges ahead.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Relaxation and Recreation The most relaxing recreating forces are a healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God—learn to sleep well— Love good music—see the funny side of life— And health and happiness will be yours.

- Dale Carnegie

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

True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.

- P.T. Barnum

During this time I learned 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 don’t like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It’s just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess.

- Walt Disney

I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine’s books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man…Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters – seldom in any school of writing.Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object….we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:’The world is my country; to do good my religion.’Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in ‘The Rights of Man’, and that genius busy at his favorite task – liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, ‘The Rights of Man’ yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke’s effort in his ‘Reflections’.Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.’Tom Paine is quite right,’ said Pitt, the Prime Minister, ‘but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.’Here we see the progressive quality of Paine’s genius at its best. ‘The Rights of Man’ amplified and reasserted what already had been said in ‘Common Sense’, with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre’s enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of ‘The Age of Reason’ and now turned his time to the latter part.Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events ‘The Age of Reason’ appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle – a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.

- Thomas Edison

Chaos in the midst of chaos isn’t funny, but chaos in the midst of order is.

- Steve Martin

Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.

- Bill Gates

Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.

- Peter Drucker

The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

- Winston Churchill

The lizard isn’t listening and the lizard doesn’t care.

- Seth Godin

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

If you’ll dare to take your mind off your troubles, get your mind off your own needs and, instead, seek to be a blessing to other people, God will do more for you than you could even ask or think.

- Joel Olsteen

I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.

- Og Mandino

It’s not going out to people who aren’t going to go shopping. You’ve already got the people who are shopping.

- Jack Taylor

We should all grow our own food and do our own waste processing, we really should.

- Bill Gates

Get ready, get ready, get ready, to get ready.

- T.D Jakes

I’m personally a moderate and a registered independent, so I’m not strongly Democratic or strongly Republican.

- Elon Musk

In the beginning, I was so chintzy I really didn’t pay my employees well.

- Sam Walton

History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

- Winston Churchill

Expect to make some mistakes when you try new and different approaches. Sometimes colossal failures lead to spectacular successes.

- Harvey Mackay

Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! … How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care … We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end … Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.

- Winston Churchill

When we launched the WineLibrary website in 1996, I didn’t even own a computer yet. I just understood that there was an opportunity here to market in a different way.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn’t turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.

- Steve Martin

Well, sometimes you just don’t like somebody.

- Henry Ford

Make failure your teacher, not your undertaker.

- Zig Ziglar

Many people who want to be great aren’t willing to do the work to make it possible!

- Zig Ziglar

SPAM is taking e-mail, which is a wonderful tool, and exploiting the idea that it’s very inexpensive to send mail.

- Bill Gates

Simon received the Nobel Prize in 1978 for his contribution to organizational decision making: It is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision.

- Timothy Ferriss

The general upward trend in residential property prices seems to be continuing, with the luxury end of the residential market poised to show better performance in particular.

- Lee Shau Kee

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

Men like a ref decision because they just want to get back to the game.

- Jerry Seinfeld

Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, ‘Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.’ Since then, I started to think differently.

- Jack Ma

I believe the returns on investment in the poor are just as exciting as successes achieved in the business arena, and they are even more meaningful!

- Bill Gates

I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.

- Jack Ma

If you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely.

- Seth Godin

I DECLARE Ephesians 3:20 over my life. God will do exceedingly, abundantly above all that I ask or think. Because I honor Him, His blessings will chase me down and overtake me. I will be in the right place at the right time. People will go out of their way to be good to me. I am surrounded by God’s favor. This is my declaration.

- Joel Olsteen

We are consolidating our position as one of the leading technology companies in the automotive industry. Research and development expenditure of another 6 percent of our sales or around €2.1 billion is fueling our capacity for innovation. There are very few companies in the industry that are able to operate in these dimensions.

- Elmar Degenhart

Applied Faith – Faith is a state of mind through which your aims, desires, plans and purposes may be translated into their physical or financial equivalent.

- Napoleon Hill

In war and policy one should always try to put oneself in the position of what Bismarck called “the Other Man”. The more fully and sympathetically a Minister can do this the better are his chances of being right. The more knowledge he possesses of the opposite point of view, the less puzzling it is to know what to do. But imagination without deep and full knowledge is a snare.

- Winston Churchill

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

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

- Warren Buffett

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