Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
- Steve Ballmer
Notable Quotables
I don’t know what causes a person to be ambitious, but it is a fact that I have been overblessed with drive and ambition from the time I hit the ground.
- Sam Walton
It all comes down to interest rates. As an investor, all you’re doing is putting up a lump-sump payment for a future cash flow.
- Ray Dalio
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
- Jim Rohn
No, markets weren’t “efficient” at finding the truth; they were just very efficient at converging on a conclusion—often the wrong conclusion.
- Ben Horowitz
The essence of competitiveness is liberated when we make people believe that what they think and do is important – and then get out of their way while they do it.
- Jack Welch
When I do something, it is all about self-discovery. I want to learn and discover my own limits.
- Larry Ellison
I spent a disproportionate amount of my time in a car in L.A. I’m 35 years old. If you add up the hours spent in cars, it would be years.
- Travis Kalanick
Judgment of the people in the situation is not helpful. How can you help them is the question.
- Russell Simmons
It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
- Seneca
First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
- Dale Carnegie
When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened
- Winston Churchill
Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.
- Jerry Vass
Our teachers deserve better feedback.
- Bill Gates
When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.
- John C. Maxwell
The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.
- John C. Maxwell
I think that, ah, I’m a very goofy sort of person in many ways.
- Jeff Bezos
Every person has a longing to be significant, to make a contribution, to be a part of something noble and purposeful.
- John C. Maxwell
Love is a promise delivered already broken.
- Steve Martin
The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The really important thing is to profit from your losses.
- Dale Carnegie
Some think that it is cruel or brutal to remove the bottom 10 percent of our people. It isn’t. It’s just the opposite. What I think is brutal and false kindness is keeping people around who aren’t going to grow and prosper. There’s no cruelty like waiting and telling people late into their careers that they don’t belong – just when the options are limited and they’re putting their children through college or paying off big mortgages.
- Jack Welch
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
You can abuse me, you can strike me, so long as you let me have my own.
- Ron Chernow
The response to the Starbucks brand has been phenomenal in our international markets.
- Howard Schultz
We don’t mature momentarily, but over the long-term.
- John C. Maxwell
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain
I believe God’s keeping the records, and I believe you will be rewarded even in this life. Somehow, someway, God will make it up to you. It may be He protected you from an accident you never knew. You can’t give God something without God giving you more in return, whether it’s peace or joy or satisfaction.
- Joel Olsteen
Once you go from 10 people to 100, you already don’t know who everyone is. So at that stage you might as well keep growing, to get the advantages of scale.
- Sergey Brin
The difference between average people and achieving people is their perception of and response to failure.
- John C. Maxwell
The overall dynamic was net positive, unlike Napster’s negative-sum struggle with the U.S. recording industry. As you craft a plan to expand to adjacent markets, don’t disrupt: avoid competition as much as possible.
- Peter Thiel
The air of the English is down-to-earth. They care about details; there’s a tradition, but there’s also a counter-culture: the younger generation versus the older generation and so on. But then that’s well blended into a happy balance and crystallised into common sense.
- Tadashi Yanai
Strong managers who make tough decisions to cut jobs provide the only true job security in today’s world. Weak managers are the problem. Weak managers destroy jobs.
- Jack Welch
But I know newspapers. They have the first amendment and they can tell any lie knowing it’s a lie and they’re protected if the person’s famous or it’s a company.
- Steve Wozniak
Do not swallow anything Satan is trying to ram down your throat. Jesus comes first.
- Joel Olsteen
Christopher Colombus’ big mistake was that he was looking for a trade route to China, and accidentally bumped into America, the richest, most powerful country in the world.
- Robert Kiyosaki
As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay.
- Ben Horowitz
Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.
- Dale Carnegie
If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.
- Joel Olsteen
When you have an understanding of how someone else lives, the less likely it is that you conflict with them.
- Jack Dorsey
Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.
- Joel Olsteen
Do you know what that word reign means? It means, time in power.” God said we’re to reign how long? In life. That means as long as you’re alive that is your time in power.
- Joel Olsteen
Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
- Napoleon Hill
If you use your money to create exceptional products and services, you won’t need to spend it on advertising.
- Seth Godin
When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.
- Howard Schultz
I know something about how to build constituencies in an independent way.
- Michael Bloomberg
The warrior mentality, the very fight to survive, is truly what created our culture.
- Herb Kelleher
A successful manager told me that stopped wearing a watch. She found that the work was so immersive, anchoring it to whatever hour it happened to be was pointless. The watch reminded her of the rigors of appointments and the status quo, while her goal was to be there, right here, right now, in the moment, and to do the work in front of her. The watch had no role in doing that right, so, for now, it’s gone.
- Seth Godin
Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.
- Napoleon Hill
Being surrounded by educated people makes democracy stronger, and it benefits our entire economy.
- Seth Godin
Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitate to get in the way if you’re moving.
- Timothy Ferriss
Librarians who are arguing and lobbying for clever e-book lending solutions are completely missing the point. They are defending the library-as-warehouse concept, as opposed to fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher, and impresario.
- Seth Godin
The mistake that’s so easy to make is to get greedy as you choose your hive, to say, “this product is for everyone” or “anyone can benefit from this idea.” Well, there are seven billion people on the planet, so it’s unlikely your comment is correct; even if it is, there’s little chance that a virus would spread across a hive that big.
- Seth Godin
I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.
- Zig Ziglar
In life, you don’t have a level of confrontation and the nonsense you run into when you’re a CEO. CEOs aren’t born.
- Ben Horowitz
About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.
- Reed Hastings
Time – the one asset none of us are ever gonna get more of.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Being called a huckster and a charlatan started several years ago, so that’s something I’m accustomed to. In most cases, it doesn’t bother me.
- Timothy Ferriss
Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn.
- Winston Churchill
If something’s important enough, you should try. Even if you – the probable outcome is failure.
- Elon Musk
Entrepreneurial skills and ability for sheer hard work will help Hong Kong re-orient its economy for future growth through a broad variety of strong and promising businesses.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Never blindside an employee by firing them without warning.
- Clay Clark
The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake or proves to be incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed.
- Napoleon Hill
If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.
- Peter Drucker
I would always be studying a map.
- Jack Dorsey
I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.
- Elon Musk
They don’t call it the Internet anymore, they call it cloud computing. I’m no longer resisting the name. Call it what you want.
- Larry Ellison
Profitability is a shallow goal if it doesn’t have a real purpose, and the purpose has to be share the profits with others.
- Howard Schultz
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge….
- Thomas Edison
Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.
- Sam Walton
As a group, we feel that our daughters are financially handicapped in comparison to our sons. Men seem to make much more money even within the same occupational categories. That is why most of us would not hesitate to share some of our wealth with our daughters. Our sons, and men in general, have the deck of economic cards stacked in their favor. They should not need subsidies from their parents.
- Thomas J Stanley
When a study was made a few years ago on runaway wives, what do you think was discovered to be the main reason wives ran away? It was lack of appreciation.
- Dale Carnegie
The dollar has lost 90% of its value in the last century.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Money is in some respects life’s fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.
- P.T. Barnum
Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
- Napoleon Hill
The greatest thing Jobs designed was his business. Apple imagined and executed definite multi-year plans to create new products and distribute them effectively. Forget “minimum viable products”—ever since he started Apple in 1976, Jobs saw that you can change the world through careful planning, not by listening to focus group feedback or copying others’ successes.
- Peter Thiel
Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.
- Richard Branson
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
Going the extra mile is the action of rendering more and better service than that for which you are presently paid. When you go the extra mile, the Law of Compensation comes into play.
- Napoleon Hill
As CEO, you should have an opinion on absolutely everything. You should have an opinion on every forecast, every product plan, every presentation, and even every comment. Let people know what you think. If you like someone’s comment, give her the feedback. If you disagree, give her the feedback. Say what you think. Express yourself.
- Ben Horowitz
What’s dangerous is not to evolve.
- Jeff Bezos
To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can’t stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do ‘anything.’ If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s not how much money you make, but how much money you keep, how hard it works for you, and how many generations you keep it for.
- Robert Kiyosaki
I swore I would never get involved in another startup ever again in my entire life.
- Larry Ellison
We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.
- Winston Churchill
Chinese consumption, particularly high-end consumption, is booming.
- Wang Jianlin
I don’t want to use my creative energy on somebody else’s user interface.
- Jeff Bezos
It’s not sufficient that I succeed, everyone else must fail.
- Larry Ellison
The steel business is a local business. We do believe in the U.S. economy and would like to have a strong, balanced presence here.
- Alexei Mordashov
As one’s fortunes are reduced, one spirit must expand to fill the void.
- Winston Churchill
If you don’t cut off negative information it will depress you. Step out of the natural and say, This may be impossible with men, but I know with God all things are possible.
- Joel Olsteen
Learn from the past, but don’t live there. Build on what you know so that you don’t repeat mistakes. Resolve to learn something new every day. Because every 24 hours, you have the opportunity to have the best day of your company’s life.
- Harvey Mackay
We’re pleased with the solid revenue and earnings per share results Cisco delivered during its second quarter, but also especially pleased with our strong order momentum. This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data along with our balanced approach to our customer segments, core and advanced technologies, business and technology architecture and key geographic theaters.
- John Chambers
Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.
- Jerry Seinfeld
A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.
- Joel Olsteen
Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That’s the fundamental thing.
- Ben Horowitz
It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.
- Ben Horowitz
Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a big believer than a great bit is a great bit – if I go and see someone I love, like Robert Klein. I want to hear some classics and some new stuff. But a great stand-up bit takes a long time to really polish and perfect, and they’re beautiful things when they’re done.
- Jerry Seinfeld
When York’s son, hitherto Earl of March, learned that his father’s cause had devolved upon him he did not shrink. He fell upon the Earl of Wiltshire and the Welsh Lancastrians, and on February 2, 1461, at the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, near Hereford, he beat and broke.
- Winston Churchill
The only time to buy these is on a day with no ‘y’ in it.
- Warren Buffett
