The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies had a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great. There is an important.
- James C. Collins
Notable Quotables
At Netflix, we think you have to build a sense of responsibility where people care about the enterprise. Hard work, like long hours at the office, doesn’t matter as much to us. We care about great work.
- Reed Hastings
One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.
- Ben Horowitz
We survive the market volatility and political changes. We cater for the actual need of the people and keep pace with the country.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gaining confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control. They’re in the control.
- Tom Landry
I think that the economics of book publishing favor hits with long book runs. You make all your money on the last bunch of books, not the first.
- Seth Godin
The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simply. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out, the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish, the other selfish. One is universally admired, the other universally condemned.
- Dale Carnegie
I’m not a tech guy. I’m looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people’s eyes.
- Jack Ma
Often people fail to start or complete a task because they don’t see any connection between what they’re doing and what they really want to accomplish in life.
- John C. Maxwell
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… The ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
- Steve Jobs
Improvement is to invent something completely new.
- Peter Thiel
It’s what we wrestle with every single day. The intersection of comfort, danger, and safety. The balancing act between vulnerability and shame. The opportunity (or the risk) to do art. The willingness to take responsibility for caring enough to make a difference and to have a point of view.
- Seth Godin
In almost every area of human endeavor, the practice improves over time. That hasn’t been the case for teaching.
- Bill Gates
TweetDeck is a very interesting client, because it presents a view that no other client in the world presents, which is this multicolumn, massive amounts of information in one pane. And people really, really enjoy that.
- Jack Dorsey
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
When an entrepreneur has an object in his line of vision, he should dismiss all other considerations from his mind, abandon all other activities, and charge directly at that object, continuing to charge until the object has been secured.
- Paul Johnson
The biggest part of my job now is to quickly develop successors, and around the world I am working to develop new business leaders in the company.
- Tadashi Yanai
Frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
- Jeff Bezos
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
- Oprah Winfrey
Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future.
- Zig Ziglar
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
- Napoleon Hill
Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.
- Dale Carnegie
I find it fascinating that a lot of business books that do well are from people who’ve never made any money in business.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The kids are a big part of my schedule.
- Bill Gates
I had so many people try to talk me out of starting a rocket company, it was crazy.
- Elon Musk
We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
- Jack Welch
We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
- Peter Drucker
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
Resposibility is the price of greatness.
- Winston Churchill
If you are a prospective entrepreneur with the desire to start and build a visionary company but have not yet taken the plunge because you don’t have a great idea,” we encourage you to lift from your shoulders the burden of the great-idea myth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it might be better to not obsess on finding a great idea before launching a company. Why? Because the great-idea approach shifts your attention away from seeing the company as your ultimate creation.
- James C. Collins
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
- Henry Ford
My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.
- Jack Welch
You always hear the phrase, money doesn’t buy you happiness. But I always in the back of my mind figured a lot of money will buy you a little bit of happiness. But it’s not really true. I got a new car because the old one’s lease expired.
- Sergey Brin
I do know this… I seem to reach a lot of previously unchurched people. So many people have told me they never went to church until they heard our message of hope that God is a good God who desires to bless those who are faithful and obedient to Him through Jesus Christ.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
- Thomas Edison
If you’re brilliant and undiscovered and underappreciated (in whatever field you choose), then you’re being too generous about your definition of brilliant.
- Seth Godin
What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.”
- James C. Collins
Create a vision and personalize it. People need to say, I understand it, I’m excited about it, and I can make it happen.
- David Novak
I think that the act of teaching is the most gratifying and rewarding of all human endeavors.
- David Novak
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
- Winston Churchill
By getting your customers to agree with you in small steps along the way, you have a better chance of reaching agreement when it’s time to do business.
- Harvey Mackay
Dell will participate in tablets and all sorts of client devices. Our main business is helping our customers secure, protect their data and access it from any device they want to.
- Michael Dell
I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It’s really a different product category.
- Jeff Bezos
If you don’t change the direction you are going, then you’re likely to end up where you’re heading…
- John C. Maxwell
What makes a startup employee instantly distinguishable to outsiders is the branded T-shirt or hoodie that makes him look the same as his co-workers. The startup uniform encapsulates a simple but essential principle: everyone at your company should be different in the same way—a tribe of like-minded people fiercely devoted to the company’s mission.
- Peter Thiel
The three short years I spent at Harvard, where I lived with excellent people, taught me not only that I must know how to choose my partners but also that choosing excellent partners is a skill you can learn. Obviously, when you spend time with the best, you learn how to choose among them.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
Takings were down by 25 per cent as a result of the security scares following the London bombings.
- Michael Ward
You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
- Walt Disney
To solve a problem or to reach a goal, you don’t need to know all the answers in advance. But you must have a clear idea of the problem or the goal you want to reach.
- W. Clement Stone
When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant, it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you, that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.
- Michael Bloomberg
It will be disastrous when a leader or manager shows up with one attitude one day and treats people with a different attitude the next day.
- Zig Ziglar
There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth. Not going all the way, and not starting.
- Siddhartha Gautama
This proves our strategy is working in terms of the convergence of voice, video and data.
- John Chambers
Victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
I love being a dad. I just love it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Google’s done a super good job on search. Apple’s done a great job on the iPod.
- Bill Gates
Drucker said: ‘If you weren’t already in this business, would you enter it today? And if not, what are you going to do about it?’ … Simple, right? But incredibly powerful.
- Jack Welch
You will never become a category of one if you run with the pack.
- Seth Godin
Let’s simplify this entire world.
- Jack Dorsey
I can become someone’s miracle.
- Joel Olsteen
What we need to do is always lean into the future, when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.
- Jeff Bezos
Learning is truly a value, growth for every employee is a real objective, mistakes aren’t always fatal, and there are lots of people around whom you can reach out to for coaching and mentoring.
- Jack Welch
The world is still in deleveraging.
- Ray Dalio
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
- John C. Maxwell
A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest… Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak. Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.
- Jack Welch
Monopoly is therefore not a pathology or an exception. Monopoly is the condition of every successful business.
- Peter Thiel
After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.
- Winston Churchill
I’m not even sure what it’s getting at … personalities are very wrong although mine is closer … don’t forget that my purpose was inspired by the values of the Homebrew Computer Club along with ideas of the value of such machines and Steve J. wasn’t around and didn’t attend the club so he was the one learning about such social impact of the future.
- Steve Wozniak
If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.
- Elon Musk
Only in a definite future is money a means to an end, not the end itself.
- Peter Thiel
The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.
- Joel Olsteen
I sold my most valuable possession, but I knew that because I worked at Hewlett Packard, I could buy the next model calculator the very next month for a lower price than I sold the older one for!
- Steve Wozniak
What’s dangerous is not to evolve.
- Jeff Bezos
You will never change what you tolerate.
- Joel Olsteen
If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.
- Elon Musk
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
I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.
- Sam Walton
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
- Winston Churchill
The global economy has experienced considerable slowdown in recent times. However there has been one notable exception: China.
- Cheng Yu-tung
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
It never hurts a fool to appear before an audience, for his capacity is not a capacity for feeling.
- Dale Carnegie
I’ve been very lucky. I come from a very close family.
- Richard Branson
When you make a TV show, they always say you’re a guest in someone’s home. Online, you’re a guest in someone’s face. So that’s why I try to make it sound and look and feel very inviting and attractive, because I know that I’m in your face.
- Jerry Seinfeld
If you can’t be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can.
- Seth Godin
When I was in my 40s, Microsoft was my primary activity.
- Bill Gates
Change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
How has being realistic” or responsible” kept you from the life you want? How has doing what you should” resulted in subpar experiences or regret for not having done something else?
- Timothy Ferriss
After all God doesn’t want you to be an imitation of someone else. You should be the original you were created to be. There is an anointing on your life, an empowerment. Not to be somebody else, but to be you. If you let people squeeze you into their molds and you bow down to their pressure to try to please your critics, it not only takes away your uniqueness, but it also lessens the favor on your life.
- Joel Olsteen
You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.
- Zig Ziglar
A lie cannot live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Use money to make money. Save your ‘first bucket of gold.’ or small fortune – but then use it for investments. Don’t just park money in the bank.
- Lee Shau Kee
Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected. I try to live by that on a daily basis.
- Jack Dorsey
3D is a way of organizing things, particularly as we’re getting much more media information on the computer, a lot more choices, a lot more navigation than we’ve ever had before.”-Bill Gates, Entrepreneur and founder of Microsoft
- Bill Gates
People always underestimate Africa. If you want to follow what’s on ground, you would not want to invest in Nigeria; when you look at it from the patriotism point of view, you will ask yourself: how did those great countries become great?
- Aliko Dangote
Structure a deal and create a plan around it.
- Jack Nadel
[Introducing himself to Sony co-founder Akio Morita] I have six of your TVs in my house.
- Phil Knight
Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
- Zig Ziglar
Become meaningful in your interactions and the path to success in any endeavor is simpler and far more sustainable.
- Dale Carnegie
Many residents have grown more cynical about government, … Sure, I want my constituents to feel good about me as their legislator, but we have to do something to restore the public’s faith in government.
- Michael Gerber
