How was your day? If your answer was “fine,” then I don’t think you were leading.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
- Warren G. Bennis
A pay increase of 5 percent is more than justified. It would compensate for losses we’ve had in the past and I’d like to be able to buy the everyday things I’ve put off for years, like a new TV.
- Michael Gerber
Progress really is possible.
- Michael Bloomberg
I’ve actually not read any books on time management.
- Elon Musk
People going nowhere want company.
- Brian Tracy
[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
The future is already here—it is just unevenly distributed.
- William Gibson
Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war. Stir up the mighty men. Let all the warriors draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong.
- Joel 3:9
When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.
- Bill Gates
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
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure
- Abraham Lincoln
A company will be most successful if the senior managers optimize for the company’s success (think of this as a global optimization) as opposed to their own personal success (local optimization).
- Ben Horowitz
You don’t build a business –you build people– and then people build the business.
- Zig Ziglar
In order for us to have a future that’s exciting and inspiring, it has to be one where we’re a space-bearing civilization.
- Elon Musk
If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.
- Thomas J Watson
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
- Andrew Carnegie
This is why successful network businesses rarely get started by MBA types: the initial markets are so small that they often don’t even appear to be business opportunities at all.
- Peter Thiel
I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.
- Charles M. Schwab
The cost of praising someone is nil – but every psychological study shows the payoff is huge.
- Harvey Mackay
IQ is a commodity, data is a commodity. I’m far more interested in watching people interact at a restaurant with their smartphone. We can all read ‘Tech Crunch,’ ‘Ad Age.’ I would rather be living in the trenches. I would rather be going to Whole Foods in Columbus Circle to watch people shop with their smartphones.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
God, Family, Country.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s not manufacturers trying to rip anybody off or anything like that. There’s nobody getting rich writing software that I know of.
- Bill Gates
We’re extremely adroit at hiding our fear. Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we’re afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.
- Seth Godin
I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America.
- Sam Walton
Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.
- Bill Gates
The lesson for business is that we need founders. If anything, we should be more tolerant of founders who seem strange or extreme; we need unusual individuals to lead companies beyond mere incrementalism.
- Peter Thiel
If you’re going to be thinking, you may as well think big.
- Donald Trump
At Uniqlo, we’re thinking ahead. We’re thinking about how to create new, innovative products… and sell that to everyone.
- Tadashi Yanai
We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.
- Winston Churchill
As Americans, there are very few things we have confidence in.
- Howard Schultz
After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Always remember that your present situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.
- Zig Ziglar
If there is any one secret of success,’ said Henry Ford, ‘it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
- Dale Carnegie
Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.
- John C. Maxwell
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- Winston Churchill
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings, the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
- Winston Churchill
My wealth is reflected in the price of Severstal, and the number of shares I have in my possession doesn’t have any impact on the company.
- Alexei Mordashov
That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity.
- Beryl Markham
So you need two professions: the one you have studied all this time, and your other profession the profession of persuasion that allows you to make good use of all those years of education, practice and dues-paying.
- Jerry Vass
[On January 30, 1964] With a hearty ichi ban Blue Ribbon Sports got off the ground on Monday with an order for 300 pairs of shoes.
- Phil Knight
Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat.
- James C. Collins
We are all worms. But I believe that I am a glow-worm.
- Winston Churchill
We want to build technology that everybody loves using, and that affects everyone. We want to create beautiful, intuitive services and technologies that are so incredibly useful that people use them twice a day. Like they use a toothbrush. There aren’t that many things people use twice a day.
- Larry Page
It partly depends on the currency regimes in place in the country.
- John Chambers
No comment’ is a splendid expression. I am using it again and again.
- Winston Churchill
And the pathetic part of it is that frequently those who have the least justification for a feeling of achievement bolster up their egos by a show of tumult and conceit which is truly nauseating. As Shakespeare put it: … man, proud man, / Drest in a little brief authority, / … Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven / As make the angels weep.
- Dale Carnegie
Profitability comes from loyalty, productivity, and having a character base from which to work.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s pretty chilly by southern California standards.
- Ed Clark
People shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to get high-quality clothing.
- Tadashi Yanai
To get rich is glorious. So is helping poor farmers.
- Dhanin Chearavanont
The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.
- Seth Godin
Group projects are the exception in school, but they should be the norm.
- Seth Godin
Building a better you is the first step to building a better America.
- Zig Ziglar
Relationships are leverage. If you give value to someone else first, you have leverage.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The chef that grew up with the grandma who cooks tends to always beat the chef that went to the culinary institute. It’s in the blood.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Danger: if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. Never run away from anything. Never!
- Winston Churchill
If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it.
- Peter Thiel
Visibility remains limited, and this should come as no surprise, given that our customers’ visibility is limited.
- John Chambers
People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest …But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious value of gold.
- Thomas Edison
God is directing every one of your steps.
- Joel Olsteen
All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current.
- Ben Horowitz
In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.
- Bill Gates
My experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.
- Michael Gerber
The lesson of the Ford story is that managers and management are the specific need of the business enterprise, its specific organ, and its basic structure. We can say dogmatically that enterprise cannot do without managers. One cannot argue that management does the owner’s job by delegation. Management is needed not only because the job is too big for any one man to do himself, but because managing an enterprise is something essentially different from managing one’s own property.
- Peter Drucker
We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new. Remarkable, as you’ve already figured out, demands initiative.
- Seth Godin
In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.
- Warren Buffett
Every man I meet is my superior in some way. In that, I learn of him.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The pancreas is by far the most complex organ in the body.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
I’ve gotten more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
- Winston Churchill
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
- Dale Carnegie
Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work.
- Bill Gates
People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.
- Joel Olsteen
The trouble with energy farming is that the energy isn’t always where you want to use it, and it isn’t always when you want to use it.
- Bill Gates
In return, society rewards those who give it what it wants. That is why how much money people have earned is a rough measure of how much they gave society what it wanted.
- Ray Dalio
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Every sale has 5 basic obstacles: need, money, hurry, desire, trust.
- Zig Ziglar
Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.
- Peter Thiel
To Admiral Cunningham it was against all tradition to abandon the Army in such a crisis. He declared, “It takes the Navy three years to build a new ship. It will take three hundred years to build a new tradition.
- Winston Churchill
You’ve got to embrace what you don’t know.
- Sara Blakely
We believe that it is better to give one a rod to fish rather than just dole out fish to them.
- Henry Sy
The ultimate goal for a business owner is to build a company that he or she can one day sell, continue to scale, or even own passively. Most business owners reach for growth by working harder and personally trying to produce more. This is a flawed model that at best will lead to only moderate growth. At worst this strategy can literally put your entire company at risk.
- Jeff Hoffman
In the context of body redesign, there are two fundamental MEDs to keep in mind: To remove stored fat → do the least necessary to trigger a fat-loss cascade of specific hormones. To add muscle in small or large quantities → do the least necessary to trigger local (specific muscles) and systemic (hormonal2) growth mechanisms.
- Timothy Ferriss
Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.
- Seth Godin
Who told you that something was wrong with you?
- Joel Olsteen
I think every Internet user likes personalization.
- Ma Huateng
I have plenty of money to do what I want to do, and I have the relationships.
- Timothy Ferriss
The worst pandemic in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed tens of millions of people. Today, with how interconnected the world is, it would spread faster.
- Bill Gates
Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.
- Bill Gates
Treatment without prevention is simply unsustainable.
- Bill Gates
Diversification does not mean that we have lost confidence in the long term prospects of the property market. Just the contrary is true.One year after the hand-over of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, the people in Hong Kong and around the world have witnessed the successful implementation of the ‘One Country, Two System.’
- Cheng Yu-tung
Opportunity is walking through your life every day in the form of people you meet.
- Zig Ziglar
Often the best way to develop workers – when you are sure they have the character and think they have the ability – is to take them to a deep place, throw them in and make them sink or swim.
- John D. Rockefeller
the expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back
- Dale Carnegie
Measuring and establishing facts at every step of the process. Without facts, assumptions and misperceptions will defeat whatever reason and good judgment can be brought to effort
- Service Profit Chain
The thought of my mortality – I think about it a lot. I find it motivating. It can be any time that your number’s up.
- Sara Blakely
Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.
- John D. Rockefeller
I took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying.
- Sara Blakely
We want Facebook to be one of the best places people can go to learn how to build stuff. If you want to build a company, nothing better than jumping in and trying to build one. But Facebook is also great for entrepreneurs/hackers. If people want to come for a few years and move on and build something great, that’s something we’re proud of.
- Mark Zuckerberg
Life is a buzzer box. Poke it.
- Seth Godin