If the recipe sucks, it doesn’t matter how good a cook you are.
- Timothy Ferriss
Notable Quotables
Once you create and dominate a niche market, then you should gradually expand into related and slightly broader markets. Amazon shows how it can be done. Jeff Bezos’s founding vision was to dominate all of online retail, but he very deliberately started with books. There were millions of books to catalog, but they all had roughly the same shape, they were easy to ship, and some of the most rarely sold books—those least profitable for any retail store to keep in stock—also drew the most enthusiastic customers. Amazon became the dominant solution for anyone located far from a bookstore or seeking something unusual. Amazon then had two options: expand the number of people who read books, or expand to adjacent markets. They chose the latter, starting with the most similar markets: CDs, videos, and software. Amazon continued to add categories gradually until it had become the world’s general store. The name itself brilliantly encapsulated the company’s scaling strategy.
- Peter Thiel
I think very early on in life we all learn what we’re good at and what we’re not good at, and we stay where it’s safe.
- Sara Blakely
Companies, exist and evolve over time and in fact they have multiple founding moments.
- Jack Dorsey
Security has to happen at the infrastructure.
- John Chambers
At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.
- George Paz
We can’t have democracy if we’re having to protect you and our users from the government over stuff we’ve never had a conversation about. We need to know what the parameters are, what kind of surveillance the government is going to do, and how and why.
- Larry Page
All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.
- Peter Thiel
The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people – including my ex-wives.
- Ronald Perelman
I don’t spend my time pontificating about high-concept things. I spend my time solving engineering and manufacturing problems.
- Elon Musk
As he brooded over how to raise the money, he was informed by his father that he had always intended to give each of his children $1,000.00 at age twenty-one, and he now offered to advance John the money. But, John, he added lest his son expect miracles, the rate is ten. Having just retrieved a thousand dollars from Hewitt, Bill might have been looking for a high return on these idle funds. John knew his father too well to plead for a gift and accepted the 10 percent loan, which was higher than the prevailing rate. So on April 1, 1858 backed up by this borrowed money, John D. Rockefeller left Isaac Hewitt and joined the partnership of Clark and Rockefeller at 32 River Street (in Cleveland). At eighteen, he was catapulted to a partner’s rank in a commission house. It was a great thing to be my own employer, said Rockefeller. Mentally I swelled with pride – a partner in a firm with $4,000 capital! The moment was fraught with meaning for him and after his first day at work, he went back to the Cheshire Street house, fell to his knees, and implored the Lord to bless his new enterprise.
- Ron Chernow
I hate the photo shoots. I hate all that stuff.
- Reed Hastings
Everything rises and falls on leadership.
- John C. Maxwell
You have to keep your goal in mind and never lose sight of it. I envisioned myself winning the heavyweight title for ten years before I actually captured it. If you’re not driven to do your best, you’ll never reach the level of excellence in your life.
- George Foreman
This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.
- Bill Gates
Do not listen to those who weep and complain, for their disease is contagious.
- Og Mandino
What’s happening is that the two groups assume that the nature of the debate is really a matter of disagreement about their own sides’ core issues. Each side is assuming that people in the other group oppose what they hold most dear to themselves – what’s most important to their side – but in fact their adversaries really don’t oppose them.
- John Chambers
When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.
- Zig Ziglar
I try to live what I teach. A lot of things come against us in life, but we should try to find something to be grateful for, and see each day as a gift.
- Joel Olsteen
Tomorrow is only found in the calendar of fools.
- Og Mandino
You don’t have to choose between your business and your life. Rather, if you do it right, you get your business and your life. In fact, we strongly believe that the only way to build a truly scalable business is by radically reducing its reliance on you, the owner, and supporting that rapid growth through systems, team and internal business controls.
- Jeff Hoffman
The success we are now taking in is the natural outcome of our adhesion to our principles to start with: an enterprise shall take care of the people’s livelihood, through thick and thin; an enterprise shall help the people overcome all difficulties to savor the fruit to be borne on the motherland, come rain or shine.
- Cheng Yu-tung
There is a revolution happening, and within two years I think that Wi-Fi and Netflix will be built into all the televisions.
- Reed Hastings
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
- Henry Ford
The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit… a reputation, character.
- John D. Rockefeller
I usually have my yellow legal pad with me, with a list of ten or fifteen things we need to be working on as a company. My list drives the executives around here crazy, but it’s probably one of my more important contributions.
- Sam Walton
Chambers have numerous committees and serving on one of them provides numerous networking opportunities as well as professional leadership development.
- American Business Magazine
It is a well known fact that Henry Ford began his business career under the handicap of poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance. It is an equally well known fact that, within the inconceivably short period of ten years, Mr. Ford mastered these three handicaps, and that within twenty-five years he made himself one of the richest men in America. Connect with this fact, the additional knowledge that Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticeable, 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
People are chasing cash, not happiness. When you chase money, you’re going to lose. You’re just going to. Even if you get the money, you’re not going to be happy.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.
- John D. Rockefeller
When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley.
- Sergey Brin
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
- Warren Buffett
I built a conglomerate and emerged the richest black man in the world in 2008 but it didn’t happen overnight, it took me 30 years.
- Aliko Dangote
The noblest art is that of making others happy.
- P.T. Barnum
Credit is a promise to deliver money. It will produce GDP but you’ll create credit… So you reach a certain point that that you can’t do that anymore… There are choices. And how do we best support, apportion the money? How much is going to be transferred?
- Ray Dalio
It is a very big exaggeration to say I am a friend of Mr. Putin.
- Alexei Mordashov
The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.
- Elon Musk
Don’t criticize them, they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.
- Dale Carnegie
There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.
- Winston Churchill
The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.
- Robert Kiyosaki
If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was ‘satisfactory,’ I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?
- Bill Gates
Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules – not just for governments but for private companies.
- Bill Gates
Daimler uses Tesla’s battery packs, Mercedes-Benz uses a Tesla powertrain, Toyota uses a Tesla motor. General Motors has even created a task force to track Tesla’s next moves.
- Peter Thiel
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly–until you can learn to do it well.
- Zig Ziglar
History is more or less bunk.
- Henry Ford
Culture is one of the most precious things a company has…So you must work harder on it than anything else.
- Herb Kelleher
I wish to God that Apple and Google were partners in the future.
- Steve Wozniak
The lesson is that, No. 1, this management has to be at the highest class possible. No. 2, they have to have a succession plan.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Today, if you want to access a typical out-of-print book, you have only one choice – fly to one of a handful of leading libraries in the country and hope to find it in the stacks.
- Sergey Brin
Get through your fears and the world will open up. Give in to your fears and your world will get smaller every year.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.
- Winston Churchill
Control your own destiny or someone else will.
- Jack Welch
Lack of Concentration Of Effort.
- Napoleon Hill
Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.
- Phil Knight
Simply changing one three-letter word can often spell the difference between failure and success in changing people without giving offense or arousing resentment. Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise followed by the word but” and ending with a critical statement. For example, in trying to change a child’s careless attitude toward studies, we might say, We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term. But if you had worked harder on your algebra, the results would have been better.” In this case, Johnnie might feel encouraged until he heard the word but.” He might then question the sincerity of the original praise. To him, the praise seemed only to be a contrived lead-in to a critical inference of failure. Credibility would be strained, and we probably would not achieve our objectives of changing Johnnie’s attitude toward his studies. This could be easily overcome by changing the word but” to and.” We’re really proud of you, Johnnie, for raising your grades this term, and by continuing the same conscientious efforts next term, your algebra grade can be up with all the others.
- Dale Carnegie
But iteration without a bold plan won’t take you from 0 to 1.
- Peter Thiel
Negative Personality.
- Napoleon Hill
A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
- Seth Godin
Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell.
- Elon Musk
The choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.
- Oprah Winfrey
The garden gleams with summer jewelry. We live vy simply—but with all the essentials of life well understood & well provided for—hot baths, cold champagne, new peas, & old brandy.
- Winston Churchill
If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business.
- Ray Kroc
The common thread for everything I do is this idea of a Web-services architecture. What does that mean? It means taking components of software and systems and having them be self-describing, so that you can aim them, ask them what their capabilities are, and communicate with them using a standard protocol.
- Bill Gates
There’s a way to do it better – find it.
- Thomas Edison
We were guerilla marketers, and we still are, a little bit.
- Phil Knight
We often hear military experts inculcate the doctrine of giving priority to the decisive theatre. There is a lot in this. But in war this principle, like all others, is governed by facts and circumstances; otherwise strategy would be too easy. It would become a drill-book and not an art; it would depend upon rules and not on an instructed and fortunate judgment of the proportions of an ever-changing scene.
- Winston Churchill
Twitter in 2000 was something that was fun to play with but something I put on the shelf to play with for another day. And that day was 2006.
- Jack Dorsey
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
- Colin Powell
We believe that according the name ‘investors’ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‘romantic.’
- Warren Buffett
Said another way, the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is. When The Entrepreneur creates the model.
- Michael Gerber
I tell my employees that we’re in the service business, and it’s incidental that we fly airplanes.
- Herb Kelleher
After the Apple II was introduced, then came the Commodore and the Tandy TRS-80.
- Steve Wozniak
What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.
- Admiral Jim Stockdale
Anyone who wants to change the world should be more humble.
- Peter Thiel
I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.
- Oprah Winfrey
It seems like a good cause. I’ve been watching it on TV and, it makes me want to help.
- Ed Clark
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
- John C. Maxwell
Flaming enthusiasm, backed by horse sense and persistence, is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
- Dale Carnegie
You have to come up with what the consumer wants, and you need a vehicle to understand it.
- Phil Knight
The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
- Napoleon Hill
and the rare individual who honestly satisfies this heart hunger will hold people in the palm of his or her hand”
- Dale Carnegie
I recall that Harry made a trip to San Bernardino about the time we were really starting to roll, and Dick McDonald asked him what he thought the future of McDonald’s would be. Harry told him that one day this company would be bigger than F. W. Woolworth. Dick really did a double take at that. He told me later, ‘I thought you had a genuine nut on your hands, Ray.’ But Harry knew exactly where he wanted to go, and he knew how to get there.
- Ray Kroc
We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life. And it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001.
- Michael Bloomberg
Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.
- Elon Musk
The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.
- Zig Ziglar
John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there’s something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.
- Ben Horowitz
Superior sales and distribution by itself can create a monopoly, even with no product differentiation.
- Peter Thiel
The screwball. Humor can often be effective and with this style, it’s emphasized. Appeal to the journalist’s heightened sense of the unusual. Stunts, sideshows, ancillary themes are put to work here.
- Michael Levine
Use your feelings, Obi-Wan, and find him you will.
- Yoda
He was probably America’s first capitalist.
- Travis Kalanick
I enjoy the competition and the process of learning as we compete. The whole thing is just fascinating. I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire. When I go sailing, I look around … anyone want to race? I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.
- Larry Ellison
Google actually relies on our users to help with our marketing. We have a very high percentage of our users who often tell others about our search engine.
- Sergey Brin
I was uncomfortable with the timing, … We were getting millions less from the federal government for Medicaid and having to search for funds to restore some of those cuts and I just did not think it was right to put a pay raise on the board that would cost tens of millions of dollars.
- Michael Gerber
Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
- Winston Churchill
…Treasure what it means to do a day’s work. It’s our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it’s certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day’s work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.
- Seth Godin
Throughout this quarter of a century, the entrepreneurial outlook, versatility and vision of our employees have remained the crucial elements of our success…
- Cheng Yu-tung
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.
- Winston Churchill
There is far more opportunity than there is ability.
- Thomas Edison
There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.
- Oprah Winfrey
We gradually came to the realization that we were hurting not just ourselves but the Chinese people.
- Sergey Brin
