Notable Quotables

We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.

- Bill Gates

If you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.

- Zig Ziglar

God will not pour fresh, creative ideas and blessing into old attitudes.

- Joel Olsteen

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

- John Wooden

It’s hard to say with 100 percent certainty that we’re totally out of it (the dry pattern), and it’s going to shift. But it’s leaning in that direction.

- Ed Clark

Play like you’re ten points behind in the final quarter. I’ve always heard this defined as operational cadence – creating a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm of doing business that drives the relentless pursuit of results. Whatever I’ve learned about creating a sense of urgency started when I worked for Howard Davis at Tracy Locke. He really knew how to push people. Everything had to be done yesterday. And I was one of the people who go pushed. Howard was a master of intimidation. Everyone knew if you didn’t give him what he wanted, he was going to find another way to get it, and if your weren’t part of the solution then you were part of the problem. The clients loved Howard because they knew he’d kill for them (and none of us wanted to be killed). It wasn’t always comfortable, but it taught me the value of constantly putting pressure on myself and the people who work for me. In corporate America, pressure is a way of life, so rather that resist it or merely accept it, you have to learn to use it as a personal motivator.

- David Novak

I tried to build a company my father would have been proud to work for, that he would have looked back on and said, ‘That’s the company that honoured me, even though I don’t have an education’. I wanted to build a company that had a conscience.

- Howard Schultz

My father encouraged me to study something I was interested in, not necessarily the basis for a career.

- Michael Balmuth

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.

- Seth Godin

None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone’s help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.

- Harvey Mackay

At the age of 30, one can overcome difficulties. By the age of 40, one has thorough appreciation of and insights into the world and becomes firmly self-assured without being carried away by all those irregularities in life.

- Cheng Yu-tung

To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.

- Peter Thiel

The Group also continues to be bullish for the long-term prospects for the property market in mainland China…

- Lee Shau Kee

I was trying to convince all these men to try to make a product that they didn’t even wear! Or if they did wear them, they were not admitting it! There was the problem right there. No wonder their hosiery was so uncomfortable.

- Sara Blakely

People who are able to lift up others and boost the morale in organization are invaluable, and they are always a tremendous asset to a leader’s inner circle.

- Napoleon Hill

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’

- Jeff Bezos

You may have made a lot of wrong choices, but you’ve also made a lot of choices that were right. Focus on your good qualities. Focus on your victories. Get off the treadmill of guilt.

- Joel Olsteen

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

- Bishop Desmond TuTu

If you do not see yourself as a winner, you cannot perform as a winner.

- Zig Ziglar

I’d learned enough about circuitry in high school electronics to know how to drive a TV and get it to draw – shapes of characters and things.

- Steve Wozniak

One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.

- Ben Horowitz

We thought we ought to put that in because it’s the truth but the (like-for-like) number even with those factors taken into account is still very disappointing.

- Simon Wolfson

You get to keep making art as long as you are willing to make the choices that let you make your art.

- Seth Godin

The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another’s keeping.

- Dale Carnegie

Whenever you have multiple devices including multiple PCs that you want to share information with, it’s always been a bit complicated.

- Bill Gates

We were pretty schizophrenic. We were going to take on the world, but we couldn’t make payroll.

- Phil Knight

Here’s a statistician joke for your next hot date: Person A: What happens when Bill Gates walks into a bar of 55 people? Person B: I don’t know. What? Person A: The average net worth jumps to more than a billion dollars!

- Timothy Ferriss

Be careful about virtual relationships with artificially intelligent pieces of software.

- Larry Ellison

Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.

- Ben Horowitz

I influence anybody who is able to get through the chaos of my first impression.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

I seek constantly to improve my manners and graces, for they are the sugar to which all are attracted.

- Og Mandino

I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.

- Donald Bren

Money is not the motivating force. It’s nice to have money, but I don’t live high. What I enjoy is running the business.

- Rupert Murdoch

David Novak CEO of YUM Brands (on crisis management)

- David Novak

As a businessperson, I don’t have the power to change the government. That is in the hands of the political leaders. However, as a taxpayer, we have the right to be critical of the government and demand change.

- Tadashi Yanai

Globally, business and government leaders are beginning to dramatically transform their traditional business models into Internet economy business models, … Customers are increasingly seeking Cisco’s expertise to help them through this transformation.

- John Chambers

Your ability to use the principle of autosuggestion will depend, very largely, upon your capacity to concentrate upon a given desire until that desire becomes a burning obsession.

- Napoleon Hill

Every job you take is a gamble that could increase your options or shut them down.

- Jack Welch

Good action today will produce good living tomorrow.

- Zig Ziglar

A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.

- Winston Churchill

You must unlearn what you have learned.

- Yoda

The current (educational) structure, which seeks low-cost uniformity that meets minimum standards, is killing our economy, our culture, and us.

- Seth Godin

Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.

- P.T. Barnum

Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I’d poison your tea. Churchill: Nancy, if I were your husband, I’d drink it.

- Winston Churchill

Eventually I left City College in my senior year, just four or five credits short of a sociology degree. This really upset my father who thought that I was a fool. Over and over he lectured me that the only way for a black man to make it was to get a degree and a job. For a while there I felt like I was a failure in my father’s eyes, which hurt alot, but promoting felt right in my gut. I knew that to be a man I had to follow my heart. My mother was always more open to Danny, Joey and me pursuing a more non-traditional entrepreneurial way…Early in my promoting career I lost all the money I’d saved on a show in Harlem no one came to. I came out to Hollis and no one would help me. My father just wanted me to go back to school and told me so. What could I say? I had no money. Then my mother went back in the house and came with $2,000 in crisp $100 bills from her personal savings. It was that money that kept me afloat until Kurtis Blow broke and I entered the record business. That act of love and faith, which is what kept me in business at a key time, is my favorite memory of her.

- Russell Simmons

This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.

- Bill Gates

We should remember it wasn’t so long ago that confidence in New York was in short supply.

- Michael Bloomberg

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

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

- Aristotle

The Western world loves liberalisation, provided it doesn’t affect them.

- Azim Premji

It was always a challenge for me to prove that a Russian financial investor can be as successful in the West as back at home in Russia.

- Alisher Usmanov

Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange.

- Peter Thiel

When Paul Allen and I started Microsoft over 30 years ago, we had big dreams about software.” We had dreams about the impact it could have.

- Bill Gates

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.

- James C. Collins

It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality.

- Og Mandino

How can we walk away from requirements that we know to be true to pursue something that we think will help?” It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.

- Ben Horowitz

You can’t win by being more average than average.

- Seth Godin

If I have one skill as a manager, I can make things extremely clear.

- Ben Horowitz

I’m going to save my public voice largely for the issues where I have some depth.

- Bill Gates

You know, I start with the assumption that -or with, with the belief that this president has to succeed. We all have an enormous amount of capital invested in his success. His success is the country’s success.

- Michael Bloomberg

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

- Winston Churchill

You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.

- Bill Gates

The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor.

- Seth Godin

If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.

- Zig Ziglar

My opinion is it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars.

- Elon Musk

Isn’t it amazing how much stuff we get done the day before vacation?

- Zig Ziglar

This is not checkers; this is motherfuckin’ chess. Technology businesses tend to be extremely complex. The underlying technology moves, the competition moves, the market moves, the people move. As a result, like playing three-dimensional chess on Star Trek, there is always a move. You think you have no moves? How about taking your company public with $2 million in trailing revenue and 340 employees, with a plan to do $75 million in revenue the next year? I made that move. I made it in 2001, widely regarded as the worst time ever for a technology company to go public. I made it with six weeks of cash left. There is always a move.

- Ben Horowitz

Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.

- Napoleon Hill

I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

- Elon Musk

The three Rs in educationare reading, writing and arithmetic. Without these basic skills, learning becomes almost impossible. In a similar way, business starts with a relationship. You are then judged by the results. Rewards spring from the results.

- Jack Nadel

One thing I’ve always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they’ll tell you, ‘We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.

- Bill Gates

People say the most important thing is building a world-class team.

- Ben Horowitz

WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT Work at it, if necessary, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now. The old proverb is full of truth and meaning, “Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.” Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbor remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business. Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

- P.T. Barnum

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our irritations and resentments slip away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

- Mark Twain

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war. – To Neville Chamberlain

- Winston Churchill

You can do two things at once, but you can’t focus effectively on two things at once.

- Gary Keller

The person who has technical knowledge plus the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people—that person is headed for higher earning power.

- Dale Carnegie

You have to learn to follow your heart. You can’t let other people pressure you into being something that you’re not. If you want God’s favor in your life, you must be the person He made you to be, not the person your boss wants you to be, not even the person your parents or your husband wants you to be. You can’t let outside expectations keep you from following your own heart.

- Joel Olsteen

What I’m trying to say is that for the average investor, what I would encourage them to do is to understand that there’s inflation and growth. It can go higher and lower and to have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced.

- Ray Dalio

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

- Dale Carnegie

A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.

- Peter Thiel

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

- Mark Twain

I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.

- Donald Trump

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

- P.T. Barnum

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.

- Dale Carnegie

There is never a bad time to start a business – unless you want to start a mediocre one.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.

- Ralph Lauren

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