Notable Quotables

The idea is to have relationships where you make money and the other guy makes money, too. That’s how a business keeps its team together.

- Russell Simmons

I’ve learned that people will seldom let you down if they understand that your destiny is in their hands, and vice versa.

- Harvey Mackay

If I prophesy my future I want to prophesy something good. I’m not saying what I feel. I’m not saying what it looks like in the real world. No, I’m saying what God says about me.

- Joel Olsteen

Cisco Systems Capital will be investing in companies working on networking technology.

- John Chambers

I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.

- Joel Olsteen

We have a go-to-hell fund. In other words, we have accumulated enough wealth to live without working for ten or more years. Thus, those of us with a net worth of $1.6 million could live comfortably for more than twelve years. Actually, we could live longer than that, since we save at least 15 percent of our earned income.

- Thomas J Stanley

We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.

- Tadashi Yanai

Role play with yourself to answer questions to a cynic, optimist, and be able play devil’s advocate.

- Maurice Kanbar

Sales is what you do in person, one on one. Marketing is sales done via a system. Most (Self-Employed) S quadrant businesspeople are very good at one-on-one sales. For them to make the transition to the B quadrant, they need to learn how to sell through a system which is called marketing.

- Robert Kiyosaki

The epidemic So many people are frozen in the face of uncertainty and paralyzed at the thought of shipping work that matters that one might think that the fear is hardwired into us. It is. Scientists can identify precisely where your lizard brain lives. This is your prehistoric early brain, the same brain that’s in the lizard or the deer. Filled with fear, intent on reproduction. Steven Pressfield gives the voice of the lizard brain a name: he calls it the resistance. And the resistance is talking to you as you read this, urging you to compromise, to not be an troublemaker, to avoid rash moves. For many of us, the resistance is always chattering away, frequently sabotaging our best opportunities and ruining our best chance to do great work. Naming it helps you befriend it, and befriending it helps you ignore it.

- Seth Godin

Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.

- Peter Thiel

Monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money, non-monopolists can’t.

- Peter Thiel

Everything that works in sales has been done already. Just keep track of the crap that you buy, or the awesome stuff that you buy, and decide what was the trigger, and then just sell to people like you. It’s really that easy – and that’s what I do.

- Timothy Ferriss

To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments.

- Dale Carnegie

The culture was strong enough to transcend the original company.

- Peter Thiel

Entrepreneurs are like visionaries. One of the ways they run forward is by viewing the thing they’re doing as something that’s going to be the whole world.

- Reid Hoffman

My biggest concern is that America is drifting towards mediocrity and that people don’t recognize – and by people I’m meaning Washington – don’t recognize the sense of urgency and the fact that I don’t think this is a crisis anymore. I think it’s an emergency.

- Howard Schultz

The secret of his success? I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.

- Dale Carnegie

Pure hell forces action, but anything less can be endured with enough clever rationalization.

- Timothy Ferriss

My son likes to go see mines and electric plants, or the Large Hadron Collider, and we’ve had a chance to see a lot of interesting stuff.

- Bill Gates

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

- Steve Jobs

Most of us have never felt at a disadvantage because we did not receive any inheritance. About 80 percent of us are first-generation affluent.

- Thomas J Stanley

Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today.

- Peter Thiel

As a freshman, I had to make one hell of an adjustment. I had to go from being a good high school competitor to a locker room with three Olympians in Dellinger, Bailey, and Grelle. Four, if you count Burley coming in my senior year. If you ask where Nike came from, I would say it came from a kid who had that world-class shock administered at age seventeen by Bill Bowerman.

- Phil Knight

Everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t consciously agree with that statement, your brain sure does.

- Seth Godin

What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.

- Thomas Edison

Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.

- P.T. Barnum

Tip 29 – A good Accountant is not just a scorekeeper.

- Jack Nadel

I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.

- Jack Ma

Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody’s got to pay for them so they’re a necessary evil.

- Michael Bloomberg

I really chess-play culture shifts. I’m really good at understanding what worldwide cell-phone use means. That’s what I do. I try to picture it three to four to five steps ahead.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

By far the most difficult skill I learned as a C.E.O. was the ability to manage my own psychology. Organizational design, process design, metrics, hiring and firing were all relatively straightforward skills to master compared with keeping my mind in check.

- Ben Horowitz

If you ask me whether the future is better than today, I would say yes; but the people must be ready to pay for services and pay their taxes.

- Aliko Dangote

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

Men sometimes stumble over the truth, but often pick themselves up and hurry off as though nothing had happened.

- Winston Churchill

I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future. It’s seeing what other people don’t see And pursuing that vision.

- Howard Schultz

I actually thought that it would be a little confusing during the same period of your life to be in one meeting when you’re trying to make money, and then go to another meeting where you’re giving it away. I mean is it gonna erode your ability, you know, to make money? Are you gonna somehow get confused about what you’re trying to do?

- Bill Gates

Leadership, on the other hand, is about creating change you believe in.

- Seth Godin

Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?

- Ray Kroc

A decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw.

- Peter Drucker

Speed is of the essence in responding to a crisis situation, and our focus is squarely on mobilizing resources to help in the relief and rebuilding efforts, while also helping customers and employees recover.

- John Chambers

Essentially, whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference, is going to be talked about.

- Mukesh Ambani

I think George Will is somebody that said recently that the Republicans will not lose, as a Republican, that the Republicans will not win the election. I think it was a terrible statement.

- Donald Trump

Hong Kong has, throughout it’s history, experienced periods of uncertainties… I believe that the virtues of Hong Kong people – diligent, flexible and entrepreneurial – will once again overcome the obstacles before us.

- Cheng Yu-tung

This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.

- Winston Churchill

It was a big momentum deal, so when the bottom comes out from under it, you have to go back to the well and start the whole thing.

- Travis Kalanick

Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character.

- Winston Churchill

I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.

- Thomas Edison

It’s a matter of invitations versus context. Twitter is really good at providing context, like, I’m having coffee at Third Rail Coffee.’ Foursquare is about invitations to places. In this respect Foursquare has started to replace Yelp for me.

- Jack Dorsey

There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.

- Peter Drucker

Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about.

- Seth Godin

In order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going. America can’t have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations – can’t have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It’s got to have a vision.

- Jack Welch

I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.

- Steve Martin

God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.

- Joel Olsteen

In three years, every product my company makes will be obsolete. The only question is whether we will make them obsolete or somebody else will.

- Bill Gates

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

- Joel Olsteen

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

- Albert Einstein

I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.

- Jeff Bezos

My job is to help more people have jobs.

- Jack Ma

The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it’s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.

- George Soros

The local property market witnessed a slowdown following the 9-11 incident in the United States, under an environment of high unemployment and sustained deflation in Hong Kong. On the whole, property prices showed a slight decline as compared with the price levels recorded in the previous financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work – what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business?

- Ray Dalio

The Bible says, See that none of you repays another evil for evil, but always aim to show kindness and seek to do good to one another and to everybody.

- Joel Olsteen

The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work if you won’t.

- Zig Ziglar

I’m not an actor who appears on the stage and gives people advice on how to live or what to do and entertains them. It is not my specialty.

- Vagit Alekperov

Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution. It just needs clarity.

- Ben Horowitz

Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.

- Elon Musk

I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.

- Russell Simmons

I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen.

- Russell Simmons

You may be sitting around waiting for God to change your circumstances. Then you’re going to be happy, then your’re going to have a good attitude, then you’re going to give God praise. But God is waiting on you to get up on the inside. When you do your part, He’ll begin to change things and work supernaturally in your life.

- Joel Olsteen

You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.

- Seth Godin

The industrial age is ending, and a new one is beginning. It produces art instead of stuff and it rewards gracefulness.

- Seth Godin

Since belief determines behavior, doesn’t it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?

- Zig Ziglar

Money is fun to make, fun to spend and fun to give away.

- Sara Blakely

The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know.

- Seth Godin

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

The typical small business owner is only 10 percent Entrepreneur, 20 percent Manager, and 70 percent Technician.

- Michael Gerber

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

- John C. Maxwell

Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.

- Jerry Seinfeld

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

- Joel Olsteen

Gold is a kind of mortar and offers a form of capital preservation. We’re still bullish about gold.

- Lee Shau Kee

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

I totally understand that people are upset about it and I think that is a reasonable point of view to take.

- Sergey Brin

The way of the warrior: keep death in mind at all times. If a warrior keeps death in mind at all times and lives as though each day might be his last, he will conduct himself properly in all his actions.

- Principle of the Bushido

Seeing his education soley in utilitarian terms, he studied hard, but showed no intellectual playfulness.

- Ron Chernow

No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.

- Peter Drucker

If you wait until all the lights are green before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.

- Zig Ziglar

STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.

- Peter Thiel

Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.

- Phil Knight

Philanthropy should be taking much bigger risks that business. If these are easy problems, business and government can come in and solve them.

- Bill Gates

If you are only big in China, you are only a local Chinese company.

- Wang Jianlin

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