Reaching the top is a monumental achievement, but remaining there may be the most spectacular feat of all.
- John C. Maxwell
Notable Quotables
Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score.”
- Sam Walton
On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m just preparing my impromptu remarks.
- Winston Churchill
I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen.
- Russell Simmons
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
- Warren Buffett
All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.
- Peter Thiel
Ironically, it is exactly because we are a city that embraces freedom, that welcomes everyone and encourages their dreams, that New York remains on the front lines in the war on terror.
- Michael Bloomberg
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
You can’t manage what you can’t measure.
- Peter Drucker
When the value of the company clearly has fallen below what its assets are worth, having a shareholder who says, ‘Let’s get a better board’ can be helpful.
- Ben Horowitz
Its never too late…to start heading in the right direction.
- Seth Godin
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.
- Seth Godin
The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The unvarnished truth is that almost all the people you meet feel themselves superior to you in some way, and a sure way to their hearts is to let them realise in some subtle way that you realise their importance, and recognise it sincerely.
- Dale Carnegie
That’s the goal, isn’t it? For every crack to be filled with your ideas and innovations and creativity? The only way to achieve this, though, is to be prepared for many of them to fail, to land on pavement, to be perfect yet cease to grow. We can cry about these failures, but that will lead us to hold back on the next idea. Or we can celebrate them, realizing that it’s proof that we’re being promiscuous in our shipping, putting the best work we can into the world, regardless of whether this particular idea actually works. When was the last time you set out to be promiscuous in your failures?
- Seth Godin
Sales were limited by how many shoes we had, shoes were limited by how many dollars we had to order them.
- Phil Knight
One who works the same reactive 40 hours per week and takes the same amount of sick days and holidays off as his or her employees, yet expects to make significantly more than everyone else simply because they have the title of owner and are thus making the loan payments and the lease payments.
- Clay Clark
I do not like to repeat successes, I like to go on to other things.
- Walt Disney
You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.
- Harry Truman
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.
- James C. Collins
Mr. Ford’s most rapid strides became noticable 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
You have to be responsible when you’re running an organization, and firing people who are your friends is part of that responsibility.
- Ben Horowitz
Japan’s biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice.
- Tadashi Yanai
Barring serious accidents, if you are not preoccupied with worry and you work hard, you can look forward to a reasonably lengthy existence…. Its not the hard work that kills, its the worrying that kills.
- Thomas Edison
Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.
- Seth Godin
People ask me what’s the most important function when you’re starting an organization or setting up the kind of culture and values that are going to endure. The discipline I believe so strongly in is H.R., and its the last discipline that gets funded.
- Howard Schultz
Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was… just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But…it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since [1945]…. And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.
- James C. Collins
You’ve got to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have what it takes. God created you to excel, and He’s given you ability, insight, talent, wisdom, and His supernatural power to do so.
- Joel Olsteen
We’re not going to outgrow our need for information.
- Seth Godin
Best wine if you’re stranded on a deserted island? 1982 Salon Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations: communications, teamwork, self-development, and development of others.
- Peter Drucker
Everything in life is luck.
- Donald Trump
Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets
- Steve Jobs
If you go to a bad movie, it’s two hours. If you’re in a bad movie, it’s two years.
- Jerry Seinfeld
User experience is everything. It always has been, but it’s undervalued and underinvested in. If you don’t know user-centered design, study it. Hire people who know it. Obsess over it. Live and breathe it. Get your whole company on board.
- Evan Williams
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
If I’m in my position at a company, I may not have the knowledge of the C.E.O., I may not know what’s possible, or I may not have the creativity, but if I can identify a problem, that’s a valuable thing.
- Ben Horowitz
As long as a person doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, he doesn’t grow.
- John Maxwell
My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
- Jeff Bezos
Lack of a well-defined purpose in life.
- Napoleon Hill
The main thing that’s missing in energy is an incentive to create things that are zero-CO2-emitting and that have the right scale and reliability characteristics.
- Bill Gates
So we really need jobs now. We have to take jobs away from other countries because other countries are taking our jobs. There is practically not a country that does business with the United States that isn’t making – let’s call it a very big profit. I mean China is going to make $300 billion on us at least this year.
- Donald Trump
When I finally retire, I just want to go away so no one has to listen to me.
- Steve Martin
Certainly there are times in all of our lives when bad things happen, or things don’t turn out as we had hoped. But that’s when we we must a decision that we’re going to be happy inspite of our circumstances.
- Joel Olsteen
A story is at its best when it’s not intrusive, when it brings value to a platform’s consumers, and when it fits in as a natural step along the customer’s path to making a purchase.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
All of us, in a sense, struggle continuously all the time, because we never get what we want. The important thing which I’ve really learned is how do you not give up, because you never succeed in the first attempt.
- Mukesh Ambani
Fortunately for India, it has got a growing economy. If it is doing the right things with taxation and focusing on the right areas for human development, it is going to have no problem, over a period of time, taking care of its own needs.
- Bill Gates
It turns out that all Netflix streaming peak on Saturday night can fit inside a single fiber optic, which is the size of one human hair.
- Reed Hastings
It’s obviously tricky to convert cellulose to a useful biofuel. I think actually the most efficient way to use cellulose is to burn it in a co-generation power plant. That will yield the most energy and that is something you can do today.
- Elon Musk
The key to high-quality communication is trust, and it’s hard to trust somebody that you don’t know.
- Ben Horowitz
If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.
- Jeff Bezos
Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.
- Joel Olsteen
A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things.
- Yoda
One who buys things to write them off for their business whether they need them or not and who borrows massive sums of money to buy frozen yogurt and cupcake franchises that cannot possibly generate enough money to produce a livable wage, much less anything approaching prosperity.
- Clay Clark
In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.
- Clayton M. Christensen
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
- Richard P. Feynman
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard
A knowledge worker, is responsible for actions and decisions which are meant to contribute to the performance capacity of his organization. It is meant for every one of the men I call executives.
- Peter Drucker
After the Apple II was introduced, then came the Commodore and the Tandy TRS-80.
- Steve Wozniak
The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness…..
- Thomas Edison
I think it is possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.
- Elon Musk
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.
- Viktor E. Frankl
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
One of the things I say to people is: Imagine if we succeeded.
- Ben Horowitz
I took a Fear of Flying class, and I always missed the class, because I was always flying.
- Sara Blakely
In Hong Kong, the property business has always been very competitive, so we have to think of ways to get an edge over our competitors.
- Raymond Kwok
Bob Dylan has said that he who is not busy being born is busy dying.
- Peter Thiel
Decisiveness is a characteristic of high performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.
- Brian Tracy
When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.
- Howard Schultz
Look after the customers and the business will take care of itself.
- Ray Kroc
In whatever you do, strive to be the best at it.
- Aliko Dangote
A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, ‘You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish!’ They won. Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by so doing can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.
- Napoleon Hill
I’d say it’s been my biggest problem of my life…it’s money. It takes a lot of money to make these dreams come true.
- Walt Disney
Each morning before breakfast, Rockefeller led the family in prayer, charging out a penny fine to latecomers.
- Ron Chernow
When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.
- Seth Godin
I thought if I had a Twitter feed and say I had a following of a 100,000, that means 100,000 of them would be interested in my book. It was logical, but it didn’t turn out to be true. It turned out if I had a Twitter feed of a 100,000, four of them were interested in my book.
- Steve Martin
JANUARY 16 Reach Out by Faith For she said to herself, If only I may touch His garment, I shall be made well.” But Jesus turned around, and when He saw her He said, Be of good cheer, daughter; your faith has made you well.” MATTHEW 9:21–22 NKJV ONE FELLOW WHOSE MARRIAGE was on the verge of dissolution told me, Joel, I’ve been this way for a long time. Nothing good ever happens to me. I don’t see how my marriage can be restored. We’ve always had these problems.” Those wrong attitudes will keep you from receiving the good things God wants to pour out in your life,” I told him. Stop dwelling on negative, destructive thoughts that keep you in a rut. Your life will change when you change your thinking.” God has so much more in store for him, and for you as well. If you want to see God’s far and beyond favor, you have to start believing it, seeing it, and speaking it.
- Joel Olsteen
[On becoming in 1969 a full-time employee of his five year old company] There were nervous moments. Every time I brought a fresh letter of credit home and it said, ‘Mr. And Mrs. Knight guarantee liabilities to the tune of $300,000,’ Penny’d say, ‘We don’t have $300,000.’ I’d say, ‘I don’t care. Just sign the thing.’
- Phil Knight
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
- Winston Churchill
There is no more important economic policy issue today than helping our nation remain the global innovation leader. To do this, our leadership must focus on an aggressive agenda to support math and science education, patent litigation reform, healthcare information technology, and research and development. We thank President Bush for his leadership and urge all members of Congress to address these issues in a comprehensive fashion to get the job done.
- John Chambers
There are things money can’t buy and hard work can’t win. One of them is happiness.
- Ray Kroc
I actually think that the economy has got some positives. It’s got the market. It’s got consumer confidence and it’s got banks throwing – I mean central bankers throwing money at it around the world.
- Jack Welch
The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin.
- Seth Godin
You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events.
- Joel Olsteen
The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
- Timothy Ferriss
Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen.
- Winston Churchill
[On Twitter and Japan] We’ve had massive success in Japan… In Japan, it’s not 140 characters, it’s 140 words. So you could write a little mini-novel. This is a whole story in the universe.
- Jack Dorsey
To add value to others, one must first value others.
- John C. Maxwell
For example, a world without secrets would enjoy a perfect understanding of justice. Every injustice necessarily involves a moral truth that very few people recognize early on: in a democratic society, a wrongful practice persists only when most people don’t perceive it to be unjust. At first, only a small minority of abolitionists knew that slavery was evil; that view has rightly become conventional, but it was still a secret in the early 19th century. To say that there are no secrets left today would mean that we live in a society with no hidden injustices.
- Peter Thiel
When I was 7, I came up with the idea of ‘charm socks.’ My mom would take me to buy bags of plastic charms, we would sew them on frilly white socks, and I sold them at school.
- Sara Blakely
Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend the great Alfred Chuang (legendary cofounder and CEO of BEA Systems) calls “the torture.” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say, “I didn’t quit.
- Ben Horowitz
I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.
- Joel Olsteen
If you don’t have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don’t take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It’s crazy.
- Jack Welch
Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Be willing to make the mistakes and realizing that something can happen later – the patience are some of the things I would advise.
- Jack Dorsey
We have two turbines in our company: One is engineering, and the other is operations. And so our business people are on equal footing with our engineering and technology culture. Cars are moving because of what we do, so there’s an imperative to go beyond just the technology.
- Travis Kalanick
In poor countries, we still need better ways to measure the effectiveness of the many government workers providing health services. They are the crucial link bringing tools such as vaccines and education to the people who need them most. How well trained are they? Are they showing up to work?
- Bill Gates
Trump has been very influential in helping me expand by vision. Sometimes I talk to Donald two or three times a day, and he’s taught me many things. The best thing was a story he tells me about buying a building. When he built Trump Tower he also bought the rights to use the Tiffany name on the building. It was gonna be Tiffany Tower. He late father said, Yeah right. When you change your name to Tiffany, you call it Tiffany Tower. But for now, you call it Trump. Over a period of years whenever he was in trouble, his name and his promotion of himself as a brand are what saved him. I keep that lesson in mind. I remember how connecting Def Comedy Jam to Def Jam records helped both entities – associating HBO with an established hip-hop brand helped get the show on the air, while linking the label to a hot TV show helped the label survive a cold period.
- Russell Simmons
A leader once convinced a particular action is the right one, must have the determination to stick with it and be undaunted when the going gets rough.
- Ronald Reagan
