Here’s a quote from ultramarathoner Dick Collins: Decide before the race the conditions that will cause you to stop and drop out. You don’t want to be out there saying, “Well gee, my leg hurts, I’m a little dehydrated, I’m sleepy, I’m tired, and it’s cold and windy.” And talk yourself into quitting. If you are making a decision based on how you feel at that moment, you will probably make the wrong decision.
- Seth Godin
Notable Quotables
Although prepared for martyrdom, I prefer that it be postponed.
- Winston Churchill
To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.
- Ben Horowitz
No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye.
- Winston Churchill
And here is the prime condition of success, the great secret. Concentrate your energy, thoughts and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged in. Having begun in one line, resolve to fight it out on that line; to lead in it. Adopt every improvement, have the best machinery and know the most about it.
- Andrew Carnegie
If you find yourself plagued by a recurrent worry, train yourself to think of something else. Your conscious mind can concentrate on only one thought at a time, and driving the negativity away will free you up to move forward again.
- Harvey Mackay
Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Do extremely difficult work.That seems obvious, right? If you do something that’s valued but scarce because it’s difficult, you’re more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do.The implication is stunning, though: When designing a project or developing a skill, seek out the most difficult parts to master and contribute. If it’s easy, it’s not for you.
- Seth Godin
Do you ever worry’ asked Dale Carnegie, I replied: ‘No. I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe that every-thing will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about?’
- Henry Ford
When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.
- Joel Olsteen
Surely, we all can look back and see things in our lives that we wish we would have done differently. But the Bible says, Make the most of each day.”4 Yesterday is gone; tomorrow may not come. You must live for today. Start right where you are. You can’t do anything about what’s gone, but you can do a great deal about what remains.
- Joel Olsteen
The average occupancy rate of the core investment properties of the group was maintained at a high level of 96%.
- Lee Shau Kee
We do not need to teach students to embrace the status quo.
- Seth Godin
I think you have a danger of regulating, putting regulations in place which will mean there will be no press in 10 years to regulate.
- Rupert Murdoch
Socialism needs to pull down wealth; liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests, Liberalism would preserve [them] … by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the preeminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks … to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.
- Winston Churchill
His friends, drunk to the point of speaking in tongues, were asleep.
- Timothy Ferriss
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
- Steve Jobs
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known
- Walt Disney
I have asked thousands of business people to smile at someone every hour of the day for a week and then come to class and talk about the results.
- Dale Carnegie
So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.
- Thomas Edison
Capitalism will save us.
- Steve Forbes
I didn’t follow up on the exchanges we had on Time Warner Cable (TWC) that were mentioned in the media because we were not ready.
- Patrick Drahi
An educated man is not, necessarily, one who has an abundance of general or specialized knowledge. An educated man is one who has so developed the faculties of his mind that he may acquire anything he wants, or its equivalent, without violating the rights of others.
- Napoleon Hill
The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.
- Elon Musk
Before you can be sure of your ability to transmute DESIRE into its equivalent, you will require SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE of the service, merchandise or profession which you intend to offer in return for fortune.
- Napoleon Hill
Whenever you have multiple devices including multiple PCs that you want to share information with, it’s always been a bit complicated.
- Bill Gates
Tell your child, your spouse, or your employee that he or she is stupid or dumb at a certain thing, has no gift for it, and is doing it all wrong, and you have destroyed almost every incentive to try to improve.
- Dale Carnegie
Indecision is the seedling of fear.
- Napoleon Hill
What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself.
- Steve Wozniak
You guarantee a good meal by picking the recipes well, not by following recipes well.
- Timothy Ferriss
A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.15 Smile. It increases your face value.
- Dale Carnegie
Business leaders cannot be bystanders.
- Howard Schultz
I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
- Jeff Bezos
I get great satisfaction from both business and philanthropy.
- Donald Bren
When you do the things you need to do when you need to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do when you want to do them.
- Zig Ziglar
Successful people think on paper.
- Brian Tracy
We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.
- Walt Disney
What you tolerate you can not change.
- Joel Olsteen
You shouldn’t focus on why you can’t do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions.
- Steve Case
People will always blame the poets for society’s ills. But these are the true artists.
- Russell Simmons
Most often I am only interested in an idea if it’s going to get hundreds of millions of users. That’s the scale that I am always trying to play to.
- Reid Hoffman
We all know now that the 747 became the flagship jumbo jet of the airline industry, but the decision looks much different from the perspective of the late 1960s. Yet—and this is the key point—Boeing was willing to make the bold move in the face of the risks. As in Boeing’s case, the risks do not always come without pain.
- James C. Collins
After the Apple II was introduced, then came the Commodore and the Tandy TRS-80.
- Steve Wozniak
In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there’s such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.
- Bill Gates
It’s easier to explain price once than to apologize for quality forever.
- Zig Ziglar
We all need a check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitude.
- Zig Ziglar
It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.
- Dale Carnegie
God will never ask you for something without first depositing it within you. If you will dare to take a step of faith, you will discover gifts inside that you never before realized were there.
- Joel Olsteen
A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.
- John C. Maxwell
Somebody talked me into writing an autobiography about six or seven years ago. And I said I’d try. We talked into a tape recorder, and after a couple of months, I said, To hell with it. I was so depressed. It was like saying, ‘This is the end.’ I was more interested in what the hell was coming the next day or the next week.
- Rupert Murdoch
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
- Benjamin Franklin
Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus.
- Oprah Winfrey
Fact: If standard of living is your number one objective, quality of life almost never improves. But if quality of life is your number one objective, standard of living invariably improves.
- Zig Ziglar
Have the humility to learn from those around you.
- John C. Maxwell
Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness.
- Ben Horowitz
They have destroyed your weapons,but these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.
- Winston Churchill
The first dollar is the most you will get if you don’t love what you are doing.
- Ray Kroc
That was annoying but not entirely unexpected. It’s not a huge shock, given what’s going on down there.
- Ed Clark
When commercializing disruptive technologies, they found or developed new markets that valued the attributes of the disruptive products, rather than search for a technological breakthrough so that the disruptive product could compete as a sustaining technology in mainstream markets.
- Clayton M. Christensen
You can take pride in yourself without comparing yourself to anybody else. If you run your race and be the best that you can be, then you can feel good about yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
One of the cornerstones of what I believe will be the future is wave after wave of applications.
- John Chambers
Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.
- James C. Collins
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
You can’t explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don’t have to. It’s that simple.
- Phil Knight
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 I wish to compose or write or pray or preach well, I must be angry. Then all the blood in my veins is stirred, and my understanding is sharpened.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.
- Lee Iacocca
Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want – and a little more.
- Sam Walton
Successful leadership calls for mastery of details of the leader’s position.
- Napoleon Hill
There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.
- Elon Musk
I believe in being an innovator.
- Walt Disney
Do not assume anything Obi-Wan. Clear your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.
- Yoda
But the three rules I always stuck with were 1) Be on time 2) No profanity and 3) Never criticize a teammate.
- David Novak
Positive thinking won’t allow you to do anything, but it will allow you to do everything better than negative thinking will.
- Zig Ziglar
Look – this is the terror of being a founder & CEO. It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do – ultimately, you’re at the end.
- Ben Horowitz
If I could drink only one wine, it would be Champagne.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
When you do more than you’re paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do.
- Zig Ziglar
I have taken six companies public, and three of those are Fortune 1000 companies, but the key to my success has been my ability to sell other people on my dreams.
- Wayne Huizenga
I don’t want anybody to not recognize how appreciative I am of the volume of e-mails I get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society – and especially in the economy – as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is “creative destruction.
- Peter Drucker
The difference between appreciation and flattery? That is simply. One is sincere and the other insincere. One comes from the heart out, the other from the teeth out. One is unselfish, the other selfish. One is universally admired, the other universally condemned.
- Dale Carnegie
Competition is an ideology—the ideology—that pervades our society and distorts our thinking.
- Peter Thiel
You do not pay the price of success, you enjoy the price of success.
- Zig Ziglar
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
The arrival of the 21st century precedes the onslaught of turmoil and tsunami. The business environment has become unpredictable and the global economy even harsher…
- Cheng Yu-tung
I never worry because I know who I am and I know Whose I am.
- Zig Ziglar
Once we assembled the entire package, Mike named it Netscape SuiteSpot, as it would be the “suite” that displaced Microsoft’s BackOffice. We lined everything up for a major launch on March 5, 1996, in New York. Then, just two weeks before the launch, Marc, without telling Mike or me, revealed the entire strategy to the publication Computer Reseller News. I was livid. I immediately sent him a short email: To: Marc Andreessen Cc: Mike Homer From: Ben Horowitz Subject : Launch I guess we’re not going to wait until the 5th to launch the strategy. — Ben Within fifteen minutes, I received the following reply. To: Ben Horowitz Cc: Mike Homer, Jim Barksdale (CEO), Jim Clark (Chairman) From: Marc Andreessen Subject: Re: Launch Apparently you do not understand how serious the situation is. We are getting killed killed killed out there. Our current product is radically worse than the competition. We’ve had nothing to say for months. As a result, we’ve lost over $3B in market capitalization. We are now in danger of losing the entire company and it’s all server product management’s fault. Next time do the fucking interview yourself. Fuck you, Marc I received this email the same day that Marc appeared barefoot and sitting on a throne on the cover of Time magazine. When I first saw the cover, I felt thrilled. I had never met anyone in my life who had been on the cover of Time. Then I felt sick. I brought both the magazine and the email home to Felicia to get a second opinion. I was very worried. I was twenty-nine years old, had a wife and three children, and needed my job. She looked at the email and the magazine cover and said, “You need to start looking for a job right away.” In the end, I didn’t get fired and over the next two years, SuiteSpot grew from nothing to a $400 million a year business. More shocking, Marc and I eventually became friends; we’ve been friends and business partners ever since. People often ask me how we’ve managed to work effectively across three companies over eighteen years. Most business relationships either become too tense to tolerate or not tense enough to be productive after a while. Either people challenge each other to the point where they don’t like each other or they become complacent about each other’s feedback and no longer benefit from the relationship. With Marc and me, even after eighteen years, he upsets me almost every day by finding something wrong in my thinking, and I do the same for him. It works.
- Ben Horowitz
Weak desires bring weak results.
- Napoleon Hill
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
As much as I love crisp, clean whites, there’s always a time for rich but balanced Chardonnays with oak, especially at Thanksgiving.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
A drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.
- Abraham Lincoln
Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.
- Bill Gates
We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.
- Winston Churchill
This defines entrepreneur and entrepreneurship – the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
- Peter Drucker
Optimists are those who go after Moby dick in a row boat with a bucket of tarter sauce.
- Zig Ziglar
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
- Winston Churchill
If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.
- James C. Collins
This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing.
- Bill Gates
What really motivates people at Facebook is building stuff that they’re proud of.
- Mark Zuckerberg
My drive into high tech doesn’t involve a lot of people – just me and a very small team.
- Raymond Kwok
