Notable Quotables

If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an impartial, objective way, his worries will usually evaporate in the light of knowledge.

- Dale Carnegie

Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.

- Warren Buffett

Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.

- Rupert Murdoch

Following a period of drastic market fluctuations in Asia during the summer months of the previous year, economies in the region gradually improved and stabilised during the financial year.

- Lee Shau Kee

Movies always are open to being remade because times change so much, and the tempo of movies changes. I think of it like a James Bond. They can have different actors play the same role… I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘We want to remake ‘The Jerk’ with so and so.’ And I say, ‘Fine.’ It just doesn’t bother me. It’s an honor actually.

- Steve Martin

Quoting from Chapter 2 of the Sayings Of Confucius, ‘At 30, I stood firm; at 40, I had no more doubts.’ Time has its role to play in one’s behavior and how one conducts himself in society. With the passage of time, we master our lives better and become more refined and polished, step by step. 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

You have everything you need to build something far bigger than yourself.

- Seth Godin

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

- Henry Ford

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

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

I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned so it evens up for me.

- Jay-Z

It’s a libel to say that I use my newspapers to support my other business interests. The fact is, I haven’t got any other business interests.

- Rupert Murdoch

The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.

- James C. Collins

The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.

- Vince Lombardi

My commitment is to Los Angeles, so whatever helps this continue to be a great city, that’s what I would be focused to do, and the Dodgers are certainly iconic to Los Angeles.

- Patrick Soon-Shiong

Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.

- James C. Collins

In the beginning, I was so chintzy I really didn’t pay my employees well.

- Sam Walton

If my life has had a theme, I suppose it has been a typical American theme in that, for most of it, I have been looking for happiness and success.

- Zig Ziglar

Purpose is a soft virtue — but it’s what gives you steel in your spine.

- Rich Karlgaard

Great achievers are driven, not so much by the pursuit of success, but by the fear of failure.

- Larry Ellison

The best way to conduct research on a larger scale is to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing… The sooner the better – start talking to other people about what you’re doing. Because that’s what will stimulate things the fastest.

- James Simons

Great foresight is required to run a multinational corporation. A magnificent blueprint, a loyal team and a well-coordinated organization are the three indispensable factors, and the same applies from ruling a country to maintaining a family.

- Cheng Yu-tung

The ultimate goal for a business owner is to build a company that he or she can one day sell, continue to scale, or even own passively. Most business owners reach for growth by working harder and personally trying to produce more. This is a flawed model that at best will lead to only moderate growth. At worst this strategy can literally put your entire company at risk.

- Jeff Hoffman

Headlines, in a way, are what mislead you because bad news is a headline, and gradual improvement is not.

- Bill Gates

In the beginning, I thought mobile search was not much different from Web search. It’s just a smaller screen, a slower speed; it’s all the bad things. When I thought about mobile Internet, it’s all the disadvantages.

- Robin Li

Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.

- Seth Godin

He was contradicting everything he’d taught us about not running sick and making it worse. I knew it was just to make me acknowledge that his word was law, no matter how arbitrary. But that didn’t make it any easier to take. I was so mad I ran a personal record.

- Phil Knight

You are here today because of a decision you made yesterday.

- Bryan Smith

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend a whole lot of time following soccer. But as I have traveled around the world to better understand global development and health, I’ve learned that soccer is truly universal. No matter where I go, that’s what kids are playing. That’s what people are talking about.

- Bill Gates

Certainly, the Windows share of servers is strong.

- Bill Gates

Chambers have numerous committees and serving on one of them provides numerous networking opportunities as well as professional leadership development.

- American Business Magazine

Control has to be by feedback from the work done. The work itself has to provide the information. If it has to be checked all the time, there is no control.

- Peter Drucker

RULE 2. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.

- Jack Welch

Incineration does not equal human digestion, eating a fireplace log will not store the same number of calories as burning one will produce.

- Timothy Ferriss

I’m surprised at the extent of the bigotry. But it really plays out when companies or schools take a side and prohibit the other platform at all. We Mac users should be good even when the other side is bad. We should do what we can to accept the other platforms.

- Steve Wozniak

For Starbucks, there will be no shortage of the highest-quality arabica beans. I suspect that for some others there could potentially be a problem, not in the near term, but over time.

- Howard Schultz

Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.

- Winston Churchill

[On Twitter] This company is bigger than any individual.

- Jack Dorsey

I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir ’em up, but you can’t do that on television. It’s just not on.

- Rupert Murdoch

HE RICH DON’T WORK FOR MONEY The poor and the middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them.

- Robert Kiyosaki

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

- Elon Musk

I will tell you how to become rich. Close the doors. Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.

- Warren Buffett

Happiness does not depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude.

- Dale Carnegie

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline–a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.

- James C. Collins

A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die without publicizing it, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another….

- Thomas Edison

Perhaps the CEO’s most important operational responsibility is designing and implementing the communication architecture for her company.

- Ben Horowitz

Thank you is probably the most important thing that a leader can say.

- David Novak

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.

- Ben Horowitz

You have to be pretty driven to make it happen. Otherwise, you will just make yourself miserable.

- Elon Musk

…The greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace.

- Seth Godin

China has many successful entrepreneurs and business people. I hope that more people of insight will put their talents to work to improve the lives of poor people in China and around the world, and seek solutions for them.

- Bill Gates

De-escalating the rivalry post-merger wasn’t easy, but as far as problems go, it was a good one to have.

- Peter Thiel

If we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes, we will never invest in things that are radical.

- Jeff Clavier

Here’s to the crazy ones…The ones who see things differently. They push thehuman race forward. And while some may see them as thecrazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

- Steve Jobs

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.

- Michael Gerber

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

- Jerry Seinfeld

I’m in two modes when I’m on Lanai: In engineering mode, I’m trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I’m in decompression mode. I’m on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins.

- Larry Ellison

With the intensity of the first three NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races at Atlanta Motor Speedway, fans have been treated to exciting finishes each race. Fans can expect nothing less than the same for the John Deere 200.

- Ed Clark

A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing.

- Phil Knight

If you think back to the beginning of cell phones, laptops or really any new technology, it’s always expensive.

- Elon Musk

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater their power to harm us.

- Voltaire

On John D. Rockefeller and the ideal entrepreneur: He embodied all its virtues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and unflagging enterprise.

- Ron Chernow

We shall go on to the end. We shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

- Winston Churchill

When I am myself, I am happy and have a good result.

- Jack Ma

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

Within the Nasdaq as an example, I do believe that out of the top 100 companies … half of them will not be around five years from now.

- John Chambers

NO PURCHASE SHOULD EVER BE MADE IN A BUSINESS UNLESS IT IS JUSTIFIED BY AN INCREASE IN SALES.

- Robert Kiyosaki

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.

- Peter Drucker

the expression one wears on one’s face is far more important than the clothes one wears on one’s back

- Dale Carnegie

It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.

- Larry Ellison

I define anxiety as experiencing failure in advance…and if you have anxiety about initiating a project, then of course you will associate risk with failure.

- Seth Godin

And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.

- Seth Godin

Everybody starts with creating or acquiring certain property in order to create the material to work with. When we started our business, we thought first of all about development, how to grow, and we managed to do this, even with all the difficulties and all the difficult rules that were implemented in Russia at that time.

- Vladimir Potanin

Dreamline Questions:What are you good at?What could you be the best at?What makes you happy?What excites you?What makes you feel accomplished and good about yourself?What are you most proud of having accomplished in your life? Can you repeat this or further develop it?What do you enjoy sharing or experiencing with other people?

- Timothy Ferriss

I am placed in situations with opportunities in those situations that others are not. I don’t believe that that is happenstance. I believe that there is a God that has a plan for me.

- Ronald Perelman

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

You think Yoda stops teaching, just because his student does not want to hear? A teacher Yoda is. Yoda teaches like drunkards drink, like killers kill.

- Yoda

There’s an entire universe in every single tweet, and it all really depends on the content as far as how it’s going to spread.

- Jack Dorsey

Strive to make every person feel special. After all, every person you meet is made in the image of God.

- Joel Olsteen

Poke the box How do computer programmers learn their art? Is there a step-by-step process that guarantees you’ll get good? 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. The box might be a computer or it might be a market or it might be a customer or it might be your boss. It’s a puzzle, one that can be solved in only one way—by poking.

- Seth Godin

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

- Jeff Bezos

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

If the executive lets the flow of events determine what he does, what he works on, and what he takes seriously, he will fritter himself away “operating.” He may be an excellent man. But he is certain to waste his knowledge and ability and to throw away what little effectiveness he might have achieved. What the executive needs are criteria which enable him to work on the truly important, that is, on contributions and results, even though the criteria are not found in the flow of events.

- Peter Drucker

The lesson of the Ford story is that managers and management are the specific need of the business enterprise, its specific organ, and its basic structure. We can say dogmatically that enterprise cannot do without managers. One cannot argue that management does the owner’s job by delegation. Management is needed not only because the job is too big for any one man to do himself, but because managing an enterprise is something essentially different from managing one’s own property.

- Peter Drucker

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow.

- John C. Maxwell

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

- Maurice Kanbar

If what others say doesn’t match what God has put in your heart, let it go in one ear and out the other.

- Joel Olsteen

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