The way we communicate with others and with ourselves ultimately determines the quality of our lives.
- Anthony Robbins
Notable Quotables
Dream more than others think practical.
- Howard Schultz
I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Over the past 30 years, the nation has gradually opened up under such reform policies, which have presented enormous challenges and unlimited opportunities for the people and benefited the development of the nation all these years.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.
- Napoleon Hill
It’s no surprise that these fields all attract disproportionate numbers of high-achieving Ivy League optionality chasers; what could be a more appropriate reward for two decades of résumé-building than a seemingly elite, process-oriented career that promises to “keep options open”?
- Peter Thiel
Our international success started out first because we became the No. 1 casual wear brand in our home market of Japan. Then, we set up stores in the world’s major fashion centers of New York, Paris and London.
- Tadashi Yanai
Think and Thank. Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
- Dale Carnegie
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
- Winston Churchill
Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.
- Larry Page
I don’t care about revenues.
- Jack Ma
All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
- Walt Disney
If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive.
- Dale Carnegie
It’s easier for our software to compete with Linux when there’s piracy than when there’s not.
- Bill Gates
I think I may not be able to retire.
- Tadashi Yanai
Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.
- Zig Ziglar
Most people have ‘one way’ brains—they acquire information and do nothing. Guerillas have ‘two way’ brains—they obtain relevant information and act on it.
- Jay Conrad Levinson
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
When people laugh at Mickey Mouse, it’s because he’s so human; and that is the secret of his popularity.
- Walt Disney
Lost time is never found again.
- Benjamin Franklin
Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.
- Sara Blakely
Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.
- Seth Godin
It’s better to think of distribution as something essential to the design of your product. If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product.
- Peter Thiel
Given the uncertainty going into the Y2K quarter, we are very pleased with our quarterly results.
- John Chambers
I’m not afraid to call a wine that tastes like Skittles or green peppers mixed with orange marmalade. I’ll say, ‘It tastes like chicken.’ I mean, that’s not what people think of when they think of wine, but that’s what it tastes like to me and it hits home.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.
- Seth Godin
Don’t fall in love with your wit. Your cleverly turned phrase may not, as you hope, show off how much gray matter you have, especially if the phrase is at someone else’s expense.
- Harvey Mackay
Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
- Zig Ziglar
I’ve been fascinated with technology since I was a boy banging around on my father’s adding machine. Back then I’d type in an equation, the device made some cool noises, and out came my answer. I was hooked.
- Michael Dell
The boss would be present at the beginning of each session, laying out the rationale for the Work-Out. He or she would also commit to two things: to give an on-the-spot yes or no to 75 percent of the recommendations that came out of the session, and to resolve the remaining 25 percent within thirty days. The boss would then disappear until the end of the session, so as not to stifle open discussion, returning only at the end to make good on his or her promise.
- Jack Welch
People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet – how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
- Jeff Bezos
No matter what any of us has—and how grateful we are for what we have—no one has it all.
- Sheryl Sandberg
The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
- Henry Ford
AP pleaded guilty to criminal theft of our software. Let me be clear. I’m not accusing SAP of anything. What did SAP do? Did you engage in criminal behavior and steal lots of Oracle software? Yes. That’s SAP. Who was CEO when you were doing all this criminal stuff? Leo.
- Larry Ellison
I read the paper every day and the Bible every day, that way I know what both sides are up to.
- Zig Ziglar
Our reputation is more important than the last hundred million dollars.
- Rupert Murdoch
I always joke and say I want to invent a comfortable stiletto and then retire.
- Sara Blakely
The most important aspect of my personality as far as determining my success goes; has been my questioning conventional wisdom, doubting experts and questioning authority. While that can be painful in your relationships with your parents and teachers, it’s enormously useful in life.
- Larry Ellison
[On Twitter] This company is bigger than any individual.
- Jack Dorsey
If you cannot read all your books…fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.
- Winston Churchill
A few years ago there was a poll in china to name the greatest man ever. The winner was Mao, but there was a tie for second between [revolutionary hero] Zhou Enlai and Michael Jordan of the Chicago Red Oxen!
- Phil Knight
In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren’t management books out there that could help me.
- Ben Horowitz
The future of Windows is to let the computer see, listen and even learn.
- Bill Gates
If you don’t have a voice that forces you back to basics, you’re a dangerous person. Or to put it another way: You’re at risk, and the people with you are at risk. I’m not a daredevil. I don’t fly without a safety net.
- Stephen Wynn
The best way to be missed when you’re gone,Is to stand for something when you’re here.
- Seth Godin
We do benefit from the fact that once we say we’re going to do it, people believe we can do it, because we have the resources. Google helps in that way: There aren’t many funding mechanisms like that.
- Larry Page
Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.
- Winston Churchill
Worry is the most significant factor that relates to the root of negative thinking.
- Zig Ziglar
It is predicated on the assumption that you dislike what you are doing during the most physically capable years of your life. This is a nonstarter—nothing can justify that sacrifice.
- Timothy Ferriss
I don’t like to beat people down. They need to be lifted up.
- Joel Olsteen
First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.
- Professor Harry A. Overstreet
Stick with the Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources.
- Seth Godin
Well… I graduated from the business school of Northumberland University in Newcastle.
- Alexei Mordashov
If you want to help the poor and our next generation, make investment, reinvestment and businesses welcome.
- Gina Rinehart
Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.
- John C. Maxwell
Stand by your principles and be comfortable with confrontation. So few people are, so when the people with the red tape come, it becomes a negotiation.
- Travis Kalanick
I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it’s something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn’t compute with our existing educational system.
- Peter Thiel
Success-minded people have no trouble at all following proven instructions. We all would be happy to follow a map if the map came with a guarantee. There is no guarantee, though. There are no maps. They’ve all been taken, and their value is not what it used to be, because your competitors have maps, too. The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure. Curiosity drives us to the haunted house because the thrills lie in what we don’t expect, not in what’s safe. Curiosity can start us down the path to shipping, to bringing things to the world, to examining them, refining them, and repeating the process again (and again).
- Seth Godin
For get this quite clear, every time we have to decide between Europe and the open sea, it is always the open sea we shall choose. Every time I have to decide between you [Charles de Gaulle] and Roosevelt, I shall always choose Roosevelt.
- Winston Churchill
All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.
- Donald Trump
I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.
- Warren Buffett
Success is one thing — but impact is another.
- Ray Lewis
It’s not what you’ve got. It’s what you use that makes a difference.
- Zig Ziglar
I have no interest in going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids. I’m just not that kind of dude.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Automotive franchise laws were put in place decades ago to prevent a manufacturer from unfairly opening stores in direct competition with an existing franchise dealer that had already invested time, money and effort to open and promote their business.
- Elon Musk
Ahhh! Yoda’s little friend you seek!
- Yoda
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
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
- Thomas Edison
If you live for the weekends and vacations, your shit is broken.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
- John F. Kennedy
People that call old leads, drive old cars.
- Jason Bailey
People are poor judges of importance and inflate minutiae to fill time and feel important.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’d say my mother made more of a difference to me than anyone else did. I know that’s a conventional and perhaps mundane answer, but my family was blown apart at the start of World War II.
- Herb Kelleher
Accountability breeds response-ability.
- Stephen R. Covey
Don’t kill competition. Competition is healthy for businesses. It keeps you – the entrepreneur – on your toes.
- Aliko Dangote
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren’t thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about – they weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
- Jeff Bezos
Look, I’m a passionate entrepreneur. I’m like fire and brimstone sometimes. And so there are times when I’ll go—I’ll get too into the weeds and too into the debate, because I’m so passionate about it.
- Travis Kalanick
I think it’d be crazy not to have the plan encompass the entire reservoir. If we have (the smaller map), we’ve got a bunch of other folks telling us what they want to see happen in our community.
- Jack Taylor
The essential thing to know about the Dip is that it’s there. Knowing that you’re facing a Dip is the first step in getting through it.
- Seth Godin
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
- Winston Churchill
I don’t want to kill ads. I think advertising is great, and I’m very aware that there’s multiple revenue streams in television, subscription and advertising. But I also don’t want to put my head in the sand, and I think the world is changing.
- Charles Ergen
And it is change that always provides the opportunity for the new and different. Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation.
- Peter Drucker
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
- Richard Branson
All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current.
- Ben Horowitz
Even today few businessmen understand that research, to be productive, has to be the “disorganizer,” the creator of a different future and the enemy of today. In most industrial laboratories, “defensive research” aimed at perpetuating today, predominates.
- Peter Drucker
Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.
- Ben Horowitz
Beginning with brand rather than substance is dangerous.
- Peter Thiel
A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.
- Winston Churchill
Venture-backed companies create 11% of all private sector jobs. They generate annual revenues equivalent to an astounding 21% of GDP.
- Peter Thiel
End-user buyers re-emerged in the market at a time when local commercial banks were keen to offer preferential terms for home mortgage loan business.
- Lee Shau Kee
Embrace what you don’t know, especially in the beginning because what you don’t know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will be doing things absolutely differently from everybody else.
- Sara Blakely
The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Starbucks is in my blood. It is such a part of me that letting it unravel simply was not an option.
- Howard Schultz
I have worked at Nike and its predecessor company for 48 years. Some might call me a short timer.
- Phil Knight
You have to manage money. Particularly with market economies. You may have a great product, but if your bottom line goes bust, then that’s it.
- Mukesh Ambani
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye, and you will be drawn toward it.
- Napoleon Hill
L.A. is only where you live, because otherwise it’s just a sprawling mass of everything, and I think if you live in L.A., you get a little network of places you go, and people you see, and when you leave town, you do miss those places and your friends.
- Steve Martin
Good relations with the Wookiees, I have.
- Yoda
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
- Dale Carnegie
The first thing to recognize is that no startup has time to do optional things.
- Ben Horowitz
