The invaders brought into Britain a principle common to all Germanic tribes, namely, the use of the money power to regulate all the legal relations of men. If there was any equality it was equality within each social grade. If there was liberty it was mainly liberty for the rich. If there were rights they were primarily the rights of property. There was no crime committed which could not be compounded by a money payment.
- Winston Churchill
Notable Quotables
When you make a promise, keep it.
- Zig Ziglar
I was born in Africa. I came to California because it’s really where new technologies can be brought to fruition, and I don’t see a viable competitor.
- Elon Musk
All that hullabaloo about somebody’s net worth is just stupid, and it’s made my life a lot more complex and difficult.
- Sam Walton
Polio’s pretty special because once you get an eradication, you no longer have to spend money on it; it’s just there as a gift for the rest of time.
- Bill Gates
Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.
- Seth Godin
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
I won’t do something unless I can get at least two or three good laughs out of it. If I can’t, it’s not gonna make the team.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Don’t marry too early in life. It’s better to work hard when young and establish a career first.
- Lee Shau Kee
Successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.
- Peter Thiel
The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand – without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it….
- Thomas Edison
The decent method you follow is better than the perfect method you quit.
- Timothy Ferriss
In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.
- Bill Gates
Hong Kong has remained a strong financial centre. It has a solid business environment and geographically, it is well located, being next to China. During this time, there is no city that can match it.
- Lee Shau Kee
Over the long run, the price of gold approximates the total amount of money in circulation divided by the size of the gold stock. If the market price of gold moves a long way from this level, it may indicate a buying or selling opportunity.
- Ray Dalio
I’m skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.
- Jeff Bezos
I like football, but I think this is a very personal matter. I don’t see any negatives for some Russian rich man to buy a football club.
- Viktor Vekselberg
Creating content that allows us to share our experiences, thoughts, and ideas in real time is becoming an intrinsic part of life in the twenty-first century.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Canada sets aside 36 percent of their visas for people with skills they think their country needs. We set aside six percent. We educate the doctors, and then don’t give ’em a green card.
- Michael Bloomberg
If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
- Seth Godin
The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry. But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.
- Michael Bloomberg
Your first projects aren’t the greatest things in the world, and they may have no money value, they may go nowhere, but that is how you learn – you put so much effort into making something right if it is for yourself.
- Steve Wozniak
If you look at space companies, they’ve failed either because they’ve had a technical solution where success was not a possible outcome, they were unable to attract a critical mass of talent, or they just ran out of money. The finish line is usually a lot further away than you think.
- Elon Musk
Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance.
- Seth Godin
You have to be constantly reinventing yourself and investing in the future.
- Reid Hoffman
There’s no mystery in business success. If you do each day’s task successfully and stay faithfully within these natural operations of commercial laws which I talk so much about and keep your head clear, you will come out all right.
- John D. Rockefeller
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
In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable.
- Peter Thiel
The hardest thing about starting a company and running a company is, there’s just so many expectations on you, and there are so many people who have things that they want you to do. It’s a lot like life about that.
- Ben Horowitz
Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart.
- Joel Olsteen
You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
We all have possibilities we don’t know about. We can do things we don’t even dream we can do.
- Dale Carnegie
I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse.
- Walt Disney
Passion can overcome fear – the fear of losing, of failing, of being traditional.
- Seth Godin
It’s pretty chilly by southern California standards.
- Ed Clark
The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me….
- Thomas Edison
I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- Winston Churchill
I’m not a knee-jerk conservative. I passionately believe in free markets and less government, but not to the point of being a libertarian.
- Rupert Murdoch
It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?
- James C. Collins
Never, give in! Never give in! Never, never, never… In nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions or honor and good sense!
- Winston Churchill
If your watch is slow by just four minutes, that’s not much – unless you’ve been warned that if you’re even one minute late ever again you will be fired. Then four minutes make a big difference.
- Zig Ziglar
I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned so it evens up for me.
- Jay-Z
I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.
- Joel Olsteen
This is why successful network businesses rarely get started by MBA types: the initial markets are so small that they often don’t even appear to be business opportunities at all.
- Peter Thiel
I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life.
- Mark Zuckerberg
You’d believe that a patient with hypertension, if you know you have hypertension or diabetes, you would take your drug every day. The compliance rate is more like 30% or 40%. Which means that 60% of patients don’t take their drugs, and they actually go into these crises, end up in the hospital.
- Patrick Soon-Shiong
All a bliss state like California does is spoil you.
- Phil Knight
I buy expensive suits. They just look cheap on me.
- Warren Buffett
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.
- Steve Ballmer
The time is always right to do what is right.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.
- Zig Ziglar
‘I don’t know’ has become ‘I don’t know yet’.
- Bill Gates
Nothing tells in the long run like a good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the stock exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.
- Andrew Carnegie
Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!
- Steve Wozniak
Some people are so belligerent in their communication style that people just stop talking when they are in the room. If every time anyone brings up an issue with the marketing organization, the VP of marketing jumps down their throats, then guess what topic will never come up? This behavior can become so bad that nobody brings up any topic when the jerk is in the room. As a result, communication across the executive staff breaks down and the entire company slowly degenerates. Note that this only happens if the jerk in question is unquestionably brilliant. Otherwise, nobody will care when she attacks them. The bite only has impact if it comes from a big dog. If one of your big dogs destroys communication on your staff, you need to send her to the pound.
- Ben Horowitz
The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.
- Thomas Edison
Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.
- Joel Olsteen
If you’ve found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.
- Bill Gates
It’s my view that solar energy may be the ultimate solution for energy for most of the world. I believe, based on what little I know about it, that there is a possibility of a breakthrough.
- Donald Bren
So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested.
- Dale Carnegie
If you think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself.
- Woodrow Wilson
The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits.
- Winston Churchill
I think they are fine. I don’t think you have a choice between iPad models so that’s just saying that the iPad is good … that’s a very different statement (and contrary to the implication) that, if I chose not to upgrade now, less than a year after my last upgrade, then I, Woz, am saying that the new Apple iPad is bad.
- Steve Wozniak
BLAMING IDIOTS FOR interruptions is like blaming clowns for scaring children—they can’t help it. It’s their nature. Then again, I had (who am I kidding—and have), on occasion, been known to create interruptions out of thin air. If you’re anything like me, that makes us both occasional idiots. Learn to recognize and fight the interruption impulse. This is infinitely easier when you have a set of rules, responses, and routines to follow.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
We were pretty schizophrenic. We were going to take on the world, but we couldn’t make payroll.
- Phil Knight
Always remember that nothing kills great ideas more than people with small ideas and limited imaginations.
- Robert Kiyosaki
However old or young, have a mindset that enables us to capture all the opportunities that changes in the world are bringing to us.
- Cheng Yu-tung
There is a good chance India may become our largest total sales market in the whole of Asia.
- John Chambers
Make your team feel respected, empowered and genuinely excited about the company’s mission.
- Tim Westergren
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
- Maya Angelou
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it’s extremely hard to block anything – extremely hard. You’ll never get perfect blocking.
- Bill Gates
A definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others…. Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.
- Thomas Edison
I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.
- Bill Gates
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
- Steve Martin
Regardless of what position people originally took, once the decision is made, everyone supports it. That’s why it is critical that no one hold anything back during the discussion.
- Patrick M. Lencioni
When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hmmmm?
- Yoda
My father had a series of blue-collar jobs and never made more than $20,000 a year. When I was seven, he got injured on a job. That was a very important point – because of the injury, he couldn’t walk, and the company he was working for did not pay him. There was no compensation. So there was no money and no food.
- Howard Schultz
I found [retail] to be interesting, challenging, and fun.
- Michael Balmuth
Jobs’s return to Apple 12 years later shows how the most important task in business—the creation of new value—cannot be reduced to a formula and applied by professionals.
- Peter Thiel
I don’t think of work as work and play as play. It’s all living.
- Richard Branson
I’m not as interested in what you make as I am in what you’re passionate about. What business are you really in?
- Howard Schultz
Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.
- P.T. Barnum
Every one of us gets through the tough times because somebody is there, standing in the gap to close it for us.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
Enjoyment is an incredible energizer to the human spirit.
- John C. Maxwell
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
- Peter Drucker
In the old days, Hong Kong was undeveloped, coming from a low base. Now it is on a high base, making it difficult to earn high multiples. We will certainly diversify out of Hong Kong and out of property. [On being asked where?] I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet.
- Lee Shau Kee
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things.
- Zig Ziglar
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
If we don’t end war, war will end us.
- Winston Churchill
The Roman world, like an aged man, wished to dwell in peace and tranquillity and to enjoy in philosophic detachment the good gifts which life has to bestow upon the more fortunate classes. But new ideas disturbed the internal conservatism, and outside the carefully guarded frontiers vast masses of hungry, savage men surged and schemed. The essence of the Roman peace was toleration of all religions and the acceptance of a universal system of government. Every generation after the middle of the second century saw an increasing weakening of the system and a gathering movement towards a uniform religion. Christianity asked again all the questions which the Roman world deemed answered for ever, and some that it had never thought of.
- Winston Churchill
We cannot continue. Our pension costs and health care costs for our employees are going to bankrupt this city.
- Michael Bloomberg
Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
- Winston Churchill
A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.
- Timothy Ferriss
Maintain a pragmatic approach, keep up with the multitude of trials and strive to remain its level of attainment in order for achieving sound performance and scaling new heights.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Stubborn isn’t a word I would use to describe myself, pigheaded is more appropriate.
- Michael Bloomberg
