I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.
- Elon Musk
Notable Quotables
Success is a choice
- Napoleon Hill
People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they’re not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter.
- Seth Godin
When the Internet first came, I thought it was just the beacon of freedom. People could communicate with anyone, anywhere, and nobody could stop it.
- Steve Wozniak
I see this as my humanitarian legacy. We’re prepared to pay billions.
- Sheldon Adelson
The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic of beginnings.
- Peter Thiel
Play long enough and you might get lucky. In the technology game, tomorrow looks nothing like today. If you survive long enough to see tomorrow, it may bring you the answer that seems so impossible today.
- Ben Horowitz
The most stable companies have strong leaders at every level of the organization. The only way to develop such widespread leadership is to make developing leaders a part of your culture. That is a strong part of Coca-Cola’s legacy.
- John Maxwell
I’m telling you, you can’t compare Saudi Arabia to other countries.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job. The customer only knows what she thinks she wants based on her experience with the current product. The innovator can take into account everything that’s possible, but often must go against what she knows to be true. As a result, innovation requires a combination of knowledge, skill, and courage.
- Ben Horowitz
You need to live every day like it could be your last.
- Joel Olsteen
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
- Peter Drucker
We saw – we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.
- Larry Ellison
A person can perform only from strength. One cannot build performance on weakness, let alone on something one cannot do at all.
- Peter Drucker
There is no sale without the story, no knockout without the setup.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
1. What is our mission?2. Who is our customer?3. What does the customer value?4. What are our results?5. What is our plan?
- Peter Drucker
Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.
- Mary Kay Ash
There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, Oh, it’s hopeless, so don’t bother doing anything and an optimist who says, Don’t bother doing anything, it’s going to turn out fine anyway. Either way, nothing happens.
- Yvon Chouinard
One day, I’d like to write a book about the worst ads ever run, but my fear is that it would be too long.
- Seth Godin
A minute of thought is greater than an hour of talk.
- John C. Maxwell
You reinforce the behaviors that you reward, he explained. If you reward candor, you’ll get it.
- Jack Welch
You can look at the situation and feel victimized. Or you can look at it and be excited about conquering the challenges and opportunities it presents.
- Jack Welch
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
- Brian Tracy
Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
- Henry Ford
a greater way. Take a few minutes every day to dream big dreams; close your eyes, and envision your dreams coming to pass. Envision yourself out of debt. Envision yourself breaking that addiction. Envision your marriage being more fulfilled. Envision yourself rising to new levels in your career. If you can establish that picture in your heart and mind, then God can begin to bring it to pass in your life.
- Joel Olsteen
If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.
- Elon Musk
Getting things done in this country, if you want to build something, if you want to start a company, it’s getting to be virtually impossible with all of the bureaucracy and all of the approvals.
- Donald Trump
I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.
- Elon Musk
I believe if you keep your faith, you keep your trust, you keep the right attitude, if you’re grateful, you’ll see God open up new doors.
- Joel Olsteen
There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.
- P.T. Barnum
It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
- Winston Churchill
Younglings, younglings gather ’round.
- Yoda
A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could.
- Zig Ziglar
I’m skeptical of a lot of what falls under the rubric of education…. People are on these tracks. They are getting these credentials and it’s very unclear how viable they are in many cases.
- Peter Thiel
No matter what’s happening, choose to be happy. Don’t focus on what’s wrong. Find something positive in your life. Thank God for the small things.
- Joel Olsteen
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a rich widow.
- Evan Esar
Let’s simplify this entire world.
- Jack Dorsey
The most important thing to understand is that the job of a big company executive is very different from the job of a small company executive. When I was managing thousands of people at Hewlett-Packard after the sale of Opsware, there was an incredible number of incoming demands on my time. Everyone wanted a piece of me. Little companies wanted to partner with me or sell themselves to me, people in my organization needed approvals, other business units needed my help, customers wanted my attention, and so forth. As a result, I spent most of my time optimizing and tuning the existing business. Most of the work that I did was “incoming.” In fact, most skilled big company executives will tell you that if you have more than three new initiatives in a quarter, you are trying to do too much. As a result, big company executives tend to be interrupt-driven. In contrast, when you are a startup executive, nothing happens unless you make it happen. In the early days of a company, you have to take eight to ten new initiatives a day or the company will stand still. There is no inertia that’s putting the company in motion. Without massive input from you, the company will stay at rest.
- Ben Horowitz
I wish I could do a lot of things different. I’m not going to tell you what they are, but if I had a list of all my films right now, I’d go, ‘Okay, I’ll cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out and cross that one out.’ Really. But I’ve made over 40 films. How can I not have some losers in there?
- Steve Martin
The Overseas Chinese habit is to save a lot and make a lot of friends.
- Lee Shau Kee
We don’t mature momentarily, but over the long-term.
- John C. Maxwell
No one can make you jealous, angry, vengeful, or greedy — unless you let him.
- Napoleon Hill
(after listening to people gripe and complain just smile and remember) Crows can’t hang with eagles.
- Joel Olsteen
We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds
- Warren Buffett
The accumulation of great fortunes calls for POWER and power is acquired through highly organized and intelligently directed specialized knowledge, but that knowledge does not necessarily have to be in the possession of the man who accumulates the fortune.
- Napoleon Hill
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
- Winston Churchill
Twitter was around communication and visualizing what was happening in the world in real-time. Square was allowing everyone to accept the form of payment people have in their pocket today, which is a credit card.
- Jack Dorsey
Hewlett Packard Chairman Built Company by Design, Calculator by Chance.
- James C. Collins
If you want enemies, excel your friends; but if you want friends, let your friends excel you.
- Dale Carnegie
With comedy, you have no place to go but more comedy, so you’re never off the hook.
- Steve Martin
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
- Winston Churchill
Look, winning and losing can’t be quantified. They are states of mind, and losing happens only when you give up. Seen that way, then, the world can be filled with winners, and there is room for them all.
- Jack Welch
Lightening is something which, again, we would rather avoid.
- Richard Branson
In order to be happy, every individual needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort. Kaczynski argued that modern people are depressed because all the world’s hard problems have already been solved. What’s left to do is either easy or impossible, and pursuing those tasks is deeply unsatisfying. What you can do, even a child can do; what you can’t do, even Einstein couldn’t have done.
- Peter Thiel
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
In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.
- Reed Hastings
That’s your opportunity–to approach your work in a way that generates unique learning and interactions that are worth sharing.
- Seth Godin
You must focus on WIN. What’s important now.
- Lee Cockerell
Education is the key to unlock the Golden door of freedom.
- George Washington Carver
Sure, ideas that spread, win, but ideas that don’t get spoken always fail.
- Seth Godin
Look at what caused people to make a lot of money and you will see that usually it is in proportion to their production of what the society wanted.
- Ray Dalio
Consider this: you are today what you believed about yourself yesterday. And you will be tomorrow what you believe about yourself right now.
- Joel Olsteen
The idea of lying on a beach as my main thing just sounds like the worst. It sounds horrible to me. I would go bonkers. I would have to be on serious drugs. I’d be super-duper bored. I like high intensity.
- Elon Musk
By improving health, empowering women, population growth comes down.
- Bill Gates
I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.
- Seth Godin
It’s Microsoft versus mankind, with Microsoft having only a slight lead.
- Larry Ellison
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do. You want to be focused on it.
- Steve Martin
Change before you have to.
- Jack Welch
Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
This whole phenomenon of the computer in a library is an amazing thing.
- Bill Gates
It’s a mystery to me the way that contemporary art galleries function.
- Steve Martin
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
- Mahatma Gandhi
You reach a point where you don’t work for money.
- Walt Disney
In the world of education, the more mistakes a person makes, the less intelligent that person is thought to be. In the world of entrepreneurship, mistakes are opportunities to learn something new, something not known previously. In the world of entrepreneurship, the more mistakes a person makes, the more a person learns. There is a bit of magic in every mistakes, so when you make mistakes, take the time to learn from them, and you’ll have more magic in your life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
don’t talk about the way you are. Talk about the way you want to be.
- Joel Olsteen
In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn’t been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A’s without taking a book home. I didn’t go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam.
- Bill Gates
That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity.
- Beryl Markham
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
The reality is that financial markets are self-destabilizing; occasionally they tend toward disequilibrium, not equilibrium.
- George Soros
I said, ‘I’m not asking your permission, I’m just telling you, I need someone to look up to. You’re my new hero.’
- Phil Knight
Who told you that something was wrong with you?
- Joel Olsteen
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
Before you take on the media, you have to know something about The Pitch.
- Michael Levine
We were always trying to look for people who could help us beyond what we were doing.
- Phil Knight
Challenges will present us a good opportunity to improve productivity.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Pick the best people, face the reality (the way it is), speak with candor to everything, never lose sight of the relationship with the constituency.
- Jack Welch
Every time I read a management or self-help book, I find myself saying, “That’s fine, but that wasn’t really the hard thing about the situation.” The hard thing isn’t setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. The hard thing is laying people off when you miss the big goal. The hard thing isn’t hiring great people. The hard thing is when those “great people” develop a sense of entitlement and start demanding unreasonable things. The hard thing isn’t setting up an organizational chart. The hard thing is getting people to communicate within the organization that you just designed. The hard thing isn’t dreaming big. The hard thing is waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat when the dream turns into a nightmare.
- Ben Horowitz
He felt the Gettysburg Address was one of the greatest documents ever written, mainly because Lincoln had said so much with so few words.
- David Novak
Hong Kong is a good fashion city. The interest is enormous. There’s good potential in the Asian market.
- Stefan Persson
Gain alignment every step of the way. Again, no involvement means no committment. Skip a layer and you will ultimately pay the price.
- David Novak
Gratitude is the single greatest treasure I will take with me from this experience.
- Oprah Winfrey
And I keep saying, whether you like the president or not, everybody has to pull together and help the president because, as the president goes, so goes the country, as the country goes, so goes your job, your ability to feed your family, your government.
- Michael Bloomberg
I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‘Automobile Magazine.’ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Since all of them overestimated the competition, no one even showed up.
- Timothy Ferriss
It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.
- Bill Gates
We’re running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere… can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.
- Elon Musk
I wasn’t satisfied just to earn a good living. I was looking to make a statement.
- Donald Trump
You don’t have to start from scratch to have a massive impact on the world.
- Jack Dorsey
I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
