[On stopping working and focussing 100% on his company Nike] I was still teaching accounting, but the next year, I told Penny [married in 1968] if we sell $300,000 worth of product, I’m going to go full-time. She was pregnant and a little anxious. We hit $290,000. I said, that ‘s close enough.
- Phil Knight
Notable Quotables
Ultimately, we wanted Nike to be the world’s best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don’t end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.
- Phil Knight
It costs nothing, but creates much. It enriches those who receive, without impoverishing those who give. It happens in a flash and the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None are so rich they can get along without it, and none so poor but are richer for its benefits. It creates happiness in the home, fosters good will in a business, and is the countersign of friends. It is rest to the weary, daylight to the discouraged, sunshine to the sad, and Nature’s best antidote for trouble. Yet it cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is no earthly good to anybody till it is given away.
- Dale Carnegie
Good and great are seldom in the same man.
- Winston Churchill
Success always demands a greater effort.
- Winston Churchill
Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant.
- Peter Drucker
Ultimately, broadcasters and advertisers have to change the way they do business or they run the risk of linear TV becoming obsolete.
- Charles Ergen
All was there—the programme of German resurrection, the technique of party propaganda; the plan for combating Marxism; the concept of a National-Socialist State; the rightful position of Germany at the summit ofthe world. Here was the new Koran of faith and war: turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.
- Winston Churchill
In inner-city, low-income communities of color, there’s such a high correlation in terms of educational quality and success.
- Bill Gates
To properly value a business, you also have to discount those future cash flows to their present worth, since a given amount of money today is worth more than the same amount in the future.
- Peter Thiel
I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.
- John D. Rockefeller
My children – in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.
- Steve Ballmer
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
Learn to listen and think.
- Jack Nadel
Well I think that there’s a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you’re likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.
- Richard Branson
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
If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.
- Napoleon Hill
I think that diversity is key for the next American entrepreneurs. They want to be a part of this society where there is so much diversity they have to have people from all the experiences.
- Russell Simmons
That’s why it is important to enjoy the journey not just the destination. In this world, we will never arrive at a place where everything is perfect and we have no more challenges. As admirable as setting goals and reaching them maybe, you can’t get so focused on accomplishing your goals that you make the mistake of not enjoying where you are right now.
- Joel Olsteen
America is built around this premise that you can do it, and there are an awful lot of people who are unlikely to have done it who did.
- Michael Bloomberg
What goes on in Europe concerns us greatly because, if Europe comes apart, the E.U. comes apart, then you’re going to have enormous impact on America, that’s a very big trading partner of ours, and people own securities around the world in this day and age.
- Michael Bloomberg
Leadership is hard to train on.
- Ben Horowitz
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
- Seneca
I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.
- Rupert Murdoch
Those who try to lead the people can only do so by following the mob.
- Oscar Wilde
People everywhere love Windows.
- Bill Gates
When you put faith, hope and love together, you can raise positive kids in a negative world.
- Zig Ziglar
You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.
- Zig Ziglar
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
- Dale Carnegie
I love cities, and I love city governments in particular. But in politics it would have taken me 8 years from implementing a policy before I would get to see the feedback. With programming I could model the same policies and see the impact immediately. Technology is a far more efficient way to test.
- Jack Dorsey
The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
- George Orwell
You’re either a Purple Cow or you’re not. You’re either remarkable or invisible. Make your choice.
- Seth Godin
When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for people telling you that you are nuts.
- Larry Ellison
Excepting for reading my numbers on Saturday morning and going to our regular meetings, I don’t have much of a routine for anything else. I always carry my little tape recorder on trips, to record ideas that come up in my conversations with the associates. 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
I definitely think there’s some way to understand how people emotionally feel about somebody, but I don’t think data collects it. They’re not going to click your bit.ly link or click your TweetMeme retweet every time.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.
- James Cameron
I always try to acknowledge what someone’s done well before talking about what could be done better. – David Novak CEO OF Yum! Brands
- David Novak
When you get a thing the way you want it, leave it alone.
- Winston Churchill
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
I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.
- Elon Musk
The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune, it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick.
- P.T. Barnum
A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.
- Winston Churchill
I think the most important factor in getting out of the recession actually is just the regenerative capacity of – of American capitalism.
- Warren Buffett
A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.
- Ralph Lauren
It’s not going to happen alone.
- Jack Dorsey
I don’t think you should spend your life praying for things, but I do believe you should thank God for what He’s given you… but I think the scripture teaches us that we can pray for our dreams, pray for the big things… he’s not a small God; this God is incredible.
- Joel Olsteen
Company culture” doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. 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
Foreign politicians don’t have resources – or limited resources. It’s useless dealing with them.
- Wang Jianlin
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
- Dale Carnegie
Monopolists downplay their monopoly status to avoid scrutiny, while competitive firms strategically exaggerate their uniqueness.
- Peter Thiel
Anyone, even a child, can be taught to develop a positive mental attitude. The method is to repeat positive affirmations such as: Day by day, in every way, through the grace of God, I am getting better and better.
- Napoleon Hill
you don’t need to understand any of the biology, just as you don’t need to understand radiation to use a microwave oven.
- Timothy Ferriss
In a climate of tight budgets, reduced workforces and stiff competition, internal training can be a great substitute for costly offsite workshops and conferences.
- Harvey Mackay
The foundation of the Germanic system was blood and kin.
- Winston Churchill
Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.
- Og Mandino
But you are the average of the five people you associate with most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious, or disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker.
- Timothy Ferriss
For Africa to move forward, you’ve really got to get rid of malaria.
- Bill Gates
Attitude, not Aptitude, determines Altitude.
- Zig Ziglar
Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?
- Winston Churchill
The future is sooner and stranger than you think.
- Reid Hoffman
Positive thinking won’t allow you to do anything, but it will allow you to do everything better than negative thinking will.
- Zig Ziglar
Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.
- Bill Gates
I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that’s not in me. I want to lift people up.
- Joel Olsteen
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
Choose wise and Godly people to advise you.
- George Foreman
I got a call from the Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah had chosen Spanx as one of her favorite products in 2000. I had boxes of product in my apartment and I had two weeks notice that she was going to say she loved it on TV and I had no shipping department.
- Sara Blakely
Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life’ (Prov. 4:23 KJV).
- Joel Olsteen
The principle is competing against yourself. It’s about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.
- Steve Young
The Group sold an attributable HK$3,434.6 million worth of properties in Hong Kong as compared with HK$6,810.9 million for the year before. In light of the then cautious market sentiment, the Group decided to defer the launch of a few new developments…
- Lee Shau Kee
Everybody at home speaks mandarin except me.
- Rupert Murdoch
I DECLARE I have the grace I need for today. I am full of power, strength, and determination. Nothing I face will be too much for me. I will overcome every obstacle, outlast every challenge, and come through every difficulty better off than I was before. This is my declaration.
- Joel Olsteen
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep form meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends.
- Andrew Carnegie
Make your desires clear and reduce them to writing.
- Napoleon Hill
My revenue was $4 million my first year in business, off of one $20 item.
- Sara Blakely
My ultimate dream is for the Irvine Ranch to be known and celebrated as much for the outstanding communities we’ve planned and built as it is for what is not developed. The beneficiary being the 50,000 acres of undeveloped land that is now permanently preserved and conserved as Open Space and parklands.
- Donald Bren
I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
- Winston Churchill
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
- Jeff Bezos
Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
- Stephen R. Covey
Learn to slow down. Get lost intentionally. Observe how you judge both yourself and those around you.
- Timothy Ferriss
Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!
- Yoda
It takes the same effort to think small than to think big. But to think big frees you from the insignificant details.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
I’ve always wanted to be a businessman. No other ambitions, I just wanted to be in business, even when I was a child in Fujian province, south China.
- Henry Sy
Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
- Warren Buffett
Respect people’s wishes.
- Jack Dorsey
We bring together the best ideas – turning the meetings of our top managers into intellectual orgies.
- Jack Welch
Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.
- Dale Carnegie
You always have to give something when you get something.
- Jack Nadel
A startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think.
- Peter Thiel
Run your business in harmony with God’s laws.
- David Green
Living in the moment brings you a sense of reverence for all of life’s blessings.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak, courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
- Winston Churchill
Don’t be different just to be different. Be different to be better.
- Seth Godin
Self-control – the man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate.
- Napoleon Hill
If you don’t change the direction you are going, then you’re likely to end up where you’re heading…
- John C. Maxwell
With a decrease in the number of pirates, there has been an increase in global warming over the same period. Therefore, global warming is caused by a lack of pirates. Even more compelling: Somalia has the highest number of Pirates AND the lowest Carbon emissions of any country. Coincidence?
- Timothy Ferriss
In some ways, running a successful business is a bit like coaching a football team. The fundamentals of football are blocking and tackling. The fundamentals of a business are it’s governing policies andprocesses. To carry out the metaphor, touchdowns are profits. The best business idea in the world cannot survive bad execution. So when you sit down to develop your workflow, internal policies, and business structure, be merciless, probe for weaknesses and assume that the worst will happen. – Jack Nadel (Author&Entrepreneur)
- Jack Nadel
I actually credit Twitter with fine-tuning some joke-writing skills. I still feel like I’m working at it.
- Steve Martin
