If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
- John D. Rockefeller
Notable Quotables
I do think there is a lot of potential if you have a compelling product and people are willing to pay a premium for that. I think that is what Apple has shown. You can buy a much cheaper cell phone or laptop, but Apple’s product is so much better than the alternative, and people are willing to pay that premium.
- Elon Musk
We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
- Bill Gates
Actually, King Abdullah, under his supervision and guidance, has established a dialogue in Saudi Arabia whereby all the population, whether Shiite or Sunnis from north, south, west or east, they can get together and exchange their views.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
God created every one of us to be successful. Before the foundation of the world, He laid out an exact plan for our lives. And in this plan He has moments of favor that will come across our path. These moments are not ordinary. They are destiny-altering moments.
- Joel Olsteen
Dinosaurs did not walk with humans. The evolutionary record says different. They gambled.
- Steve Martin
Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I’d put myself in the latter category. But I’d never call myself a normal designer of anything.
- Steve Wozniak
This paper, by its very length, defends itself from ever being read.
- Winston Churchill
Starting means you’re going to finish. If it doesn’t ship, you’ve failed. You haven’t poked the box if the box doesn’t realize it’s been poked. To merely start without finishing is just boasting, or stalling, or a waste of time. I have no patience at all for people who believe they are doing their best work but are hiding it from the market. If you don’t ship, you actually haven’t started anything at all. At some point, your work has to intersect with the market. At some point, you need feedback as to whether or not it worked. Otherwise, it’s merely a hobby.
- Seth Godin
Ideas are cheap. The difficult part is finding the team to execute them.
- Raymond Kwok
We are a country of artisans and a country of manufacturing. I think Japanese textile technology is the best in the world.
- Tadashi Yanai
The most valuable kind of company maintains an openness to invention that is most characteristic of beginnings.
- Peter Thiel
Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.”
- John C. Maxwell
It is very helpful to me, in my job, for people to know me better. A lot of that is, it’s a communication job.
- Ben Horowitz
I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one subject at a time.
- Charles Dickens
It is no ordindary desire that survives disappointment, discouragement, temporary defeat, criticism, and the constant reminding of waste of time. It is a burning desire an obsession! – Napoleon Hill (on leadership)
- Napoleon Hill
You measure your people and you take action on those that don’t measure up.
- Jack Welch
If you’re less sensitive to social cues, you’re less likely to do the same things as everyone else around you.
- Peter Thiel
The millionaires and billionaires who chose to invest in Australia are actually those who most help the poor and our young. This secret needs to be spread widely.
- Gina Rinehart
Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today.
- Peter Thiel
Encouragement and hope are the two most powerful qualities any person can provide to others.
- Zig Ziglar
You’ve got to eat while you dream. You’ve got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that.
- Jack Welch
Find a need and fill it.
- Jack Nadel
There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you’re good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.
- Jeff Bezos
The good-will of a business which is losing money is not worth much.
- Ron Chernow
It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don’t know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.
- Elon Musk
As CEO, you should have an opinion on absolutely everything. You should have an opinion on every forecast, every product plan, every presentation, and even every comment. Let people know what you think. If you like someone’s comment, give her the feedback. If you disagree, give her the feedback. Say what you think. Express yourself.
- Ben Horowitz
The first thing I ever invested in was Twitter. Blaine Cook, former CTO, was leaving the company and asked me if I wanted to buy his stock.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
God’s desire is that we excel.
- Joel Olsteen
I think that the act of teaching is the most gratifying and rewarding of all human endeavors.
- David Novak
Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
- Yoda
All of us, in a sense, struggle continuously all the time, because we never get what we want. The important thing which I’ve really learned is how do you not give up, because you never succeed in the first attempt.
- Mukesh Ambani
You’re not really free until you’re free from trying to please everybody.
- Joel Olsteen
Encourage yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
The most interesting biofuel efforts avoid using land that’s expensive and has high opportunity costs. They do this by getting onto other types of land, or taking advantage of byproducts that aren’t used in the food chain today, or by intercropping.
- Bill Gates
In terms of mathematics textbooks, why can’t you have the scale of a national market? Right now, we have a Texas textbook that’s different from a California textbook that’s different from a Massachusetts textbook. That’s very expensive.
- Bill Gates
We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun together.
- Walt Disney
Keep costs low and spirits high, and the people of Southwest Airlines will keep LUV in the air.
- Herb Kelleher
When you start a company, you’re basically jumping off a cliff. You don’t have any sense of where you’re going to land, what to do when you land, or what you should be doing inmidair. It’s very very scary. But it’s much easier when you have somebody to commiserate with you who knows what you’re going through, and who you know will always be on your side.
- Seth Goldman
You can’t worry about the mistakes, because you’re going to make a lot of them. You’ve got to be thinking about your next move.
- Ben Horowitz
Many a false step was made by standing still.
- Timothy Ferriss
Don’t sit around depressed and discouraged. Get a new vision for your life.
- Joel Olsteen
Zynga is about fun. Fun is important. Fun is good. And to have the ability to do something fun for 10 or 15 minutes that’s right at your fingertips and involves your friends, well, that’s better than television in terms of social connectivity.
- Reid Hoffman
“Everyone will think it’s stupid!””Everyone says it’s impossible.”Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong.
- Seth Godin
The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.
- Jack Welch
A decision is a judgment. It is a choice between alternatives. It is rarely a choice between right and wrong. It is at best a choice between “almost right” and “probably wrong”—but much more often a choice between two courses of action neither of which is provably more nearly right than the other.
- Peter Drucker
95% financing arrangement offered by Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation Limited in a period of sustained low interest have added impetus to secondary trading activities in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
There’s a difference between telling people what to do and inciting a movement.
- Seth Godin
In the early days of aviation, there was a great deal of experimentation and a high death rate.
- Elon Musk
We wouldn’t survive if people didn’t trust us.
- Sergey Brin
I own a home in Kyoto, Japan actually on the temple on grounds in Nanzenji that is going to become a Japanese art museum.
- Larry Ellison
You may think there is a lot wrong with you, but there is also a lot right with you.
- Joel Olsteen
if you want to achieve consistent performance, you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound, a hurdle that you jump over and a ceiling that you will not rise above, the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back.
- James C. Collins
Backed by our conviction, we remain committed to investing wholeheartedly to improve the people’s living conditions, regardless of all uncertainties.
- Cheng Yu-tung
For me, it’s a purity thing about the joke itself. It’s a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that’s a legitimate item you have there. For me, it’s nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It’s just not what I’m in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Be candid with everyone. Candor is the biggest dirty little secret in business?
- Jack Welch
Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you.
- Oprah Winfrey
With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.
- Richard Branson
The people who are the best in the world specialize at getting really good at the questions they don’t know.
- Seth Godin
The best way to prepare [to be a programmer] is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and fished out listings of their operating system.
- Bill Gates
Founding Fathers of U.S. set up processes, checks and balances designed to insure that their values lived on long after their passing.
- Jim Collins
Well, we have to provide the world’s best schools. We certainly don’t have them, but that’s our objective.
- Michael Bloomberg
In low-income countries, the main problems you have is infectious diseases.
- Bill Gates
People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.
- John C. Maxwell
It is impossible to divide the interest of a country and a company that works on its soil.
- Vagit Alekperov
War metaphors invade our everyday business language: we use headhunters to build up a sales force that will enable us to take a captive market and make a killing. But really it’s competition, not business, that is like war:
- Peter Thiel
There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.
- Zig Ziglar
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
- Steve Jobs
The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry is going to affect society, or how much it will grow, but rather determining the competitive advantage of any given company and, above all, the durability of that advantage
- Warren Buffett
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
All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
- Aristotle
What you tolerate you can not change.
- Joel Olsteen
I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.
- Richard Branson
By establishing a reputation as being a person who always renders more service and better service than that for which you are paid, you will benefit by comparison with those around you who do not render such service, and the contrast will be so noticeable that there will be keen competition for your services, no matter what your life-work may be.
- Napoleon Hill
The austerity policies for the mainland property market will remain intact in 2011.
- Lee Shau Kee
I didn’t like the way it looked in white trousers, and I couldn’t find anything to work underneath them.
- Sara Blakely
You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there.
- Zig Ziglar
China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‘us versus them,’ it’s an ‘us and them’ type scenario.
- Bill Gates
Be careful about virtual relationships with artificially intelligent pieces of software.
- Larry Ellison
The difference between being mediocre and magical is often the difference between letting people take creative risk and holding them too tightly accountable. Accountability is important, but it’s not the only thing that’s important.
- Ben Horowitz
About half of our wives do not work outside the home. The number-one occupation for those wives who do work is teacher.
- Thomas J Stanley
[On January 30, 1964] With a hearty ichi ban Blue Ribbon Sports got off the ground on Monday with an order for 300 pairs of shoes.
- Phil Knight
Great business is defined by its ability to generate cash flows in the future.
- Peter Thiel
It’s Almost Impossible to Overinvest in Becoming the Market Leader.
- Seth Godin
I’m often asked how I define success. It’s an overused term, but I fundamentally view this elusive beast as a combination of two things – achievement and appreciation. One isn’t enough: Achievement without appreciation makes you ambitious but miserable. Appreciation without achievement makes you unambitious but happy.
- Timothy Ferriss
God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.
- Joel Olsteen
We need to understand the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment is what you do to someone, discipline is what you do for someone.
- Zig Ziglar
You must focus on WIN. What’s important now.
- Lee Cockerell
That Newport store was really the beginning of where Walmart is today. We did everything. We would wash windows, sweep floors, trim windows. We did all the stockroom work, checked the freight in. Everything it took to run a store. We had to keep expenses to a minimum. That is where it started, years ago. Our money was made by controlling expenses. That, and Sam always being so ingenius. He never stopped trying to do something different. One thing, though: I never forgave him for was making me clean out that damned ice cream machine.
- Bud Walton
I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
We gave new customers $10 for joining, and we gave them $10 more every time they referred a friend.
- Peter Thiel
If you have 50 different plug types, appliances wouldn’t be available and would be very expensive. But once an electric outlet becomes standardized, many companies can design appliances, and competition ensues, creating variety and better prices for consumers.
- Bill Gates
I’m so optimistic, I’d go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me.
- Zig Ziglar
If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you—like a fever.
- Sam Walton
When I used to play sports, I’d be the one cheering the team on, ‘Come on, we can beat these guys!’ That’s just in me.
- Joel Olsteen
I pay about a third in taxes, I give away about a third, and I follow the law.
- Ray Dalio
Competition and capitalism are opposites.
- Peter Thiel
Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.
- Bill Gates
When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience, we’re stamping out the artist that lives within.
- Seth Godin
One of the things that I’m really proud of is that I have really good timing. It’s very easy for me to see what’s coming up and it’s no coincidence that I went headfirst into wine and then headfirst into new media – none at all.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
