Notable Quotables

As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.

- Peter Thiel

On every occasion, we were able to rely on our unique qualities – resourcefulness, perseverance, diligence and passion for excellence – to rise above our difficulties.

- Cheng Yu-tung

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

It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.

- Timothy Ferriss

In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally.

- Ben Horowitz

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

It is my practice to try to understand how valuable something is by trying to imagine myself without it.

- Herb Kelleher

Frequently I’ll be interviewing with somebody or talking and in about 15 minutes they’ll interrupt me mid-stream and say, ‘Oh my God, you’re nothing like I’d thought you’d be.’

- Larry Ellison

Yes, it’s absolutely true that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly – until you can learn to do it well.

- Zig Ziglar

It is one thing to see the forward path and another to be able to take it. But it is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all.

- Winston Churchill

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

- Henry Ford

Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World.

- Bill Gates

Life is bigger than processes and overflows and dwarfs them.

- Dale Carnegie

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.

- Og Mandino

When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right. It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

- Steve Jobs

Winners Evaluate Themselves In A Positive Manner And Look For Their Strengths As They Work To Overcome Weaknesses.

- Zig Ziglar

Branding is what people think about you before they even know you.

- Bryan Smith

That’s the hard thing about hard things—there is no formula for dealing with them.

- Ben Horowitz

But I know newspapers. They have the first amendment and they can tell any lie knowing it’s a lie and they’re protected if the person’s famous or it’s a company.

- Steve Wozniak

From an evolutionary standpoint, human consciousness has not been around very long. A little light just went on after four and a half billion years. How often does that happen? Maybe it is quite rare.

- Elon Musk

Here’s the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don’t you hate that? I love that there’s no map.

- Seth Godin

Some people, through luck and skill, end up with a lot of assets. If you’re good at kicking a ball, writing software, investing in stocks, it pays extremely well.

- Bill Gates

I’m Phil Knight, and I don’t believe in advertising.

- Phil Knight

The first step to thinking clearly is to question what we think we know about the past.

- Peter Thiel

We’ve used up a lot of bullets. And we talk about stimulus. But the truth is, we’re running a federal deficit that’s 9 percent of GDP. That is stimulative as all get out. It’s more stimulative than any policy we’ve followed since World War II.

- Warren Buffett

There was a moment when I was watching Martin Lawrence and Will Smith in ‘Badboys’ that I felt, you know, inspired. I don’t know if I was proud, because so many people do the work. Everyone’s part of a team that develops over the years and gives people chances. There have been some good moments watching people develop.

- Russell Simmons

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

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.

- Elon Musk

Leanness is a methodology, not a goal. Making small changes to things that already exist might lead you to a local maximum, but it won’t help you find the global maximum.

- Peter Thiel

I’ve always been fascinated by cities and how they work. And I taught myself how to program so I can understand how the city works.

- Jack Dorsey

We have the necessary foundations that will enable us to weather the current storm and enter into a new era of growth.

- Cheng Yu-tung

Buda dijo: El odio nunca es vencido por el odio sino por el amor, y un malentendido no termina nunca gracias una discusión sino gracias al tacto, la diplomacia, la conciliación, y un sincero deseo de apreciar el punto de vista de los demás.

- Dale Carnegie

If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved. The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards—not punishes—people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.

- Ben Horowitz

In Riyadh, there’s going to be a huge project that will house at least 12,000 units with inhabitants of approximately 150,000 people. It’s like a city within a city.

- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud

Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.

- Warren Buffett

Poke the box How do computer programmers learn their art? Is there a step-by-step process that guarantees you’ll get good? All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works. The box might be a computer or it might be a market or it might be a customer or it might be your boss. It’s a puzzle, one that can be solved in only one way—by poking.

- Seth Godin

The oil patch pays good. They’re decent jobs paying between 50 and 70 thousand a year. Fracking has a big impact on the oil consumption in the United States.

- Harold Hamm

Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.

- Napoleon Hill

IN A NUTSHELL FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE PRINCIPLE 1 Don’t criticize, condemn or complain. PRINCIPLE 2 Give honest and sincere appreciation. PRINCIPLE 3 Arouse in the other person an eager want.

- Dale Carnegie

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

The best way to be missed when you’re gone,Is to stand for something when you’re here.

- Seth Godin

“What would you do if capital were free?” is a dangerous question to ask an entrepreneur. It’s kind of like asking a fat person, “What would you do if ice cream had the exact same nutritional value as broccoli?”

- Ben Horowitz

If you do not believe in your product or service enough to offer it to your own family and friends, then you should question the value of what you are selling.

- Zig Ziglar

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

- Thomas Edison

Of course people are getting smarter nowadays, they are letting lawyers instead of their conscience be their guides.

- Will Rogers

Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.

- Og Mandino

One who works the same reactive 40 hours per week and takes the same amount of sick days and holidays off as his or her employees, yet expects to make significantly more than everyone else simply because they have the title of owner and are thus making the loan payments and the lease payments.

- Clay Clark

Niklas Zennstroem has a thorough background as a successful entrepreneur with extensive expertise in areas such as IT and online.

- Stefan Persson

For me, the most fun is change or growth. There are definitely elements of both that I like. Launching a business is kind of like a motorboat: You can go very quickly and turn boat.

- Tony Hsieh

I don’t feel under-taxed in any way at all.

- Jack Welch

Why do I need succession planning? I’m very alert, I’m very vibrant. I have no intention to retire.

- Sheldon Adelson

The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.

- Herb Kelleher

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

- Richard P. Feynman

The biggest cowards are managers who don’t let people know where they stand.

- Jack Welch

Many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t.

- Peter Thiel

Seeds of discouragement cannot take root in a grateful heart.

- Joel Olsteen

How much has it been your experience that Americans follow what happens in the world?

- Reed Hastings

What if there were no longer only two sides? Not just capital versus labor, but a third team, one that straddled elements of both? I think there’s a huge opportunity for a third kind of participant, a linchpin, and now there is an opportunity to change all the rules that we’ve lived with all our lives. There is a shortage of this third kind of worker, and that shortage means that the market needs you desperately. The con game is ending, at least for people passionate enough to do something about it.

- Seth Godin

Permission marketing turns strangers into friends and friends into loyal customers. It’s not just about entertainment – it’s about education. Permission marketing is curriculum marketing.

- Seth Godin

The better at communicating you are, and the more people you communicate to, the better your cash flow will be.

- Robert Kiyosaki

No tienes que responder a cada crítica. No tienes que demostrarle nada a nadie. Tan solo permanece por encima y permite que Dios pelee tus batallas por ti.

- Joel Olsteen

The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

- Bill Gates

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

- Henry Ford

I wish HP nothing but the best. I think HP is an icon. Those of us who had their careers in the Valley think of Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett as role models. We would love to be half as good as they were.

- Larry Ellison

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you maycome to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

- Winston Churchill

Give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people.

- Sam Walton

Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.

- Og Mandino

I was working probably at the age of 10, when I had my first paper route. I had every different kind of job you could possibly imagine as a young kid.

- Howard Schultz

I think Tesla will most likely develop its own autopilot system for the car, as I think it should be camera-based, not Lidar-based. However, it is also possible that we do something jointly with Google.

- Elon Musk

The spread of online information isn’t just good for charities. It’s also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.

- Bill Gates

For me, privacy and security are really important. We think about it in terms of both: You can’t have privacy without security.

- Larry Page

I will take as a given that, for most people, somewhere between six and seven billion of them, the perfect job is the one that takes the least time.

- Timothy Ferriss

Newspaper readership is still growing in India.

- Bill Gates

A startup is the largest endeavor over which you can have definite mastery. You can have agency not just over your own life, but over a small and important part of the world. It begins by rejecting the unjust tyranny of Chance. You are not a lottery ticket.

- Peter Thiel

I don’t want to be liked. I want to be respected.

- Jack Ma

The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.

- Michael Gerber

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

- Winston Churchill

I have seen firsthand that agricultural science has enormous potential to increase the yields of small farmers and lift them out of hunger and poverty.

- Bill Gates

Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.

- John C. Maxwell

In order to become rich, you need to learn to build systems that can work without you. .

- Robert Kiyosaki

While there were a number of highlights, it was probably the U.S. that topped the highlight list with strong order growth of approximately 20 percent year over year. This is better order growth than we’ve experienced in the last six quarters in the U.S..

- John Chambers

So many people label themselves a failure when they fail at something. Instead, the entrepreneurial spirit is realizing that these failures are a necessary part of the path to wherever you’re going to end up.

- Tony Hsieh

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

- David Novak

Oracle’s latest database, version 12c, was specifically designed for the cloud. Oracle 12c makes all your Oracle applications multitenant applications without you having to make any changes whatsoever to your applications.

- Larry Ellison

The employees who share innovative ideas may also be the folks who have some hidden talents that would help incorporate their suggestions.

- Harvey Mackay

I’m pretty good at sticking to what I know. You don’t see me social commentating on health-care or presidential debates. I talk about what I know because I’m petrified of being wrong.

- Gary Vaynerchuk

Even freebies must be delivered with a certain salesmanship or the receiver does not perceived the true value of the gift.

- Jerry Vass

At 25, I was in the audience of my first professional speaker, Bob Bales. His presentation got my attention. I had never seen anyone having so much fun ‘at work’ and getting paid for it!

- Zig Ziglar

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

- Elon Musk

Everything is fraught with danger. I love technology and I love science. It’s just always all in the way you use it. So there’s no – you can’t really blame anything on the technology. It’s just the way people use it, and it always has been.

- Steve Martin

If I have one skill as a manager, I can make things extremely clear.

- Ben Horowitz

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