The most obvious market segment in email-based payments was the millions of emigrants still using Western Union to wire money to their families back home. Our product made that effortless, but the transactions were too infrequent.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
My parents were ordinary people, we lived in a small apartment.
- Viktor Vekselberg
In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money.
- P.T. Barnum
With the right pitch, you’ll get no argument. This is where the salesmanship comes in…It requires of you a substantial degree of self-confidence to pull it off, but your belief in your own project will help you muster that.
- Michael Levine
Investors should remember that excitement and expenses are their enemies. And if they insist on trying to time their participation in equities, they should try to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful.
- Warren Buffett
The husband and wife who open another delicatessen store or another Mexican restaurant in the American suburb surely take a risk. But are they entrepreneurs? All they do is what has been done many times before. They gamble on the increasing popularity of eating out in their area, but create neither a new satisfaction nor new consumer demand. Seen under this perspective they are surely not entrepreneurs even though theirs is a new venture. McDonald’s, however, was entrepreneurship. It did not invent anything, to be sure. Its final product was what any decent American restaurant had produced years ago. But by applying management concepts and management techniques (asking, What is “value” to the customer?), standardizing the “product,” designing process and tools, and by basing training on the analysis of the work to be done and then setting the standards it required, McDonald’s both drastically upgraded the yield from resources, and created a new market and a new customer. This is entrepreneurship.
- Peter Drucker
I don’t believe that government is good at picking technology, particularly technology that is changing. By the time you get it done and go through democracy, it’s so outdated.
- Michael Bloomberg
In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem.
- Ben Horowitz
When you face adversity, you need to remind yourself that whatever is trying to defeat you could very well be what God will use to promote you.
- Joel Olsteen
We sold ‘Seinfeld’ all over the world but it was a very specific kind of show. In some countries it went down really well, in others they hated it.
- Jerry Seinfeld
At the end of the day, the Irvine Co. is slowly being transformed. Our long-term goal is to transform what was once an agricultural company to a development company, and to that, the next, final step is to create a large real estate investment company.
- Donald Bren
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Just learn from the guys who have already done it well. You need a mentor, a seasoned coach who is willing to share his wisdom and experience with you. Ask someone who has already been successful to guide you.
- George Foreman
The worst day of a man’s life is when he sits down and begins thinking about how he can get something for nothing.
- Thomas Jefferson
Because we publicists are hired guns, reported don’t often put much stock in our pleas and arguments, at least not a first. I was told by one entertainment reporter from a large metropolitan paper, Publicists don’t believe in what they are selling. They’re just paid pitchmen.
- Michael Levine
To model yourself after Steve Jobs is like, ‘I’d like to paint like Picasso, what should I do? Should I use more red?’
- Larry Ellison
It took thirty-eight years before 50 million people gained access to radios. It took television thirteen years to earn an audience that size. It took Instagram a year and a half.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
McDonald’s is a people business, and that smile on that counter girl’s face when she takes your order is a vital part of our image.
- Ray Kroc
At the end of the day … Nexium is Nexium, Lipitor is Lipitor, drugs are drugs, and it shouldn’t matter that much who’s counting to 30.
- George Paz
Do what you want to do. Do what you like to do.
- Lei Jun
A lot of the evil in the world is actually not intentional. A lot of people in the financial system did a lot of damage without intending to.
- George Soros
I don’t have all the answers.
- Joel Olsteen
With the casino and the beds, our passengers will have at least two ways to get lucky on one of our flights.
- Richard Branson
Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don’t approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides.
- Bill Gates
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar
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
The factory is a dead end and so is compliance. More obedience will not make us better. That’s why graceful is in such demand.
- Seth Godin
I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 18. I started a company with a bunch of buddies that got funded in my senior year, and that’s when I finished school. It was called Scour, a peer-to-peer service, file-sharing.
- Travis Kalanick
We vote for a presidential candidate without saying, “Why not run the country for a month and then we’ll see . .
- Seth Godin
You’ve been destined to live in victory, destined to overcome, destined to leave your mark on this generation.
- Joel Olsteen
Many a false step was made by standing still.
- Timothy Ferriss
A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it.
- Seth Godin
Seeing his education soley in utilitarian terms, he studied hard, but showed no intellectual playfulness.
- Ron Chernow
I made a decision to write for my readers, not to try to find more readers for my writing.
- Seth Godin
Despite the office rent in Hong Kong generally declining, the Group’s rental is resilient as the major rental properties owned by the Group are retail shopping properties situated in the new towns and mass transportation network.
- Lee Shau Kee
I believe God, Jesus, died that we not just go to Heaven but that we excel in this life. I never think you make money your goal… God wants you to excel. Just keep Him in first place, and God will open up doors you never dreamed of.
- Joel Olsteen
In the long years to come, not only will the people of this island but of the world, wherever the bird of freedom chirps in human hearts, look back to what we’ve done, and they will say ‘do not despair, do not yield…march straightforward.
- Winston Churchill
Companies are like countries in this way. Bad decisions made early on—if you choose the wrong partners or hire the wrong people, for example—are very hard to correct after they are made. It may take a crisis on the order of bankruptcy before anybody will even try to correct them. 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
Successful people find value in unexpected places, and they do this by thinking about business from first principles instead of formulas.
- Peter Thiel
All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.
- John C. Maxwell
The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That’s a bittersweet ending.
- Timothy Ferriss
On many long journeys have I gone. And waited, too, for others to return from journeys of their own. Some return; some are broken; some come back so different only their names remain.
- Yoda
There’s no substitute for a full-time dad. Dads who are fully engaged with their kids overwhelmingly tend to produce children who believe in themselves and live full lives.
- Tony Dungy
Don’t equate activity with efficiency. You are paying your key people to see the big picture. Don’t let them get bogged down in a lot of meaningless meetings and paper shuffling. Announce a Friday afternoon off once in a while. Cancel a Monday morning meeting or two. Tell the cast of characters you’d like them to spend the amount of time normally spent preparing for attending the meeting at their desks, simply thinking about an original idea.
- Harvey Mackay
I’ve taken those pharmacists and asked them to reach out to doctors. Doctors still misprescribe very often. They leave gaps with care. People with asthma, they don’t take their inhalers, they wait until they’re sick, and by then, it’s too late. Now we’re already running up the bills and going to emergency rooms. We’re using our pharmacist to do the things they were educated to do, not to count pills. That’s not where the value is.
- George Paz
Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money, it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows?
- Joel Olsteen
Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.
- Bill Gates
Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.
- Og Mandino
A productive employee who is kept busy working at his or her job is far more likely to be happy at that job and less likely to look for employment elsewhere.
- Zig Ziglar
It’s just not right that so many things don’t work when they should. I don’t think that will change for a long time.
- Steve Wozniak
Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
- Robert J. Sawyer
They told you to get your résumé in order, to punch your ticket, to fit in, and to follow instructions. They told you to swallow your pride, not to follow your dream. They promised trinkets and prizes and possibly riches if you would just suck it up and be part of the system, if you would merely do what you were told and conform. They sold you debt and self-storage and reality TV shows. They sold your daughters and sons, too.All in exchange for what would happen later, when it was your turn. It’s your turn.
- Seth Godin
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
I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.
- Oprah Winfrey
Be reactionary. React to what the market wants. And the market wants one-on-one real time engagement. Now that we have the tools to engage, I’m going to continue fighting for the end user.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
John, never lend money to your friends; it will spoil your friendships.
- John D. Rockefeller
Cisco will be well placed to continue building our presence in India as a critical part of our research and development efforts and as domestic market for networking products and solutions continues to expand.
- John Chambers
For all the supporters of Tesla over the years, and it’s been several years now and there have been some very tough times, I’d just like to say thank you very much. I deeply appreciate the support, particularly through the darkest times.
- Elon Musk
It takes a decade to grow trees but a century to nurture human beings.
- Cheng Yu-tung
There’s room for another planet between Mars and Jupiter. Given that planets formed everywhere else, why couldn’t another planet have formed there?
- John Chambers
Our lives change in two ways :through the people we meet and the books we read.
- Harvey Mackay
I worry about another leg down in the economies causing social disruption because deleveragings can be very painful – it depends on how they’re managed.
- Ray Dalio
Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
- George Soros
A smile, someone once said, costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give.15 Smile. It increases your face value.
- Dale Carnegie
If it’s not meeting a need, turn it into a seed. Remember, we will reap what we sow. When you do good for other people, that’s when God is going to make sure that His abundant blessings overtake you.
- Joel Olsteen
Windows is probably the most important product in the entire PC industry. Everything we do in terms of supporting touch, new hardware, accessibility has incredible impact.
- Bill Gates
Let’s not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember Life is too short to be little.
- Dale Carnegie
You can start from where you are with what you’ve got and go to where it is you want to go.
- Zig Ziglar
The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves.
- Peter Drucker
The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill…
- Thomas Edison
“Trust me.” That’s what a CEO says every day to her employees. Trust me: This will be a good company. Trust me: This will be good for your career. Trust me: This will be good for your life. A layoff breaks that trust. In order to rebuild trust, you have to come clean.
- Ben Horowitz
President Bush is endangering our safety, hurting our vital interests, and undermining American values.
- George Soros
I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m not in business to make money for the other guy. I’m in the business to make money for myself.
- Sheldon Adelson
Most governments are pragmatic, most people are logical. There are pockets of extremism in Israel, in the U.S. and in the Muslim world. But we have to fight them with reason, with logic and with compassion.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking all day from one laboratory table to another. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.
- Thomas Edison
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
- Winston Churchill
God knows your value; He sees your potential. You may not understand everything you are going through right now. But hold your head up high, knowing that God is in control and he has a great plan and purpose for your life. Your dreams may not have turned out exactly as you’d hoped, but the bible says that God’s ways are better and higher than our ways, even when everybody else rejects you, remember, God stands before you with His arms open wide. He always accepts you. He always confirms your value. God sees your two good moves! You are His prized possession. No matter what you go through in life, no matter how many disappointments you suffer, your value in God’s eyes always remains the same. You will always be the apple of His eye. He will never give up on you, so don’t give up on yourself.
- Joel Olsteen
The Benefits are about the Buyer’s stuff – what your products or services do for Buyers. Do the Benefits make them feel better about life – give them power; make them sexier, prettier, richer, more comfortable or secure, smarter, more competitive? Do they save time, money, fear or hassle?
- Jerry Vass
We need to, you know, restore people. We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.
- Joel Olsteen
To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.
- Ben Horowitz
The resentment that criticism engenders can demoralize employees, family members and friends, and still not correct the situation that has been condemned.
- Dale Carnegie
Don’t Hire People Like Yourself.
- Forrest Ray
It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculate a Web site’s importance.
- Larry Page
In practice, a large market will either lack a good starting point or it will be open to competition.
- Peter Thiel
The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets.
- John D. Rockefeller
Capitalism has shortfalls. It doesn’t necessarily take care of the poor, and it underfunds innovation, so we have to offset that.
- Bill Gates
When an entrepreneur has an object in his line of vision, he should dismiss all other considerations from his mind, abandon all other activities, and charge directly at that object, continuing to charge until the object has been secured.
- Paul Johnson
Well, it’s the last step of the civil rights movement: You know, wrap your hands around some money, right?
- Russell Simmons
My own center, my Kingdom Center, which is the highest priced tower in Saudi Arabia, was vacated twice because of terrorist attacks, terrorist threats.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
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
I’ve got to confess I’m a pragmatic optimist myself.
- Zig Ziglar
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
Here’s Kanye, the great musical genius of his generation in hip hop, but, like, society really can’t even deal with him because he’s always saying something that people go, ‘Oh, I can’t believe Kanye said that. I can’t believe he did that.’
- Ben Horowitz
It is very clear that the Republicans do not want to raise taxes.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.
- Winston Churchill
They did not die because of sickness or anything but because of hunger. I remember that and how people suffered.
- Lui Che Woo
To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks.
- Bill Gates
You can be committed to Church but not committed to Christ, but you cannot be committed to Christ and not committed to church.
- Joel Olsteen
Accessible design is good design.
- Steve Ballmer
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
