Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.
- James C. Collins
Notable Quotables
This notion that it is up to each person to innovate in some way flies in the face of the industrial age, but you know what, the industrial age is over.
- Seth Godin
I’m getting better. I’m improving. My health is coming back,” those words began to create a new image on the inside. Before long, they started seeing themselves strong, healthy, and whole.
- Joel Olsteen
I’m a pretty conservative guy. But for some reason in business, I have always been pretty driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where we’ve been. On the one hand, in the community, I really am an establishment kind of guy; on the other hand, in the marketplace, I have always been a maverick who enjoys shaking things up and creating a little anarchy. And sometimes the establishments made me mad…
- Sam Walton
Every company starts only once.
- Peter Thiel
Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
In China anything less than 6% growth is a recession meaning that it also causes financial problems and it’s disruptive and it’s a problem.
- Ray Dalio
I had a feeling once about Mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me – the Byss and Abyss. I saw – as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor’s Show – a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.
- Winston Churchill
There was joy in getting his blood pressure down . . . joy in climbing Mount Everest . . . joy in reaching the summits of six more of the world’s highest mountains . . . joy in building a profitable company providing houses that people could turn into homes . . . joy in learning to fly. But he will also tell you there has been no joy as great as giving from what God has blessed him with so that he might bless and serve others. That’s the true and ultimate purpose of setting and reaching goals.
- Zig Ziglar
My experience of malaria was just taking anti-malarials, which give you strange dreams, because I don’t want to get malaria.
- Bill Gates
Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn’t willing to.
- Bill Gates
I was dyslexic, I had no understanding of schoolwork whatsoever. I certainly would have failed IQ tests. And it was one of the reasons I left school when I was 15 years old. And if I – if I’m not interested in something, I don’t grasp it.
- Richard Branson
I think the word rich is all relative.
- Joel Olsteen
I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.
- Og Mandino
One of the most distinguished psychiatrists living, Dr. Carl Jung, says in his book Modern Man in Search of a Soul (*): During the past thirty years, people from all the civilised countries of the earth have consulted me. I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among all my patients in the second half of life-that is to say, over thirty-five-there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given to their followers, and none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.
- Dale Carnegie
I don’t think there’s anything unique about human intelligence.
- Bill Gates
This is Day 1 for the Internet and, if we execute well, for Amazon.com. Today, online commerce saves customers money and precious time. Tomorrow, through personalization, online commerce will accelerate the very process of discovery. Amazon.com uses the Internet to create real value for its customers and, by doing so, hopes to create an enduring franchise, even in established and large markets.
- Jeff Bezos
Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.
- Walt Disney
I didn’t follow up on the exchanges we had on Time Warner Cable (TWC) that were mentioned in the media because we were not ready.
- Patrick Drahi
It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.
- Jeff Bezos
Use technology to remind people that we are really human and civilization is meant to connect together. Civilization is meant to be easy, and the technology to completely disappear. And should be easy to pick up.
- Jack Dorsey
In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.
- Reed Hastings
If you’re interested in ‘balancing’ work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable.
- Donald Trump
He had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed.
- Thomas Edison
Be factual. Lying is really, really a bad idea, mostly because they’ll find you out. And then you’ll never get another item in that outlet for as long as they remember you, which will be forever.
- Michael Levine
How do you tap in to what God has already done? Very simple: just act like you’re blessed, talk like you’re blessed, walk like you’re blessed, think like you’re blessed, smile like you’re blessed, dress like you’re blessed. Put actions behind your faith, and one day you will see it become a reality.
- Joel Olsteen
There is no such thing as a good tax.
- Winston Churchill
Dell’s a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There’s enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.
- Michael Dell
Refuse to accept partial completeness.
- Timothy Ferriss
About three million computers get sold every year in China, but people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.
- Bill Gates
If you run a corporation, your job is to maximize the return on investment for your investors. Good for you. But by the same token, we have to remember that corporations have no compassion. That’s why legislation and regulations are necessary.
- Russell Simmons
Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.
- Gail Devers
Knowledge isn’t power until it is applied.
- Dale Carnegie
You have a real chance to make an impact, but you have to do it in the first 90 days. Otherwise they’ll think it’s going to be business as usual.
- David Novak
I may be over the top on this, but I just don’t want to like my competitors. I want my people to believe that whenever he and our other competitors succeed, we will be less able to do all the things we want to do.
- Phil Knight
Hard feelings pass. Don’t suffer fools or you’ll become one.
- Timothy Ferriss
If your offering itself isn’t remarkable, then it’s invisible — no matter how much you spend on well-crafted advertising.
- Seth Godin
No amount of ability is of the slightest avail without honor.
- Andrew Carnegie
If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time – a tremendous whack.
- Winston Churchill
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
Life is not a portfolio: not for a startup founder, and not for any individual. An entrepreneur cannot “diversify” herself: you cannot run dozens of companies at the same time and then hope that one of them works out well. Less obvious but just as important, an individual cannot diversify his own life by keeping dozens of equally possible careers in ready reserve.
- Peter Thiel
Goals enable you to do more for yourself and others, too.
- Zig Ziglar
How you look, talk, and market your business is what should be keeping everyone busy.
- Bryan Smith
I think anything that requires real global breakthroughs requires a degree of intensity and sustained effort that cannot be done part time, so it’s something you have to do around the clock, and that doesn’t compute with our existing educational system.
- Peter Thiel
Digital reading will completely take over. It’s lightweight and it’s fantastic for sharing. Over time it will take over.
- Bill Gates
The first ten minutes of sorting through clothing was like choosing which child of mine should live or die.
- Timothy Ferriss
We all know that there are these exemplars who can take the toughest students, and they’ll teach them two-and-a-half years of math in a single year.
- Bill Gates
‘You have to come to your closed doors before you get to your open doors… What if you knew you had to go through 32 closed doors before you got to your open door? Well, then you’d come to closed door number eight and you’d think, ‘Great, I got another one out of the way’… Keep moving forward.’
- Joel Olsteen
A company is like a shark, it either has to move forward or it dies.
- Larry Ellison
The habit of doing more than is necessary can only be earned through practice.
- Seth Godin
I have ways of making money that you know nothing about…(if you’re firm won’t sell) you will stand alone, Your firm can never make any more money in Cleveland. No use trying to do business in competition with Standard Oil Company. If you do (continue to fight) it will end in your being wiped out.
- John D. Rockefeller
Blackjack is very scientific. There’s always a right answer and a wrong answer. Do you take a card, increase your bet, bet big or bet small. There’s absolutely a right and wrong answer.
- Charles Ergen
Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.
- Bill Gates
The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.
- John C. Maxwell
Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.
- Elon Musk
The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
- Rupert Murdoch
I’ve changed my will to show my concern for animal rights.
- Stephen Wynn
The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places,
- Peter Thiel
My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.
- Joel Olsteen
A lot of psychological principles and even medical principles, you see them coming around to what the Bible said hundreds of years ago: a merry heart is good like a medicine.
- Joel Olsteen
It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill
Three out of four of us who are self-employed consider ourselves to be entrepreneurs. Most of the others are self-employed professionals, such as doctors and accountants.
- Thomas J Stanley
The quality of our integration will be judged, not by the ultimate costs in hitting our targets, but instead by the level of service we give to our clients throughout the process. That’s kind of my 8-to-5 job. My 5-to-8 job is what’s the next move? Where else in health care do we see inefficiencies, that we see a splintered system with tremendous cost overruns?
- George Paz
Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.
- Elon Musk
No matter how many times you get knocked down, keep getting back up. God sees your resolve. He sees your determination. And when you do everything you can do, that’s when God will step in and do what you can’t do.
- Joel Olsteen
You hit what you aim at, and if you aim at nothing you will hit it every time.
- Zig Ziglar
To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.
- George Soros
Alternating periods of activity and rest is necessary to survive, let alone thrive. Capacity, interest, and mental endurance all wax and wane. Plan accordingly.
- Timothy Ferriss
I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I actually wanted to be Bruce Lee.
- Jack Dorsey
I tell my employees that we’re in the service business, and it’s incidental that we fly airplanes.
- Herb Kelleher
Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human.
- Seth Godin
Learn to speak God’s favor over every area of your life. Remember, the more favor-minded you are, the more of God’s favor you’re going to experience.
- Joel Olsteen
The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness…..
- Thomas Edison
Don’t interrupt me while I’m interrupting.
- Winston Churchill
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
- Henry Ford
Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
- Winston Churchill
The more you talk about negative things in your life, the more you call them in. Speak victory not defeat.
- Joel Olsteen
You don’t have to fear defeat if you believe it may reveal powers that you didn’t know you possessed.
- Napoleon Hill
Success (a win) doesn’t make you, and failure (a loss) doesn’t make you.
- Zig Ziglar
Insufficient Education (not formal education).
- Napoleon Hill
It’s about stories. If I can tell the story to America, whether it’s Riesling or a boxer from Harlem, it will sell. I know on my gravestone it’s going to be, ‘Storyteller.’
- Gary Vaynerchuk
No matter what happens, always be yourself.
- Dale Carnegie
Your customers are only satisfied because their expectations are so low and because no one else is doing better. Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create Raving Fans.
- Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
- John D. Rockefeller
Keep on keeping on!!!
- Joel Olsteen
You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.
- Oprah Winfrey
The best teacher is very interactive.
- Bill Gates
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
[On Howard White] Rather than say to young people that they should have a goal and focus on it, he reverses it: ‘Any road will get you there if you don’t know where you’re going.’ Most often, on reflection, you will grow to understand that what had passed for a funny commnet of the moment has a good deal of wisdom behind it.
- Phil Knight
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
- Winston Churchill
Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn’t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value.
- Warren Buffett
What do you want? is too imprecise to produce a meaningful and actionable answer.
- Timothy Ferriss
You have to believe in what you do in order to get what you want.
- Larry Ellison
Chinese consumption, particularly high-end consumption, is booming.
- Wang Jianlin
Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
It’s easier to add things on to a PC than it’s ever been before. It’s one click, and boom, it comes down.
- Bill Gates
If you are a big company, a big website, and lots of users come to your website, you will have attacks, and you have to deal with that. It just cannot be a reason to take actions to exit certain markets.
- Robin Li
Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land, – it largely increases the product.
- P.T. Barnum
The group has continued to dedicate itself to its core businesses in property, infrastructure development, hotel operations and telecommunications. As for our operations in China, we expect to reap good returns from the investments in infrastructure, government housing and city core redevelopment projects as time goes by. Our strategic foothold in telecommunications will allow us to become an important player in the telecom industry.
- Cheng Yu-tung
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.
- Winston Churchill