True happiness… is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
- Helen Keller
Notable Quotables
I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t go and continue to use every advantage that I can to promote New York’s cause.
- Michael Bloomberg
The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.
- P.T. Barnum
The first dollar is the most you will get if you don’t love what you are doing.
- Ray Kroc
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
If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied with my day?
- Timothy Ferriss
Stop whining, start hustling.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Refrain from throwing the executive under the bus.
- Ben Horowitz
People who understand the power law will hesitate more than others when it comes to founding a new venture: they know how tremendously successful they could become by joining the very best company while it’s growing fast.
- Peter Thiel
mejor mamá que usted puede ser. Posiblemente, yo nunca seré el mejor pastor del mundo. Quizá no seré el mejor esposo ni el mejor padre, pero he decidido ser lo mejor que yo puedo ser y no me sentiré mal conmigo. Si otra persona puede hacer lo que hago mejor que yo, que bueno, yo no estoy en una competencia ni me estoy comparando con nadie. A mi manera de pensar, ¡yo soy el mejor! Y sé que estoy haciendo lo mejor que puedo. Eso es lo que nos enseña la Escritura. Dice: Así que, cada uno someta a prueba su propia obra…
- Joel Olsteen
When you work under the cloud of anxiety, the best strategy is to play it safe, because if (when!) it fails, you’ll be blameless.
- Seth Godin
Think and Thank. Think of all we have to be grateful for, and thank God for all our boons and bounties.
- Dale Carnegie
Money doesn’t change you, it reveals who you are when you no longer have to be nice.
- Timothy Ferriss
We are beginning to see the benefits of global consolidation.
- Lakshmi Mittal
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
- Benjamin Franklin
The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald’s the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had, they didn’t want to be bothered with more risks and more demands.
- Ray Kroc
There are two main drivers of asset class returns – inflation and growth.
- Ray Dalio
The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin.
- Seth Godin
The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.
- James C. Collins
The bottom line is that you only have the rights you fight for.
- Timothy Ferriss
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
I feel that people I trusted – I don’t know who, on what level – have let me down, and I think they have behaved disgracefully, and it’s for them to pay. And I think, frankly, that I’m the best person to see it through.
- Rupert Murdoch
The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it’s going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there’s going to be an extinction event.
- Elon Musk
The bigger we get as a company, the more important it becomes for us to shift responsibility and authority toward the front lines, toward the department manager who’s stocking the shelves and talking to the customer. When we were much smaller, I probably wasn’t as quick to catch on to this idea as I do should have been. But as an avid student of management theory, back in the mid-seventies I started reading the work of W. Edwards Deming, the famous statistician who taught so much to the Japanese about improving their productivity and competitiveness.
- Sam Walton
You may think you’ve got a long way to go, but you need to look back at how far you’ve already come. You may not be everything you want to be but atleast you can thank God that you’re not what you used to be.
- Joel Olsteen
Wal-Mart’s leaders had obviously made a point of educating and informing everyone at all levels about all aspects of the company, and that shows a real respect for their people.
- David Novak
Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.
- Jeff Bezos
Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.
- Rupert Murdoch
More than that, internal peace is what enables a startup to survive at all. When a startup fails, we often imagine it succumbing to predatory rivals in a competitive ecosystem. But every company is also its own ecosystem, and factional strife makes it vulnerable to outside threats. Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease: the technical cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause remains hidden from plain view.
- Peter Thiel
The customer reaction to Dell going private has been a lot more positive than I would have ever imagined. Customers see it as – ‘You don’t have to be distracted. Now you can totally focus on your business.’ So they see it as a positive.
- Michael Dell
Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed.
- Seth Godin
There are only two kinds of employees that I’ve run across in 30 years. There are ones that get results, and ones that make excuses. If you’re in that second camp, you’re not going to like Dish.
- Charles Ergen
For all their bitching about what’s holding them back, most people have a lot of trouble coming up with the defined dreams they’re being held from.
- Timothy Ferriss
You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
- Warren Buffett
Failing forward” is the ability to get back up after you’ve been knocked down, learn from your mistake, and move forward in a better direction.
- John C. Maxwell
Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
- Steve Jobs
The book ‘Do You!’ is about your inner voice. And when you connect to that voice then you – then the freedom comes. And we’re only here to be happy. So happy makes money. Money doesn’t make happy.
- Russell Simmons
There’s no recipe for motivating teams when your business has turned to crap.
- Ben Horowitz
No man is ever whipped, until he quits in his own mind…A winner never quits and quitter never wins. No follower of this philosphy can reasonably expect accumulate a fortune without experience temporary defeat.
- Napoleon Hill
If there is to be a low-cost Uber, Uber will be the low-cost Uber.
- Travis Kalanick
The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn’t think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
- Steve Ballmer
It is a very big exaggeration to say I am a friend of Mr. Putin.
- Alexei Mordashov
My natural inclination to be improv rather than an educated character serves me well.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Amazon made its first 10x improvement in a particularly visible way: they offered at least 10 times as many books as any other bookstore.
- Peter Thiel
The Starbucks customer and the Teavana customer are two very different customers, two different need states that are highly complimentary.
- Howard Schultz
Those who keep the peace of their inner selves in the midst of the tumult of the modern city are immune from nervous diseases.
- Dale Carnegie
VaynerMedia filters the world how humans interact. This is how people are going to make buying decisions.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I’ve seen executives improve their performance and skill sets, I’ve never seen one lose the support of the organization and then regain it.
- Ben Horowitz
I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.
- Bill Gates
Your faith is very important. I have done the math, and you are going to be dead a whole lot longer that you will be alive.
- Zig Ziglar
The word ‘Spanx’ was funny. It made people laugh. No one ever forgot it.
- Sara Blakely
Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Backed by our conviction, we remain committed to investing wholeheartedly to improve the people’s living conditions, regardless of all uncertainties.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Mormonism is a little different, but I still see them as brothers in Christ.
- Joel Olsteen
Nearly every person who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.
- Thomas Edison
One of [Bill] Bowerman’s more legendary innovations is the Waffle outsole, which he discovered by pouring rubber into a waffle iron.
- Phil Knight
Research shows that there is only half as much variation in student achievement between schools as there is among classrooms in the same school. If you want your child to get the best education possible, it is actually more important to get him assigned to a great teacher than to a great school.
- Bill Gates
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
- Henry Ford
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
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.
- Dale Carnegie
Monotony is the awful reward of the careful.
- A. G. Buckham
It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them.
- Winston Churchill
The goal is not to simply eliminate the bad, which does nothing more than leave you with a vacuum, but to pursue and experience the best in the world.
- Timothy Ferriss
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
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
- Seneca
We’d like to believe that efficient, useful, cost-effective products and services are the way to succeed. That hard work is its own reward. Most marketers carry around a worldview that describes themselves as innovators, not storytellers.
- Seth Godin
Work hard and persevere.
- Lee Shau Kee
No question about it, alot of my attitude towards money stems from growing up during a pretty hardscrabble time in our country’s history: the Great Depression.
- Sam Walton
The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.
- Bill Gates
SLOW DANCE Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask: How are you? Do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. Ever told your child, We’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say, Hi”? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last. When you run so fast to get somewhere You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music Before the song is over.
- Timothy Ferriss
In line with the objective to diversify the business of your Group, Henderson Cyber was established to focus on businesses in the telecommunications and information technology fields.
- Lee Shau Kee
We were comfortable with first-quarter results.
- John Chambers
The dollar has lost 90% of its value in the last century.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Well, you have the public not wanting any new spending, you have the Republicans not wanting any new taxes, you have the Democrats not wanting any new spending cuts, you have the markets not wanting any new borrowing, and you have the economists wanting all of the above. And that leads to paralysis.
- Michael Bloomberg
The number of residential units which have been booked in the financial statements of the Group in the period under review totalled 5,800 and amounted to approximately HK$14 billion in aggregate value.
- Lee Shau Kee
I’m a job creator.
- Stephen Wynn
Other people and things can stop you temporarily. You’re the only one who can do it permanently.
- Zig Ziglar
I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly.
- Steve Martin
The best ideas in a company are the ones that people come up with themselves because then they really own their ideas and are committed to making them work. – David Novak CEO of YUM Brands
- David Novak
It is equally important that diversification is an ongoing process.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Try to look at your weakness and convert it into your strength. That’s success.
- Zig Ziglar
We don’t want disruption where we just move things around from point a to point b. We want a direction, we want a purpose.
- Jack Dorsey
My new favorite word is ‘awkward.’…The reason we need to be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
- Seth Godin
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.
- Dale Carnegie
We create stress for ourselves because you feel like you have to do it. You have to. I don’t feel that anymore.
- Oprah Winfrey
After the decline in the past few years, the worst moment in the economy of Hong Kong is now behind us. The local property market is expected to show a steady upward trend as from this point.
- Lee Shau Kee
When Baby Boomers grow up and write books to explain why one or another individual is successful, they point to the power of a particular individual’s context as determined by chance. But they miss the even bigger social context for their own preferred explanations: a whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning. Gladwell at first appears to be making a contrarian critique of the myth of the self-made businessman, but actually his own account encapsulates the conventional view of a generation.
- Peter Thiel
Send out a cheerful, positive greeting, and most of the time you will get back a cheerful, positive greeting. It’s also true that if you send out a negative greeting, you will, in most cases, get back a negative greeting.
- Zig Ziglar
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
The quality of a leader is reflected in the standards they set for themselves
- Ray Kroc
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
Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.
- John F. Kennedy
I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick – it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.
- Sara Blakely
Most people think companies are basically evil. They get a bad rap. And I think that’s somewhat correct.
- Larry Page
We can say with certainty – or 90% probability – that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.
- Peter Drucker
After its return to China, Hong Kong has become an inseparable part of this large country by exerting its business strengths to become a vital member of the country and developing its four pillar industries, namely finance, commerce, shipping and professional services.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Never consider the possibility of failure. As long as you persist, you will be successful.
- Brian Tracy
Even working remotely should be avoided, because misalignment can creep in whenever colleagues aren’t together full-time, in the same place, every day.
- Peter Thiel
The dangers of unchecked bureauracy are a constant thorn in the CEO’s side.
- Jack Welch