Effective people know when to stop assessing and make a tough call, even without total information. Little is worse than a manager who can’t cut bait.
- Jack Welch
Notable Quotables
If you don’t have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don’t take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It’s crazy.
- Jack Welch
Security is, I would say, our top priority because for all the exciting things you will be able to do with computers – organizing your lives, staying in touch with people, being creative – if we don’t solve these security problems, then people will hold back.
- Bill Gates
I’m a very big believer in equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcome. I don’t believe in equal outcome because unfortunately life’s not like that. It would be a pretty boring place if it was. But I really believe in equal opportunity. Equal opportunity to me more than anything means a great education.
- Steve Jobs
The economy in Hong Kong remained on a declining path. Occurrence of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (‘SARS’) in March this year led to a sharp drop in consumer spending and an increasing unemployment rate. The decline in the economy resulted in downward adjustment in the property market.
- Lee Shau Kee
If You Want to Gather Honey, Don’t Kick Over the Beehive.
- Dale Carnegie
Take time to be kind and to say ‘thank you.’
- Zig Ziglar
If there is to be a low-cost Uber, Uber will be the low-cost Uber.
- Travis Kalanick
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
the Mach3—leaving hundreds of millions of people to a more painful daily battle with stubble.19
- James C. Collins
Lack of ambition to aim above mediocrity.
- Napoleon Hill
The potential financial reward for building the ‘next Windows’ is so great that there will never be a shortage of new technologies seeking to challenge it.
- Bill Gates
He climbs highest who helps another up.
- Zig Ziglar
Leadership, very simply, is about two things: 1. Truth and trust. 2. Ceaselessly seeking the former, relentlessly building the latter.
- Jack Welch
Friends are made my many acts and lost by only one.
- Harvey Mackay
I said a long time ago that Foursquare can make cities better. You have these augmented realities like Foursquare and Twitter and Facebook that provide these virtual nodes and instant feedback from anywhere, adding annotation around a physical places.
- Jack Dorsey
I care about our employees more than anybody in my company. I care about my kids, too, but that doesn’t mean I give them everything that they want.
- Charles Ergen
Tesla is becoming a real car company.
- Elon Musk
My saddlebags are why Spanx exist! Now that I have a baby I also have a muffin top.
- Sara Blakely
On engagement, we’re already seeing that mobile users are more likely to be daily active users than desktop users. They’re more likely to use Facebook six or seven days of the week.
- Mark Zuckerberg
It was a big momentum deal, so when the bottom comes out from under it, you have to go back to the well and start the whole thing.
- Travis Kalanick
Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
- Steve Ballmer
Windows 8 is key to the future, the Surface computer.
- Bill Gates
I was fascinated with jeans, because you can impress your life upon the jeans you wear. The way you sit imprints on the jeans.
- Jack Dorsey
Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.
- Herb Kelleher
Nobody ever lost a dollar by underestimating the taste of the American public.
- P.T. Barnum
God made you a masterpiece – be blessed, secure, disciplined and equipped.
- Joel Olsteen
If you have your health, if you have people in your life to love, you are blessed. Slow down and enjoy the simple things in life.
- Joel Olsteen
Everything tends towards catastrophe and collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that?
- Winston Churchill
The employees who share innovative ideas may also be the folks who have some hidden talents that would help incorporate their suggestions.
- Harvey Mackay
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.
- Elon Musk
The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.
- Michael Bloomberg
We just sort of factor all that information into the computer between the ears and come up with conclusions.
- Phil Knight
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep form meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
All the best people in life seem to like LINUX.
- Steve Wozniak
When the tech geeks talk, I pay close attention.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Stones of judgment, discouragement or doubt may be thrown at you. You can’t stop them, but you can make the choice to keep your walls up and not let them affect you.
- Joel Olsteen
You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.
- Bill Cosby
Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome.
- Jerry Seinfeld
It’s harder, but we’re still finding oil in Oklahoma today. The bar has been raised on startup companies, but it can still be done. Every regulation and every rule limits you, but, yes, it can still be done. That’s the beauty of living in a free country and having the freedom to have an idea and become an entrepreneur.
- Harold Hamm
Oh, I think there are a lot of people who would be buying and selling online today that go up there and they get the information, but then when it comes time to type in their credit card they think twice because they’re not sure about how that might get out and what that might mean for them.
- Bill Gates
I want the services to look and sound like the Grammys. It’s not showy, but we represent God, and it should be first class.
- Joel Olsteen
Why settle for the ‘get by’ when in the long run the good costs less?
- Zig Ziglar
Form the habit of systematic saving by putting aside a definite percentage of your income. Money in the bank gives one a very safe foundation of courage…
- Napoleon Hill
You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.
- Henry Ford
When I look at the 10% of Americans who control 90% of all the shares in America and 73% of the wealth, I understand exactly where their wealth was derived. Many acquired that wealth in much the same way as Henry Ford and Thomas Edison (who was worth far more than Bill Gates at his day and age). The list includes Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Warren Buffet, Rupert Murdock, Anita Roddick, Richard Branson, and others who all acquired their wealth the same way. They found their spirit and their mission; built a business; and allowed others to share in the dreams, the risks as well as the rewards. You can do the same thing if you want. Just follow the same diagram rich dad guided me with: the B-I Triangle.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurt his sense of importance and arouses resentment.
- Dale Carnegie
Just about everything you learned in school about life is wrong, but the wrongest thing might very well be this: Being well rounded is the secret to success.
- Seth Godin
I’d get kicked out of buildings all day long, people would rip up my business card in my face. It’s a humbling business to be in. But I knew I could sell and I knew I wanted to sell something I had created. I cut the feet out of those pantyhose and I knew I was on to something. This was it.
- Sara Blakely
You know, if you look back in the 1930s, the money went to infrastructure. The bridges, the municipal buildings, the roads, those were all built with stimulus money spent on infrastructure. This stimulus bill has fundamentally gone, started out with a $500 rebate check, remember. That went to buy flat-screen TVs made in China.
- Michael Bloomberg
In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.
- Jorge Paulo Lemann
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
- Winston Churchill
My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure
- Abraham Lincoln
But the three rules I always stuck with were 1) Be on time 2) No profanity and 3) Never criticize a teammate.
- David Novak
The rumours of the demise of the U.S. manufacturing industry are greatly exaggerated.
- Elon Musk
Weak desires bring weak results.
- Napoleon Hill
Run your business in harmony with God’s laws.
- David Green
This was a decision we reached after a number of years speaking to the human rights groups, and specifically people who really cared about China on human rights. I understand why other people might have other views.
- Sergey Brin
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
- Bill Gates
As a group, we feel that our daughters are financially handicapped in comparison to our sons. Men seem to make much more money even within the same occupational categories. That is why most of us would not hesitate to share some of our wealth with our daughters. Our sons, and men in general, have the deck of economic cards stacked in their favor. They should not need subsidies from their parents.
- Thomas J Stanley
Most people already know what they’re doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.
- Joel Olsteen
It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor.
- Timothy Ferriss
I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.
- Joel Olsteen
Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.
- Walt Disney
Although we can’t predict the future, our orders for the first weeks of this quarter are in line with the expectations we discussed in our fourth quarter earnings call.
- John Chambers
With communication technology in general, there’s a kind of certain critical mass of people. Once you get to 15% of the world’s entire population using one communication technology, that’s a big deal. It’s beyond the theoretical at this point. The people who think it’s a fad have probably not been paying that much attention.
- Ben Horowitz
Being a good husband is like being a good stand-up comic – you need ten years before you can even call yourself a beginner.
- Jerry Seinfeld
Outsiders are fascinated by the great fortunes being made inside China, but they pay less attention to the wealthy Chinese trying hard to get their money out of the country. Poorer Chinese just save everything they can and hope it will be enough. Every class of people in China takes the future deadly seriously.
- Peter Thiel
I am not influenced by the techniques or fashions of any other motion picture company.
- Walt Disney
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
So, if you look at what’s common among some of the companies I have, including the Four Seasons, NewsCorp, George V, the Plaza, these are all irreplaceable brands in their own fields.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
If you ask me whether the future is better than today, I would say yes; but the people must be ready to pay for services and pay their taxes.
- Aliko Dangote
The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
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
The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.
- Peter Drucker
Every employee in a company depends on the C.E.O. to make fast, high-quality decisions.
- Ben Horowitz
A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
- Richard Branson
I was never much of a reader when I was a boy. Books bored me. I liked action. But I spent a lot of time thinking about things. I’d imagine all kinds of situations and how I would handle them.
- Ray Kroc
I like going to Burning Man, for example. An environment where people can try new things. I think as technologists we should have some safe places where we can try out new things and figure out the effect on society. What’s the effect on people, without having to deploy it to the whole world.
- Larry Page
The noblest art is that of making others happy.
- P.T. Barnum
A peace talk is always difficult, always complicated.
- Jack Ma
MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once.
- Peter Thiel
Being a winner is much different from having the potential to win. Everyone has the potential, it’s what you do with that potential that really matters.
- Zig Ziglar
I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along with it.
- Walt Disney
Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.
- Peter Drucker
Every noteworthy achievement met with some sort of temporary setback before success came.
- Napoleon Hill
You are closer than you think.
- Joel Olsteen
You can either fit in or stand out. Not both.
- Seth Godin
If I had to single out one element in my life that has made difference for me, it would be a passion to compete.
- Sam Walton
Motivation gets you going and habit gets you there.
- Zig Ziglar
I really believed that I said then, and I still do. But we figured out a way to grow, and stay profitable, and there was no logical place to stop. The way I approached managing the business, I always tried to maintain a sense of hands-on, personal supervision – usually flying around to take a look at our stores on a regular basis. But from the very beginning, even on my paper routes in college, I have also been a delegator, trying to hire the best possible people to manage the stores. That’s been the case since back in Newport….We’re big now. We’re really big. That’s not something I like to focus on. I always wanted to be the best retailer in the world, not necessarily the biggest…(being big poses opportunities), but being big also poses big dangers. It has ruined many a fine company – including some giant retailers – who started out strong and got bloated or out of touch or were slow to react to the needs of their customers. Here’s the point: the biggest Wal-Mart gets, the more essential it is that we think small. Because that is exactly how we have become a big corporation.
- Sam Walton
The slowdown in futures orders clearly signals that revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 1998 will be below our previous expectations. This is largely a result of the slowdown in the Asia Pacific market, where we now anticipate more moderate revenue growth in fiscal 1998 after increasing 84 percent on a constant dollar basis in fiscal 1997.
- Phil Knight
The leader of the market today may not necessarily be the leader tomorrow.
- Ma Huateng
Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one.
- Peter Thiel
STARTUP THINKING New technology tends to come from new ventures—startups. From the Founding Fathers in politics to the Royal Society in science to Fairchild Semiconductor’s “traitorous eight” in business, small groups of people bound together by a sense of mission have changed the world for the better. The easiest explanation for this is negative: it’s hard to develop new things in big organizations, and it’s even harder to do it by yourself. Bureaucratic hierarchies move slowly, and entrenched interests shy away from risk. In the most dysfunctional organizations, signaling that work is being done becomes a better strategy for career advancement than actually doing work (if this describes your company, you should quit now). At the other extreme, a lone genius might create a classic work of art or literature, but he could never create an entire industry. Startups operate on the principle that you need to work with other people to get stuff done, but you also need to stay small enough so that you actually can. Positively defined, a startup is the largest group of people you can convince of a plan to build a different future. A new company’s most important strength is new thinking: even more important than nimbleness, small size affords space to think. This book is about the questions you must ask and answer to succeed in the business of doing new things: what follows is not a manual or a record of knowledge but an exercise in thinking. Because that is what a startup has to do: question received ideas and rethink business from scratch.
- Peter Thiel
And people who take risk intelligently can usually actually make a lot more progress than people who don’t.
- Reid Hoffman
The internet had yet to take off, partly because its commercial use was restricted until late 1992 and partly due to the lack of user-friendly web browsers.
- Peter Thiel
The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.
- Walt Disney