I believe social responsibility begins with a strong, competitive company. Only a healthy enterprise can improve and enrich the lives of people and their communities.
- Jack Welch
Notable Quotables
Politics are close to me, but there are different ways of participating in politics.
- Vagit Alekperov
I have plenty of money to do what I want to do, and I have the relationships.
- Timothy Ferriss
Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
- Dale Carnegie
They that soar too high, often fall hard, making a low and level Dwelling preferable. The tallest Trees are most in the Power of the Winds, and Ambitious Men of the Blasts of Fortune. Buildings have need of a good Foundation, that lie so much exposed to the Weather.
- Dale Carnegie
I have made the tough decisions, always with an eye toward the bottom line. Perhaps it’s time America was run like a business.
- Donald Trump
Trees will improve property values, take pollutants out of the air, help with water runoff.
- Michael Bloomberg
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
I think that more flow of information, the ability to stay connected to more people makes people more effective as people. And I mean, that’s true socially. It makes you have more fun, right. It feels better to be more connected to all these people. You have a richer life.
- Mark Zuckerberg
We’re still in a recession. We’re not gonna be out of it for a while, but we will get out.
- Warren Buffett
The ‘morality of compromise’ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.
- Andrew Carnegie
The right quote can inspire people to change their ways.
- Zig Ziglar
The minimum effective dose (MED) is defined simply: the smallest dose that will produce a desired outcome.
- Timothy Ferriss
I try to create businesses that I think are not hurtful.
- Russell Simmons
The Obama representatives like Robert Gibbs attack people viciously, but people like me will not be silent and will answer them back.
- Donald Trump
The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.
- John C. Maxwell
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- Winston Churchill
The important thing about mobile is, everybody has a computer in their pocket. The implications of so many people connected to the Internet all the time from the standpoint of education is incredible.
- Ben Horowitz
Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t so you can spend the rest of your life like most people cant.
- Warren G. Tracy
is his or hers. PRINCIPLE 8 Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view. PRINCIPLE 9 Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires. PRINCIPLE 10 Appeal to the nobler motives. PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas. PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.
- Dale Carnegie
A lot of hacking is playing with other people, you know, getting them to do strange things.
- Steve Wozniak
You need editors, not brand managers,who will push the envelope to make [a brand media property] go forward.
- Seth Godin
An Enemy Called Average
- Jim Collins
When the Internet first came, I thought it was just the beacon of freedom. People could communicate with anyone, anywhere, and nobody could stop it.
- Steve Wozniak
A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt, long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.
- Winston Churchill
Whenever you are speaking, both your passion for your business and your appearance will have a lasting impact on your audience.
- Robert Kiyosaki
He climbs highest who helps another up.
- Zig Ziglar
God doesn’t look at how much we do, but with how much love we do it.
- Mother Teresa
A goal properly set is halfway reached.
- Zig Ziglar
The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.
- Joel Olsteen
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
- Zig Ziglar
A company will be most successful if the senior managers optimize for the company’s success (think of this as a global optimization) as opposed to their own personal success (local optimization).
- Ben Horowitz
By working only when you are most effective, life is both more productive and more enjoyable. It’s the perfect example of having your cake and eating it, too.
- Timothy Ferriss
Measuring and establishing facts at every step of the process. Without facts, assumptions and misperceptions will defeat whatever reason and good judgment can be brought to effort
- Service Profit Chain
I am a man who has always needed heros.
- Phil Knight
Economic medicine that was previously meted out by the cupful has recently been dispensed by the barrel. These once unthinkable dosages will almost certainly bring on unwelcome after-effects. Their precise nature is anyone’s guess, though one likely consequence is an onslaught of inflation.
- Warren Buffett
Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We’ll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I’m very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.
- Steve Ballmer
I’m in the shoe business. Look at these things. They’re called Tigers. I faked out the company. I’m the US distributor. Come with me.
- Phil Knight
Now that we had a name, we had to have a trademark for the side of the shoe. It was 1971, and Ford had spent $2 million getting a trademark. We didn’t have $2 million, so I went by the graphic arts department at Portland State, and there was a woman there saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to get enough money for the dress for this prom,’ And I said, ‘I have a job for you.’ I paid her $2 an hour, and she spent 17 and a half hours. So $35 and she came up with what is now the swoosh.
- Phil Knight
We drink the can, not the beverage
- Seth Godin
FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.
- Ben Horowitz
I’ve actually not read any books on time management.
- Elon Musk
The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks.
- Andrew Carnegie
If you wait until all the lights are green before you leave home, you’ll never get started on your trip to the top.
- Zig Ziglar
Writing a book is a tremendous experience. It pays off intellectually. It clarifies your thinking.It builds credibility. It is a living engine of marketing and idea spreading, working every dayto deliver your message with authority.You should write one.
- Seth Godin
Life’s too short to spend it trying to keep others happy. You can’t please everyone. To fulfill your destiny, stay true to your heart.
- Joel Olsteen
Well, you know, News Corp is the only real media global – that has a global presence that’s involved in TV production, in movies, in publishing, in newspapers, digital media, et cetera. So for a company like that to function, clearly it does not depend only on Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill
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
Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.
- Bill Gates
Essentially, whoever is successful, whoever is going to do things that make a difference, is going to be talked about.
- Mukesh Ambani
There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems.
- Henry Ford
Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.
- Socrates
You read these management books that say, ‘These are the hard things about running a company.’ But those aren’t really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt.
- Ben Horowitz
On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, ‘What God do you pray to?’ What beliefs do you hold?’
- Michael Bloomberg
Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want.
- Dale Carnegie
Changes that used to occur over quarters are literally occurring over months.
- John Chambers
The best way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter Drucker
Value and purpose are about understanding the specific benefits you will help people receive if they receive what you have for them.
- Zig Ziglar
The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully.
- Napoleon Hill
Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.
- Dale Carnegie
You have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart.
- Thomas J Watson
Don’t romance Wall Street. You don’t want investors who are only concerned about the quarter, or who are working on their exit strategy from day one. You want shareholders to own you forever. If we have no trading at all, I consider that a tremendous accomplishment.
- Warren Buffett
My biggest mistake is probably weighing too much on someone’s talent and not someone’s personality. I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.
- Elon Musk
Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don’t make
- Donald Trump
Americans are in a cycle of fear which leads to people not wanting to spend and not wanting to make investments, and that leads to more fear. We’ll break out of it. It takes time.
- Warren Buffett
I think I may not be able to retire.
- Tadashi Yanai
Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.
- Timothy Ferriss
The characteristics that make a good advertisement or commercial – it’s memorable, engaging, entertaining, focused, sends a clear message, makes you want to see it again, makes you want to buy the product.
- David Novak
A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.
- Winston Churchill
Students of public speaking continually ask, How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience? Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer’s wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as the train goes by? How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines? Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be half scared to death. There are a great many wetless bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.
- Dale Carnegie
While evaluating his future professional opportunities, Gary has chosen to spend some time with his family.
- John Chambers
This is like the Six Sigma approach to quality. Six Sigma refers to the quest for continuous improvement, ultimately leading to 3.4 defects per million units. The problem is that once you’re heading down this road, there’s no room left for amazing improvements and remarkable innovations. Either you rolled ten strikes or you didn’t. Organizations that earn dramatic success always do it in markets where asymptotes don’t exist, or where they can be shattered. If you could figure out how to bowl 320, that would be amazing. Until that happens, pick a different sport if you want to be a linchpin.
- Seth Godin
Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.
- Napoleon Hill
Consumers, we’re too busy to pay attention to advertising, but we’re desperate to find good stuff that solves our problems.
- Seth Godin
Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.
- Sam Walton
If you want to build lifelong, loyal friendships, if you want to build trust, learn to protect your family members and friends even when they make mistakes.
- Joel Olsteen
I think that both parties should declare the debt limit as a political weapon of mass destruction which can’t be used. I mean, it is silly to have a country that has 237 years building up its reputation and then have people threaten to tear it down because they’re not getting some other matter.
- Warren Buffett
Nothing tells in the long run like a good judgment, and no sound judgment can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the stock exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.
- Andrew Carnegie
1. It is better to risk boldness than triviality.2. A bad plan is better than no plan.3. Competitive markets destroy profits.4. Sales matters just as much as product.
- Peter Thiel
For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.
- Jeff Bezos
Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they’re doing.
- Warren Buffett
Business leaders cannot be bystanders.
- Howard Schultz
You may never get to that perfect world that you’re waiting for where everything’s going to be perfect and you got that much money and your house paid off.
- Joel Olsteen
By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: ‘John, I’d love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I’ve got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said ‘no’ yesterday. Gotta run!
- Timothy Ferriss
Before you can be sure of your ability to transmute DESIRE into its monetary equivalent, you will require SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE of the service, merchandise or profession which you intend to offer in return for fortune.
- Napoleon Hill
Bill Gates was in his 20s when he started with $50,000 and became the richest man in the world with $90 billion. It’s a good idea that he did not ask too many people for their ideas on what they thought was possible for his life.
- Robert Kiyosaki
Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war. Stir up the mighty men. Let all the warriors draw near. Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say, I am strong.
- Joel 3:9
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
Some of us learn from other people’s mistakes and the rest of us have to be other people.
- Zig Ziglar
I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.
- Elon Musk
MOMENT IN BUSINESS happens only once.
- Peter Thiel
If you want people to know how much you care, show them how much you remember. Learn their names and use them often. It’s an important skill to develop.
- Harvey Mackay
I DECLARE God is going before me making crooked places straight. He has already lined up the right people, the right opportunities and solutions to problems I haven’t had. No person, no sickness, no disappointment, can stop His plan. What he promised will come to pass.
- Joel Olsteen
Investing for the poor requires participation from the entire community.
- Bill Gates
Microsoft’s an important partner for Dell, an important company in the industry.
- Michael Dell
Your workforce is your most valuable asset. The knowledge and skills they have represent the fuel that drives the engine of business – and you can leverage that knowledge.
- Harvey Mackay
The companies that refused to make hard choices, or refused to admit that anything much was happening, fared badly. If they survive, it is only because their respective governments will not let them go under.
- Peter Drucker
The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.
- Thomas Edison
Skype actually does get a fair bit of revenue.
- Bill Gates