Restructuring a job usually means restructuring a score of jobs, moving people around, and upsetting everybody. There is one exception: the exceedingly rare, truly exceptional man for whose sake the rule should be broken.
- Peter Drucker
Notable Quotables
When it comes to Starbucks, I take every threat very personally.
- Howard Schultz
People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
- Zig Ziglar
Any colour – so long as it’s black.
- Henry Ford
I believe people have to follow their dreams – I did.
- Larry Ellison
At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization—taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere.
- Peter Thiel
Rockefeller succeeded because he believed in the long –term prospects of the business and never treated it as a mirage that would soon fade.
- Ron Chernow
These are all commodity-focused issues. The old conceit of a retailer was that if you offered the right products at a fair price in a convenient location, you’d do fine if you watched your expenses. Today, the issues are totally different.
- Seth Godin
We are gods in the chrysalis.
- Dale Carnegie
You give before you get.
- Napoleon Hill
My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
- Winston Churchill
Apply the blacksmith’s homely principle when you are speaking. If you feel deeply about your subject you will be able to think of little else. Concentration is a process of distraction from less important matters. It is too late to think about the cut of your coat when once you are upon the platform, so centre your interest on what you are about to say—fill your mind with your speech-material and, like the infilling water in the glass, it will drive out your unsubstantial fears.
- Dale Carnegie
Athletic skills are acquired over a long period of time and after countless hours of practice.
- Zig Ziglar
If you’re going to have to swallow a frog, you don’t want to have to look at that sucker too long!
- Zig Ziglar
Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage.
- Sam Walton
Your job isn’t to do your job. Your job is to decide what to do next.
- Seth Godin
It is going to be a little, if you will, laboratory for sustainability in businesses of small scale
- Larry Ellison
As an entrepreneur, remove obstacles for your team. If there is anything that is holding the team back, get it out of the way.
- David Nilssen
If you’re in business, first and foremost, you have to be nice. Show your customers that you care.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Authors by the hundreds can tell you stories by the thousands of those rejection slips before they found a publisher who was willing to ‘gamble’ on an unknown.
- Zig Ziglar
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into smaller manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
- Mark Twain
Cutting prices or putting things on sale is not sustainable business strategy. The other side of it is that you can’t cut enough costs to save your way to prosperity.
- Howard Schultz
Spare the conquered and confront the proud.
- Winston Churchill
Here lies one who knew how to get around him men who were cleverer than himself.
- Dale Carnegie
Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.
- James C. Collins
There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.
- Bill Gates
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.
- Napoleon Hill
When I used to play sports, I’d be the one cheering the team on, ‘Come on, we can beat these guys!’ That’s just in me.
- Joel Olsteen
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
- Henry Ford
I deal with more practical issues of the Bible.
- Joel Olsteen
If you just work on stuff that you like and you’re passionate about, you don’t have to have a master plan with how things will play out.
- Mark Zuckerberg
I believe that one of life’s greatest risks is never daring to risk.
- Oprah Winfrey
Profitability comes from loyalty, productivity, and having a character base from which to work.
- Zig Ziglar
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
I hate recording all the shows for the week in one day, because I want to be able to mention current events and pop culture. If Madonna punches Britney in the face today, I want to reference that on ‘Wine Library TV’ tomorrow. Monday’s episode is always the best, because it’s hot off the press.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
Access to play should be a kid’s inalienable right.
- Phil Knight
You do not get what you want. You get what you negotiate.
- Harvey Mackay
Success is never accidental.
- Peter Thiel
Too many companies think they want to do a video blog to sell merchandise, but if you turn your site into QVC, you lose. I have an audience that trusts me. It’s about building a global brand – not selling four more bottles of Pinot Grigio.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I believe that success can be measured in the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have.
- Timothy Ferriss
Our household’s total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
- Thomas J Stanley
The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.
- Winston Churchill
We all need a daily checkup from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.
- Zig Ziglar
Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform. Consider for a moment the possibility of your putting on a series of four lectures for members of your department. Let’s count on three hours preparation for each hour of course time—twelve hours of work in total. Say that you have ten students in your class. Next year they will work a total of about twenty thousand hours for your organization. If your training efforts result in a 1 percent improvement in your subordinates’ performance, your company will gain the equivalent of two hundred hours of work as the result of the expenditure of your twelve hours.
- Ben Horowitz
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
If the United States has to accept the U.N. resolutions, we have to generalize it across the board. We can’t just pick and choose where we impose and accept the U.N. resolution and don’t accept them. U.N. Resolution 242 is very clear and states very clearly that Israel has to go back to the borders of the pre-war of 1967.
- Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Alsaud
Extraordinary results are directlydetermined by how narrow you can make your focus.
- Gary Keller
From an operational perspective, this quarter was a home run.
- John Chambers
Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.
- John C. Maxwell
On top of this, if you do great work you gain the reward of knowing you’re doing great work. Your day snaps into alignment with your dreams, and you no longer have to pretend you’re mediocre. You’re free to contribute.
- Seth Godin
We believe that within five years, 96 percent of British consumers will have access to the internet, whether it be through a personal computer, a set-top box or a mobile phone.
- Richard Branson
The doctors actually told my family there was a five percent chance of me living.
- Ed Clark
After assessing the prospects of the various business segments of Henderson Cyber, the company, Henderson Investment, Hong Kong and China Gas and Henderson Cyber jointly announced in August 2005, the proposed privatisation of Henderson Cyber by Henderson Investment and Hong Kong and China Gas…
- Lee Shau Kee
In Hong Kong, the property business has always been very competitive, so we have to think of ways to get an edge over our competitors.
- Raymond Kwok
Some people are gift givers by nature. They love their tribe, or they respect their art, and so they give. Not for an ulterior motive, but because it gives them joy.
- Seth Godin
It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.
- Bill Gates
Recovery continues to gain momentum on a global basis.
- John Chambers
Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‘I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.’ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.
- Joel Olsteen
I can become someone’s miracle.
- Joel Olsteen
Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.
- Ben Horowitz
Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
- Winston Churchill
Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that’s really powerful.
- Reid Hoffman
Use what you have to run toward your best – that’s how I now live my life.
- Oprah Winfrey
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
I believe in Las Vegas. I think its best days are ahead of it. But I’m afraid to do anything in the current political environment in the United States.
- Stephen Wynn
As technology continues to virtualize money, brick ‘n mortar banks have become as superfluous as traditional bookstores.
- Reid Hoffman
Did you know that nearly one in three children live apart from their biological dads? Those kids are two to three times more likely to grow up in poverty, to suffer in school, and to have health and behavioral problems.
- Tony Dungy
Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.
- Bill Gates
I don’t want anybody to not recognize how appreciative I am of the volume of e-mails I get.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
I was about twenty and the Beatles were meditating and I heard about it and they had a center in New York and I came to the center and I learned about it.
- Ray Dalio
The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently.
- Mark Zuckerberg
If I want a better-than-average career, I can’t simply ‘go with the flow’ and get it. Most people do just that: they wish for an outcome but make no intention-driven actions toward that outcome. If they would just do something most people would find that they get some version of the outcome they’re looking for. That’s been my secret. Stop wishing and start doing.
- Timothy Ferriss
You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.
- Jeff Bezos
U.K. companies are in very international and very competitive markets. If you look at PC penetration in the U.K., it is very similar to the United States market.
- Bill Gates
Brands mature over time, like a marriage. The bond you feel with your spouse is different than when you first met each other. Excitement and discovery are replaced by comfort and depth.
- Gary Vaynerchuk
On this basis, we intend to increase the dividend for the third time in a row. We are proposing a distribution of €3.25 per share, corresponding to a dividend payout ratio of 27.4 percent, which is again up slightly on the previous year’s level.
- Elmar Degenhart
Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.
- Oprah Winfrey
You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.
- Walt Disney
Trust your instincts
- Estée Lauder
If you go to a bad movie, it’s two hours. If you’re in a bad movie, it’s two years.
- Jerry Seinfeld
I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: He is nothing but a boy — a little boy!
- Dale Carnegie
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
Becoming a member of the NR is not just about working smarter. It’s about building a system to replace yourself.
- Timothy Ferriss
I’d rather have 1% of 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own.
- John D. Rockefeller
We are very happy to be reporting that our pro-forma earnings passed the $1 billion mark for the first time.
- John Chambers
Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life.
- Dale Carnegie
there has never been a better time for testing the uncommon.
- Timothy Ferriss
I loved to make people laugh in high school, and then I found I loved being on stage in front of people. I’m sure that’s some kind of ego trip or a way to overcome shyness. I was very kind of shy and reserved, so there’s a way to be on stage and be performing and balance your life out.
- Steve Martin
In motivating people, you’ve got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example – and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved.
- Rupert Murdoch
A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily.
- John D. Rockefeller
So we really need jobs now. We have to take jobs away from other countries because other countries are taking our jobs. There is practically not a country that does business with the United States that isn’t making – let’s call it a very big profit. I mean China is going to make $300 billion on us at least this year.
- Donald Trump
Don’t have sex man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to start talking to them.
- Steve Martin
Sam hired me in 1970 as a district manager in charge of new store openings. He had eighteen Wal-Marts and some variety stores doing about $31 million a year. I moved my family and as the van was unloading furniture into our rented house, they called from the office and said, Can you set up this new store in Missouri? My wife, who had three babies and a moving van to deal with, helped me find some clothes and I left. I didn’t see her again for two weeks. Then there was a managers’ meeting so I didn’t see her again for two more weeks. It would be safe to say that in those days we all worked a minimum of 16 hours a day.
- Jack Shewmaker
The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete.
- Peter Thiel
Visibility remains limited, and this should come as no surprise, given that our customers’ visibility is limited.
- John Chambers
It’s not going to happen alone.
- Jack Dorsey
No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.
- Brian Tracy
Rivalry causes us to overemphasize old opportunities and slavishly copy what has worked in the past.
- Peter Thiel
The main rule to me is to honor God with your life. To life a life of integrity. Not be selfish. You know, help others. But that’s really the essence of the Christian faith.
- Joel Olsteen