The fatal temptation is to describe your market extremely narrowly so that you dominate it by definition.
- Peter Thiel
Notable Quotables
If you’re going to be thinking, you may as well think big.
- Donald Trump
Give your subconscious a chance to work by turning your brain off from time to time. Don’t focus on work or solving problems constantly.
- Harvey Mackay
This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
- Peter Thiel
[As a child] I would just question things…
- Elon Musk
Nobody ever accused me of wisdom of any kind, let alone conventional.
- Phil Knight
The moral systems of religion, I think, are super important.
- Bill Gates
Bad psychoanalysis would say I enjoyed pleasing people, working really hard and pleasing people, which is probably related to my father in some way. But I really liked working hard. When I worked at Disneyland, I’d do 12 hours straight and go home thrilled.
- Steve Martin
The object of the new school is to teach reasonable doubt. Not the unreasonable doubt of the wild-eyed heckler, but the evidence-based doubt of the questioning scientist and the reason-based doubt of the skilled debater.
- Seth Godin
I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business, basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.
- Jack Welch
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
- Arnold Glasow
People suck at following advice. Even the most effective people in the world are terrible at it. There are two reasons: 1. Most people have an insufficient reason for action. The pain isn’t painful enough. It’s a nice-to-have, not a must-have. There has been no Harajuku Moment. 2. There are no reminders. No consistent tracking = no awareness = no behavioral change. Consistent tracking, even if you have no knowledge of fat-loss or exercise, will often beat advice from world-class trainers.
- Timothy Ferriss
[On American running shoes] They cost five bucks and gave you blood blisters after five miles. Adidas was taking advantage. And at $30 a pair, Adidas was making a killing.
- Phil Knight
Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future.
- Zig Ziglar
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things.
- Elon Musk
The breadth and maturity of our own businesses is allowing us to weather the prevailing storms.
- Cheng Yu-tung
Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it: if you are sick you should not take it.
- Henry Ford
Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.
- George Soros
In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It’d be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.
- Steve Martin
For 20-plus years I looked at thousands of storyboard for corporate and product ads, and I never allowed one advertisement on the air that I didn’t like.
- Jack Welch
About half my work in education is U.S. political reform around school districts and charter schools, and creating more room for entrepreneurial organizations to develop. And about half on technology, which I look at as a global platform.
- Reed Hastings
In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
- Sid Caesar
Music plays a very important role in my life. I’m a frustrated musician. I play the drums.
- Ronald Perelman
There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. ‘Good pride’ represents our dignity and self-respect. ‘Bad pride’ is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance.
- John C. Maxwell
Being financially rich and having the ability to live like a millionaire are fundamentally two very different things.
- Timothy Ferriss
I think when companies are struggling, they don’t want to talk to the press. The guys who write business books aren’t interested in it because nobody wants to learn what it’s like to be a mess, you want to learn how to be successful. That’s slanted the whole thing quite a bit.
- Ben Horowitz
A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.
- Seth Godin
I think it’d be crazy not to have the plan encompass the entire reservoir. If we have (the smaller map), we’ve got a bunch of other folks telling us what they want to see happen in our community.
- Jack Taylor
The depth of your spirit will determine the height of your success.
- Zig Ziglar
There would be no advantage to be gained by sowing a field of wheat if the harvest did not return more than was sown.
- Napoleon Hill
In difficult times, we’re not supposed to quit believing; we’re not supposed to quit growing.
- Joel Olsteen
You walk into a retail store, whatever it is, and if there’s a sense of entertainment and excitement and electricity, you wanna be there.
- Howard Schultz
Let’s simplify this entire world.
- Jack Dorsey
I’m much more concerned about America than the Democratic Party.
- Howard Schultz
Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves.
- Zig Ziglar
The Silver Spoon, the best-selling Italian cookbook of the last 50 years.
- Timothy Ferriss
Someday, man will harness the rise and fall of the tides, imprison the power of the sun, and release atomic power.
- Thomas Edison
It really matters whether people are working on generating clean energy or improving transportation or making the Internet work better and all those things. And small groups of people can have a really huge impact.
- Larry Page
It’s all a risk. Always. That’s not true, actually. The only exception: it’s a certainty that there’s risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That’s because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing.
- Seth Godin
The intersection of law, politics, and technology is going to force a lot of good thinking.
- Bill Gates
When the economy does pick up, … so will … spending.
- John Chambers
You cannot tailor make your situation in life, but you can tailor make your attitudes to those situations.
- Zig Ziglar
If you want to help the poor and our next generation, make investment, reinvestment and businesses welcome.
- Gina Rinehart
The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.
- Joel Olsteen
I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city’s worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city’s Students Federation.
- Jack Ma
The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.
- Bill Gates
To succeed at selling a losing product, you must develop seriously superior sales techniques. In addition, you have to be massively competitive and incredibly hungry to survive in that environment.
- Ben Horowitz
Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right things.
- Peter Drucker
Rockefeller’s supreme insight was that he could solve the oil industry’s problems by solving the railroad’s problems at the same time, creating a double cartel in oil and rails. One of Rockefeller’s strength in bargaining situations was that he figured out what he wanted and what the other party wanted and then crafted mutually advanteous terms. Instead of ruining the railroads, Rockefeller tried to help them prosper, albeit in away that fortified his own position.
- Ron Chernow
Daca ceea ce doriti sa faceti este corect si credeti in el, porniti spre implinire! Puneti visele inainte, si nu conteaza ce spune gura lumii daca va confruntati cu infrangerea temporara, caci poate ca lumea nu stie ca orice esec aduce cu el germenele unui eventual succes.
- Dale Carnegie
I think our main real estate effort should be directed at getting out in front of expansion and letting the population build out to us.
- Sam Walton
Entrepreneurs must protect themselves and the venture at all times by documenting your agreements.
- Jack Nadel
It marks a big step in a man’s development when he comes to realize that other men can be called in to help him do a better job than he can do alone.
- Andrew Carnegie
But if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you’ll give up on trying to master it.
- Peter Thiel
In bad times and good, I have never lost my sense zest for life
- Walt Disney
A successful manager told me that stopped wearing a watch. She found that the work was so immersive, anchoring it to whatever hour it happened to be was pointless. The watch reminded her of the rigors of appointments and the status quo, while her goal was to be there, right here, right now, in the moment, and to do the work in front of her. The watch had no role in doing that right, so, for now, it’s gone.
- Seth Godin
She said, ‘My family is OK, John, but we lost everything.
- John Chambers
I’ve actually not read any books on time management.
- Elon Musk
The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.
- Peter Drucker
There’s pros and cons of a big church. Cons is I don’t get to know everybody, I don’t get to go to their ballgame, I don’t get to marry everybody, but the pros are you get all this community, 800 ushers come in to serve, getting there at 7 in the morning on their day off and coming in on Saturday to make all those wafers.
- Joel Olsteen
Another hero was Tom Swift, in the books. What he stood for, the freedom, the scientific knowledge and being and engineer gave him the ability to invent solutions to problems. He’s always been a hero to me. I buy old Tom Swift books now and read them to my own children.
- Steve Wozniak
Properly understood, technology is the one way for us to escape competition in a globalizing world. As computers become more and more powerful, they won’t be substitutes for humans: they’ll be complements.
- Peter Thiel
The thing about HD-DVD that is attractive to Microsoft is that it’s very pro-consumer in letting you copy all movies up onto the hard disk.
- Bill Gates
The fact is, everyone is in sales.
- Jay Abraham
In periods of stress and grief, not only does your mind do funny things, you say things that surprise you.
- Phil Knight
If they really don’t want to buy the flats, I’ll take their deposits.
- Lee Shau Kee
The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
- Zig Ziglar
When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.
- James C. Collins
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
It is always your next move.
- Napoleon Hill
Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.
- John C. Maxwell
If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
- Thomas Edison
We are continuing to see a number of signs that could be interpreted with the appropriate caveats as optimistic.
- John Chambers
All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Every time I find myself stressed out, it’s because I do things primarily driven by growth.
- Timothy Ferriss
Cherish you visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.
- Napoleon Hill
Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.
- Bill Gates
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
- Henry Ford
Is it really necessary to work like a slave to live like a millionaire?
- Timothy Ferriss
My principal business consists of giving commercial value to the brilliant, but misdirected, ideas of others…. Accordingly, I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.
- Thomas Edison
None of us got to where we are alone. Whether the assistance we received was obvious or subtle, acknowledging someone’s help is a big part of understanding the importance of saying thank you.
- Harvey Mackay
Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.
- Herb Kelleher
There is no substitute for hard work. There is no such thing as overnight success or easy money.
- Henry Sy
The Law of the Garbage Truck,” was this: Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they look for a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. So when someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. It doesn’t have anything to do with you. Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Believe me, you’ll be happier.
- Joel Olsteen
I don’t like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.
- Bill Gates
Solving big problems is easier than solving little problems.
- Sergey Brin
When I came into office, people said, ‘Billionaire? How do they live? What do they eat? How do they sleep?’ Today, they see me on the subway coming uptown. A couple of people say hi, some people smile and nod. Some people just sleep. It’s not an issue.
- Michael Bloomberg
Leadership is the capacity to transform vision into reality.”
- Warren G. Bennis
Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.
- Steve Jobs
Only the paranoid survive.
- Andrew Grove
In Germany they had no kings. They developed them in Britain from leaders who claimed descent from the ancient gods.
- Winston Churchill
It is hard to realize today that “government” during the American Civil War a hundred years ago meant the merest handful of people. Lincoln’s Secretary of War had fewer than fifty civilian subordinates, most of them not “executives” and policy-makers but telegraph clerks. The entire Washington establishment of the U.S. government in Theodore Roosevelt’s time, around 1900, could be comfortably housed in any one of the government buildings along the Mall today.
- Peter Drucker
For any Silicon Valley company, the most important thing is the company. And any great founders need to get out of the way of the company. We presented a spark with an idea.
- Jack Dorsey
Nike is a marketing-oriented company, and the product is our most important marketing tool.
- Phil Knight
In order to lead a country or a company, you’ve got to get everybody on the same page and you’ve got to be able to have a vision of where you’re going. America can’t have a vision of health care for everybody, green economy, regulations – can’t have a bunch of piece-meal activities. It’s got to have a vision.
- Jack Welch
Don’t be cocky. Don’t be flashy. There’s always someone better than you.
- Tony Hsieh
I have worked at Nike and its predecessor company for 48 years. Some might call me a short timer.
- Phil Knight
I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.
- Elon Musk
By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer.
- Bill Gates
The quality of your life is determined by the quality of your relationships. The quality of your business is no different.
- Harvey Mackay