Favorite Quotes

• “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
• “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”
• “Never, never, never give up.”
• “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.”
• “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
• “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
• “Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.”
• “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

• “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
• “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”
• “People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.”
• “Next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.”
• “However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.”

• “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
• “Stay hungry, stay foolish”
• Stanford Commencement Speech

• “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
• “The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. “The result of a business is a satisfied customer.”
• “The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”
• “Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.”
• “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”
• “No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.”
• “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
• “So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. “
• “People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.”
• “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.”
• “There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.”
• “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”
• “A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge.”
• “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”
• “Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.”
• “Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.”
• “Teamwork is neither ‘good’ nor ‘desirable’. It is a fact. Wherever people work together or play together they do so as a team. Which team to use for what purpose is a crucial, difficult and risky decision that is even harder to unmake. Managements have yet to learn how to make it.”
• “The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
• “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
• “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. “
• “Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”

Albert Einstein

• “If ‘A’ is a success in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x; y is play, and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
• “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
• “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
• “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
• “A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.”
• “Everything has changed, except our way of thinking.”
• “A clever person solves a problem.  A wise person avoids it.”
• “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
• “I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.”
• “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.”
• “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
• “Information is not knowledge.”
• “The only source of knowledge is experience.”
• “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.”
• “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
• “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.”
• “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
• “If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”
• “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
• “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
• “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” (Sign hanging in Einstein’s office at Princeton)
• “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
• “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
• “When you sit with a pretty girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours – that’s relativity.”
• “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
• “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
• “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
• “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
• “Try not to be a man of success, but a man of value.”
• “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”

Thomas Edison

• “Discontent is the first necessity of progress.”
• “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
• “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
• “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.”
• “Vision without execution is hallucination.”
• “Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.”
• “A man’s best friend is a good wife.”

Sir Winston Churchill

• “Rules were made for fools to follow and wise men to be guided by.”
• “Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.”
• “A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt; long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest.”
• “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
• “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
• “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Mahatma Gandhi

• “Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.”
• “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
• “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
• = Seven Deadly Sins =
  Wealth without work
  Pleasure without conscience
  Science without humanity
  Knowledge without character
  Politics without principle
  Commerce without morality
  Worship without sacrifice

Others

• “The difference between ‘involvement’ and ‘commitment’ is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was ‘involved’ – the pig was ‘committed’.” -unknown
• “Any fool can criticise, complain, condemn, and most fools do.”  -unknown
• “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” -Confucius
• “Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.” – Henry Ford
• “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” -Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
• “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” -Mario Andretti
• “The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.” -Edward Phelps
• “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” -George Bernard Shaw
• “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it” -Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
• “Never mistake motion for action.” -Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
• “If women didn’t exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.” -Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
• “My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” -Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
• “Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.” -Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
• ” The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” -Alan Kay
• “If you want something said, ask a man if you want something done, ask a woman.” -Margaret Hilda Thatcher
• “It used to be about trying to do something. Now it’s about trying to be someone.” -Margaret Hilda Thatcher
• “Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man.” -Jeseph Joubert
• “My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.” -Rodney Dangerfield
• “When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.” -Sacha Guitry
• “The reason people sweat is so they won’t catch fire when making love.” -Don Rose
• “To love is to commune with another person and to discover in him or her a divine spark.” -Paulo Coelho
• “Everything a human being wants can be divided into four components love, adventure, power and fame.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “Friends are those rare people who ask how you are and then wait for the answer.” -Unknown
• “A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with.” -Kenneth A. Wells
• “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” -Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
• “Formal education will make you a living self-education will make you a fortune.” -Jim Rohn
• “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion.” -Abraham Lincoln
• “Sweat plus sacrifice equals success.” -Charlie Finley
• “I want to know not his earning power but his yearning power.” -David McCord
• “Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.” -Dalton Camp
• “No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.” –Aristotle
• “Great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.” -Mark Twain
• “No one ever promised that the fastest horse in the race was the easiest one to ride.” (on managing talented people) -Eric J. Joiner, Jr.
• “Under promise, over deliver.” -Tom Peters
• “If you don’t go fishing because you thought it might rain you will never go fishing. This applies to more than fishing.” -Gary Sow
• “Fishing gives you a sense of where you fit in the scheme of things – Your place in the universe…I, mean, here I am, one small guy with a fishing pole on this vast beach and out there in the blue expanse of ocean are these hundreds of millions of fish…laughing at me.” -Unknown
• “Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him of the entire weekend.” -Zenna Schaffer
• “Have we created fire/light that lights up the world or burns it down.” -Unknown
• “People tend to take the persona of the leader. Could take down as a group?  Must bring out individual thought.” -Unknown