Inspirational Quotes
Try not to become a man of success but a man of value. Albert Einstein If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them. Henry David Thoreau Inspiration and genius--one and the same. Victor Hugo To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: "Leave no stone unturned." Edward Bulwer Lytton
If you would create something, you must be something. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Every artist was first an amateur. Ralph Waldo Emerson The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration
his life will be. Horace Bushnell Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself. W. C. Doane Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action. Benjamin Disraeli Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? George Eliot No great man ever complains of want of opportunities. Ralph Waldo Emerson Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can. Thomas Carlyle Let thy words be few. Ecclesiastes 5:2 from Words of Wisdom Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true. Leon J. Suenes The power of imagination makes us infinite. John Muir
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do. Epictetus
Goals and Goal Setting Quotations Related Links: Inspirational Quotes | Success Quotes The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success. Henry Ward Beecher The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter. Lee Iacocca
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds. Francis Bacon In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success. Victor Cousins
Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is. Vince Lombardi Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving. Dennis Waitley (as quoted in Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog) A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life. Samuel Butler Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose. Michel de Montaigne
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for? Robert Browning The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain. Kahlil Gibran
Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right. Aldous Huxley If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else. Yogi Berra Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than before. Polybius Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives. Viktor Frankl The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize. Richard Monckton Milnes
To reach a port, we must sail—Sail, not tie at anchor—Sail, not drift. Franklin Roosevelt There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something. Henry Ford Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Seneca It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it. Burmese Saying In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia. Author Unknown Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. David Ogilvy There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the
wisest of mankind has achieved the second. Logan Pearsall Smith
Leadership Quotations
Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Harold R. McAlindon (also attributed to Emerson and others) Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. Dwight D. Eisenhower There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader. Alexandre Ledru-Rollin What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him. General Douglas MacArthur The real leader has no need to lead-he is content to point the way. Henry Miller Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves. Lao Tzu
We call ourselves a “capacity building” organization; selfmotivated and self-initiated capacity building. For example, in 30 years, I don’t think I have signed a check for the company. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh - Employee - Motivational - Management Companies - Leadership I think you have to work with people, and when I talk about managing relationships, don’t think the derogatory ‘‘managed relationships’’. It is a question of sharing emotion and feelings. The common denominator of everything can’t be money, and it should not be money. Anil Ambani - Work - Management - Money - People People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps. Mary Kay Ash - Companies - Assets - Management Whenever there is a hard job to be done I assign it to a lazy man; he is sure to find an easy way of doing it. Walter Chrysler - Hard Work - Lazy - Management Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions.. whether in the corporate or social sectors.. to advance their own interests. Jim Collins - Smart - Society - Understanding - Leadership Management If we allow the celebrity rock-star model of leadership to triumph,
we will see the decline of corporations and institutions of all types. The twentieth century was a century of greatness, but we face the very real prospect that the next century will see very few enduring great institutions. Jim Collins - Management - Famous - Leadership - Great I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly. Chris Corrigan - Management - Decisions - Business - Planning CEO I'm a firm believer that to really understand a business takes years, not months. As an investment analyst you think you understand a business from the outside, but the reality is that, once you are inside, you can go on learning for five or ten years. Chris Corrigan - Management - Business - Investing - Learning I was always acting primarily with shareholder interests in mind. It's also true I've always had a fairly moralistic attitude to business, and would not do anything that I considered improper. As a consequence, I have occasionally pursued issues during my career that other people might have avoided. Chris Corrigan - Management - Stocks - Business - Challenges Job
There are managers so preoccupied with their e-mail messages that they never look up from their screens to see what's happening in the nondigital world. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Management - Internet - Technology In knowledge-intensive business settings, where every manager has to oversee massive amounts of information as well as people, facilitating the use of psychic energy becomes a primary concern. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Management - Knowledge - People In large organizations the dilution of information as it passes up and down the hierarchy, and horizontally across departments, can undermine the effort to focus on common goals. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Companies - Management - Focus Goals The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product. Peter Drucker - Management Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five-year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses. Peter Drucker - Leadership - Strength - Management - CEO Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. Peter Drucker - Leadership - Responsibility - Work - Management
Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information. Peter Drucker - Leadership - Strength - Management - Decisions Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake. Peter Drucker - Decisions - Mistakes - Management Businesses are made by people. We've proven time and time again that you can have wonderful shop, and put a bloke in there who's no good, and he'll stuff it up. Put a good bloke in, and it just turns around like that. Gerry Harvey - Companies - Management - Ambition I went to the brink many times. A couple of times I thought "I'm gone.. This is it." But then you would just keep working. I think if you're close to the brink and just make sure that you work twice as hard and put twice as much effort into everything and the people around you and everything, you should come through. Gerry Harvey - Management - Ambition - Challenges It's not a question of arriving and putting in a whole new administration, but instead, arriving and "compacting" things as much as possible, reducing management layers. We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don't believe in having big corporate infrastructures.
Carlos Slim Helu - Companies - Management - Improving I'm going to miss Blockbuster. I'm gonna miss being CEO and all that stuff. We had an atmosphere where everybody was happy. When people make money, they're happy. Wayne Huizenga - Employee - Money - Management - Happy CEO Management is nothing more than motivating other people. Lee Iacocca - Management - Motivational - People Too often it's not the most creative guys or the smartest. Instead, it's the ones who are best at playing politics and soft-soaping their bosses. Boards don't like tough, abrasive guys. Carl Icahn - Politics - Intelligent - Management We have bloated bureaucracies in Corporate America. The root of the problem is the absence of real corporate democracy. Carl Icahn - Politics - Management - Companies - Problems With some exceptions, the wrong people are running U.S. companies. It's been that way for years, and it hasn't gotten much better. Carl Icahn - Management - Companies - Criticism We want these assets to be productive. We buy them. We own them. To say we care only about the short term is wrong. What I care about is seeing these assets in the best hands Carl Icahn - Assets - Management
We're not about liquidating companies, but if you do that, why is that terrible? We're not blowing up the factories. The person who buys it should be able to make the asset more productive. Carl Icahn - Management - Assets - Improvement People ought to invest in us because they like our company and the way they run it. We still do quarterly earnings guidance, but we tell people openly that they ought to look at the company for the long term and that's how they ought to invest. Jeffrey Immelt - Companies - Future - Investing - Long Term Investing - Management - Earnings I’m out talking about this company (General Electric) seven days a week, 24 hours a day, with nothing to hide. We’re a 130-yearold company that has a great record of high-quality leadership and a culture of integrity. Jeffrey Immelt - CEO - Companies - Leadership - Management Integrity The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay. Steve Jobs - Work Today, a skilled manager makes more than the owner. And owners fight each other to get the skilled managers. Mikhail Khodorkovsky - Money - Management Our industry expertise (at KKR) enables the firm not only to make better investment choices but also to win the confidence of senior
management and sellers, which has enabled us to purchase many companies on an exclusive basis. Henry Kravis - Companies - Buying - Selling - Experience Decisions - Investing - Management - Confidence We've got a portfolio of companies that range all the way from hotels to television stations and cable TV companies, oil and gas, consumer products, and industrial products. If there's anything that I want to know more about, I have the opportunity. It's right in our portfolio. I can spend time at the factory or with the manangement and learn as much as I want. You can't get bored doing that. Henry Kravis - Companies - Management - Opportunity - Learning - Bored Go for a business that any idiot can run - because sooner or later, any idiot probably is going to run it. Peter Lynch - Management - Business - Investing I think the hardest thing about my job is the way Whole Foods Market views itself philosophically is that we are a business dedicated to meeting all the various stakeholders of the company's best interests. And by stakeholders we mean customers, team members, stockholders, community, and the environment. Sometimes what is in the best interest of one stakeholder may not be in the best interest of another stakeholder, and as the CEO, I have to balance the various interests of the different constituencies and stakeholders to create win, win, win scenarios, and that can sometimes be very difficult to do. Everybody wants something from the CEO.
John Mackey - Stocks - Customers - Business Ethics Management - Environmental - Challenges - Companies - CEO Synergies are something that the CEO basically has to force to happen, because organizations are, generally, like bodies in motion that tend to stay in motion. It's very hard to get big organizations to change. And it takes really a very powerful mandate to force things to happen. John Malone - Management - Change - Power - CEO I have learned the novice can often see things that the expert overlooks. All that is necessary is not to be afraid of making mistakes, or of appearing naive. Abraham Maslow - Management - Learning - Fear - Mistakes Encouragement Regardless of how well a studio is run, it's only as good as the product it produces. Vince McMahon - Business - Management - Products In financing growing companies, we always looked for human value that didn’t appear on the balance sheet.. the quality of management, especially its entrepreneurial drive. Michael Milken - Investing - Companies - Employee Management - Entrepreneurs A boat can't have two captains. Akira Mori - Management I believe my concepts are more than just business, they are about
our culture. Minoru Mori - Management - Business - Belief - Culture We intend to conduct our business in a way that not only meets but exceeds the expectations of our customers, business partners, shareholders, and creditors, as well as the communities in which we operate and society at large. Akira Mori - Management - Business - Customers - Society Partnership - Stocks Understanding how to be a good investor makes you a better business manager and vice versa. Charlie Munger - Management - Investing - Understanding You can't build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own. Rupert Murdoch - Strength - Decisions - Management The buck stops with me, but I can tick off dozens of very good senior executives that are responsible for hundreds or thousands of people who work for me. Rupert Murdoch - Management - Responsibility - Employee Leadership If the boss is a jerk, get over it. First of all, don’t you think there’s a good chance that your boss’s boss knows what’s going on? If so, just keep your head down and do the work. Usually, if you put in maximum effort and produce excellent results, someone in the company is going to take notice. Either you will get promoted or
your jerky boss will get the heave-ho. It happens all the time. Suze Orman - Jobs - Management - Hard Work - Companies We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many. Larry Page - Management Successful enterprises are usually led by a proven chief executive who is a competent benevolent dictator. Richard Pratt - Companies - Leadership - Management Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people. John D. Rockefeller - Management - Work - Leadership I'm able to bring business expertise but, more importantly, operating experience. The people here at Google are young. Every day there are lots of new challenges. I keep things focused. The speech I give everyday is: "This is what we do. Is what you are doing consistent with that, and does it change the world?" Eric Schmidt - Internet - Management - Change - Focus Our mission statement about treating people with respect and dignity is not just words but a creed we live by every day. You can't expect your employees to exceed the expectations of your customers if you don't exceed the employees' expectations of management. Howard Schultz - Respect - Employee - Customers Management - Encouragement
Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can't tell you whether someone will fit into a company's culture. When you realize you've made a mistake, you need to cut your losses and move on. Howard Schultz - Employee - Management - Jobs - Decisions Art - Companies - Culture - Mistakes I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism. Charles Schwab - Leadership - Work Practice Golden-Rule 1 of Management in everything you do. Manage others the way you would like to be managed. Brian Tracy - Management I mean, there's no arguing. There is no anything. There is no beating around the bush. "You're fired" is a very strong term. Donald Trump - Management Well, yes, I've fired a lot of people. Generally I like other people to fire, because it's always a lousy task. But I have fired many people. Donald Trump - Management - Work If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers. Sun Tzu - Leadership - Management - Blame - Understanding -
Soldier - Fault My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too. Jack Welch - Management People ask me, how is managing in the New Economy different from managing in the Old Economy? Actually, it's a lot the same. It's about the financial discipline of the bottom line, understanding your customers, segmenting your customers by their needs, and building a world-class management team. Meg Whitman - Ebay - Companies - Management - Economy Customers - Customer Service - Finance Some great people are leaders and others are more lucky, in the right place at the right time. I'd put myself in the latter category. But I'd never call myself a normal designer of anything. Steve Wozniak - Great - Luck - Leadership - Management The way you see them is the way you treat them and the way you treat them is the way they often become. Zig Ziglar - Management - Attitude Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business. Zig Ziglar - Business - Customers - Management - Opportunity