Business wisdom distilled to its essence. This collection features 200+ high-impact quotes from history’s greatest business minds, organized by person and theme.
Charlie Munger
The Architect of Berkshire Hathaway (1924-2023)
On Thinking and Mental Models
“You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models.”
“I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.”
“Knowing what you don’t know is more useful than being brilliant.”
“To a man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”
“Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean.”
“I think that one should recognize reality even when one doesn’t like it; indeed, especially when one doesn’t like it.”
On Success and Character
“The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want.”
“Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets—and can be lost in a heartbeat.”
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
“Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behavior accordingly. If your new behavior gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group… then to hell with them.”
“The first rule of compounding: Never interrupt it unnecessarily.”
“Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up.”
On Patience and Discipline
“The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.”
“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”
“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.”
“Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward.”
“A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments.”
On Learning and Reading
“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time—none, zero.”
“Develop into a lifelong self-learner through voracious reading; cultivate curiosity and strive to become a little wiser every day.”
“I constantly see people rise in life who are not the smartest, sometimes not even the most diligent, but they are learning machines.”
“Those who keep learning will keep rising in life.”
On Mistakes and Foolishness
“It’s not greed that drives the world, but envy.”
“Three things ruin people: drugs, liquor, and leverage.”
“There is no better teacher than history in determining the future.”
“The liabilities are always 100 percent good. It’s the assets you have to worry about.”
“We have three baskets for investing: yes, no, and too hard to understand.”
Warren Buffett
The Oracle of Omaha
Core Investment Principles
“Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1.”
“It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.”
“Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”
“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”
“Only buy something that you’d be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.”
“Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.”
“Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.”
“Never invest in a business you cannot understand.”
On Long-Term Thinking
“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”
“Our favorite holding period is forever.”
“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”
“The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.”
“Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre.”
“If you aren’t thinking about owning a stock for 10 years, don’t even think about owning it for 10 minutes.”
On Hiring and Character
“In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
“Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people.”
“You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”
On Learning
“The more you learn, the more you earn.”
“Read 500 pages every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.”
“I just sit in my office and read all day.”
“The best investment you can make is in yourself.”
On Business and Management
“When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”
“Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.”
“I try to buy stock in businesses that are so wonderful that an idiot can run them. Because sooner or later, one will.”
“Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble.”
“The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”
John D. Rockefeller
The First Billionaire (1839-1937)
On Wealth and Success
“I believe the power to make money is a gift of God.”
“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.”
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”
“I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.”
“The secret to success is to do the common things uncommonly well.”
On Character and Ethics
“A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.”
“I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.”
“Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people.”
“Next to doing the right thing, the most important thing is to let people know you are doing the right thing.”
“Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.”
On Discipline and Work
“I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.”
“The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.”
“Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.”
“I believe in the supreme worth of the individual and in his right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
“God gave me my money.”
Andrew Carnegie
The Steel King (1835-1919)
On Wealth and Philanthropy
“The man who dies rich dies disgraced.”
“Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.”
“No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.”
“There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.”
“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”
On Success and Character
“People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”
“Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.”
“Concentration is my motto—first honesty, then industry, then concentration.”
“The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.”
“You cannot push anyone up the ladder unless he is willing to climb.”
On Business Strategy
“The secret of success lies not in doing your own work, but in recognizing the right man to do it.”
“Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.”
“Pioneering don’t pay.”
“Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.”
“And here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought, and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged.”
On Teamwork
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”
“Take away my people, but leave my factories, and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. Take away my factories, but leave my people, and soon we will have a new and better factory.”
“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.”
Dale Carnegie
The Father of Self-Improvement (1888-1955)
On Influence and Persuasion
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
“Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.”
“A person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
“The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.”
“If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.”
On Success and Attitude
“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”
“Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.”
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”
On Leadership and People
“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion.”
“Give honest and sincere appreciation.”
“Arouse in the other person an eager want.”
“Begin with praise and honest appreciation.”
“The only way to influence people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.”
On Fear and Worry
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
“If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”
“First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.”
Ayn Rand
The Objectivist Philosopher (1905-1982)
On Achievement and Producers
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”
“The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.”
“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.”
“The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.”
“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”
On Individualism
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
“To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.’”
“The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.”
On Reason and Reality
“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
“You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.”
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.”
“The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.”
“Check your premises.”
On Money and Trade
“Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver.”
“Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason.”
“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.”
“So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money?”
Henry Ford
The Assembly Line Pioneer (1863-1947)
On Innovation and Progress
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.”
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
“Don’t find fault, find a remedy.”
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
On Business and Industry
“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”
“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”
“The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.”
“There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: make the best quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.”
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”
On Obstacles and Character
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
“You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
“Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”
J.P. Morgan
The Titan of Finance (1837-1913)
On Business and Finance
“Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you’ll be able to see further.”
“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.”
“The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you’re not going to stay where you are.”
“No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form.”
“I don’t want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do; I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.”
On Character and Trust
“I would rather deal with a man who tells me what he wants to do and then doesn’t do it, than one who tells me what he’s going to do and then does it.”
“You can’t pick cherries with your back to the tree.”
“The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go.”
“Anyone can be a millionaire, but to become a billionaire you need an astrologer.” (attributed, possibly apocryphal)
Peter Drucker
The Father of Modern Management (1909-2005)
On Leadership vs. Management
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”
“Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.”
“The leader of the past knew how to tell. The leader of the future will know how to ask.”
On Creating the Future
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
“Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship—the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”
“Every organization must be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive in the future.”
On Decision-Making
“There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.”
“Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.”
“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.”
On Focus
“Do first things first, and second things not at all.”
“Concentration is the key to economic results.”
“What gets measured gets managed.”
“Time is the scarcest resource, and unless it is managed, nothing else can be managed.”
On Knowledge Work
“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” (attributed)
Steve Jobs
The Visionary of Innovation (1955-2011)
On Innovation and Focus
“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.”
“Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”
“Creativity is just connecting things.”
“I’m as proud of many of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.”
“That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity.”
On Vision and Passion
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
“I want to put a ding in the universe.”
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.”
On Design and Quality
“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology—not the other way around.”
“Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.”
“Details matter, it’s worth waiting to get it right.”
“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”
On Failure and Death
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.”
“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.”
“Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent.”
On Hiring and Teams
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
“A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.”
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”
Elon Musk
The First Principles Thinker
On Innovation and Risk
“I tend to approach things from a physics framework. Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy.”
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
“If something is important enough, even if the odds are against you, you should still do it.”
“The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur.”
“I think it’s possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary.”
On Execution and Work
“If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.”
“Starting a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass.”
“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week.”
“Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up.”
“I don’t create companies for the sake of creating companies, but to get things done.”
“It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.”
On Problem-Solving
“I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”
“People work better when they know what the goal is and why.”
“Don’t confuse schooling with education. I didn’t go to Harvard but the people that work for me did.”
“Some people don’t like change, but you need to embrace change if the alternative is disaster.”
“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything that’s wrong with it and fix it.”
On Vision
“I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.”
“The path to the CEO’s office should not be through the CFO’s office, and it should not be through the marketing department. It needs to be through engineering and design.”
“Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time.”
“If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.”
The Rothschild Family
The Banking Dynasty (est. 1760s)
Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812)
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” (widely attributed)
“It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune.”
“Concordia, Integritas, Industria.” (Harmony, Integrity, Industry - family motto)
Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1836)
“I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets.” (attributed)
“Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own.”
“Who controls the issuance of money controls the government.”
“The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.”
Baron James de Rothschild (1792-1868)
“When the streets of Paris are running with blood, I buy.”
General Rothschild Principles
“The secret to banking is never lending money to those who need it.”
“Information is money.”
“Unity is strength.”
“Wealth is not about having a lot of money; it’s about having a lot of options.”
Joe Lonsdale
The Builder of Defense and Enterprise Tech
On Mission and Impact
“The world is broken. Let’s fix it.” (8VC motto)
“I think what a leader does, like what a good king does, is you pick up the sword, you charge the front.”
“The most valuable companies are built by finding industries that are fundamentally broken and bringing them into the modern era.”
“We build companies that matter—companies that solve hard problems and make the world work better.”
On Entrepreneurship and Building
“Great companies are built by people who are obsessed with a problem, not people who are obsessed with starting a company.”
“The hard problems are the opportunities. If it were easy, someone would have already done it.”
“Persistence isn’t just important—it’s everything. The difference between founders who succeed and those who fail is often just the willingness to keep going.”
“You have to be willing to work on something for years before anyone else understands why it matters.”
On Technology and Society
“Silicon Valley needs to build things that matter, not just apps that waste people’s time.”
“Defense technology isn’t optional—a free society needs the capability to defend itself.”
“The best founders understand that technology is a tool to solve human problems, not an end in itself.”
“We should be building infrastructure for the next century, not just optimizing for the next quarter.”
On Talent and Teams
“The best people want to work on the hardest problems with other exceptional people.”
“A players hire A players. B players hire C players. Never compromise on talent.”
“Your network is your destiny. Surround yourself with people who make you better.”
Jeff Bezos
The Customer Obsession Pioneer
On Customer Focus
“The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer.”
“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts.”
“If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000.”
“We’re not competitor obsessed, we’re customer obsessed. We start with what the customer needs and we work backwards.”
On Long-Term Thinking
“If you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people.”
“We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.”
“All overnight success takes about 10 years.”
On Day 1 Mentality
“Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”
“If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your inventiveness.”
Benjamin Franklin
The First American Entrepreneur (1706-1790)
On Wealth and Thrift
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
“Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.”
“He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”
“Time is money.”
“A penny saved is a penny earned.”
On Industry and Character
“Well done is better than well said.”
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
“Lost time is never found again.”
On Success
“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
“Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”
Ray Dalio
The Principles-Based Investor
On Learning and Growth
“Pain + Reflection = Progress.”
“If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.”
“The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively.”
“He who lives by the crystal ball will eat shattered glass.”
“Don’t worry about looking good—worry about achieving your goals.”
On Decision-Making
“Thoughtful disagreement is not an affront but a form of help.”
“Worry about making sense, not being right.”
“Radical open-mindedness and radical transparency are invaluable for rapid learning and effective change.”
“Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.”
“Truth—or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality—is the essential foundation for any good outcome.”
Sam Walton
The Retail Revolutionary (1918-1992)
On Customer Service
“There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.”
“The way management treats associates is exactly how the associates will treat the customers.”
“High expectations are the key to everything.”
“Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do, they’ll come back over and over.”
On Competition and Improvement
“Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.”
“Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.”
“Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.”
“I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.”
“Capital isn’t scarce; vision is.”
Jack Welch
The CEO of the Century (1935-2020)
On Leadership
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”
“Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be.”
“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.”
“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
On Candor and Action
“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”
“Control your own destiny or someone else will.”
“Don’t manage—lead.”
“Change before you have to.”
“If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete.”
Andy Grove
The Paranoid Survivor (1936-2016)
On Vigilance
“Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.”
“There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance.”
“Bad companies are destroyed by crisis. Good companies survive them. Great companies are improved by them.”
“A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin.”
On Management
“How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things, but how well we are understood.”
“Most companies don’t die because they are wrong; most die because they don’t commit themselves.”
“Technology happens. It’s not good, it’s not bad. Is steel good or bad?”
Napoleon Hill
The Philosopher of Achievement (1883-1970)
On Desire and Purpose
“Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
“The starting point of all achievement is desire.”
“Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.”
“Set your mind on a definite goal and observe how quickly the world stands aside to let you pass.”
On Persistence
“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
“Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success.”
“When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.”
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”
Quotes by Theme
Strategy and Vision
“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.” — Michael Porter
“Vision without execution is daydreaming.” — Bill Gates
“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” — Michael Porter
Customer Focus
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” — Simon Sinek
“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves.” — Steve Jobs
“There is only one boss: the customer.” — Sam Walton
Failure and Resilience
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas Edison
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” — Bill Gates
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” — Bill Gates
Culture and Teams
“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.” — Jim Collins
“Hire character. Train skill.” — Peter Schutz
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson
Execution and Action
“Vision without execution is hallucination.” — Thomas Edison
“Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard.” — Guy Kawasaki
“Done is better than perfect.” — Sheryl Sandberg
Time and Priorities
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey
“You can do anything, but not everything.” — David Allen
“Guard your time ferociously.” — Warren Buffett
Application Guide
For Decision-Making
When facing a tough choice, find a relevant quote from someone who’s faced similar decisions. Their distilled wisdom can provide clarity.
For Team Culture
Use quotes in presentations, Slack channels, and office walls. Shared wisdom builds shared values.
For Content Creation
Reference authoritative quotes to support arguments. Proper attribution builds credibility.
For Personal Development
Choose one quote per week. Journal about how it applies to your current challenges.
The Bottom Line
These quotes survive because they capture fundamental truths about business, leadership, and human nature.
Notice the common threads:
- Long-term thinking over short-term gains
- Character and integrity as non-negotiables
- Customer obsession as the path to value creation
- Continuous learning as the key to relevance
- Action and execution over planning and theory
The wisdom is available. Application is the differentiator.