"Autonomy gives people ownership and pride. In ideal situations, new ventures with strong leaders should have all their own tools, like their own R & D, sales, and marketing teams. They should be allowed to place their own audacious bets on people and strategies." - Jack Welch

"A couple of months in the laboratory can save a couple of hours in the library." - Frank H. Westheimer

"Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon." - Winston Churchill

"Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the future." - Warren Buffett

“Any organization — or unit or team — that brings more people and their minds into the conversation has an immediate advantage.” – Jack Welch

“The leader’s mood is, for lack of a better word, catching. You’ve seen the dynamic a hundred times: an upbeat manager who goes through the day with a positive outlook somehow ends up running a team or organization filled with... well, upbeat people with positive outlooks. A pessimistic sourpuss somehow ends up with an unhappy tribe all his own. Unhappy tribes have a tough time winning.” – Jack Welch

"Only those willing to continually see things from new perspectives can have regular access to the truth." - Tom Butler-Bowdon

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them." - Alfred Adler

"You have to talk about vision constantly— basically, to the point of gagging. There were times I talked about the company’s direction so many times in one day that I was completely sick of hearing it myself. But I realized the message was always new to someone." - Jack Welch

"I feel like tap-dancing all the time." - Warren Buffett

“There are lucky breaks and bad calls in any season, but the team with the best players usually does win. And that is why, very simply, you need to invest the vast majority of your time and energy as a leader in three activities:

* You have to evaluate — making sure the right people are in the right jobs, supporting and advancing those who are, and moving out those who are not.

* You have to coach — guiding, critiquing, and helping people to improve their performance in every way.

* And finally, you have to build self-confidence — pouring out encouragement, caring, and recognition. Self-confidence energizes, and it gives your people the courage to stretch, take risks, and achieve beyond their dreams. It is the fuel of winning teams.” – Jack Welch

“Leaders can’t have an iota of fakeness. They have to know themselves—so that they can be straight with the world, energize followers, and lead with the authority born of authenticity.” – Jack Welch

 “A good leader has the courage to put together a team of people who sometimes make him look like the dumbest person in the room! I know that sounds counterintuitive. You want your leader to be the smartest person in the room — but if he acts as if he is, he won’t get half the pushback he must get to make the best decisions.” – Jack Welch

"Never ask the barber whether you need a haircut." - Warren Buffett

"Below an income of $60k per year, Americans are unhappy, and they get progressively unhappier the poorer they get. Above that, we get an absolutely flat line in terms of happiness. Money does not buy you experiential happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery." - Daniel Kahneman

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html

"Maybe grapes from a little eight-acre vineyard in France are really the best in the whole world, but I have always had a suspicion that about 99 percent of it is in the telling and about 1 percent is in the drinking." - Warren Buffett

"I don’t try to jump over seven-foot bars; I look around for one-foot bars that I can step over." - Warren Buffett

"I feel like tap-dancing all the time." - Warren Buffett

"I will persist until I succeed. I will try, and try, and try again. Each obstacle I will consider as a mere detour to my goal and a challenge to my profession." - Og Mandino

"How ridiculous and unrealistic is the man, who is astonished at anything that happens in life." - Marcus Aurelius

"Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong." - Dandamis

“Weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions; strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts.” - Og Mandino

"Hunger is the handmaid of genius." - Mark Twain

"Only a worm is free from the worry of stumbling. I am not a worm." - Og Mandino

"Be quick, but don’t hurry." - John Wooden

"Habit is a cable; we weave a strand of it each day until it becomes so strong that we cannot break it." - Napoleon Hill

"A strong desire must be placed in the mind and held there with persistence that knows no defeat, until the subconscious mind takes it over. Up to this point, you must stand behind the desire and push it. Beyond this point, the desire will stand behind you and push you on to acheivement." - Napoleon Hill

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

"Here lie great piles of loose brick, lumber, nails, and glass. In its present form it is worse than useless, for it is a nuisance and an eyesore. But mix it with the architect's imagination, and add some skilled labor, and it becomes a beautiful mansion worth a king's ransom." - Napoleon Hill

"Fear is a dagger with which hypocrisy assassinates the soul." - Robert Ingersoll

"The market will pay you better to entertain than to educate." - Warren Buffett

"...as if criticism will do you any damage or defeat your purpose." - Napolean Hill

"All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level." - Bill Bernbach

"Were it not for ignorance, fear would disappear from human thought." - Napolean Hill

"No one may succeed in life without saving money; there is no exception to this rule, and no one may escape it." - Napolean Hill

"The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken." - Warren Buffet

"If you risk something that is important to you for something that is not important to you; it does not make any sense. It doesn't matter what the odds are." - Warren Buffet

"John Jacob Astor suddenly had to go into partnership in a millinery store because the owners could not keep up their mortgage payments. What did he do to get this business back on its feet? He would go into the park and quietly watch the women strolling along, particularly the most confident and elegant, and take careful note of the hats they were sporting. Back in the store, he had these hats copied exactly. The result was that the store never made a hat or bonnet that a lady didn't like, and it boomed. Left behind was the idea that "We make hats and try to sell them," to be replaced by "What women want, we sell."

From such basic service erupts great success, in this case a store that even in the nineteenth century made $17 million. You may think you have already considered it, but ask again: What do people want?" - Tom Butler-Bowdon

"The American public always wants something a little better than it asks for, and the successful man, in catering to it, is he who follows this golden rule." - Edward Bok

"No one wants to be told, either directly or indirectly, that he knows less than he does, or even that he knows as little as he does: everyone is benefited by the opposite implication, and the public will always follow the leader who comprehends this bit of psychology." - Edward Bok

"In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot." - Alexander Pope

"A boil on one’s neck interests one more than forty earthquakes in Africa. Think of that the next time you start a conversation." - Dale Carnegie

"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." - John D. Rockefeller

"You must have a good time meeting people if you expect them to have a good time meeting you." - Dale Carnegie