"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

"Very competent people figure out a perfect work-life balance plan that allows them to deliver enough of themselves to the workplace, enough of themselves to family, and enough of themselves to one or two volunteer organizations. The problem is, this perfect plan creates a kind of fun-free vacuum for the person at its center. Of course, work-life balance involves making trade-offs, and decent people are obliged to deliver on their commitments to home and work. But if you craft a work-life balance plan where you are having no fun, chances are you won’t be able to sustain it." - Jack Welch

"If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself." -Romain Rolland

"Let’s set the existence-of-God issue aside for a later volume, and just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored. Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes zany, frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse IV was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a Congregational preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo–which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn’t a stupendous badass was dead." - Neal Stephenson

"Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way." -Martin Luther King Jr.

"Fundamentally, games are about what you do, not what you see. So in terms of things which make games fundamentally profound experiences - and differentiate them from non-interactive entertainment such as TV and film - it's more about what you do on the CPU than on the GPU." - Gabe Newell

Transcendental Freedom: the ability to stand for your beliefs without requiring others to abandon their own.

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" - Charles Darwin

"He spoke so long the audience had abandoned their watches and were examining their calendars." - Jack Valenti

"Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff." - Frank Zappa

"You can tell a man to go to hell, but getting him to go there is a another proposition." - Lyndon B. Johnson

"The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts." - John Locke

"Why talk about what we want? That is childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is. The rest of us are just like you: we are interested in what we want. So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it." - Dale Carnegie

"What is trust? I could give you a dictionary definition, but you know it when you feel it." - Jack Welch

Never settle for ordinary incomes or outcomes.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas A. Edison

"Inside each of us is a brave, brilliant, and daring character. There is also the flip side of that character: people who could get down on their knees and beg if necessary. After a year in Vietnam, as a Marine Corps pilot, I intimately got to know both of those characters inside of me. One is not better than the other." - Robert Kiyosaki

"I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again." - Stephan Grellet

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping it will eat him last." - Winston Churchill

"Let the dog see the rabbit." - Anonymous

"No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had." - Samuel Johnson (Commenting on Oliver Goldsmith.)

"Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail." - Anonymous

"Is not dread of thirst when your well is full, thirst that is unquenchable?" - Khalil Gibran

If you're reading this after I've died, then my theory about the world only existing in my thoughts was wrong.

"I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among my people the greatest asset I possess, and the way to develop the best that is in a person is by appreciation and encouragement. There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticisms from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise." - Charles Schwab

"The pursuit of happiness is driving me to despair." - Hannah Betts

"The fool wonders, the wise man asks." - Benjamin Disraeli

"People are more wont to be astonished at the sun's eclipse than at its unfailing rise." - Midrash

"The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." - Sigmund Freud

"We must believe in free will. We have no choice." - Isaac Singer

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank

"Stop a minute to contrast your keen interest in your own affairs with your mild concern about anything else. Realize then, that everybody else in the world feels exactly the same way!" - Kenneth M. Goode

"Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities when directing one's course by it, one must still try to follow its direction." -Vincent van Gogh

"It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth." -John Locke

"I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice." - Abraham Lincoln

"It's easy to win forgiveness for being wrong; being right is what gets you into real trouble." - Bjarne Stroustrup

"I leave my ego in a box at home. I have never understood why people bring their insecurities to work." - Drew Fisher

"I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him, but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

"When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

"Thousands of salespeople are pounding the pavement today tired, discouraged, and underpaid. Why? because they're always thinking of what they want. They don't realize that you and I don't want to buy anything. If we did, we'd go out and buy it. But we are eternally interested in solving our problems." - Dale Carnegie

"Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention." - Abraham Lincoln

Jobs become obsolete. Talent doesn't.

"A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something." - Bill Bernbach

"Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the capability to recover when failures occur." - Ed Catmull

"The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you're saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly." - Bill Bernach

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion: creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity." - Dale Carnegie

"We give too much of our power away to cynicism." - Barack Obama

"Cynics criticize. Winners analyze. Criticism dims the vision; analysis opens the eyes. Analysis allows us to see new opportunities. Analysis allows achievers to see that cynics are blind." - Robert Kiyosaki

"As a rule of thumb, you can make a nice place to work, or you can promise people they'll get rich quick. But you have to do one of those, or you won't be able to hire." - Joel Spolsky

"Success takes years. And when I say years, I really mean it! Not as some cliched regurgitation of "work smarter, not harder." I'm talking actual calendar years. You know, of the 12 months, 365 days variety. You will literally have to spend multiple years of your life grinding away at this stuff, waking up every day and doing it over and over, practicing and gathering feedback each day to continually get better. It might be unpleasant at times and even downright un-fun occasionally, but it's necessary." - Jeff Atwood

"For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money." -Arne Garborg

"Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe." -John Milton

"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything." — Nikola Tesla

"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." - Wilhelm Stekel

"Honest service cannot come to loss." - Napoleon Hill