A collection of our favourite quotes

(all copyright acknowledged)

Good quotes

You cannot solve the problem with the same kind of thinking that has created the problem  – Albert Einstein

Warren Buffett says that a great reputation is like virginity – ‘it can be preserved but it can’t be restored.’ Once you default, it’s hard to go back.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe –  Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln quotes:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/229.Abraham_Lincoln

Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.
—Alfred A. Montapert

“Never be afraid to try, remember… Amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.” ~ Author Unknown

Your margin is my opportunity. -Jeff Bezos

Attitude, not aptitude, determines altitude.

Only stupid men learn from experience. Wise men learn from other people’s experience.

Don’t fall in love with the most beautiful person in the World, but the person that makes your World more beautiful.

Roll the Dice by Charles Bukowski
http://cowbells.blogspot.com/2005/02/write-stuff-roll-dice.html

The impossible, I do immediately. Miracles require 24-hour notice

“Promote yourself, but do not demote another.” Israel Salanter (1810 — 1883)
In other words, any form of negativity just breeds a negative atmosphere, whether it is about you or comes from you.

“The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time.”-Thomas Jefferson

‘Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment’
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/seth-godin-if-youre-going-to-be-average-you-might-as-well-quit-2012-9#ixzz27D9keWwG

don’t believe in regrets. You have to have been where you’ve been, and done what you’ve done, to have gotten to where you are now.

Albert Einstein once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

“The software is wrong, not the people.” Matt Mullenweg (creator of WordPress)

Life forms us. Sin deforms us. School informs us. But only Love transforms us.

“Nothing else wounds so deeply and irreparably. Nothing else robs us of hope so much as being unloved by one we love” – Clive Barker

“Choose a job you like and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Confucius (551 BC — 479 BC)

those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. – Albert Einstein

“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of men’s desires, but by the removal of desire.” Philosopher Epictetus

<< Sales Quotes >>

The Essence Of Selling


In selling we have to engage the right customer with the right problem at the right time and present a compelling solution to that.

Personally, the ‘essence of selling’ is simply making sure you create a successful ‘Win/Win’ scenario. – VA

What if instead of searching for people who want to buy our products and services, we decided to search for people with problems?
Not just any problem, but the problems we solve?

Rethinking Prospecting


discover whether there is a mutually acceptable basis for doing business

“What would you like to get out of this meeting?”
Stephen Covey refers to it as the 2nd of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Starting with the End in Mind.

“I believe proposals are written confirmations with details of what has already been agreed too, so let’s determine what we are agreeing too, and then I will write it up for your review, edits and approval.”
http://www.huntbigsales.com/blog/

Have you reviewed many other xxx solutions? ”What is the one thing none of your vendors do that you wish they would?”

A CRM demo should start with one of the specific problems or challenges the customer or prospect said they are having. — request the evaluation criteria before a demo
http://asalesguy.com/2013/09/03/why-sales-peoples-product-demos-suck-and-what-to-do-about-it/?utm_content=buffer8f53e&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Bufferhttp://

Be relevant and discoverable everywhere your customer is.

Making something appear simple adds complexity behind the scenes.
Leonardo Da Vinci said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
The more complex our lives become, the more we crave simplicity.

How To Achieve Simplicity In Design

Potential in the absence of achievement doesn’t mean anything. You must aspire to greatness. You must plan the path to get there. You must inspire to achieve the aspiration.
But ultimately you have to execute the plan to reach your goal.
http://www.inc.com/matthew-swyers/4-traits-of-great-leaders.html
http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/nayar/2012/12/one-thing-your-team-wants-you.html

 

Links:
http://www.allfamousquotes.net/life-quotes/

http://www.marcandangel.com/

best way to make money during the gold rush is not joining the mob of prospectors, but selling them pickaxes and shovels.

“Address the why before the how.”
“A dream without a plan is just a fantasy”
without prior planning and a clear strategy, it won’t be long until the wheels come off.

having a website and no promotion of it is like having a shop in a poor location with no window display and no sign outside.

“I learned to always take on things I’ve never done before,” Rometty says. “Growth and comfort do not coexist.”
be first and be lonely, the money and the opportunities are where no one else is, growth and comfort do not coexist – IBM CEO

“Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up” – Thomas Edison

Rather than being born to succeed, great entrepreneurs are born to be able to deal with failure

Failure is not an option! It is a requirement for success!

even the strong and the courageous and the flexible fail sometimes. An old Japanese proverb says “Even monkeys fall from trees.” (Saru mo ki kara ochiru — ????????.)
Before success comes the courage to fail. The biggest mistake is not taking action
Hurt feelings, disappointments, and even embarrassments about past mistakes heal with time, but the regrets about the things we did not do are inconsolable. “The only thing you live to regret are the risks you didn’t take”

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Alan Curtis Kay (born 1940-05-17) American computer scientist pioneering object-oriented programming and graphical user interface
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alan_Kay
The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.

If you don’t fail at least 90 percent of the time, you’re not aiming high enough

Think big, start small, fail quickly, scale fast.

Our success came from harnessing the talent of customers and getting them involved.”
–Greg Selkoe, founder of KarmaLoop, as quoted by BNET’s Owners Only blog

Tweetage Wasteland : I Don’t Care if You Read This Article. Or put another way “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Hat tip: Mark Riley.

Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital. ~Aaron Levenstein

Say you were standing with one foot in the oven and one foot in an ice bucket. According to the percentage people, you should be perfectly comfortable. ~Bobby Bragan, 1963

** The average human has one breast and one testicle. ~Des McHale

Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.
~ Maurice Setter

I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone – the chances that all the functions of an individual would just happen is a statistical monstrosity. ~George Gallup

Then there is the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches. ~W.I.E. Gates

“Try not to become a man of success but a man of value” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)
show not only what qualifies you for the position through your past achievements but more importantly what qualities you are going to bring to the role and how you can be of real value to the organisation.

‘To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did.’

The ClueTrain Manifesto that really helped me to understand these New Markets with a quote a little something like this : Conversations about your industry, your products and your company are happening right now online. You can decide to join the conversation or opt out. You decide. http://www.cluetrain.com/book/markets.html

Chinese proverb “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand”

Il regalo più grande che tu puoi fare a qualcuno è il tuo tempo, perchè quando regali a qualcuno il tuo tempo, regali un pezzo della tua vita che non ti ritornerà mai indietro?…

“When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is
called the World Wide Web – now even my cat has its own page.”
Bill Clinton

Choose being kind over being right, and you’ll be right every time – Richard Carlson

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

patience is NOT ALWAYS a virtue, sometimes it’s a bloody waste of time!

A stupid person is someone who thinks other people are stupid.

We will either find a way, or make one

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails

God chooses what we go through, we choose how we go through it

Don’t worry about the people in your past; There’s a reason they didn’t make it to your future.

Kevin Keegan once said: “I know what is around the corner… I just don’t know where the corner is.”

“Stare at the past, look into the future, ACT today”

If you live each day as it was your last, someday you’ll be right. (used by Steve Jobs during Stanford speach 2005)

“There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things” – Machiavelli

http://www.thingstheydont.com/
“Stories trump statistics.” Zainab Salbi

“When you understand what kind of story you can tell with your results, you create a whole new way of connecting with your clients and helping them see how much you mean to their bottom line.”

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.” Henry Ford
“Do things not when they are ready, but when they are right.” Hermes
“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.” Rabindranath Tagore

Worry about usage and users, not money. Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow. (Google)

“It’s not what you want to sell or when you want to sell it that matters today.
It’s what the customer wants to buy and when the customer wants to buy it that counts.”

If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse —Henry Ford
(What they wanted and what Ford, among others, understood was that what they really wanted was faster transportation. He gave them what they wanted, even though it wasn’t something they could verbalize. http://www.vanseodesign.com/marketing/who-knows-better/ see past your customers words and look deep into their desires.)

“Knowing is not enough, you must apply. Willing is not enough, you must do.” Bruce Lee

genes interact with their surroundings, getting turned on and off all the time. In effect, the same genes have different effects depending on who they are talking to. “There are no genetic factors that can be studied independently of the environment,” says Michael Meaney http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12140064

When 90% of businesses have a well designed website, having a mediocre site is no longer the status quo, it’s a liability.

The time is always right to do what is right. — Martin Luther King

an old military axiom that applies here, “Don’t Give An Order You Know Will Not Be Obeyed”.

Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions

Smart companies increasingly understand that their richest source of insight, ideas, data, and information is within their own employees. They are the ones whose talent, work, and daily interactions with the product make the business what it is.
“If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” – Lew Platt, Former CEO of HP
http://mashable.com/2010/03/05/companies-crowdsourcing/

“As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”
Benjamin Franklin

A man’s worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes. – Thomas Huxley

If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.- Red Adair
When you eliminate quality as a requirement, the entire design process becomes a whole lot easier. – Jared M. Spool

Invention is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.- Thomas Edison

…designers can make life more bearable by producing stuff that touches its audience rather than fucks them in the head. – Jon Wozencraft

Never design a website before you’ve seen the business and met the people who will be using it.

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. Pablo Picasso

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. Aristotle

The definition of an expert is someone who knows what not to do – Charles Willson

Never say the sky is the limit, when there are footprints on the moon. Eugenia Clara

If you want 1 year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people.
-Chinese Proverb

“No man is ever whipped until he quits – in his own mind.”
~ Napoleon Hill
Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it.
Nobody can make you feel like a loser, unless you believe them.

“It does not matter how slow you go so long as you don’t stop.”

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
~ Sir Winston Churchill

It doesn’t matter what people say, unless you believe them.

Success has nothing to do with happiness.

“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
Robert Heinlein (1907 – 1988)

Money will only solve those problems that not having money creates.

“First, learn your craft. It won’t prevent you from becoming a genius later.“ by the painter Renoir

Cameron Foote, Editor of the Creative Business Newsletter, says, “If there is anything that marks the owner of a successful business – whether it’s a delicatessen or a design firm – it’s being pragmatic. That is, having the ability to put aside personal inclinations and biases in favor of doing whatever works best for the business…”s

If we look at the present through our rear-view mirror, we march backwards into the future.
– Marshall McLuham

Learn from the mistakes of others – you won’t live long enough to make them all yourself.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t even try.

The only way not to fail, is to not try – that works!

Best John Wooden quotes:
– It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.
– If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.
– Nothing will work unless you do.
– Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there
– Don’t measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your ability
– Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

– Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.
~ John Wooden

– Success is a personal standard — reaching for the highest that is in us — becoming all that we can be. If we do our best, we are a success. Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
~ Zig Ziglar
– There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.
– Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.
– You can have anything in the world you want if you?ll just help enough other people get what they want.
~ Zig Ziglar

– People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing-that’s why we recommend it daily.
– Money won’t make you happy… but everybody wants to find out for themselves.
– Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage

http://www.quoteland.com/topic.asp?CATEGORY_ID=137

A successful business is one that finds out what’s wrong with their business before their competitors do.

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
~Will Rogers on Taking Action

“The GOLDEN RULE: He who has the GOLD makes the RULE”. – Confucious?

Internet services and consulting
Business Catalyst domain naming
http://businesscatalyst.com/ForumRetrieve.aspx?ForumID=30&TopicID=13701

kramerwestfield.co.uk

“I’m on vacation until x/x/2010. When I get back, I’m going to delete all the email that arrived while I was gone, so if this note is important, please send it to me again after that date.”

Email Sabbatical Has Begun

Sell people something they’re interesting in buying.
if you’re having trouble persuading people to buy what you sell, perhaps you should sell something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about what you sell in a different way.

A real friend can achieve making you feel like nobody … … but yourself!

“People may not remember exactly what you did or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.”
– Jack Welch, Former Chairman and CEO, General Electric Corp.-

Everything flows, nothing stands still – Quoted by Plato in Cratylus,
The modern variation being:
Change is the only constant
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heraclitus
Except my love, that will never change 😉

“How does a project get to be a year behind schedule?
One day at a time.”
~Fred Brooks, System/360 Chief Designer, IBM

The best way to avoid disappointment is to not expect anything from anyone

“We may not be able to control the wind, but we can always adjust our sails”

“Today’s problems cannot be solved if we still think the way we thought when we created them.”
Albert Einstein

You cannot solve the problem with the same kind of thinking that has created the problem.
— Albert Einstein

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
You selected me because of my experience and hope that I’ve made my mistakes elsewhere.

Why use only one brain when you have access to many?

…it’s important not to point at the mess, but to offer a solution.

Starting your own business/Entrepreneurship is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down,” says Nikhil Shah, founder of Mixcloud, the online radio website that launched yesterday.

opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious… And curiosity keeps leading us down new paths

There are some people in high places in this company that have not found their calling in life and need to be helped along to find their true vocational place–because the way the ball has been perennially dropped here this sure as heck isn’t for them! http://businesscatalyst.com/ForumRetrieve.aspx?ForumID=1744&TopicID=18326

Don’t choose the beautiful one, choose the one who makes your world beautiful.

I may not be the best looking or the sexiest man nor do I have a perfect body. I might not be everyone’s first choice, but I’m a great choice. I do not pretend to be someone I’m not, because I’m good at being me. I might not be proud of some of the things in my past, but I’m proud of who I am today. So take me … as I am or watch me as I walk away!

‘Love isn’t the person you see yourself living with it’s the person you can’t see yourself living without’

“Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays.”
– Henry Youngman

“Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes in between them.” – Sydney Smith

Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming 1. Whenever you’re wrong, admit it, 2. Whenever you’re right, shut up.
– Nash

My wife and I were happy for twenty years.
… before we met.
– Rodney Dangerfield

After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they
just can’t face each other, but still they stay together.
– Hemant Joshi

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
– Socrates

Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching. and live like it’s heaven on earth.
~Mark Twain

FaceTime it only works between two iPhone 4’s and WiFi only
whole point of a phone is that it communicates with every other phone, irrespective of network or manufacturer

Imagine a world in which any video phone can communicate with any other video phone – except an iPhone. That seems to be Apple’s vision for the future.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/maggieshiels/2010/06/apples_facetime_and_demo_fail.html

If you bury your head in the sand, all you can do is talk out of your arse.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then boredom must be its sperm donor. Take one long summer vacation not spent sweating it out on an assembly line plus two young designers, and you’ve got a cornucopia of things nobody really needs but could make really funny holiday gifts.
http://holykaw.alltop.com/two-young-designers-one-idea-a-day

It’s not tax avoidance
“Every man is entitled if he can to order his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it would otherwise be”.
As Lord Tomlin said in the House of Lords during the case of The Duke of Westminster v The Commissioners of Inland Revenue in 1936,

* “Everything that can be invented has already been invented.”
– Director of the U.S. Patent Office, 1899
* “A rocket will never be able to leave the earth’s atmosphere.”
– The New York Times, 1936
* “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
– IBM Chairman 1943
* “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
– H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927”

Smile, it makes people wonder what you’re thinking.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a work station.

By the time a man realizes that his father was usually right, he has a son who thinks he’s usually wrong.

There are two theories to arguing with women.. Neither one works.

An expert is someone who takes a subject you understand and makes it sound confusing.

When you’re right, no one remembers. When you’re wrong, no one forgets.

Don’t be irreplaceable, if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.

And One More Thing

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Assumptions;
Take nothing for granted. Be critical and dare to ask. Do this with respect for the individual. Everyone knows that an assumption leads to miscommunication.