Serendipity

Share/Save/Bookmark



Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer's daughter.
quote by Julius Comroe Jr.

Good and excellent

The difference between good and excellent: details

Share/Save/Bookmark

Happiness and action

Action may not always bring happiness,
but there is no happiness without action…

quote by Benjamin Disraeli, former British prime minister
Share/Save/Bookmark

The illiterate of the 21st century

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who
cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn
and relearn.

Quote by Alvin Toffler
Share/Save/Bookmark

Learn faster

The ability to learn faster than your
competitors may be the only
sustainable competitive advantage.

Quote by Arie De Geus/Shell
Share/Save/Bookmark

How far ?

Only those who will risk going too far
can possibly find out how far one can go

Quote by T.S. Elliot

Share/Save/Bookmark

Live and learn

Live as if you were to die tomorrow.
Learn as if you were to live forever.

Quote by Mahatma Ghandi

Share/Save/Bookmark

Leadership

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more,
you are a leader.

quote by John Quincy Adams

Share/Save/Bookmark

Reputation

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

Quote by Warren Buffet
Share/Save/Bookmark

Apology

Never ruin an apology with an excuse

quote by Kimberly Johnson
Share/Save/Bookmark

Alcohol

God only created alcohol
to prevent the Irish from ruling the world.

Share/Save/Bookmark

Experience

Experience is the comb that nature gives us
after we are bald

Belgian proverb

Share/Save/Bookmark

Our friends' help

It is not so much our friends' help that helps
but the confidence of their help

quote by Epicurus
Share/Save/Bookmark

Growing old

Growing old isn't so bad if you consider the alternative

quote by Maurice Chevalier

(and... "Growing old is not for sissies" by Bette Davis)

Share/Save/Bookmark

Making the news

It is better to be making the news than taking it
to be an actor rather than a critic

Quote by Winston Churchill

Share/Save/Bookmark

Silence


If a word is worth a coin

silence is worth two


Hebrew proverb




Share/Save/Bookmark
(seen at the banks of the Thames, London)


Nothing in life is to be feared

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

quote by Marie Curie

Share/Save/Bookmark

Robbing a bank

What is robbing a bank
compared to founding a bank

quote by Berthold Brecht
Share/Save/Bookmark

Experience

A man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20
has wasted 30 years of his life.

quote by Mohammed Ali
Share/Save/Bookmark

Pirate

It is more fun to be a pirate
than to join the navy

Quote by Steve Jobs
Share/Save/Bookmark

Being wrong

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition,
there is no shame in being wrong,
only in failing to correct our mistakes.

quote by George Soros
Share/Save/Bookmark

18

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.

quote by Albert Einstein

Share/Save/Bookmark

Every problem has a solution

Every problem has a solution
If there is no solution
It is not a problem but a fact
Share/Save/Bookmark

A man of value

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value...

Quote by Albert Einstein
Share/Save/Bookmark

Helping others

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone.
People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed;
never throw out anyone.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand,
you will find one at the end of each of your arms.
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself,
and the other for helping others.

Poem by Audrey Hepburn
Share/Save/Bookmark

Vacancy

When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy

quote by James Goldsmith

Share/Save/Bookmark

5 quotes by Ricky Gervais "The office"

- If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.
- If you treat the people around you with love and respect, they will never guess that you're trying to get them sacked.
- Never do today that which will become someone else's responsibility tomorrow.
- If work was so good, the rich would have kept more of it themselves.
- Eagles may soar high, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.


Share/Save/Bookmark

Simplicity

Simplicity of all things is the hardest to be copy.

quote by Sir Richard Steele
Share/Save/Bookmark

Inspire

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself.
Before you can move their tears, your own must flow.
To convince them, you must yourself believe.

quote by Winston Churchill
Share/Save/Bookmark

Unforeseen

We are ready for any unforeseen event which may or may not happen.

quote by George W. Bush
Share/Save/Bookmark

Creativity

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties

quote by Erich Fromm
Share/Save/Bookmark

Two apples

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

quote by George Bernard Shaw
Share/Save/Bookmark

Responsibility

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

Quote by Obama Barack
Share/Save/Bookmark

Looks like work

Opportunity is missed by most because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

quote by Thomas Edison
Share/Save/Bookmark

Optimist & pessimist

A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are.

quote by Chauncey Mitchell Depew
Share/Save/Bookmark

Profits & losses

It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses.

quote by Winston Churchill
Share/Save/Bookmark

Heroes

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.

quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Share/Save/Bookmark

No depression in Los Angeles - 1933

Depression? We have no depression in Los Angeles; but I will admit that we are having the worst boom in many years.

quote by the president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce when he was asked how the depression had hit Los Angeles, January 1933

Scary questions

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

quote by Jules Winnfield, Pulp Fiction

The second mouse

The early bird catches the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Optimist & pessimist

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

quote by James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion, 1926

Define it

You can’t improve anything if you can’t define it.

quote by Max Guinn, Deere & Co.

The art of communication

Put it before them briefly so they will read it,
clearly so they will appreciate it,
picturesquely so they will remember it
and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.

quote by Joseph Pulitzer, Editor

Optimist & pessimist

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society.
The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.

quote by Gil Stern

A hammer and a nail

If all you have is a hammer in the toolbox, everything looks like a nail.

quote by Bernard Baruch

Branding / rebranding

Hanging a sign on a cow that says ‘I am a horse’ does not make it a horse.

Unknown

Impossible situations

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

quote by Charles R. Swindoll, American Writer

ISO 9000

With ISO 9000 you can still have terrible processes and products.
You can certify a manufacturer that makes life jackets out of concrete…

quote by Richard Buetow, Motorola

Not enough time ?

Don't say you don't have enough time.
You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

Life's Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Incrementalism

Incrementalism is innovation’s worst enemy.

quote by Nicholas Negroponte, MIT Media Lab

300 ! Celebrate !

Celebrate what you want to see more of.

quote by Thomas J. Peters

This is quote number 300 on Quotes for Business !
Thank you all, contributors and readers

Prosperity / recession

Prosperity is when people buy things they can't afford; recession is when they stop doing it.

quote by H. Martz

Recession wisdom - 1933

Surely the ability to get laughter out of trivial things, under miserable conditions, is not an entirely worthless result of the depression.
I have little hope of getting started again in my former business,
so I can have the thrill of planning my future all over again.

Quote by Gordon Byron, December 1933

The art of war

The clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.

quote by Sun Tzu

Consulting

If you're not part of the solution
there is good money to be made in prolonging the problem

Clarke on innovation

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

quote by Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future

Demagogue

The secret of the demagogue is to make herself as stupid as her audience so that they believe they are as clever as she is.

Seen in NY, 5th Avenue

Barrier to success

The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.

quote by Sven Goran Eriksson

Design

A good design is not a democratic consensus.

quote by Edward de Bono

Luck

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

quote by Seneca, Roman Philosopher

Mediocre work

The quickest way to kill the human spirit is to ask someone to do mediocre work.

quote by Ayn Rand

The art of war

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence;
supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.

quote by Sun Tzu, the Art of War

The artist

The artist is nothing without gift, but gift is nothing without work.

quote by Emile Zola

Internet = anarchy experiment

The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand,
the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.

quote by Eric Schmidt

Simplicity in measurement

Simplicity applies to measurement also. Too often we measure everything and understand nothing.

quote by Jack Welch

A brand is a promise

A brand is a promise.
It creates expectations that the product has to deliver.

quote by Guillaume Van de Stighelen (Duval Guillaume)

Capitalism vs socialism

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

quote by Winston Churchill

That's funny...

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, “Eureka!” (“I found it!”) but rather, “Hmm... that’s funny...”

quote by Isaac Asimov

Speed waiting

I took a course in speed waiting.
Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes.

quote by Steven Wright

Snakebite

Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.

quote by W.C. Fields

as if the world were watching

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

quote by Thomas Jefferson

Warren Buffet on statistics and metrics

I don't need to know a lady's weight
to know if she is fat or not

quote by Warren Buffet

Facts

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

quote by John Adams

Transparency

Transparency is only a problem if you have something to hide

Hans

(came up in a meeting on corporate social media interaction)

Spend money

It is better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.

quote by P. J. O'Rourke

Definition of wealth

Wealth:
any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year
than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.

quote by H. Mencken

Job security

Any organization that thinks it can guarantee job security is going a dead end.
Only satisfied customers can give people job security. Not companies.

quote by Jack Welch

Practice ?

Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do 'practice'?"

quote by George Carlin

Means and goals

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age

quote by Albert Einstein

Stop digging

When you're in a pit, the first thing to do is to stop digging.

quote by James Ellman, Seacliffe Capital

Bill Gates on the internet

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

quote by Bill Gates

Fool the people

You can fool some of the people some of the time,
and some of the people all of the time,
and that is sufficient.

Carreer in Washington

I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here.

Quote by Harry Truman

Big idea

There is no way to feel safe about a big idea.

quote by Guillaume Van der Stighelen (Duval Guillaume)

New Year

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.

quote by Bill Vaughn

More time to be depressed

If you didn't have to work so hard, you'd have more time to be depressed.

Judges and generosity

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.

quote by P. G. Woodehouse