“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Effective executives know that their subordinates are paid to perform and not to please their superiors.

Your first and foremost job as a leader is to take charge of your own energy and then help to orchestrate the energy of those around you.

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.

Managing yourself requires taking responsibility for relationships.

History has been written not by the most talented but by the most motivated.

Entrepreneurship is risky mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.

Effectiveness must be learned.

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective.

There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.

What’s measured improves.

The best way to predict your future is to create it.

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

We should be building great things that don’t exist.

Never give up on something that you can’t go a day without thinking about.

E-mail has some magical ability to turn off the politeness gene in a human being.

Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.

When you say that something is impossible, you have made it impossible.

You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.

It is failure that is easy. Success is always hard.

In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts.