PREPARATION

"Prepare Thoroughly Before You Begin." — Brian Tracy

"It's not the will to win that matters — everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters." — Paul William "Bear" Bryant, top-winning college American football coach

"By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail." — Benjamin Franklin, American founder

"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work." — Stephen King, famous novelist

"Nobody's a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It's hard to stay on top." — Paul Coffey, NHL star

“Luck is created by the prepared.” — James Altucher, an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and bestselling author, including Choose Yourself (Kindle version, $1)

"I learned that the only way you are going to get anywhere in life is to work hard at it. Whether you're a musician, a writer, an athlete, or a businessman, there is no getting around it. If you do, you'll win—if you don't, you won't." — Bruce Jenner, Olympic gold medal, Decathlon, 1976

“I may say that this is the greatest factor — the way in which the expedition is equipped — the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order — luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.” — Roald Amundsen via Gijs van Wulfen

"The will to win is worthless if you do not have the will to prepare." — Thane Yost

"Life is like a combination lock; your job is to find the right numbers, in the right order, so you can have anything you want." — Brian Tracy

"The commander must decide how he will fight the battle before it begins. He must then decide who he will use the military effort at his disposal to force the battle to swing the way he wishes it to go; he must make the enemy dance to his tune from the beginning and not vice versa." — Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

"Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals, and achieve the promised results." — Larry Bossidy

"Explosions are not comfortable." — Yevgeny Zamyatin

"Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it." — Louis L'Amour's Bendigo Shafter

"If the people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all." — Michelangelo

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult." — E. B. White

"All things are ready, if our minds be so." — William Shakespeare

"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining." — John F. Kennedy, 35th American President

"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe." — Abraham Lincoln, 16th American President

"Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you're ready or not, to put this plan into action." — Napoleon Hill, "one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature," 1928–1970

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." — Seneca Nation of New York, mid 19th Century

"If I miss a day of practice, I know it. If I miss two days, my manager knows it. If I miss three days, my audience knows it." — Andrι Previn, a "most versatile musicians," mid 1950's -

"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure." — Confucius

"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." — Alexander Graham Bell

"One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation." — Arthur Ashe, American World No 1 professional tennis player, late 1960s - mid 1970s

"A lot of my intensity in wrestling was due to my mental preparation before the matches. I got myself into a different world." — Dan Gable, American Olympic wrestler, Gold, 1972

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre." — Gail Godwin, an American novelist and short story writer, 1937 -

FUNDING

"Early stage investment is a gamble on both sides but all we can control is how we present the opportunity, what calibre management we surround ourselves with etc. An investor will think not just in terms of ROI but more fundamentally, 'if I give you money, how do I know you will spend it wisely?' This is not an ROI question. It is a business planning question. Be prepared to provide a detailed launch plan and use of funds plan." — Alex Petrilak, Managing Director, Consultants for accelerated market expansion or funding, Bucknell-Petrilak & Associates, LLC

ENTREPRENEURSHIP
(started by Joel Peterson, Chairman, JetBlue Airways)

"What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." — Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900

"Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance." — Samuel Johnson, 1709-84.

"Sweet are the uses of adversity." — William Shakespeare, 1564-1616

"When it’s darkest, men see the stars." — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

"Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom." — General George S Patton, 1885-1945

"When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water." — Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, American founder

"A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind." — John Neal, 1793-1876

"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm." — Anon

"He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity." — Ben Jonson, c. 1573-1637

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well." — Jack London, 1878-1916

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." — Theodore Roosevelt (from speech at Paris’s Sorbonne in April, 1910)

"It ain't over 'til it's over." — Yogi Berra, baseball star

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

"Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." — Margaret Mead

Many great quotes at: GoodReads.com

GENERAL

"The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now" — Zig Ziglar

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals." — Zig Ziglar

"Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street" — Zig Ziglar

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is not effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at lease fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." — Theodore Roosevelt

"Better an S.O.B. than a fool." — Kenton H Johnson

"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 other's 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." — Steve Jobs in his Stanford Commencement Address, June 12, 2005

"Crawling around endless back roads or slowing successful people on the super highway are no ways to become wealthy." — Kenton H Johnson

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going[, get creative and get paid VERY well]." — popular Chinese proverb [+Johnson]

"It's not WHAT or WHO you know, it's who you know (who know) WHO KNOW projects, professionals and payers: entrepreneurial, big-thinking Collaborators." — Kenton H Johnson

"The successful person has the habit of doing things failures don’t like to do[ or don't do well]." — Albert E N Gray [+Johnson]

On selling: "Get to the 'no' quickly." — Kenton H Johnson

"We do all tasks similarly (each like the other)" — T Harv Eker

On collaboration: "Many senior consultants aren't looking to make a living anymore; the smart ones are making a fortune by Collaborating for futures." — Kenton H Johnson

Others at BrainyQuote.com