"In Google's way of looking at the world, Marissa Mayer explained, any product that simplifies a task for consumers better delivers "the world's information" to them. Which is another way of saying: Google engineers should imagine that Search can be anything that makes a current system more efficient."
- Chapter 13. Compete or Collaborate?

"But we are entering the era of infinite shelf space. Two of the main scarcity functions of traditional economics – the marginal costs of manufacturing and distribution – are trending to zero in Long Tail markets of digital goods, where bits can be copied and transmitted at almost no cost at all."

"If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom."

- Chapter 9. Committees, Juries and Teams

"To be specific, the point of greatest peril in the development of a high-tech market lies in making the transition from an early market dominated by a few visionary customers to a mainstream market dominated by a large block of customers who are predominantly pragmatists in orientation."

- Part II. Chapter 5. Assemble the Invasion Force

"Search is the new interface for commerce and marketing."

From the Amazon.com Editorial Review: "A fascinating and comprehensive examination of the different dimensions of luxury management in various sectors. This is a powerful book for marketers, advertisers and brand managers in understanding the intricacies of the luxury market- how it is designed, defined and divined. Written by the authors of Pro-Logo, this book sets the benchmark for luxury brand management."

"This book attempts to provide a conceptual overview of macroeconomics, emphasizing essential principles and relationships, rather than mathematical models and formulas. The purpose is to convey the fundamentals - the building blocks - and to do so in a way that is both accesible and relevant. [...] As the remainder of this volume makes clear, macroeconomics may be thought of as resting on three basic pillars: output, money, and expectations."

- Introduction

"All schedules [...] serve three primary purposes. The first is to make commitments about when things will be done. The schedule provides a form of contract between every person on a team or in an organization [...] The second purpose of a schedule is to encourage everyone who's contributing to a project to see her efforts as part of a whole [...] The third purpose of schedules is to give the team a tool to track progress and to break work into manageable chunks."
- Chapter 2. The Truth About Schedules

"[...] Newton was elected President of the Royal Society, the ultimate scientific accolade in Great Britain, and in 1705, Queen Anne bestowed on him a knighthood, the ultimate royal tribute. The once shy, frail boy from a small Lincolnshire village was to spend the remaining years of his life regarded as little less than a national treasure. Sir Isaac Newton died in 1727 at the age of eighty-four, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His epitaph in the Abbey reads: Mortals, congratulate yourselves that so great a man has lived for the honour of the human race."

- Chapter 3. Mathematics in Motion

"The product of smart mob technologies is cooperation, not horsepower or mind power. Intellectual technologies like mathematics and graphic user interfaces augment the capabilities
of cognition. The power of mobile and pervasive communications derives from the ways people can use them to organize social groups in new ways."
- Chapter 2: Technologies of Cooperation

"This strange game presented an opening for Buffett. He was hearing from quite a few CEOs that they were under siege. It occurred to Buffett that Berkshire could make an attractive baby-sitter. It had a reputation as an unmeddlesome, and stable, owner. And, not needing financing, it could move fast. For a desperate CEO, selling to Buffett could be a third route between succumbing to a raider and resorting to self-immolation via greenmail."

- Chapter 14. The Eighties

"This book will teach you three powerful lessons: How you can minimize the odds of suffering irreversible losses; how you can maximize the chances of achieving sustainable gains; how you can control the self-defeating behavior that keeps most investors from reaching their full potential."

- Chapter 1. Investment versus speculation: Results to be    expected by the Intelligent Investor

"Whether you're banded together to meet a deadline, to fight a competitor, or just to beat the team down the hall, a challenging rival can be a great motivator. And a little competition can make a big difference."

- Chapter 3. To be a Good Boss

"Create like a God. Command Like a King. Work Like a Slave."

"A word of mouth topic is not your official marketing message or your formal brand statement. It's a simple message that sparks interest and conversation. Great word of mouth topics are often hard for traditional marketers to see. They violate the rules of marketing. [...] It's an exception when real people want to repeat your official company motto or carefully crafted theme. Instead, people latch onto the unexpected."

- Chapter 5. Topics: What Will They Talk About?

"Creating buzz sounds very tough. But it can be easy if you know which buttons to push. Time and time again, these six things push people's buttons and start conversations: The taboo (sex, lies, bathroom humour), The unusual, The outrageous, The hilarious, The remarkable, The secrets (both kept and revealed). Push any of these buzz buttons, and you'll give people the currency to start a conversation."

- Chapter 3. The First Secret - Push the Six Buttons of Buzz

"Most companies in expert services - such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants - think that their clients are buying expertise. But most prospects for these complex services cannot evaluate expertise; [...] But they can tell if the relationship is good and if phone calls are returned. Clients are experts at knowing if they feel valued. [...] If you're selling a service, you're selling a relationship."

- Chapter 3. Marketing is Not a Department

"Fate never played a stranger prank than when she transformed this shy young Oxford graduate from a studious archaeologist into the leader of a hundred thrilling raids, creator of kings, commander of an army, and world's champion train-wrecker."

- Chapter XI

"He who makes pure his works by Yoga, who watches over his soul, and who by wisdom destroys his doubts, is free from the bondage of selfish work. Kill therefore with the sword of wisdom the doubt born of ignorance that lies in thy heart. Be one in self-harmony, in Yoga,

and arise, great warrior, arise."

"For I am the abode of Brahman, the never-failing fountain of everlasting life. The law of righteousness is my law; and my joy

is infinite joy."

"Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, Yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for Yoga: the science of mind control. The ancient rishi Patanjali defines Yoga as: Neutralization of the alternating waves in consciousness. [...] After pursuing every conceivable ontological inquiry, the Hindu systems formulate six definite disciplines aimed

at the permanent removal of suffering and the attainment of timeless bliss."

- Chapter 24. I Become a Monk of the Swami Order

"My earnest request is that you practice love and kindness whether you believe in a religion or not. Through this practice you will come to realize the value of compassion and kindness for your own peace of mind. After all, even though you may not be concerned with other people, you are very much concerned with yourself - no question about it - so you must want to achieve a peaceful mind and a happier daily life."

- Chapter 5. Extending Help

"It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings."

"Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy"

"Our Story centres in an island, not widely sundered from the Continent, and so tilted that its mountains lie all to the west and north, while south and east is a gently undulating landscape of wooded valleys, open downs, and slow rivers. It is very accesible to the invader, whether he comes in peace or war, as pirate or merchant, conqueror or missionary. Those who dwell there are not insensitive to any shift of power, any change of faith, or even fashion, on the mainland, but they give to every practice, every doctrine that comes to it from abroad, its own peculiar turn and imprint."

- Volume I. Preface

"Moreover, these same Germans were, of all the enemies in the world, the most to be dreaded when pursuing their own plans; the most easily disconcerted when forced to conform to the plans of their antagonist. To leave a German leisure to evolve his vast, patient, accurate designs, to make his slow, thorough, infinitely far-seeing preparations, was to court a terrible danger. To throw him out of his stride, to baffle his studious mind, to break his self-confidence, to cow his spirit, to rupture his schemes by unexpected action, was surely the path not only of glory but of prudence."

- Chapter XVII. Turkey and The Balkans

"Like Verdun, The Somme is a name which has entered the language of Western civilization. Say it today, eighty years after the battle, and the mind conjures up a disaster the magnitude of which stands alone even in the crowded history of World War I. The Battle of The Somme lasted five months, from July to November 1916. It was contested by two million men on a 30-mile front between Amiens and Péronne.
It produced no strategic gain and over one million casualties."

- Chapter 4. Slaughter

"[...] Cast away regret and rue,
Think what you are marching to.
Little live, great pass.
Jesus Christ and Barabbas
Were found the same day.
This died, that went his way.
So sing with joyful breath.
For why, you are going to death.
Teeming earth will surely store
All the gladness that you pour. [...]"

'All the hills and vales along'
by Charles Hamilton Sorley
» read the full poem

"To keep a positive outlook, you need to keep perspective. Don't allow the media to infect you with a negative view or a sense of helplessness about the world's many social and economic problems. Try to skim the bad news in newspapers and focus on broader economic and social trends.
I am an optimist because I have never met a rich pessimist. "

- Chapter 27

From the Amazon.com Editorial Review: "Are you a gambling, divorce-prone, conspicuously consuming "Income-Statement Affluent" Jacuzzi fool soon to be parted from his or her money? or a frugal, loyal, resole-your-shoes and buy-your-own-groceries type like one of Stanley's "Balance-Sheet Affluent" millionaires?"

"Growing business and economic links will ensure that relationships among the NAFTA countries endure and grow more intense as time goes by. [...] While there is much that each country can do on its own to secure a prosperous future for the region as a whole, growing interdependence makes it essential that they move forward together."

- Chapter 6. Three's Company: NAFTA as a Bloc

"...three important characteristics influencing global growth: the extent of competition domestically [...] the quality of a country's institutions that make an economy work; and the success of its policy makers in..."

- Chapter 12. The Universals of Economic Growth

"German management works hard at maintaining good relationships with its employees because so much has been invested in them via the apprenticeship system. Germany's apprenticeship system, rooted in the medieval guilds, consists today of approximately 380 core occupational training programs within a dual-track educational system. [...] Workers understand that doing their job poorly will have a negative effect on both their company and the economy. This training infuses them with a stronger sense of social responsibility and personal accountability."

- Chapter 5. The German Social Market Economy

"Now again I cannot answer questions, but at this moment there is no need because I go where my legs will take me and if I look ahead, it seems like time gone by, for I see myself no matter where I go, forever here."

- Chapter 25

"...and to lounge in the warm darkness while conversation grew up, seemingly from no roots at all, and blossomed and flowered exotically, under the magic brilliance of the stars until with a reluctance of which they were hardly conscious they drifted off to bed, hours after midnight."

- The Happy Return

"The present book is intended, as far as possible, to give an exact insight into the theory of Relativity to those readers who, from a general scientific and philosophical point of view, are interested in the theory, but who are not conversant with the mathematical apparatus of theoretical physics. The work presumes a standard of education corresponding to that of a university matriculation examination, and, despite the shortness of the book, a fair amount of patience and force of will on the part of the reader."

- Preface

"Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. [...] The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die."

"To a large extent, the solution lies in the same place. In a very real sense, scientifically and technically literate MBA's could save American Industry. [...] The spirit of the time seems to be that things are pretty bad and will certainly get worse. [...] The truth is that the resources available to us are, for all practical purposes, infinite. Building on what we know of the solar system, [...] we can relieve Earth of of its energy problem, make astronomical amounts of raw material available, and raise the living standard of people wordwide."

- Preface.

"Personal power is a feeling, something like being lucky. Or one may call it a mood. Personal power is something that one acquires regardless of one's origin. A warrior is a hunter of power. I am teaching you how to hunt and store it. The difficulty with you, which is the difficulty with all of us, is to be convinced. You need to believe that personal power can be used and that it is possible to store it.
To be convinced means that you can act by yourself."

- Chapter 10. Becoming Accesible to Power

"The self-confidence of a warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. [...] The difference between the two is remarkable.
Self-confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one's actions and feelings."

- Part Two, Chapter I. Having to Believe

"Can an intelligence create another intelligence more intelligent than itself? Are we more intelligent than the evolutionary process that created us? In turn, will the intelligence that we are creating come to exceed that of its creator?"

- Chapter 2. The Intelligence of Evolution

"Robot industries will start as conversions of existing enterprises [...] But then they will explore and exploit expanding non-traditional options, some very unhuman. Our artificial progeny will grow away from and beyond us."

- Chapter 1. Escape Velocity

“O Divine Master, grant that I may not seek to be consoled, as to console. To be understood, as to understand. To be loved, as to love. For it is in giving that we receive. It is in pardoning that we are pardoned. It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

“Above all the grace and the gifts that Christ gives to his beloved is that of overcoming self.”

"A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man desires."

"Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also."

"They may not be worth much, but after all, they're property and portable.  It don't signify to you, with your brilliant lookout, but as to myself, my guiding star always is: Get hold of portable property."

- Chapter 24.