"I find, when you're an optimist, life has a funny way of looking after you."

"If you have the opportunity to do amazing things in your life, I strongly encourage you to invite someone to join you."

"If you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they'll work for you with blood, sweat, and tears."

"Leadership is absolutely about inspiring action, but it is also about guarding against mis-action."

"Though we may have desires or bold goals, for whatever reason, most of us don't think we can achieve something beyond what we're qualified to achieve. Why, I ask, do we let reality interfere with our dreams?"

"Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress: Working hard for something we love is called passion."

"The cost of leadership is self-interest."

"Champions are not the ones who always win races - champions are the ones who get out there and try. And try harder the next time. And even harder the next time. 'Champion' is a state of mind. They are devoted. They compete to best themselves as much if not more than they compete to best others. Champions are not just athletes."

"It is only from the people I've had the good fortune to meet that I am learning the lessons to guide me. Baz Luhrmann, director of 'Moulin Rouge,' for example, has a childlike curiosity about the world. He doesn't pretend to know all the answers - quite the opposite, in fact. He asks loads of questions of everyone."

"We can't all be good at everything. This is partly the logic behind having a team in the first place, so each role can be filled with the person best suited for that role and together, every job and every strength is covered."

"One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader's need to be both stubborn and open-minded. A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he must be open-minded during the process."

"Like a good parent can't also be his child's best friend, a leader with authority requires some separation from subordinates."

"Cowards...cling to the hope that failure will never happen and may be sloppy in the face of danger - not because they don't acknowledge that it exists, but because they are just too afraid of it to look it in the eye."

"The strong bond of friendship is not always a balanced equation; friendship is not always about giving and taking in equal shares. Instead, friendship is grounded in a feeling that you know exactly who will be there for you when you need something, no matter what or when."

"Over 90% of people go home at the end of the day feeling unfulfilled by their work, and I won't stop working until that statistic is reversed - until over 90% of people go home and can honestly say, 'I love what I do'."

"Pilots have their names painted just beneath the canopy of their aircraft. This gives the pilot a sense of ownership for his or her jet. What's more, like cars, each aircraft has its own personality, so it's important for a pilot to get to know and love his aircraft."

"A star wants to see himself rise to the top.A leader wants to see those around him rise to the top."

"Great leaders are willing to sacrifice the numbers to save the people. Poor leaders sacrifice the people to save the numbers."

"Responsibility is not doing as we are told, that's obedience. Responsibility is doing what is right."

"TiVo and other digital recording devices have confounded advertisers. The ad industry sees the technology as a threat to their product."

"At the end of the day, humans are social animals and we are at our best when we get to do things with others who appreciate and enjoy what we enjoy. It's what keeps us human."

"The goal is not simply to 'work hard, play hard'. The goal is to make our work and our play indistinguishable."

"A friend is an emotional bond, just like friendship is a human experience."

"Empathy is not something we offer to our customers or our employees from nine to five. It is "a second by second, minute by minute service that we owe to everyone if we want to call ourselves a leader"."

"Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank."

"The challenge of the unknown future is so much more exciting than the stories of the accomplished past."

"A leader's job is not to do the work for others, it's to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done, and to succeed beyond what they thought possible."

"The world is a bell curve. Classroom test scores, employee performance in a company or how many people really, really like you. No matter the population you're studying, they always fit neatly across the standard deviations of the famous bell curve."

"A sour corporate culture can actually make an entire society unhappy. This means that a strong corporate culture can have a positive impact on a society."

"Some people are born good-looking. Some have the gift of gab. And some are lucky enough to be born smarter than the rest of us. Whether we like it or not, Mother Nature does not dole these characteristics out evenly."

"If you want to be a great leader, remember to treat all people with respect at all times. For one, because you never know when you'll need their help. And two, because it's a sign you respect people, which all great leaders do."

"The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe."

"The only time I waste is time I spend doing something that, in my gut, I know I shouldn't. If I choose to spend time playing video games or sleeping in, then it's time well spent, because I chose to do it. I did it for a reason - to relax, to decompress or to feel good, and that was what I wanted to do."

"The single best machine to measure trust is a human being. We haven't figured out a metric that works better than our own sort of, like, 'There's something fishy about you'."

"Starbucks was founded around the experience and the environment of their stores. Starbucks was about a space with comfortable chairs, lots of power outlets, tables and desks at which we could work and the option to spend as much time in their stores as we wanted without any pressure to buy. The coffee was incidental."

"Great companies don`t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something better than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you`ll be stuck with whoever`s left."

"People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe."

"The most effective leaders are actually better at guarding against danger when they acknowledge it that it exists. Cowards, in contrast, cling to the hope that failure will never happen and may be sloppy in the face of danger - not because they don't acknowledge that it exists, but because they are just too afraid of it to look it in the eye."

"I love science fiction - always have."

"Innovators are the ones whose dreams are clearer than the reality that tells them they're crazy."

"Leadership is a way of thinking, a way of acting and, most importantly, a way of communicating."

"When you explain to people what you're trying to do, as opposed to just making demands or delegating tasks, you can build instant trust, even if it's just for that short time you're on the phone."

"Leadership is not about the next election, it's about the next generation."

"The U.S. Constitution protects our privacy from the prying eyes of government. It does not, however, protect us from the prying eyes of companies and corporations."

"Great leaders don't need to act tough. Their confidence and humility serve to underscore their toughness."