Quotes from Guy Kawasaki

A simple summary of my life is that my parents worked very hard so that I could have a great education, and I took that education and worked very hard to get where I am. I would like my kids' lives to be exactly the same.

Great companies start because the founders want to change the world... not make a fast buck. Call me a romantic, but I think entrepreneurs should try to change the world. This comes from working at Apple... old habits die hard.

My mother taught me not to take any crap from anyone and to stand up for my rights. You might not believe this lesson came from a tiny Japanese woman, but it's true.

If you're in enough places at enough times, then some of them are bound to be the right ones.

I travel all the time.

What you learn in school is the opposite of what happens in the real world. In school, you're always worried about minimums. You have to reach 20 pages or you have to have so many slides or whatever. Then you get out in the real world and you think, 'I have to have a minimum of 20 pages and 50 slides.'

You have to sit by the side of a river a very long time before a roast duck will fly into your mouth.

The A-listers and the A+ listers, are reporting the news, they're not making it.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. —Oscar Wilde

When you've worked hard and done well and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you.

If achieving success were easy, more people would do it.

Inertia. Guy's law of enchantment: "People at rest will remain at rest, and people in motion will keep moving in the same direction unless an outside enchanter acts upon them.

Knowledge is great. Competence is great. But the combination of both encourages people to trust you and increases your powers of enchantment. And in this world, the combination is a breath of fresh air.

Good enough is good enough. There is time for refinement later. It's not how great you start—it's how great you end up.

Starting your book is only the first five miles of a twenty-six-mile marathon that's one-third of a triathlon (authoring, publishing, and entrepreneuring).

The first follower is what transforms the lone nut into a leader," and in a startup, that first follower is usually a cofounder.

Suck up with subtlety.

Man who waits for roast duck to fly into mouth must wait very, very long time.

I have a hardcore attitude: a "self-published, ghost-written book" is wrong because the concept behind self publishing is that you have knowledge or emotions that you want to express. When people read a book—particularly a self-published one—they have the right to expect that it's the person's writing, not cleaned-up dictation or slapping a name on a book that someone else wrote.

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

Create like a god. Command like a king. Work like a slave. —Constantine Brancusi

Don't take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. DON MIGUEL RUIZ, THE FOUR AGREEMENTS: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO PERSONAL FREEDOM

You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do. —Henry Ford