“If I think something’s a waste of time or inappropriate I don’t wait to point it out. I say it right away. It’s real time. So you might hear me say That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard many times during a meeting”
Bill Gates
Playboy Interview: Bill Gates (Primary source)
The Playboy interview captures the 38-year-old CEO at a pivotal moment: newly married to Melinda French, presiding over a company whose MS-DOS ran on roughly 90% of the world’s PCs, and facing a Justice Department antitrust inquiry that had picked up where a three-year FTC investigation left off.
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“I do know that if people say things that are wrong, others shouldn’t just sit there silently. They should speak. Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved. That’s true in any endeavor. I’ve never criticized a person. I have criticized ideas. If I think something’s a waste of time or inappropriate I don’t wait to point it out. I say it right away. It’s real time. So you might hear me say That’s the dumbest idea I have ever heard many times during a meeting.”
Bill Gates
“Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“Few skills are more important than knowing how to distinguish what’s true from what’s false.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“The axiom that you learn more from your failures than your successes is trite but absolutely true.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten.”
— Bill Gates Primary source“If you have time don’t wait for time.”
— Benjamin Franklin Primary source“So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.”
— Charlie Munger Primary source“There’s actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest calibre.”
— Steve Jobs Primary source“One of the things that happens in organizations as well as with people is that they settle into ways of looking at the world and become satisfied with things and the world changes and keeps evolving and new potential arises but these people who are settled in don’t see it. That’s what gives start-up companies their greatest advantage.”
— Steve Jobs Primary source