"Look, anyone can manage for the short term just keep squeezing the lemon. And anyone can manage for the long just keep dreaming. You were made leader because someone believed you could squeeze and dream at the same time. They saw in you a person with enough insight, experience, and rigor to balance the conflicting demands of short- and long-term results. Performing balancing acts every day is leadership. You've got to eat while you dream. You've got to deliver on short-range commitments, while you develop a long-range strategy and vision and implement it. The success of doing both. Walking and chewing gum if you will. Getting it done in the short-range, and delivering a long-range plan, and executing on that. You can't grow long-term if you can't eat short-term. Anybody can manage short. Anybody can manage long. Balancing those two things is what management is. Management is all about managing in the short term, while developing the plans for the long term.” ― Jack Welch

"He was the best man I ever met…he once told me that being a lord is like being a father, except you have thousands of children. And you worry about all of them: The farmer plowing the fields is yours to protect, the charwomen scrubbing the floors, yours to protect, the soldiers you order into battle. He told me he woke with fear in the morning and went to bed with fear in the night. I didn't believe him. I asked him, 'How can a man be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' he said." ― Game of Thrones

"A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor." ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." ― Winston Churchill

"In time, I realized that the satisfaction of success doesn’t come from achieving your goals but from struggling well." ― Ray Dalio

"Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present nobody really notices, but when it’s absent, everybody notices.” ― Warren Buffett

“There are two basic types of resources that any CEO needs to allocate: financial and human.” ― William Thorndike

“Decentralization is the cornerstone of our philosophy. Our goal is to hire the best people we can and give them the responsibility and authority they need to perform their jobs. All decisions are made at the local level. . . . We expect our managers . . . to be forever cost conscious and to recognize and exploit sales potential.” ― William Thorndike

“Nothing is as good as it seems, and nothing is as bad as it seems. Somewhere in between lies realty.” ― Lou Holtz

“Pain plus reflection equals progress” ― Ray Dalio

"If we can train a couple of hundred BU managers to be competent part-time capital allocators and provide them with acquisition analysis and structuring support when they need it, then I can foresee the day when we are doing 100 acquisitions per annum, instead of 30. It makes the BU manager’s job richer and more fun, but also more demanding. Only one other HPC has followed a strategy of buying hundreds of small businesses and managing them autonomously. They eventually caved in to increased centralisation. My hunch is that it takes an unusually trusting culture and a long investment horizon to support a multitude of small businesses and their entrepreneurial leaders. If trust falters the BU’s can be choked by bureaucracy. If short term results are paramount, the siren song of consolidation synergies is powerful. We continue to believe that autonomy and responsibility attract and motivate the best managers and employees." ― Constellation Software

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." ― George S. Patton

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." ― Nietzsche

"The opposite of exhaustion is not rest, it’s wholeheartedness. Find things about which you can be truly passionate, and you will never be too tired to keep going." ― (unknown)