People
Developing others and building the team and culture around them.
Leaders who emphasize people spend time on hiring, coaching, and growing others. They delegate meaningful work so others can stretch, and they treat culture as something to build on purpose.
Quotes are tagged by what they are about, not by who said them. A quote here is not a rating of the speaker.
Engineering actually doesn't care how old you are. It actually cares whether you have good ideas.
Verified source2026 Commencement Address at MIT · Watch at 6:31 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology on YouTube
The greatest satisfaction of my career has been bringing people together to do something more than any of us thought was possible.
Verified source2026 Commencement Address at MIT · Watch at 8:47 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology on YouTube
Luck is not just being in the right place at the right time. It is taking the risk to work on something really hard. It's challenging yourself. It's choosing problems where you may not know the answer. It's surrounding yourself with people who make you better.
Verified source2026 Commencement Address at MIT · Watch at 13:03 · Massachusetts Institute of Technology on YouTube
You can’t change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.
Verified source2014 Commencement Address at the University of Texas at Austin · Watch at 6:57 · UT News, The University of Texas at Austin
6:57 of 19:29All quotes from this speech →
As delivered You can't change the world alone—you will need some help. And to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide you. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.
We can succeed only by concert. It is not, 'Can any of us imagine better,' but, 'Can we all do better?'
SourceSecond State of the Union address (1862) · via Wikiquote
My foundations support people in the country who care about an open society. It's their work that I'm supporting. So it's not me doing it. But I can empower them. I can support them, and I can help them.
SourceInterview with David Brancaccio (2003) · via Wikiquote
I shall make it the most agreeable part of my duty to study merit, and reward the brave and deserving.
SourceAddress to the Officers of the Virginia Regiment · National Archives on Founders Online
I have diligently sought the public welfare; and have endeavoured to inculcate the same principles in all that are under me. These reflections will be a cordial to my mind as long as I am able to distinguish between Good & Evil.
SourceLetter to the Speaker of the House of Burgesses, John Robinson · National Archives on Founders Online
A people unused to restraint must be led, they will not be drove.
SourceLetter to Major General Stirling · National Archives on Founders Online
It is infinitely better to have a few good Men, than many indifferent ones.
SourceLetter to James McHenry · National Archives on Founders Online
Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.
Source"5 Life Lessons From Alibaba Founder Jack Ma", Time (Sept. 23, 2014) · via Wikiquote
Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
SourceJordan, Michael. I Can't Accept Not Trying · via Wikiquote
Innovation has nothing to do with how many R & D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R & D. It's not about money. It's about the people you have, how you're led, and how much you get it.
SourceAs quoted in Fortune (9 November 1998); also quoted in "TIME digital 50" in TIME digital archive (1999) · via Wikiquote
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem.
SourceAs quoted in "The Seed of Apple's Innovation" in BusinessWeek (12 October 2004) · via Wikiquote
Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn't been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.
SourcePlayboy interview (1985) · via Wikiquote
We allow no geniuses around our Studio.
SourceAs quoted in Animated Architecture (1982) by Derek Walker, p. 10 · via Wikiquote
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
It's not all about talent. It's about dependability, consistency, and being able to improve. If you work hard and you're coachable, and you understand what you need to do, you can improve.
Things happen so quickly. We don't have time for one person to tell everybody what to do. Everybody needs to know what to do in those situations.
Ultimately, the team has to come first even though we all have individual goals and preferences.
My job as a coach is to make good decisions. It's not to go out there and block or tackle.
You have to go with the person who you have the most confidence in, the most consistent. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, but I'm going down with that person.
I think it's important for us, as a team, to know each other. Know our teammates and our coaches. To interact with them is more important than to be 'liked' by whoever on Chatrun.
I think your team evolves every year. The more you know about it, the better you can coach it.
You go to the draft board and think, 'Here's a nose tackle. Who needs a nose tackle?' Well, eight teams in front of you need a nose tackle, and there's two nose tackles. It's something you have to figure out where you can get the players to play in your system.
The more you and the organization can help take care of personal situations, the smoother the ship runs on the football end.
As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.
Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.
Everyone needs a coach. It doesn't matter whether you're a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player.
If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.
One thing I've always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they'll tell you, 'We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.'
If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was 'satisfactory,' I would have no hope of ever getting better. How would I know who was the best? How would I know what I was doing differently?
Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
If you've found some way to educate yourself about engineering, stocks, or whatever it is, good employers will have some type of exam or interview and see a sample of your work.
I don't think culture is something you can describe.
Steve Jobs' ability to focus in on a few things that count, get people who get user interface right, and market things as revolutionary are amazing things.
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
It's very important to like the people you work with. Otherwise, your job is going to be quite miserable.
The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You're encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren't that smart, who aren't that creative.
I care very deeply about the people at Tesla. I feel like I have a great debt to the people of Tesla who are making the company successful.
A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.
I'm trying to construct a world that maximises the probability that SpaceX continues its mission without me.
Everybody has talent, it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is.
If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.
I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can't be done.
You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.
Trust the young people; trust this generation's innovation. They're making things, changing innovation every day. And all the consumers are the same: they want new things, they want cheap things, they want good things, they want unique things. If we can create these kind of things for consumers, they will come.
The world needs new leadership, but the new leadership is about working together.
The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.
Part of company culture is path-dependent - it's the lessons you learn along the way.
My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they're having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society. As a world, we're doing a better job of that. My goal is for Google to lead, not follow that.
We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.
I think, team first. It allows me to succeed, it allows my team to succeed.
To all the positions, I just bring the determination to win. Me being an unselfish player, I think that can carry on to my teammates. When you have one of the best players on the court being unselfish, I think that transfers to the other players.
There are a lot of things I suck at. I'm not organized. I have to have partners and people around me who dot my i's and cross my t's. I'm sloppy. I'm a ready-fire-aim guy. I need to have people around me who aren't.
When I got to the Mavericks people were all giving me advice - change this, change that - and one thing that I didn't do was fire anybody.
The key is having great players. But there are a lot of teams that have All-Stars and haven't been able to put it together.
I love helping entrepreneurs. It's something I really have fun doing. It's like planting a little seed and watching it grow.
When you turn your team upside down and try to figure out what the culture of the team is, you take the greatest risk a team can take.
If you are good enough to compete for a top-level corporate job, you should be smart enough to know what the job pays the other gender and negotiate accordingly. If you are an employer, and you don't pay an employee market wages, regardless of gender or orientation, you will end up with what you deserve.
The people I don't like to work with are people like me. I need people who can complement my skill set, people who can do the nitty gritty with me.
Culture is very important to the Mavs. Your best player has to be a fit for what you want the culture of the team to be. He has to be someone who leads by example. Someone who sets the tone in the locker room and on the court. It isn't about who talks the most or the loudest. It is about the demeanor and attitude he brings.
I always tell people that you should only hire people to be on your team if you would work for them.
Our philosophy is that we care about people first.
Hackathons are these things where just all of the Facebook engineers get together and stay up all night building things. And, I mean, usually at these hackathons, I code too, just alongside everyone.
We have a very open culture at the company, where we foster a lot of interaction between not just me and people but between everyone else. It's an open floor plan. People have these desks where no one really has an office. I mean, I have a room where I meet with people. But it has all glass, so everyone can see into it and see what's going on.
I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person. It's a pretty good test.
We are a mission-driven company. In order to do this, we have to build a great team. And in order to do that, you need people to know they can make a bunch of money. So we need a business model to make a lot of money.
I look at Google and think they have a strong academic culture. Elegant solutions to complex problems.
The amount of trust and bandwidth that you build up working with someone for five, seven, 10 years? It's just awesome. I care about openness and connectedness in a global sense.
What really motivates people at Facebook is building stuff that they're proud of.
If we're trying to build a world-class News Feed and a world-class messaging product and a world-class search product and a world-class ad system, and invent virtual reality and build drones, I can't write every line of code. I can't write any lines of code.
We want Facebook to be one of the best places people can go to learn how to build stuff. If you want to build a company, nothing better than jumping in and trying to build one. But Facebook is also great for entrepreneurs/hackers. If people want to come for a few years and move on and build something great, that's something we're proud of.
I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I'm generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we're providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we're doing so well on so many of these things. I think it's important to have gratitude for that.
If you learn something new every day, you can teach something new every day.
The best evaluation I can make of a player is to look in his eyes and see how scared they are.
My challenge when I came back was to face the young talent, dissect their games, and show them maybe that they needed to learn more about the game than just the money aspect.
For everyone of us that succeeds, it's because there's somebody there to show you the way out.
When you think about growing and being empowered yourself, it is what you've been able to do for other people that leaves you the fullest.
Love is the force that ignites the spirit and binds teams together.
You have to be able to psychologically help your players, support-wise, be in touch with them, so I think managing people is very important.
My philosophy is that you don't motivate players with speeches; you have motivated players that you draft. That's where they come in, and those are the guys that are competitive. You can not teach competitiveness.
I think the most important thing about coaching is that you have to have a sense of confidence about what you're doing. You have to be a salesman, and you have to get your players, particularly your leaders, to believe in what you're trying to accomplish on the basketball floor.
The NBA has made a real issue about really making these superstars the premium that everybody wants to go to. That's their calling card and their marketing tool. But the coaches at the other end of the sphere are trying to make everybody on the team, even nine, 10, 11, 12, just as important, and have a real role that's meaningful.
There's a lot of chatter in basketball and, rightfully, you want players to be talking to each other... But sometimes in practice, it gets too verbose... so I tried to take things out of the ordinary and make them special so they'd understand the difference.
I think the most rewarding part of the job, and I think most coaches would say it, is practice. If you have it, a very good practice in which you have 12 guys participate, and they can really get something out of it, lose themselves in practice.
By putting the employee first, the customer effectively comes first by default, and in the end, the shareholder comes first by default as well.
The art of delegation is one of the key skills any entrepreneur must master.
A good leader doesn't get stuck behind a desk.
Especially when you're at a high level in an organization, criticism can be devastating to an employee. I prefer to praise employees for what they're doing right, and it tends to lead to them doing more of the same. Not always, but it's the way I choose to bet.
From a young age, I learned to focus on the things I was good at and delegate to others what I was not good at. That's how Virgin is run. Fantastic people throughout the Virgin Group run our businesses, allowing me to think creatively and strategically.
When hiring somebody, I never ask to see a curriculum vitae. I feel that since I didn't have one myself, it would be a bit presumptuous to ask to see anyone else's.
When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn't set out to build a business empire... For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives.
The energy you create around you is perhaps going to be the most important attribute - in the long run, EQ trumps IQ. Without being a source of energy for others, very little can be accomplished.
There is something only a CEO uniquely can do, which is set that tone, which can then capture the soul of the collective.
At Microsoft, we're aspiring to have a living, learning culture with a growth mindset that allows us to learn from ourselves and our customers. These are the key attributes of the new culture at Microsoft, and I feel great about how it seems to be resonating and how it's seen as empowering.
Without a doubt, I wholeheartedly support programs at Microsoft and in the industry that bring more women into technology and close the pay gap.
The thing I'm most focused on today is, how am I maximizing the effectiveness of the leadership team, and what am I doing to nurture it?
I want people on the front line to be proud of what they're doing and give themselves permission to finish things in ways that they can be proud of.
Ultimately, what any company does when it is successful is merely a lagging indicator of its existing culture.
I want the least number of decision makers. We want to empower people to get more things done and also give permission to question orthodoxy.
To excel at the highest level - or any level, really - you need to believe in yourself, and hands down, one of the biggest contributors to my self-confidence has been private coaching.
We have a great group of guys that really sacrifice every night, care about each other, and try to play the right away.
The vibe in our locker room is real energetic and fun and real personable, I think from Day 1. That gets you through a lot of tough times, where in hard times, it might be common nature for guys to do their own thing and split up and become silent.
Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.
It's not the tools that you have faith in - tools are just tools. They work, or they don't work. It's people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I'm still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.
Technology is nothing. What's important is that you have a faith in people, that they're basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they'll do wonderful things with them.
My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others' negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts.
We hire people who want to make the best things in the world.
The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.
The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.
When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it's you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.
I love creating partnerships; I love not having to bear the entire burden of the creative storytelling, and when I have unions like with George Lucas and Peter Jackson, it's really great; not only do I benefit, but the project is better for it.
If the world ran the way a crew runs a set, we'd have a better, more progressive world.
I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.
Google teams have lots of autonomy, including from people like me.
I think the most diverse group will produce the best product; I firmly believe that.
If you believe, as we believe, that diversity leads to better products, and we're all about making products that enrich people's lives, then you obviously put a ton of energy behind diversity the same way you would put a ton of energy behind anything else that is truly important.
We collectively, to get things done, work together as a team. Because the work really happens horizontally in our company, not vertically. Products are horizontal. It takes hardware plus software plus services to make a killer product.
We generally acquire a company every three to four weeks on average. And so it's a rare month that there's not a company being bought. We typically buy for technology and really great people.
Apple has a culture of excellence that is, I think, so unique and so special. I'm not going to witness or permit the change of it.
When you care about people's happiness and productivity, you give them what brings out the best in them and their creativity. And if you give them a choice, they'll say, 'I want an iPhone,' or 'I want a Mac.' We think we can win a lot of corporate decisions at that level.
I think each person, if you're a CEO, the most important thing is to have - to me, is to pick people around you that aren't like you, that complement you. Because you want to build a puzzle; you don't want to stack Chiclets up and have everyone be the same. And so I believe in diversity with a capital D.
When you're an engineer, you want to analyze things a lot. But if you believe that the most important data points are people, then you have to make conclusions in relatively short order. Because you want to push the people who are doing great. And you want to either develop the people who are not or, in a worst case, they need to be somewhere else.
What Beats brings to Apple are guys with very rare skills. People like this aren't born every day. They're very rare. They really get music deeply.
We could build just about anything that you could dream of. But that's not the question. The thing that Beats provides us is a head start. They provide us with incredible people that don't grow on trees.
I just love working hard. I love being part of a team; I love working toward a common goal.
WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren't playing so well, you don't have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.
It's amazing, the culture Coach Belichick has been able to create in our system.
When I work, I work very hard. So I look to work with people who have that level of dedication. And I depend on that from everyone. From the director to my crews that I work with.
I like to work with people that I like hanging out with, that I admire, that are really smart and talented, and we can problem solve together.
Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
The achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.
Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.
People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.
The leader can never close the gap between himself and the group. If he does, he is no longer what he must be. He must walk a tightrope between the consent he must win and the control he must exert.
Coaches who can outline plays on a black board are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their player and motivate.
Teamwork is what the Green Bay Packers were all about. They didn't do it for individual glory. They did it because they loved one another.
I'll put the Packers' best players on defense. It's best for a team and good for its morale.
You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
Of all the things I've done, the most vital is coordinating those who work with me and aiming their efforts at a certain goal.
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