Drake Bennett:

Whether they want to or not, people quickly begin to take things for granted.

Jeff Bezos:

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.

Gifts are easy -- they're given, after all. Choices can be hard.

You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices.

Merlin Mann:

It takes a lot of patience and it takes a lot of self-awareness to be open to the fact that you may become popular about something that you didn't want to become popular about.

At a certain point, you don't get to pick that anymore.

Paul Kafasis:

It's got arrogance and self-conceit, followed by comeuppance, which is my absolute favorite kind of uppance.

David Petraeus:

Hard is not hopeless.

Schumpeter:

One of the problems with the corporate world is that all the incentives are towards producing platitudes, and none of them towards plain speaking. We need to invent a way of penalizing people for producing guff.

Daniel Plainview:

I like to think of myself as an oilman. As an oilman, I hope that you'll forgive just good old fashioned plain-speaking.