"The Peters Principles: Enthusiasm. Emotion. Excellence. Energy. Excitement. Service. Growth. Creativity. Imagination. Vitality. Joy. Surprise. Independence. Spirit. Community. Limitless human potential. Diversity. Profit. Innovation. Design. Quality. Entrepreneurialism. Wow."

"As project chief you are creating a narrative, a story, a good yarn. If you look at the process-journey that way, you and your gang will … dramatically up the odds of a WOW outcome!"

"What is my personal strategy for the next 10 hours? Who can I talk with or what can I volunteer for to learn something new?"

"Do not even flippantly badmouth anybody this week. Button it up."

"Service is the highest human calling."

"The Big Four: Out-read 'em. Out-study 'em. Out-present 'em. Out-listen 'em."

"Musing on the phrase ‘waste of time.’ So much more complex than it appears. Many ‘wastes of time’—small talk, daydreaming—are imperatives.”"

"Read deep! Read often! Out-READ the 'Competition'!!!"

"An organization, no matter how ‘technologically transformed,’ is at the end of the day no more/no less than: PEOPLE SERVING PEOPLE. (And as leader, your job is: SERVE THE PEOPLE WHO SERVE THE PEOPLE.) (One last thing: The people we serve are our Customers AND our Communities.)"

"Life is too short for non-WOW projects."

"Every excellent company we studied is clear on what it stands for, and takes the process of value shaping seriously. In fact, we wonder whether it is possible to be an excellent company without clarity on values and without having the right sorts of values."

"Lists simplify, clarify, edify."

"Most of their real innovation comes from the market"

"Transforming leadership, [is defined as] leadership that builds on man's need for meaning, leadership that creates institutional purpose … he is the value-shaper, the exemplar, the maker of meanings … he is the true artist, the true pathfinder."

"What gets measured gets done."

"If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?"

"EXCELLENCE in <140 Characters: Cherish your people, cuddle your customers, wander around, “try it” beats “talk about it,” Excellence or else, tell the truth."

"Creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company's success."

"Without exception, the dominance and coherence of culture proved to be an essential quality of the excellent companies."

"The vitality of our network will determine our professional fate."

"I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world. I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with , who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances. Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo... The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search."

"Bosses: You make your living going to meetings. Hence any meeting that does not bubble and incite enthusiasm is a forever-lost opportunity."

"Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes."

"Design that matters infuses HR and Purchasing and Finance as much as product development."

"Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else."

"The magic of drama is infinitely more powerful than the magic of trickery. It is as available to the conjurer as it is to the actor. The only difference is that actors take it for granted, whereas few conjurers are even aware that it exists."

"It's not how you start, but it's how you finish."

"Records are always made to be broken no matter what they are. Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to."

"Dream as big as you can dream, and anything is possible."

"He doesn't do anything small. Everything he does, he does right."

"When you're in the middle of nowhere and you see something moving in the jungle, you're forced to become a creative problem solver."

"Security is for cadavers."

"In business you wind up trying a lot of things, most of which won’t work. The way you become a good business person is to fail, fail, fail and fail."

"The bottom line is this is not a war we want to get into. We can win the battle of Iraq, but that is not the war. It's not a war that can be won in the traditional sense. If we succeed in ousting Saddam Hussein, what then? Who is going to run Iraq afterwards? We cannot do it. The country is a mish mash of factions who hate each other."

"I am dying to find a way to invest in both North Korea and Myanmar. The major changes in these two countries are among the most exciting things I see right now, looking to the future."

"Sometimes I think our central bank will keep printing money till we run out of trees."

"Unfortunately politicians are not very sound people or they wouldn't be politicians."

"I started out with $600, a second hand Volkswagen, and a wife. One was an asset and one was a liability. I will let you figure out which was which. I liquidated both, and still had the $600. I worked long hours, and spent weekends reading about markets. I simply love it. You have to love what you do, whether it be gardening, hairdressing, etc. When you love it, then the money follows. Even if it doesn’t, you will still be happy. Being happy and poor is better than being unhappy and poor."

"If you bail out every investment bank that gets in trouble, that’s not capitalism, that’s socialism for the rich."

"Attacking Iraq would be madness."

"When President Bush goes on television and says certain cultures hate us for our democracy and freedom, he's just wrong. Everywhere I went in the Middle East, everyone told me how much they loved America and Americans; the hatred is directed at American policy."

"I did very little marketing. The key is to make your clients money. If you have a good track record, people will find you and knock on your door. Just make your clients money."

"Teach your children or your grandchildren Chinese. It is going to be the most important language of their lifetimes."

"When I was a young man working 14 hour days, I traded using outrageous and terrifying leverage. I was either very lucky, very smart or very dumb. That’s what terrifies people about commodities. Commodities themselves are no riskier than stocks. A stock on margin has more risk than a commodity fully paid for. It’s all about the degree of leverage."

"Political scientists don't work at banks—which is a problem. As political issues become more important for the markets, analysts at banks are asked all sorts of questions they don't have the ability to answer. And if you're getting paid to answer questions—as analysts at banks are—you never want to be in the position of saying you don't know."

"An emerging market is a country where politics matters at least as much as economics to the market."

"India and China offer intriguing mirror images. Modern India has long been open politically and, until recently, closed economically. Modern China has opened economically, but remains politically closed. The comparison reveals that, while politics and economics can never fully be separated, political openness is a better guarantor of long-term stability than economic openness."

"New York used to be the financial capital of the world. It's no longer even the financial capital of the U.S. For the moment, Washington is."

"The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes—unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime’s safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve—however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins."