Michael Dell Quotes

If you want to sustain excellence over a long time, you'd better come up with a system that works well. Anyone can sprint for a little while, but you can't sprint for forty years.

Twenty years and $40 billion. They seem like good round numbers.

I have no doubt that in the future, wearable devices like Fitbit will know my blood pressure, hydration levels and blood sugar levels as well. All of this data has the potential to transform modern medicine and create a whole new era of personalized care.

Each day that you're moving toward your dreams without compromising who you are, you're winning

Recognize that there will be failures, and acknowledge that there will be obstacles. But you will learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, for there is very little learning in success.

There are a lot of new things going on in the microprocessor world, including increased focus on power and efficiency.

Our business is about technology, yes. But it's also about operations and customer relationships.

There is no better catalyst to success than curiosity.

Celebrate for a nanosecond.

We were always focused on our profit and loss statement. But cash flow was not a regularly discussed topic. It was as if we were driving along, watching only the speedometer, when in fact we were running out of gas.

One of the things was to create a kind of amnesty environment.

Productivity is grounded in the PC. Where does the computing power come from? How would you run 'USA Today' without PCs? Run a hospital without PCs? People don't want products, they want solutions.

We are all gifts to each other, and my own growth as a leader has shown me again and again that the most rewarding experiences come from my relationships.

If you think about computing, there isn't just one way to compute, just like there's not just one way to move around. You can have shoes, you can have a car, you can have a bicycle, submarine, rocket, plane, train, glider, whatever. Because you have one doesn't mean you get rid of another one ... But PCs continue to be important.

I've been fascinated with technology since I was a boy banging around on my father's adding machine. Back then I'd type in an equation, the device made some cool noises, and out came my answer. I was hooked.

I had to give it a full go and see what happened.

We've found that customers are very open. They'll tell you what's going on, what's working and what's not. They're looking for help.

It's easy to decide what you're going to do. The hard thing is deciding what you're not going to do.

There are many different kinds of PCs. You have fixed, virtual, tablets, notebooks, ultrabooks, desktops, workstations. What you find in commercial PCs, business PCs, is that there's a really long tail of usage on client devices.

Computing shows up in many different ways. You have computing that you wear, computing that you carry. What you think of as the traditional PC market has a long tail of usage, particularly in the commercial world, but also in consumer.

I'm a big believer in online communities and in user-generated content.

In taking Dell private, we plan to go back to our roots, focusing on the entrepreneurial spirit that made Dell one of the fastest-growing and most successful companies in history.

If we have 99% [market] share of Ford Company, the question to us is 'How do we improve the customer satisfaction in order to get that additional 1% share?

Dell's a company that has changed the IT landscape in making PCs and servers more affordable. There's enormous opportunities to make IT more accessible to tens of millions of companies, kind of democratizing the ability for companies to gain access to IT.

I believe that you have to understand the economics of a business before you have a strategy, and you have to understand your strategy before you have a structure. If you get these in the wrong order, you will probably fail.

The point is, you can't keep doing the same thing and expect it to keep working.

It had always made sense to me to build a business based on what people really wanted, rather than guess what we thought they might want.

Today the world lost a visionary leader, the technology industry lost an iconic legend and I lost a friend and fellow founder. The legacy of Steve Jobs will be remembered for generations to come. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and to the Apple team.

Ideas are commodity. Execution of them is not.

Whether you've found your calling, or if you're still searching, passion should be the fire that drives your life's work.

The very thing you fear could be the best thing to ever happen to you

If you look at innovation, it doesn't just occur in the lab.

People ask me all the time, 'How can I become a successful entrepreneur?' And I have to be honest: It's one of my least favorite questions, because if you're waiting for someone else's advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you're not one.

The speed of the Internet provides a fundamentally different perspective on how business relationships occur ... The approach relies on collaboration, not on competition ... on sharing information, and understanding what we as businesses do best.

The key to using the Internet to extend and build relationships is to view ownership of information differently-you need to bring customers inside your business to create information partnerships ... relationships become the differentiator, more than products or services. Businesses become intertwined.

I started Dell 28 yrs ago with $1000. Revenues in 1984 were $6 million. Last year $62.1 billion. Impossible is nothing.

If you don't have jobs, it's hard to have other things like health and education.

It's exciting to see how fast your kids learn and grow. I'm not too worried about them, particularly the ones who like to break rules and don't follow instructions; those are the ones that will do just fine because they know what's important to them.

From the time I was 7, when I purchased my first calculator, I was fascinated by the idea of a machine that could compute things.

I always knew I wanted to run a business someday.

Microsoft's an important partner for Dell, an important company in the industry.

One of the things I benefited from when I started this business was that I didn't know anything. I was just instinct with no preconceived notions. This enabled me to learn and change quickly without having to worry about maintaining any kind of status quo, like some of my bigger competitors.

If you're happy, that's probably the most important thing. Everyone probably has their own definition of success, for me it's happiness. Do I enjoy what I'm doing? Do I enjoy the people I'm with? Do I enjoy my life?

Sometimes it's better not to ask-or to listen-when tell you something can't be done. I didn't ask for permission or approval. I just went ahead and did it.

Ignore the people who tell you it won't work, and hire people who embrace your vision.

Don't be afraid to fail. Get out there and experiment and learn and fail and get a rate based on the experiences you have. Go for it and when you go for it you'll learn what you're capable of, what the potential is, where the opportunities are, but you can't be afraid to fail because that's when you learn.

I'm pretty active anyway, but I'm also competitive.I used my Fitbit as an example of the innate power of data to turn information into insights and actions.