Phil Knight Quotes

I refused to even consider ordering less inventory. Grow or die, that's what I believed, no matter the situation.

It's never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.

There is an immutable conflict at work in life and in business, a constant battle between peace and chaos. Neither can be mastered, but both can be influenced. How you go about that is the key to success.

Like it or not, life is a game.

Dream audaciously. Have the courage to fail forward. Act with urgency.

We must all be professors of the jungle.

All is vanity, says the Bible. All is now, says Zen, All is dust, says the desert.

Beating the competition is relatively easy. Beating yourself is a never-ending commitment.

He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to-equally important qualities in a friend. Essential in a travel companion.

Fear of failure, I thought, will never be our downfall as a company. No that any of us thought we wouldn't fail; in fact we had every expectation that we would. But when we did fail, we had faith that we'd do it fast, learn from it, and be better for it.

Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are really part of a very big advertising program, and the fact that they make so much money is because the markets have dictated that they get that money, and the fact that they endorse our products allows us to sell more products and create more jobs.

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.

I'd tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don't know what that means, seek it. If you're following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you've ever felt.

God, how I wish I could relive the whole thing. Short of that, I'd like to share the experience, the ups and downs, so some young man or woman, somewhere, going through the same trials and ordeals, might be inspired or comforted. Or warned. Some young entrepreneur, maybe, some athlete or painter or novelist, might press on.
It's all the same drive. The same dream.
It would be nice to help them avoid the typical discouragements. I'd tell them to hit pause, think long and hard about how they want to spend their time, and with whom they want to spend it for the next forty years. I'd tell men and women in their midtwenties not to settle for a job or a profession or even a career. Seek a calling. Even if you don't know what that means, seek it. If you're following your calling, the fatigue will be easier to bear, the disappointments will be fuel, the highs will be like nothing you've ever felt.
I'd like to warn the best of them, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bull's-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bull's-eye. It's not one man's opinion; it's a law of nature.

A brand is something that has a clear-cut identity among consumers, which a company creates by sending out a clear, consistent message over a period of years until it achieves a critical mass of marketing.

My job is to listen to ideas, maybe cook up a few of my own, and make decisions based on what's good for the shareholders and for the company.

Meeting sports athletes that are the best in the world is a thrill to this day.

confidence was cash. You had to have some to get some. And people were loath to give it to you.

Sports is like rock 'n' roll. Both are dominant cultural forces, both speak an international language, and both are all about emotions.

The art of competing, I'd learned from track, was the art of forgetting, and I now reminded myself of that fact. You must forget your limits. You must forget your doubts, your pain, your past.

The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.

It is possible to tell a customer "no", and have the customer thank you for doing it

Business is no more about making money than the human body is about making blood. Yes you need to make the stuff, but only to serve your higher aims.

We could see that he was a charismatic guy who jumps over the moon and is very competitive, but nobody could have predicted what he would become to our culture.

Why is it always so hard to get started?

But that's the nature of money. Whether you have it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you like it or not, it will try to define your days. Our task as human beings is not to let it.

The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.

There were many ways down Mount Fuji, according to my guidebook, but only one way up. Life lesson in that, I thought. Signs

You can't explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don't have to. It's that simple.

basic rule of negotiation is to know what you want, what you need to walk away with in order to be whole.

Driving back to Portland I'd puzzle over my sudden success at selling. I'd been unable to sell encyclopedias, and I'd despised it to boot. I'd been slightly better at selling mutual funds, but I'd felt dead inside. So why was selling shoes so different? Because, I realized, it wasn't selling. I believed in running. I believed that if people got out and ran a few miles every day, the world would be a better place, and I believed these shoes were better to run in. People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible. Sometimes

We used to think that everything started in the lab. Now we realize that everything spins off the consumer.

I still get real nervous when I go in front of more than two people.

Up until the time I was 14 years old, I was sure that I was going to be a big-league baseball player. But that dream came to a rude awakening when I got cut from my high school baseball team.

If my life was to be all work no play, I wanted my work to be play.

Like books, sports give people a sense of having lived other lives, of taking part in other people's victories. And defeats. When sports are at their best, the spirit of the fan merges with the spirit of the athlete.

Make history or be a part of it.

I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.

It doesn't matter how many people you offend, as long as you're getting your message to your consumers. I say to those people who do not want to offend anybody: You are going to have a very, very difficult time having meaningful advertising.

I truly believe the American consumer doesn't want to buy products made under abusive conditions.

You are remembered, he said, prophetically, for the rules you break. I

Perception can be changed