Remember, There's No Limit To What You Can Achieve

1. Novelist Stephen King almost made a multimillion-dollar mistake when he threw his Carrie manuscript in the garbage because he was tired of rejections. "We are not interested in science fiction that deals with negative utopias," he was told. "They do not sell." Luckily his wife fished it out of the garbage. Eventually Carrie was printed by another publisher, sold more than 4 million copies, and was made into a blockbusting film.

2. "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to no one in particular?"--Associates of David Sarnoff responding to the latter's call for investment in the radio in 1921.

3. When Alexander Graham Bell offered the rights to the telephone for $100,00 to Carl Orton, president of Western Union, Orton replied: "What use would this company make of an electrical toy?"

4. A young Albert Einstein was thought to be mentally retarded by his parents, and his grades in school were so poor that one teacher suggested that he drop out saying: "Einstein, you will never amount to anything!" He went on to be regarded as the most important scientist of the 21st century and awarded the 1921 Nobel Peace Prize for physics.

5. "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

6. "Television won't last because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."--Darryl Zanuck, movie producer, 20th Century Fox, 1946

7. Angie Everhart, who started modelling at age 16, was once told by modelling agency owner Eileen Ford That she would never make it as a model. Why? Because "Redheads don't sell." Everhart later became the first redhead in history to appear on the cover of Glamour magazine, had a great modelling career, and then went on to appear in 27 films.

8. John Grisham's first novel was rejected by sixteen agents and twelve publishing houses.

9. "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), maker of big business mainframe computers, arguing against the PC in 1977.

10. In 1998 Google founders Sergery Brin and Larry Page approached Yahoo! and suggested a merger. Yahoo! could have snapped up the company for a handful of stock, but instead they suggested that the young Googlers keep working on their little school project and come back when they had grown up. Within 5 years Google had an estimated market capitalization of $20 billion.

11. "Good enough for our transatlantic friends, but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men."--British Parliamentary Committee, referring to Edison's light bulb, 1878