Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

By: Phil Knight
Date Read: 2016-08-29
Rating: ★★★★★

Part One

1962

In every religion, it seemed, self is the obstacle, the enemy. And yet Zen declares plainly that the self doesn’t exist. Self is a mirage, a fever dream, and our stubborn belief in its reality not only wastes life, but shortens it. Self is the bald-faced lie we tell ourselves daily, and happiness requires seeing through the lie, debunking it. To study the self, said the thirteenth-century Zen master Dogen, is to forget the self. Inner voice, outer voices, it’s all the same. No dividing lines.

1965

Again and again I learned that lack of equity was a leading cause of failure.

1966

Don’t tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

But my hope was that when I failed, if I failed, I’d fail quickly, so I’d have enough time, enough years, to implement all the hard-won lessons.

1967

And then Adidas threatened to sue. Adidas already had a new shoe named the “Azteca Gold,” a track spike they were planning to introduce at the same Olympics. No one had ever heard of it, but that didn’t stop Adidas from kicking up a fuss.

“Who was that guy who kicked the shit out of the Aztecs?” he asked. “Cortez,” I said. He grunted. “Okay. Let’s call it the Cortez.”

1968

Primary principle of all accounting: Assets equal liabilities plus equity.

1971

Shoe dogs were people who devoted themselves wholly to the making, selling, buying, or designing of shoes.

1973

He had a superb talent for underplaying the bad, and underplaying the good, for simply being in the moment.

Part Two

1977

That’s what men do when they fight. They put up walls. They pull up the drawbridge. They fill in the moat.

1980

When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman.

Night

I thought of that phrase, “It’s just business.” It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.

Vocabulary