Motivational Quotes

Business

Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.

- Cooley, Mason

Best Quotes about Business

It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.

Geneen, Harold S.

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.

John Cleese

I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.

Sydney Biddle Barrows

It is surprising, in the welter of questions that one gets at (AGMs), how few actually relate to the performance of the company, or the decisions taken by the board in particular areas.

Harvey-Jones, John

Don't forget until too late that the business of life is not business, but living.

Forbes, B. C.

Such is the brutalization of commercial ethics in this country that no one can feel anything more delicate than the velvet touch of a soft buck.

Chandler, Raymond

Frankly, I don't want to see a rapid upturn.I want it to hold until some of these idiotic competitors go bust.

Bamford, Joe

Don't worry about your physical shortcomings. I am no Greek god. Don't get too much sleep and don 't tell anybody your troubles. Appearances count: Get a sun lamp to keep you looking as though you have just come back from somewhere expensive: maintain an elegant address even if you have to live in the attic. Never nickel when short of cash. Borrow big, but always repay promptly.

Onassis, Aristotle

In business, words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.

Geneen, Harold S.

10.

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P's -- pay, perks, power and prestige -- rather than making profits for shareholders.

Pickens, T. Boone

11.

The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without and to depart.

Morley, John

12.

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

Drucker, Peter F.

13.

It doesn't matter to me if a man is from Harvard or Sing Sing. We hire the man, not his history.

Ford, Henry

14.

The poor man who enters into a partnership with one who is rich makes a risky venture.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

15.

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Warhol, Andy

16.

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

Henderson, Bruce

17.

We are all manufacturers. Making good, making trouble, or making excuses.

Adolt, H. V.

18.

Anything that you do to increase job security automatically does work for you. It makes your employees a closer part of the unit.

Smith, Roger

19.

It's the economy, stupid.

Clinton, Bill

20.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.

Baruch, Bernard M.

21.

Talk of nothing but business, and dispatch that business quickly.

Aldus Manutius

22.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Warren Buffett

23.

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.

Marcinko, Richard

24.

A hard thing about business is minding your own

25.

Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before.

Manzi, Jim

26.

Get the best people and train them well.

Merrill, Charles

27.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your own family to read. You wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out -- either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don't think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

Ogilvy, David

28.

There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.

Jacobs, Randall

29.

Show me the business man or institution not guided by sentiment and service; by the idea that he profits most who serves best and I will show you a man or an outfit that is dead or dying.

Harris, B. F.

30.

Good design can't fix broken business models.

Jeffrey Veen

31.

The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.

Ogilvy, David

32.

A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something.

Coffin, Harold

33.

The happiest time in a man's life is when he is in the red hot pursuit of a dollar with a reasonable prospect of overtaking it.

Billings, Josh

34.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

Bristol, Lee

35.

So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a grout at last.

Franklin, Benjamin

36.

In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.

Revson, Charles

37.

Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.

Blake, William

38.

If each of us hires people smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.

Ogilvy, David

39.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent -- for every effect a perfect cause -- and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

Anybody can cut prices, but it takes brains to produce a better article.

Armour, P. D.

41.

Goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy.

Field, Marshall

42.

We have yet to see the full impact of the open, global marketplace. By 1997 all raw materials and technology will be available everywhere in the world. The only differences between countries and markets will be skill levels, education, and the level of empowerment of the workplace.

Pritchett, Lew

43.

Business is a combination of war and sport.

Maurois, Andre

44.

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.

Olsen, Kenneth

45.

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.

Beene, Geoffrey

46.

Compromise is usually bad. It should be a last resort. If two departments or divisions have a problem they can't solve and it comes up to you, listen to both sides and then pick one or the other. This places solid accountability on the winner to make it work. Condition your people to avoid compromise.

Townsend, Robert

47.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

Thomas, Dylan

48.

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

Luce, Henry

49.

Conducting your business in a socially responsible way is good business. It means that you can attract better employees and that customers will know what you stand for and like you for it.

Burns, M. Anthony

50.

Every business is built on friendship.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)