Motivational Quotes

Business

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.

- David M. Ogilvy

Best Quotes about Business

Don't try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. This can't be done, except by liars.

Baruch, Bernard M.

A generation which has passed through the shop has absorbed standards and ambitions which are not of those of spaciousness, and cannot get away from them. Everything with them is done as though for sale, and they naturally have in view the greatest possible benefit, profit and that end of the stuff that will make the best show.

Herzen, Alexander

Good design can't fix broken business models.

Jeffrey Veen

The first thing the secretary types is the boss.

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

Ogilvy, David

I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.

Rothschild, Sir Nathan

Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.

Perot, H. Ross

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

It is almost as difficult to keep a first class person in a fourth class job, as it is to keep a fourth class person in a first class job.

Dunn, Paul H.

10.

Corporations cannot commit treason, or be outlawed or excommunicated, for they have no souls.

Coke, Sir Edward

11.

You have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart.

Watson, Thomas J.

12.

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.

Seth Godin

13.

If you did not look after today's business then you might as well forget about tomorrow.

Mophatlane, Isaac

14.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

Baudelaire, Charles

15.

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

Townsend, Robert

16.

Business is a combination of war and sport.

Maurois, Andre

17.

A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes that he has got the biggest piece.

Erhard, Ludwig

18.

In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running, if you stand still, they will swallow you.

Knudsen, William

19.

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

Benjamin Franklin

20.

The big will get bigger; the small will get wiped out.

Riklis, Meshulam

21.

When two friends have a common bank account, one sings and the other weeps.

Proverb

22.

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

Manzi, Jim

23.

Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.

Little, Royal

24.

You can't run a business or anything else on a theory.

Geneen, Harold S.

25.

One of the vices of the virtue of decentralization is that people don't share ideas.

O'Reilly, Anthony J. F.

26.

A dinner lubricates business.

Lord William Stowell

27.

The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.

Lippmann, Walter

28.

Let love give way to business; give attention to business and you will be safe.

Ovid

29.

A vacation should be just long enough that you're boss misses you, and not long enough for him to discover how well he can get along without you.

30.

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.

31.

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

Peters, Thomas J.

32.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Churchill, Winston

33.

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

34.

You generally hear that what a man doesn't know doesn't hurt him, but in business what a man doesn't know does hurt.

Lewis, E. St. Elmo

35.

The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.

Onassis, Aristotle

36.

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

37.

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.

Grove, Andrew

38.

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

Geneen, Harold S.

39.

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.

Young, Owen D.

40.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

42.

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

Olsen, Kenneth

43.

Business conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.

44.

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

Morley, John

45.

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

Jacobs, Randall

46.

A man's success in business today turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want.

Lee, Gerald Stanley

47.

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

48.

It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away.

Geneen, Harold S.

49.

A hard thing about business is minding your own

50.

I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises -- but only performance is reality.

Geneen, Harold S.