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

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

Benjamin Franklin

Utility is our national shibboleth: the savior of the American businessman is fact and his uterine half-brother, statistics.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

Onassis, Aristotle

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Blanchard, Ken

Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell how to do what I want to do.

Morgan, John Pierpont

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

Manzi, Jim

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

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

Galvin, Robert

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

10.

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

Thomas, Dylan

11.

Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

Bierce, Ambrose

12.

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

Proverb

13.

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.

14.

'Whom are you?'he asked, for he had attended business college.

George Ade

15.

The question is, then, do we try to make things easy on ourselves or do we try to make things easy on our customers, whoever they may be?

Frand, Erwin

16.

Drive your business, let not your business drive you.

Franklin, Benjamin

17.

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

18.

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.

Leavitt, Theodore

19.

Business is like war in one respect. If its grand strategy is correct, any number of tactical errors can be made and yet the enterprise proves successful.

Woods, General Robert E.

20.

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

Drucker, Peter F.

21.

Every business is built on friendship.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

22.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

Branson, Richard

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Few great men could pass personal.

Goodman, Paul

27.

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

Plautus, Titus Maccius

28.

Our planning system was dynamite when we first put it in. The thinking was fresh; the form mattered little. It was idea oriented. We then hired a head of planning, and he hired two vice presidents, and then he hired a planner; and the books got thicker, and the printing more sophisticated, and the covers got harder, and the drawings got better.

Welch, John

29.

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.

Allen, Fred A.

30.

The morality of compromise' sounds contradictory.Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat.Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.

Handy, Charles

31.

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

Armour, P. D.

32.

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

33.

Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.

Bierce, Ambrose

34.

Location, location, location.

Dillard, William

35.

Executives are like joggers. If you stop a jogger, he goes on running on the spot. If you drag an executive away from his business, he goes on running on the spot, pawing the ground, talking business. He never stops hurtling onwards, making decisions and executing them.

Baudrillard, Jean

36.

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.

37.

The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.

Hook, Harold

38.

If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don't wait for time.

Franklin, Benjamin

39.

More business is lost every year through neglect than through any other cause.

Cathcart, Jim

40.

Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was business; but now when great fortunes are only made by business: Business is war!

Bovee, Christian Nevell

41.

You don't want to get the same kind of advice from everyone on your board.

Cardenas, Ruben

42.

Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.

Wang, An

43.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

Baudelaire, Charles

44.

You can't run a business without taking risks.

Drexler, Millard

45.

People want economy and they'll pay almost any price to get it.

Iacocca, Lee

46.

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

47.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

48.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

Ritz, Cesar

49.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Kroc, Ray

50.

A dinner lubricates business.

Lord William Stowell