Motivational Quotes

Business

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

- Dewolf, Nicholas

Best Quotes about Business

Business is a combination of war and sport.

Maurois, Andre

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

Geneen, Harold S.

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

Hook, Harold

If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.

Kettering, Charles F.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.

Dickens, Charles

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

Quality, service, cleanliness, and value.

Ross, Steven J.

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

Onassis, Aristotle

10.

The novice in advertising frequently gives the public credit, for too much intelligence.

11.

Drive your business, let not your business drive you.

Franklin, Benjamin

12.

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

Ford, Henry

13.

We're going to see a lot more young people entering entrepreneurial ventures.

Malek, Fred

14.

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

Warren Buffett

15.

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

16.

You don't hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.

Watson, Thomas J.

17.

I work in a strange business, and trust is a word that's not even in the vocabulary.

Basinger, Kim

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

Townsend, Robert

21.

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

George Ade

22.

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

23.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

24.

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

Coke, Sir Edward

25.

I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.

Woolworth, F. W.

26.

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

Olsen, Kenneth

27.

Corporations are social organizations, the theater in which men and women realize or fail to realize purposeful and productive lives.

Rena, Peter

28.

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

Cathcart, Jim

29.

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

Ogilvy, David

30.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

Baudelaire, Charles

31.

A dinner lubricates business.

Lord William Stowell

32.

It's the economy, stupid.

Clinton, Bill

33.

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

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.

If you don't drive your business you will be driven out of business.

Forbes, B. C.

36.

Leisure for people of business, and business for people of leisure would cure many problems.

37.

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

Watson, Thomas J.

38.

It is not the employer who pays wages -- he only handles the money. It is the product who pays the wages.

Ford, Henry

39.

If when a businessman speaks of minority employment, or air pollution, or poverty, he speaks in the language of a certified public accountant analyzing a corporate balance sheet, who is to know that he understands the human problems behind the statistical ones? If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart. It is as simple as that -- but that isn't simple.

Lundborg, Louis B.

40.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

41.

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

Plautus, Titus Maccius

42.

To succeed as a team is to hold all of the members accountable for their expertise.

Mitchell Caplan

43.

Only as long as a company can produce a desired, worthwhile, and needed product or service, and can command the public, will it receive the public dollar and succeed

Carlson, Curtis

44.

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

Jacobs, Randall

45.

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

Morley, John

46.

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

Aldus Manutius

47.

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

Proverb

48.

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

49.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

50.

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

Beene, Geoffrey