Motivational Quotes

Business

The City's reluctance to take a stand on an issue like the British Gas pay row makes a mockery of corporate governance and shareholders' ability to influence annual general meetings.Institutions should be obliged to make public how they vote at such events.They should be obliged to provide customers with a record of how they vote on every kind of issue.

- Donovan, Patrick

Best Quotes about Business

Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he's hired to do.

Forbes, Malcolm S.

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

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

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

Geneen, Harold S.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

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

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Kroc, Ray

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

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

10.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

11.

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.

12.

When you are skinning your customers you should leave some skin on to grow again so that you can skin them again.

Khrushchev, Nikita

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Proverb

16.

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

Mitchell Caplan

17.

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

Knudsen, William

18.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Blanchard, Ken

19.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.

Baruch, Bernard M.

20.

It is very vulgar to talk about one's business. Only people like stockbrokers do that, and then merely at dinner parties.

Wilde, Oscar

21.

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

Iacocca, Lee

22.

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

23.

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

Rothschild, Sir Nathan

24.

Every business is built on friendship.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

25.

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

Ovid

26.

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

27.

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

Drucker, Peter F.

28.

You can't run a business without taking risks.

Drexler, Millard

29.

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

Adolt, H. V.

30.

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

Plautus, Titus Maccius

31.

The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.

Jefferson, Thomas

32.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

33.

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

Peters, Thomas J.

34.

The first thing the secretary types is the boss.

35.

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

36.

A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often has no opportunity to exercise judgment.

Firestone, Harvey S.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

We let folks know we're interested in them and that they're vital to us. cause they are.

Walton, Sam

40.

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

41.

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

John Cleese

42.

In business partnerships and marriage partnerships, oh, the cheating that goes on.

Proverb, American

43.

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

44.

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.

Ceo, Harold Geneen

45.

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

Drucker, Peter F.

46.

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

Riklis, Meshulam

47.

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

48.

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

Revson, Charles

49.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

50.

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

Coke, Sir Edward