Motivational Quotes

Business

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

- Drucker, Peter F.

Best Quotes about Business

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

John Cleese

To succeed in business it is necessary to make others see things as you see them.

Patterson, John H.

If you don't do it with excellence, don't do it at all! Because if it's not excellent, it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?

Townsend, Robert

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.

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

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

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

The propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals.

Smith, Adam

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

10.

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

11.

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

Onassis, Aristotle

12.

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

Proverb

13.

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

Knudsen, William

14.

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

Adolt, H. V.

15.

You can hype a questionable product for a little while, but you'll never build an enduring business.

Kiam, Victor

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Cardenas, Ruben

19.

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

Henderson, Bruce

20.

A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something.

Coffin, Harold

21.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Kroc, Ray

22.

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

23.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

Buffett, Warren

24.

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

Ford, Henry

25.

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

26.

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

27.

Business is like a wheelbarrow--it stands still until someone pushes it.

28.

The first thing the secretary types is the boss.

29.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Blanchard, Ken

30.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

31.

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

Branson, Richard

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

36.

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

37.

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

Thomas, Dylan

38.

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

39.

If we decide to take this level of business creating ability nationwide, we'll all be plucking chickens for a living.

Perot, H. Ross

40.

Business is a combination of war and sport.

Maurois, Andre

41.

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

Galvin, Robert

42.

The more I know about business, the more IÆm convinced that it is conducted in homes and churches far more than in office buildings.

Laura Moncur

43.

Blessed is he who talks in circles, for he shall become a big wheel.

Dane, Frank

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

Wang, An

47.

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

Grove, Andrew

48.

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

Rothschild, Sir Nathan

49.

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

50.

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

Field, Marshall