Motivational Quotes

Business

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

- Drucker, Peter F.

Best Quotes about Business

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

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.

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.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

Baudelaire, Charles

You can employ men and hire hands to work for you, but you must win their hearts to have them work with you.

Riorio

Business is more exciting than any game.

Beaverbrook, Lord

When the product is right, you don't have to be a great marketer.

Iacocca, Lee

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

It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by -- Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.

Mulford Jr., Ren

10.

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.

11.

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

Luce, Henry

12.

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

Walton, Sam

13.

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

Malek, Fred

14.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

Buffett, Warren

15.

A hard thing about business is minding your own

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

There's a lot more business out there in small town America than I ever dreamed of.

Walton, Sam

21.

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

Patterson, John H.

22.

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

Wilde, Oscar

23.

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

Ford, Henry

24.

Location, location, location.

Dillard, William

25.

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

Jefferson, Thomas

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Business is a combination of war and sport.

Maurois, Andre

29.

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

Warren Buffett

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.

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

O'Reilly, Anthony J. F.

32.

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

Wang, An

33.

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

Kroc, Ray

34.

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.

Mcnealy, Scott

35.

You can't run a business without taking risks.

Drexler, Millard

36.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

37.

The chief business of the American people is business.

Calvin Coolidge

38.

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.

39.

HereÆs my theory about meetings and life; the three things you canÆt fake are erections, competence and creativity. ThatÆs why meetings become toxic they put uncreative people in a situation in which they have to be something they can never be. And the more effort they put into concealing their inabilities, the more toxic the meeting becomes. One of the most common creativity-faking tactics is when someone puts their hands in prayer position and conceals their mouth while they nod at you and say,'Mmmmmm. Interesting.'If pressed, theyÆll add,'IÆll have to get back to you on that.'Then they donÆt say anything else.

Douglas Coupland

40.

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

Manzi, Jim

41.

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

John Cleese

42.

People will go right on preferring to do business with friends.

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.

Baruch, Bernard M.

46.

The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

Gilbey, Walter

47.

Cut your losses and let your profits run.

Proverb, American

48.

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

49.

Get the best people and train them well.

Merrill, Charles

50.

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