Motivational Quotes

Business

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

Best Quotes about Business

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Riklis, Meshulam

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

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

Grove, Andrew

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

Proverb

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.

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

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

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

Khrushchev, Nikita

10.

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

John Cleese

11.

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

12.

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

Mcnealy, Scott

13.

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

Beene, Geoffrey

14.

Among the worries of today's business executives is the large number of unemployed still on the payroll.

15.

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

16.

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

Aldus Manutius

17.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

Kashoggi, Adnan

18.

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

Dickens, Charles

19.

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

Ovid

20.

Every business is built on friendship.

Penney, J. C. (James Cash)

21.

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

22.

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

Malek, Fred

23.

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

24.

A vacation should be just long enough that you're boss misses you, and not long enough for him to discover how well he can get along without you.

25.

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

Morley, John

26.

The chief business of the American people is business.

Calvin Coolidge

27.

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

28.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

29.

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

Basinger, Kim

30.

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

Townsend, Robert

31.

The five essential entrepreneurial skills for success: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication

Gerber, Michael E.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

A hard thing about business is minding your own

35.

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

Leavitt, Theodore

36.

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

37.

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

38.

My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.

Oscar Wilde

39.

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

Kiam, Victor

40.

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.

41.

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