Motivational Quotes

Business

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

Best Quotes about Business

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

Basinger, Kim

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Churchill, Winston

In a balanced organization, working towards a common objective, there is success.

Scrutton, T. L.

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.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

The chief business of the American people is business.

Calvin Coolidge

Business is more exciting than any game.

Beaverbrook, Lord

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

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

John Cleese

10.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

11.

Frankly, I don't want to see a rapid upturn.I want it to hold until some of these idiotic competitors go bust.

Bamford, Joe

12.

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

Knudsen, William

13.

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

14.

To business that we love we rise betime, and go to't with delight.

Shakespeare, William

15.

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

Wilde, Oscar

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

Field, Marshall

20.

Designing your product for monetization first, and people second will probably leave you with neither.

Tara Hunt

21.

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

Jacobs, Randall

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.

Little, Royal

25.

The more business one has, the more you are able to accomplish, for you learn to economize your time.

Hale, Sir Matthew

26.

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

Coke, Sir Edward

27.

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

Kiam, Victor

28.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.

Baruch, Bernard M.

29.

The business of the country is business.

Coolidge, Calvin

30.

If each of us hires people smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.

Ogilvy, David

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Don't worry about your physical shortcomings. I am no Greek god. Don't get too much sleep and don 't tell anybody your troubles. Appearances count: Get a sun lamp to keep you looking as though you have just come back from somewhere expensive: maintain an elegant address even if you have to live in the attic. Never nickel when short of cash. Borrow big, but always repay promptly.

Onassis, Aristotle

34.

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

35.

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

36.

A dinner lubricates business.

Lord William Stowell

37.

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

38.

I believe Mrs. Thatcher's emphasis on enterprise was right.

Blair, Tony

39.

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

Iacocca, Lee

40.

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.

41.

Charge less, but charge. Otherwise, you will not be taken seriously, and you do your fellow artists no favours if you undercut the market.

Elizabeth Aston

42.

Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.

Kiam, Victor

43.

Don't forget until too late that the business of life is not business, but living.

Forbes, B. C.

44.

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

Townsend, Robert

45.

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

46.

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

Rena, Peter

47.

The first thing the secretary types is the boss.

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

Get the best people and train them well.

Merrill, Charles