Motivational Quotes

Business

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.

Best Quotes about Business

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

Iacocca, Lee

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

John Cleese

Utility is our national shibboleth: the savior of the American businessman is fact and his uterine half-brother, statistics.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

Hale, Sir Matthew

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.

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.

Allen, Fred A.

I think it is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises -- but only performance is reality.

Geneen, Harold S.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

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

10.

A consumer is a shopper who is sore about something.

Coffin, Harold

11.

If you have lower than a ten percent turnover, there is a problem. And if you have higher than, say 20%, there is a problem.

Mcgovern, William

12.

Cut your losses and let your profits run.

Proverb, American

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Ovid

17.

The business of the country is business.

Coolidge, Calvin

18.

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

Little, Royal

19.

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

Jacobs, Randall

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Scrutton, T. L.

24.

Location, location, location.

Dillard, William

25.

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

Ogilvy, David

26.

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.

27.

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.

Seth Godin

28.

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

Kiam, Victor

29.

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.

30.

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

Aldus Manutius

31.

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

32.

Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.

Cooley, Mason

33.

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

34.

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

Mcnealy, Scott

35.

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

Rothschild, Sir Nathan

36.

Women do not win formula one races, because they simply are not strong enough to resist the G-forces.In the boardroom, it is different.I believe women are better able to marshal their thoughts than men and because they are less egotistical they make fewer assumptions.

Foulston, Nicola

37.

The commercial class has always mistrusted verbal brilliancy and wit, deeming such qualities, perhaps with some justice, frivolous and unprofitable.

Nevill, Dorothy

38.

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

Malek, Fred

39.

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

40.

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

Warren Buffett

41.

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.

Buffett, Warren

42.

You never really hear the truth from your subordinates until after 10 in the evening.

Jurgen Schrempp

43.

The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.

Hook, Harold

44.

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

Wilde, Oscar

45.

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

Ford, Henry

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

You make the best products you can, and you grow as fast as you deserve to.

Olsen, Kenneth

50.

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

Jefferson, Thomas