Motivational Quotes

Business

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.

Best Quotes about Business

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

Olsen, Kenneth

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

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

Ford, Henry

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

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

Geneen, Harold S.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

Business is more exciting than any game.

Beaverbrook, Lord

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

Onassis, Aristotle

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

10.

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

11.

Quality, service, cleanliness, and value.

Ross, Steven J.

12.

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

13.

Good design can't fix broken business models.

Jeffrey Veen

14.

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

O'Reilly, Anthony J. F.

15.

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

Riorio

16.

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

Mcnealy, Scott

17.

To succeed as a team is to hold all of the members accountable for their expertise.

Mitchell Caplan

18.

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

19.

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.

Ceo, Harold Geneen

20.

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

Ogilvy, David

21.

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

Basinger, Kim

22.

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

23.

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

Wilde, Oscar

24.

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

Warren Buffett

25.

It is not the employer who pays wages -- he only handles the money. It is the product who pays the wages.

Ford, Henry

26.

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

Blair, Tony

27.

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

Aldus Manutius

28.

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

Hale, Sir Matthew

29.

It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.

Geneen, Harold S.

30.

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.

Allen, Fred A.

31.

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

Rothschild, Sir Nathan

32.

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

Manzi, Jim

33.

I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.

Woolworth, F. W.

34.

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

Drucker, Peter F.

35.

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

36.

What's good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.

Wilson, Charles E.

37.

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

Hook, Harold

38.

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

39.

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.

Baruch, Bernard M.

40.

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

41.

Location, location, location.

Dillard, William

42.

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

43.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

Buffett, Warren

44.

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.

45.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

Baudelaire, Charles

46.

Concentrate your strengths against your competitor's relative weaknesses.

Henderson, Bruce

47.

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.

48.

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

Ford, Henry

49.

The happiest time in a man's life is when he is in the red hot pursuit of a dollar with a reasonable prospect of overtaking it.

Billings, Josh

50.

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