Motivational Quotes

Business

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

- Nevill, Dorothy

Best Quotes about Business

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

Business is like a wheelbarrow--it stands still until someone pushes it.

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

Iacocca, Lee

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Blanchard, Ken

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

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

Ford, Henry

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

O'Reilly, Anthony J. F.

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

I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.

Sydney Biddle Barrows

10.

In business, words are words; explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.

Geneen, Harold S.

11.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

Dewolf, Nicholas

12.

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

Forbes, B. C.

13.

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.

14.

The business that considers itself immune to the necessity for advertising sooner or later finds itself immune to business.

Brown, Derby

15.

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

16.

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

Leavitt, Theodore

17.

If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don't wait for time.

Franklin, Benjamin

18.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Morley, John

23.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

24.

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

Manzi, Jim

25.

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

26.

Treat employees like partners, and they act like partners.

Allen, Fred A.

27.

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

Ford, Henry

28.

The poor man who enters into a partnership with one who is rich makes a risky venture.

Plautus, Titus Maccius

29.

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

30.

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

Khrushchev, Nikita

31.

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

Jacobs, Randall

32.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

Buffett, Warren

33.

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

34.

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

Proverb

35.

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

36.

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

Townsend, Robert

37.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

38.

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

39.

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

Nevill, Dorothy

40.

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

41.

Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.

Galvin, Robert

42.

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

Little, Royal

43.

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

Jurgen Schrempp

44.

It's the economy, stupid.