Motivational Quotes

Business

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

- Ogilvy, David

Best Quotes about Business

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

Riklis, Meshulam

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.

A hard thing about business is minding your own

Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.

Bierce, Ambrose

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

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

Gerber, Michael E.

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

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

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

Nevill, Dorothy

10.

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

Wilson, Charles E.

11.

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

Onassis, Aristotle

12.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Blanchard, Ken

13.

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

14.

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

Drucker, Peter F.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.

Thomas, Dylan

21.

No sale is really complete until the product is worn out, and the customer is satisfied.

Bean, L.L.

22.

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

23.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

24.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

Manzi, Jim

26.

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

Beene, Geoffrey

27.

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

28.

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

Jurgen Schrempp

29.

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

30.

In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing.

Young, Owen D.

31.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

32.

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

33.

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

Olsen, Kenneth

34.

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

Leavitt, Theodore

35.

Good design can't fix broken business models.

Jeffrey Veen

36.

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

Benjamin Franklin

37.

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

38.

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

39.

The chief business of the American people is business.

Calvin Coolidge

40.

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

Iacocca, Lee

41.

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

42.

In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.

Revson, Charles

43.

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

O'Reilly, Anthony J. F.

44.

If you don't do it with excellence, don't do it at all! Because if it's not excellent, it won't be profitable or fun, and if you're not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing there?

Townsend, Robert

45.

Show me the business man or institution not guided by sentiment and service; by the idea that he profits most who serves best and I will show you a man or an outfit that is dead or dying.

Harris, B. F.

46.

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.

47.

HereÆs my theory about meetings and life; the three things you canÆt fake are erections, competence and creativity. ThatÆs why meetings become toxic they put uncreative people in a situation in which they have to be something they can never be. And the more effort they put into concealing their inabilities, the more toxic the meeting becomes. One of the most common creativity-faking tactics is when someone puts their hands in prayer position and conceals their mouth while they nod at you and say,'Mmmmmm. Interesting.'If pressed, theyÆll add,'IÆll have to get back to you on that.'Then they donÆt say anything else.

Douglas Coupland

48.

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

49.

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

50.

You don't want to get the same kind of advice from everyone on your board.

Cardenas, Ruben