Motivational Quotes

Business

A vacation should be just long enough that you're boss misses you, and not long enough for him to discover how well he can get along without you.

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about Business

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

John Cleese

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

Geneen, Harold S.

Get me inside any boardroom and I'll get any decision I want.

Bond, Alan

The consumer isn't a moron. She is your wife.

Ogilvy, David

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

Hale, Sir Matthew

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

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

Executives are like joggers. If you stop a jogger, he goes on running on the spot. If you drag an executive away from his business, he goes on running on the spot, pawing the ground, talking business. He never stops hurtling onwards, making decisions and executing them.

Baudrillard, Jean

A dinner lubricates business.

Lord William Stowell

10.

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

Rothschild, Sir Nathan

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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

Galvin, Robert

14.

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

Knudsen, William

15.

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

16.

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

17.

Entrepreneurship is the last refuge of the trouble making individual.

Cooley, Mason

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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.

21.

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

Nevill, Dorothy

22.

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.

23.

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

Jacobs, Randall

24.

Only as long as a company can produce a desired, worthwhile, and needed product or service, and can command the public, will it receive the public dollar and succeed

Carlson, Curtis

25.

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

26.

If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.

Buffett, Warren

27.

For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.

Baudelaire, Charles

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

37.

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

38.

Among the worries of today's business executives is the large number of unemployed still on the payroll.

39.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

Ford, Henry

40.

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

Leavitt, Theodore

41.

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

Manzi, Jim

42.

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.

Marcinko, Richard

43.

We let folks know we're interested in them and that they're vital to us. cause they are.

Walton, Sam

44.

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

Drucker, Peter F.

45.

I buy when other people are selling.

Getty, J. Paul

46.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

47.

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

Drucker, Peter F.

48.

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

49.

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

Beene, Geoffrey

50.

The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace.

Ogilvy, David