Motivational Quotes

Business

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

Best Quotes about Business

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

Geneen, Harold S.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic!

Bernbach, William

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

Geneen, Harold S.

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

Basinger, Kim

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

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

Forbes, B. C.

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

Riklis, Meshulam

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

10.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

11.

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

12.

If you can run one business well, you can run any business well.

Branson, Richard

13.

A man's success in business today turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want.

Lee, Gerald Stanley

14.

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

15.

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

Mcnealy, Scott

16.

Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.

Wang, An

17.

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.

18.

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.

Grove, Andrew

19.

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

20.

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

Geneen, Harold S.

21.

To business that we love we rise betime, and go to't with delight.

Shakespeare, William

22.

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

23.

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

24.

If you did not look after today's business then you might as well forget about tomorrow.

Mophatlane, Isaac

25.

I buy when other people are selling.

Getty, J. Paul

26.

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.

Dickens, Charles

27.

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

28.

There's no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting.

David Letterman

29.

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

Galvin, Robert

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

Hale, Sir Matthew

33.

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

Aldus Manutius

34.

We are all manufacturers. Making good, making trouble, or making excuses.

Adolt, H. V.

35.

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

36.

Commerce is so far from being beneficial to arts, or to empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their history shows, for the above reason of individual merit being its great hatred. Empires flourish till they become commercial, and then they are scattered abroad to the four winds.

Blake, William

37.

Business has only two functions -- marketing and innovation.

Drucker, Peter F.

38.

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

Rothschild, Sir Nathan

39.

In business partnerships and marriage partnerships, oh, the cheating that goes on.

Proverb, American

40.

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.

41.

Blessed is he who talks in circles, for he shall become a big wheel.

Dane, Frank

42.

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

43.

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

Beene, Geoffrey

44.

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

John Cleese

45.

Work is our business; it's success is God s.

Proverb, German

46.

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