Quotes about business

Doing well is the result of doing good. That's what capitalism is all about.

— Adnan Kashoggi

If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.

— Charles F. Kettering

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

— Nikita Khrushchev

Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.

— Victor Kiam

You can hype a questionable product for a little while, but you'll never build an enduring business.

— Victor Kiam

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

— William Knudsen

In business for yourself, not by yourself.

— Ray Kroc

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

— Theodore Leavitt

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

— Gerald Stanley Lee

Business today consists in persuading crowds.

— Gerald Stanley Lee

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.

— E. St. Elmo Lewis

The simple opposition between the people and big business has disappeared because the people themselves have become so deeply involved in big business.

— Walter Lippmann

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

— Royal Little

Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.

— Henry Luce

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.

— Louis B. Lundborg

We're going to see a lot more young people entering entrepreneurial ventures.

— Fred Malek

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

— Jim Manzi

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.

— Richard Marcinko

Business is a combination of war and sport.

— Andre Maurois

If you have lower than a ten percent turnover, there is a problem. And if you have higher than, say 20%, there is a problem.

— William Mcgovern

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

— Scott Mcnealy

Get the best people and train them well.

— Charles Merrill

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

— Isaac Mophatlane

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.

— John Pierpont Morgan

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

— John Morley

It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by -- Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.

— Ren Mulford Jr.

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

— Dorothy Nevill

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

— David Ogilvy

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.

— David Ogilvy

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

— David Ogilvy

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.

— David Ogilvy

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

— Kenneth Olsen

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.

— Aristotle Onassis

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

— Aristotle Onassis

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

— Anthony J. F. O'Reilly

Let love give way to business; give attention to business and you will be safe.

— Ovid

To succeed in business it is necessary to make others see things as you see them.

— John H. Patterson

Method goes far to prevent trouble in business: for it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves abundance of time, and instructs those that have business depending, both what to do and what to hope.

— William Penn

Every business is built on friendship.

— J. C. (James Cash) Penney

If we decide to take this level of business creating ability nationwide, we'll all be plucking chickens for a living.

— H. Ross Perot

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.

— H. Ross Perot

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

— Thomas J. Peters

Far too many executives have become more concerned with the four P's -- pay, perks, power and prestige -- rather than making profits for shareholders.

— T. Boone Pickens

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

— Titus Maccius Plautus

We have yet to see the full impact of the open, global marketplace. By 1997 all raw materials and technology will be available everywhere in the world. The only differences between countries and markets will be skill levels, education, and the level of empowerment of the workplace.

— Lew Pritchett

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

— Proverb

Cut your losses and let your profits run.

— American Proverb

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

— American Proverb

Don't open a shop unless you like to smile.

— Chinese Proverb

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

— German Proverb

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away.

— Ronald Reagan

Corporations are social organizations, the theater in which men and women realize or fail to realize purposeful and productive lives.

— Peter Rena

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

— Charles Revson

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

— Meshulam Riklis

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

— Riorio

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.

— Cesar Ritz

Quality, service, cleanliness, and value.

— Steven J. Ross

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

— Sir Nathan Rothschild

In a balanced organization, working towards a common objective, there is success.

— T. L. Scrutton

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

— William Shakespeare

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.

— Adam Smith

Anything that you do to increase job security automatically does work for you. It makes your employees a closer part of the unit.

— Roger Smith

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Men who do things without being told draw the most wages.

— Edwin H. Stuart

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

— Dylan Thomas

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

— Robert Townsend

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?

— Robert Townsend

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.

— Robert Townsend

Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.

— Donald Trump

The novice in advertising frequently gives the public credit, for too much intelligence.

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

The first thing the secretary types is the boss.

— Source Unknown

A hard thing about business is minding your own

— Source Unknown

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.

— Source Unknown

Business conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company can operate without.

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

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

— Source Unknown

People will go right on preferring to do business with friends.

— Source Unknown

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

— Sam Walton

There's a lot more business out there in small town America than I ever dreamed of.

— Sam Walton

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.

— Sam Walton

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.

— John Wanamaker

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

— An Wang

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

— Andy Warhol

You have to have your heart in the business and the business in your heart.

— Thomas J. Watson

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.

— Thomas J. Watson

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.

— John Welch

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.

— John Welch

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

— Oscar Wilde

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

— Charles E. Wilson

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

— Woodrow T. Wilson

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.

— General Robert E. Woods

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

— F. W. Woolworth

When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.

— William Wrigley Jr.

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.

— Owen D. Young

The first rule of luck in business is that you should persevere in doing the right thing. Opportunities will come your way if you do.

— Ronald Cohen

There is no such thing as weak competition, it grows all the time. - Nabil N. Jamal

— Nabil N. Jamal

We are trying to teach what an experience is like to technolgy. We would like to use technology in a way that it allows us to actually experience something. We place more value on experience.

— Debbie Wong

We are trying to teach what an experience is like to technology. We would like to use technology in a way that it allows us to actually experience something. We place more value on experience.

— Debbie Wong

The picture you paint of me depends on the color of lens you are looking through.

— Ahmed M Ibrahim