Top 100 Business Quotes


1. I buy when other people are selling. - J. Paul Getty 

2. If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem. - J. Paul Getty 

3. Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader. - Tacitus 

4. Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You'd be amazed how many companies don't listen to their customers. - Ross Perot 

5. Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results. - Scott Adams 

6. Remind people that profit is the difference between revenue and expense. This makes you look smart. - Scott Adams 

7. The opportunity is often lost by deliberating. - Publilius Syrus 

8. Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country. - Norman Cousins 

9. Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself. - Thomas J. Watson 

10. If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid. - Thomas J. Watson 

11. Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops. - Thomas J. Watson 

12. I don't think meals have any business being deductible. I'm for separation of calories and corporations. - Ralph Nader 

13. If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them. - Jane Fonda 

14. Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything. - John Kenneth Galbraith 

15. Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work. - Warren Bennis 

16. One of the tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency. - Arnold H. Glasow 

17. A consultant is someone who saves his client almost enough to pay his fee. - Arnold H. Glasow 

18. Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch. - Tim Berners-Lee 

19. Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design. - Tim Berners-Lee 

20. For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation. - Charles Baudelaire 

21. As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth. - John Greenleaf Whittier 

22. An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. - Laurence J. Peter 

23. It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference. - Tom Brokaw 

24. Exchange ideas frequently. - James Cash Penney 

25. I never trust an executive who tends to pass the buck. Nor would I want to deal with him as a customer or a supplier. - James Cash Penney 

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

27. The invisible hand of the market always moves faster and better than the heavy hand of government. - Mitt Romney 

28. Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to. - Harry Emerson Fosdick 

29. An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission. - Fred Allen 

30. To think that the new economy is over is like somebody in London in 1830 saying the entire industrial revolution is over because some textile manufacturers in Manchester went broke. - Alvin Toffler 

31. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. - Walter Lippmann 

32. The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully. - Walter Lippmann 

33. Never argue with a profit. - Jeff Rich 

34. The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force. - Andre Maurois 

35. Business is a combination of war and sport. - Andre Maurois 

36. The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant. - Max de Pree 

37. Our work is the presentation of our capabilities. - Edward Gibbon 

38. Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun. - Don Marquis 

39. Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates. - Don Marquis 

40. My son is now an 'entrepreneur.' That's what you're called when you don't have a job. - Ted Turner 

41. Every few seconds it changes - up an eighth, down an eighth - it's like playing a slot machine. I lose $20 million, I gain $20 million. - Ted Turner 

42. Word of mouth is the best medium of all. - William Bernbach 

43. The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks. - Rupert Murdoch 

44. If the head man in a company is not working 12 hours a day, doing things, taking risks, but also standing with his people in the trenches at the most difficult of times, then the company loses something. - Rupert Murdoch 

45. Your mission is to find a product or service that can positively impact the lives of 1 billion people because that's the game we're playing today. - Peter Diamandis 

46. An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it. - Dee Hock 

47. So little done, so much to do. - Cecil Rhodes 

48. Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile. - Gary Ryan Blair 

49. If you have one good idea, people will lend you twenty. - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach 

50. The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows. - Aristotle Onassis 

51. One of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it's making cold calls to strangers. Actually, it's the people who already have strong trust relationships with you, who know you're dedicated, smart, a team player, who can help you. - Reid Hoffman 

52. The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own. - Michael Korda 

53. The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them. - Benjamin Jowett 

54. We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference. - Steve Ballmer 

55. What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question 'Can we trust Microsoft?' - Steve Ballmer 

56. I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money. - John Dalberg-Acton 

57. If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business. - B. C. Forbes 

58. In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later. - Harold S. Geneen 

59. Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. - Theodore Isaac Rubin 

60. Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard. - Edgar Fiedler 

61. The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers. - Edgar Fiedler 

62. If you have to forecast, forecast often. - Edgar Fiedler 

63. All lasting business is built on friendship. - Alfred A. Montapert 

64. To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less. - Andre Malraux 

65. People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.' - Sinclair Lewis 

66. The characteristic of great innovators and great companies is they see a space that others do not. They don't just listen to what people tell them; they actually invent something new, something that you didn't know you needed, but the moment you see it, you say, 'I must have it.' - Eric Schmidt 

67. Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network. - Mitch Kapor 

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

69. First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people. - Leo Rosten 

70. Industry is fortune's right hand, and frugality its left. - John Ray 

71. There was a point in the late '90s where all the graduating M.B.A.'s wanted to start companies in Silicon Valley, and for the most part they were not actually qualified to do it. - Marc Andreessen 

72. Details create the big picture. - Sanford I. Weill 

73. A group or an artist shouldn't get his money until his boss gets his. - Bobby Darin 

74. Family farms and small businesses are the backbone of our communities. - Tom Allen 

75. Look at growth, look at how much time people spend on the Net and look at the variety of things that they are doing. It's all really good, so I am actually encouraged by the fundamentals that underlie usage growth on the Net. - Meg Whitman 

76. Everyone is your best friend when you are successful. Make sure that the people that you surround yourself with are also the people that you are not afraid of failing with. - Paula Abdul 

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

78. If being the biggest company was a guarantee of success, we'd all be using IBM computers and driving GM cars. - James Surowiecki 

79. Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures. - Evan Esar 

80. Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don't lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won't stand up either. - Evan Esar 

81. I've never felt like I was in the cookie business. I've always been in a feel good feeling business. My job is to sell joy. My job is to sell happiness. My job is to sell an experience. - Debbi Fields 

82. When did it become a problem to be a small businessman and become successful? The small businessman - like my father, or like me? - Glenn Beck 

83. Cannibals prefer those who have no spines. - Stanislaw Lem 

84. Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness. - Stanislaw Lem 

85. One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do. - A. C. Benson 

86. My father told me, never have partners. - Howard Hughes 

87. What's the subject of life - to get rich? All of those fellows out there getting rich could be dancing around the real subject of life. - Paul A. Volcker

88. Go to your business, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business. - William Wycherley 

89. When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder. - James H. Boren 

90. The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead even more than teamwork. - Igor Sikorsky 

91. Business can be a source of progressive change. - Jerry Greenfield 

92. If you fire people, you fire customers. - Ferdinand Piech 

93. Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. - Howard Aiken 

94. A manager doesn't hear the cheers. - Alvin Dark 

95. You can't operate a company by fear, because the way to eliminate fear is to avoid criticism. And the way to avoid criticism is to do nothing. - Steve Ross 

96. It's called a pen. It's like a printer, hooked straight to my brain. - Dale Dauten 

97. We need to become good citizens in the global village, instead of competing. What are we competing for - to drive more cars, eat more steaks? That will destroy the world. - Yuan T. Lee 

98. No partnership between two independent companies, no matter how well run, can match the speed, effectiveness, responsiveness and efficiency of a solely owned company. - Edward Whitacre, Jr. 

99. I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill. - Edward Appleton 

100. The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself. - Blaine Lee

Post a Comment

0 Comments