Business Quotes

A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
William Feather

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
Henry Ford

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.
Stephen Covey

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover


Airline travel is hours of boredom interrupted by moments of stark terror.
Al Boliska

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

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.
Tom Peters

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

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

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
Will Rogers

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.
Andrew Carnegie

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

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

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

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.
Thomas Carlyle

Business is a combination of war and sport.
Andre Maurois

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

Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money.
Peter Drucker

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost

Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.
Stanislaw Lem

Carpe per diem - seize the check.
Robin Williams

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce

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

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

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

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

Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it.
Will Rogers

Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it.
Colin Powell

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

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

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.
Herbert Hoover

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Stephen Covey

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Napoleon Hill

Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.
Andy Warhol

Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
Robert Orben

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

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
Henry Ward Beecher

Failure doesn't mean you are a failure it just means you haven't succeeded yet.
Robert H. Schuller

For a lot of people, the weekly paycheck is "take-home pay" because home is the only place they can afford to go with it.
Charles A. Jaffe

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

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

He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
Benjamin Franklin

He who lives by the crystal ball soon learns to eat ground glass.
Edgar R. Fiedler

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
Charles Kettering

I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
Winston Churchill

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

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

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

I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for - getting paid for doing what you love.
Tiger Woods

I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.
Edward Appleton

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau

I want to put a ding in the universe.
Steve Jobs

I was told to avoid the business all together because of the rejection. People would say to me, 'Don't you want to have a normal job and a normal family?' I guess that would be good advice for some people, but I wanted to act.
Jennifer Aniston

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

If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.
George Bernard Shaw

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

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

If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
Abraham Lincoln

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

If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable.
Will Rogers

If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
J. Paul Getty

If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
Kahlil Gibran

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

If you have to forecast, forecast often.
Edgar R. Fiedler

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.
Robert H. Schuller

If you make a living, if you earn your own money, you're free - however free one can be on this planet.
Theodore White

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

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.
William Wordsworth

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

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin

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

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

Inside every working anarchy, there's an Old Boy Network.
Mitchell Kapor

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
Adam Smith

It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
Mark Twain

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

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

It's not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.
Will Rogers

It's not your salary that makes you rich, it's your spending habits.
Charles A. Jaffe

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas A. Edison

Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Robert Browning

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

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
Dale Carnegie

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
Peter Drucker

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

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln

No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Not for nothing is their motto TGIF - 'Thank God It's Friday.' They live for the weekends, when they can go do what they really want to do.
Richard Nelson Bolles

Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put on an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up. Well, maybe once.
Isaac Asimov

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

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
Henry Ford

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

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

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

Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away products.
Scott McNealy

Our favorite holding period is forever.
Warren Buffett

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.
Edward Gibbon

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

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Colin Powell

Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
W. Edwards Deming

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

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
B. C. Forbes

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
Tacitus

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.
Frank Lloyd Wright

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

So little done, so much to do.
Cecil Rhodes

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Steve Jobs

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
Paul Tournier

Stock prices have been quoted in fractions for two centuries, based on a system descended from Spanish pieces of eight. Each dollar was cut into eight bits worth 12.5 cents each.
Charles A. Jaffe

Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.
Walter Scott

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.
Arthur C. Clarke

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

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

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

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

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce

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

The great leaders are like the best conductors - they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
Blaine Lee

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Albert Einstein

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

The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.
Jack Anderson

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

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

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
Napoleon Hill

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
Henry Ford

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.
J. Paul Getty

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

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

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
Confucius

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

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
Josh Billings

The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
Thomas Carlyle

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

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.
Colin Powell

There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Jeff Bezos

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!
Coco Chanel

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

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
Adlai E. Stevenson

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Peter Drucker

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

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

Try, try, try, and keep on trying is the rule that must be followed to become an expert in anything.
W. Clement Stone

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

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Whales only get harpooned when they come to the surface, and turtles can only move forward when they stick their neck out, but investors face risk no matter what they do.
Charles A. Jaffe

What we actually learn, from any given set of circumstances, determines whether we become increasingly powerless or more powerful.
Blaine Lee

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

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

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

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

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn't always have to be their top priority.
William Arthur Ward

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world.
Tom Brokaw

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