Business 009

When I first became a lawyer, only 2% of the bar was women. People would always think I was a secretary. In those days, professional women in the business world wore hats. So I started wearing hats.
Bella Abzug

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
Dean Acheson

I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
Douglas Adams

Christmas is over and Business is Business.
Franklin P. Adams

Count that day won when, turning on its axis, this earth imposes no additional taxes.
Franklin P. Adams

Consultants eventually leave, which makes them excellent scapegoats for major management blunders.
Scott Adams

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.*
*Attribution questionable.
Scott Adams

Good advertising can make people buy your product even if it sucks ... A dollar spent on brainwashing is more cost-effective than a dollar spent on product improvement.
Scott Adams

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

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

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 H. Aiken

Giving up your core business in search of a phantom audience is not wise.
Roger Ailes

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

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

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

The codfish lays ten thousand eggs
The homely hen lays one.
The codfish never cackles
To tell you that she's done.
And so we scorn the codfish,
While the humble hen we prize,
Which only goes to show you
That it pays to advertise.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Anonymous

I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.
Edward Victor Appleton

One lesson a man learns from Harvard Business School is that an executive is only as good as his health.
Jeffrey Archer

A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.
Mary Kay Ash

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

This is not an age of castles, moats, and armor where people can sustain a competitive advantage for very long.
Richard D'Aveni

Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone.
Walter Bagehot

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

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

You can't permit a honeymoon of small changes over a year or two. A long series of small changes just prolongs the pain.
Percy Barnevik

Ultimately, the job of the manager is to get ordinary people to create extraordinary results.
Christopher Bartlett

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.
Jean Baudrillard

The largest profits go to those businesses which most devotedly follow a policy of insisting on a competitive advantage, no matter how small, for every product or service they market.
R. H. Beeby

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

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?. And it is what I have done.
Tony Benn

Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett

The rough broad difference between the American and the European business man is that the latter is anxious to leave his work, while the former is anxious to get to it.
Arnold Bennett

Copying other organizations' activities sounds like industrial espionage to some people, but the truth is that benchmarking is perfectly legal and ethical.
Warren Bennis

The leader ... is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather, they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.
Warren Bennis

The only way many companies can attract and keep the best people is by offering them more than merely money or prestige - they offer them the chance to make history.
Warren Bennis

Accounting issues did not cause Enron's stock price to fall - its failed business model did.
Joseph Berardino

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.
Timothy Berners-Lee

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

If someone thinks they are being mistreated by us, they won't tell 5 people, they'll tell 5000.
Jeff Bezos

The common question that gets asked in business is, why? That's a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?
Jeff Bezos

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

COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
Ambrose Bierce

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

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

Grand business plans are all very well, but nothing beats dipping your toe in the water.
Karan Bilimoria

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

The first steps to becoming a really great manager are simply common sense; but common sense is not very common.
Gerard M. Blair

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

Doing the things we do now and doing them better, cheaper and faster will take us so far. But it will not take us far enough. We're going to have to do new things in new ways.
Peter Bonfield

The big danger in mega-mergers is that they are seen as a mating of dinosaurs.
Peter Bonfield

Start with your own money and value your intuition. It's all about endurance in the beginning. Your dream and passion to succeed must be stronger than your fear of failure.
Terri Bowersock

Growth does not always lead a business to build on success. All too often it converts a highly successful business into a mediocre large business.
Richard Branson

In a restless, creative business with an emphasis on experiment and development, ideas are the lifeblood.
Richard Branson

No one has ever accused us of lagging behind. In fact, I am willing to turn an entire company upside down if it's time to do that. We're in perpetual evolution.
Richard Branson

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

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

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

I don't pay attention to what the stock does. If the business does well, the stock eventually follows.
Warren Buffett

Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.
Warren Buffett

One's objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over ... your problem won't improve with age.
Warren Buffett

Our favorite holding period is forever.
Warren Buffett

Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I don't think the Internet is going to change how people chew gum.
Warren Buffett

The attitude of disrespect that many executives have today for accurate reporting is a business disgrace. And auditors ... have done little on the positive side. Though auditors should regard the investing public as their client, they tend to kowtow instead to the managers who choose them and dole out their pay.
Warren Buffett

The market will pay better to entertain than educate.
Warren Buffett

The true investor welcomes volatility ... a wildly fluctuating market means that irrationally low prices will periodically be attached to solid businesses.
Warren Buffett

The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph. We like a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people. When these attributes exist, and when we can make purchases at sensible prices, it is hard to go wrong.
Warren Buffett

Wall Street is the only place people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from people who take the subway.
Warren Buffett

Your goal as an investor ... to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher ... years from now. Over time, you will find only a few companies that meet these standards - so when you see one ... buy a meaningful amount of stock.
Warren Buffett

If you are having as much fun running a big corporation as you did running a piece of it, then you are probably interfering too much with the people who really make it happen.
James E. Burke

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
Samuel Butler (Author)

IBM is like the Stepford Wives. It takes the best people from the best universities and colleges and then snips out some part of the brain so that they become mindless clones.
Bill Campbell

You cannot acquire experience by making experiments. You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
Albert Camus

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

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

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

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

There are two ways to compete - in stable conditions, you plan and you compete on scale. In unstable times, you live by your wits.
Dick Cavanagh

There are two parties involved in every corrupt transaction, typically a government official and a business person. Yet those who pay bribes are often depicted as innocent victims ... The reality is that both parties conspire to defraud the public.
Lynda Chalker

Innovation! One cannot be forever innovating. I want to create classics.
Coco Chanel

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

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

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

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

In every era, society must strike the right balance between the freedom businesses need to compete for a market share and to make profits and the preservation of family and community values.
Hillary Clinton

Too many companies, especially large ones, are driven more and more narrowly by the need to ensure that investors get good quarterly returns and to justify executives' high salaries. Too often, this means that they view most employees as costs.
Hillary Clinton

It is only the very wisest and the very stupidest who cannot change.
Confucius

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
Confucius

Accountants and market researchers may be brilliant at examining and analysing facts about the past, but they have no forward vision.
Terence Conran

That's what I say about restaurants - the back part is manufacturing, the front part is retailing, the theatre is what holds the whole thing together.
Terence Conran

It's a well-known proposition that you know who's going to win a negotiation: it's he who pauses the longest.
Robert Court

Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Leonard Courtney

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

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 R. Covey

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

For many businesses, the Internet is still a technology in search of a strategy.
Mary J. Cronin

Just as location, location, location defines value in real estate, in business today it's connectivity that equals competitiveness.
Mary J. Cronin

Money, it has been said, has two properties. It is flat so that it can be piled up. But it is also round so that it can circulate.
Geoffrey Crowther

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

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

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

I believe that you have to understand the economics of a business before you have a strategy, and you have to understand your strategy before you have a structure. If you get these in the wrong order, you will probably fail.
Michael Dell

If you limit a company by its structure or by the people in the company, you will, by definition, limit the full potential of that business. It sounds basic, but a lot of companies don't follow the idea that the structure should be last and not first.
Michael Dell

We're fast approaching the point at which there is really no distinction between the .com companies and traditional businesses. The only distinction will be between the winners and losers, and of course, the pace of change at which companies become winners or losers.
Michael Dell

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

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
Demosthenes

Here's the rule for bargains: Do other men, for they would do you. That's the true business precept.
Charles Dickens

When dealing with complexity and uncertainty, trust and openness become critical.
David Dotlich

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

Decisions of the kind the executive has to make are not made well by acclamation. They are made well only if based on the clash of conflicting views ... The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.
Peter Drucker

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

Organizations that are change leaders are designed for change. But people need continuity ... they do not function well if the environment is not predictable, not understandable, not known.
Peter Drucker

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

You can't trust the specials like the old time coppers when you can't find your way home.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

First get in, then get rich, then get respectable.
Bernie Ecclestone

Some of them think they have me by the balls, but their hands aren't big enough.
Bernie Ecclestone

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

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

No organizational action has more power for motivating employee behavior change than feedback from credible work associates.
Mark R. Edwards

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

I find that no matter how long a meeting goes on, the best ideas always come during the final five minutes, when people drop their guard and I ask them what they really think.
Michael Eisner

Blameless people are always the most exasperating.
George Eliot

We will ship them our garbage. We believe in full disclosure.
Larry Ellison

You can't win without being completely different. When everyone else says we are crazy, I say, gee we really must be on to something.
Larry Ellison

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

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar

An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.
Sam Ewing

Contracts are agreements made up of big words and little type.
Sam Ewing

To win against opponents, companies need strategies for three related tasks: outwitting, outmaneuvering, and outperforming competitors.
Liam Fahey

The decision to do that extra bit must be embedded in the company's culture.
Tom Farmer

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

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

If you have to forecast, forecast often.
Edgar Fiedler

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

Anytime you have a fiercely-competitive, change-oriented growth business where results count and merit matters, women will rise to the top.
Carly Fiorina

Business shouldn't be like sports, separating the men from the women.
Carly Fiorina

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

At office-managerial level ... you do not read more than the first two sentences of any given report. You believe that anything which cannot be put into two sentences is not worth attending to.
Penelope Fitzgerald

No one has a greater asset for his business than a man's pride in his work.
Mary Parker Follett

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

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

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
Bertie Forbes

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

A manufacturer is not through with his customer when a sale is completed. He has then only started with his customer.
Henry Ford

Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.
Henry Ford

Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Henry Ford

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

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

A company needs smart young men with the imagination and the guts to turn everything upside down if they can. It also needs old figures to keep them from turning upside down those things that ought to be rightside up.
Henry Ford II

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

A little neglect may breed mischief ... for want of a nail the shoe was lost.
Benjamin Franklin

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

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

Remember that time is money.
Benjamin Franklin

Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
Milton Friedman

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

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
Robert Frost

Those who invest only to get rich will fail. Those who invest to help others will probably succeed.
Art Fry

Change is inevitable, but it is in us to control its content and directions.
Indira Gandhi

It is possible for a business venture to be an island of efficiency in a sea of sloth.
Indira Gandhi

It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. What is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.
Mahatma Gandhi

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.
Mahatma Gandhi

Whosoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.... And when you realize the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.
James Garfield

A little blindness is necessary when you undertake risk.
Bill Gates

If the 1980s were about quality and the 1990s were about reengineering, then the 2000s will be about velocity.
Bill Gates

Take our 20 best people away, and I will tell you that Microsoft would become an unimportant company.
Bill Gates

The CEO's role in raising a company's corporate IQ is to establish an atmosphere that promotes knowledge sharing and collaboration.
Bill Gates

Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationships of the men and women in the organization.
Harold Geneen

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

There is a misconception that small is always more beautiful than big.
Louis V. Gerstner Jr.

I buy when other people are selling.
Jean Paul Getty

I think a man is a business failure who lets his family life interfere with his business record ... business is no place for him.
Jean Paul Getty

If businessmen always made the right decisions, business wouldn't be business.
Jean Paul Getty

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

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

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

The truly successful businessman is essentially a dissenter, a rebel who is seldom if ever satisfied with the status quo.
Jean Paul Getty

It's the classic case of being at the party too early. Nobody was there yet and nobody had had a drink. By the time we got there, the party was raging.
Mark Getty

Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.
Edward Gibbon

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

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

Everything which is properly business we must keep separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freer handling.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The world is first a Coke world, then an orange world, then a lemon-lime world.
Roberto Goizueta

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Samuel Goldwyn

Everything is always impossible before it works. That is what entrepreneurs are all about - doing what people have told them is impossible.
R. Hunt Greene

Even the frankest and bravest of subordinates do not talk with their boss the same way they talk with colleagues.
Robert Greenleaf

Columbus didn't have a business plan when he discovered America.
Andrew Grove

I believe in the value of paranoia. Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left.
Andrew Grove

Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos.
Andrew Grove

The essence of a company like Intel is execution and strategy. Intel, looked at in another way, is a three-legged stool. One leg is technology - design and silicon technology - another leg is manufacturing, and the third leg is marketing. Whenever Intel did well it was because the three legs were equal. Whenever one of those legs was shorter than the others, we wobbled.
Andrew Grove

The new environment dictates two rules; first everything happens faster; second, anything that can be done will be done, if not by you, then by someone else, somewhere.
Andrew Grove

Without an appropriate vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing, incompatible and time-consuming projects that go in the wrong direction or nowhere at all.
Bob Guccione

Bury your ego. Don't be the star. Be the star maker!
Bud Hadfield

When it's time to make a decision about a person or problem ... trust your intuition ... act.
Bud Hadfield

Globalization is an opportunity. Well managed, it will help drive forward efforts to build prosperity and eliminate poverty. Badly managed it will increase the divide between rich and poor.
Peter Hain

Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save his face ... Avoid self-righteousness like the devil - there is nothing so self-blinding.
B. H. Liddell Hart

Keeping dreams alive and trying to make them come true is crucial in the watch business. We're in the business of selling emotional products.
Nicolas G. Hayek

Most of the information we use now is obtained free ... and there is no way of knowing anymore whether the information on which we base our own information for distribution is true or false. But that doesn't seem to matter; all that matters is that the information comes from a reputable source.
Joseph Heller

People in the company are almost never fired ... they are encouraged to retire early or are eased aside into hollow, insignificant positions with fake functions and no authority where they are sheepish and unhappy for as long as they remain.
Joseph Heller

People in the Market Research Department ... are not expected to change reality but merely to find it if they can and suggest ingenious ways of disguising it ... converting whole truths into half truths and half truths into whole ones.
Joseph Heller

The market has no morality.
Michael Heseltine

Others appear frozen in the headlights - aware of the likely impact, yet paralysed by the fear of major transformations.
Patricia Hewitt

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

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

To me success can only be achieved through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success represents 1 per cent of your work which results from the 99 per cent that is called failure.
Soichiro Honda

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

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

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

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.
Chuck Jaffe

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.
Chuck Jaffe

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson

I found that there were these incredibly great people at doing certain things, and you couldn't replace one of these people with 50 average people. They could just do stuff that no number of average people could do.
Steve Jobs

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

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
Steve Jobs

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

When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something ... That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.
Steve Jobs

Too seldom does the world pause to consider how much kinder and more humane business has become since women invaded the market-place.
Edith Johnson

Well-ventilated, well-lighted, and sanitarily kept workrooms, rest-rooms and other creature comforts provided in factories, stores, and office buildings are largely the results of women's presence in industry.
Edith Johnson

If you're not happy with yourself, how can you make the customer happy?
Liisa Joronen

People are ambitious and unrealistic. They set targets for themselves that are higher than what you would set for them. And because they set them, they hit them.
Liisa Joronen

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

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
Carl Jung

Companies that stay ahead of change are ones in which their people see change as something they themselves accomplish and not something that is imposed on them. They see lots of opportunities to take initiative.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The power of the position is giving way to the power of the person. A formal title and its placement on an organization chart have less to do with career prospects and success ... than the skills and ideas a person brings to that work.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

There's nothing more demoralizing than having nobody notice good performance ... the successful culture is one that provides constant recognition and applause. At the same time, it breeds a restless dissatisfaction that keeps you challenging yourself to a higher and higher performance.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

To stay ahead, you must have your next idea waiting in the wings.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

You can always buy something in English, you can't always sell something in English.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter

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

Customers provide you with the most accurate barometer of what's right and wrong.
Herb Kelleher

The more time I spend with our people, the more I find out about our business.
Herb Kelleher

I feel sorry for those who live without competition ... fat, dumb, and unhappy in cradle-to-grave security.
Donald Kendall

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
John F. Kennedy

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

An entrepreneur assumes the risk and is dedicated and committed to the success of whatever he or she undertakes.
Victor Kiam

Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise. They willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all its facets.
Victor Kiam

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

I don't like to hire consultants. They're like castrated bulls: all they can do is advise.
Victor Kiam

I'd rather sell my shaver myself than pay a fee to some actor to stand up there and sell it when he'll be back next night selling someone else's chocolates or wrist watches.
Victor Kiam

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

Information is a negotiator's greatest weapon.
Victor Kiam

Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.
Victor Kiam

When my wife bought me a Remington shaver, I was so impressed I bought the company.
Acquisition of Remington in 1979.
Victor Kiam

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

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Quality is not a program that can be simply imposed on an operation; instead it is a way of operating that permeates a business and the thinking of its employees.
Theodore B. Kinni

Our vision controls the way we think and, therefore, the way we act ... the vision we have of our jobs determines what we do and the opportunities we see or don't see.
Charles Koch

True creativity often starts where language ends.
Arthur Koestler

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

Companies worry too much about the cost of doing something. They should worry about the cost of not doing it.
Philip Kotler

Good customers are an asset which, when well managed and served, will return a handsome lifetime income stream for the company.
Philip Kotler

What do you do when your competitor's drowning? Get a live hose and stick it in his mouth.
Ray Kroc

Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.
Dalai Lama

Observing your own and your competitor's successes and failures makes your inner business voice more sure and vivid.
Estée Lauder

Business today is about making decisions amid ambiguity.
Geraldine Laybourne

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

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

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

Now I have finished with all earthly business, and high time too. Yes, yes, my dear child, now comes death.
Franz Lehár

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

The man who whispers down a well
About the goods he has to sell
Will not make as many dollars
As the man who climbs the tree and hollers!
William Lever

We sometimes take for granted the freedom and power of independent thought and action. And only after it's been compromised, do we fully realize how fundamental it is to the pursuit of economic opportunity.
Arthur Levitt

A powerful new idea can kick around unused in a company for years, not because its merits are not recognized, but because nobody has assumed the responsibility for converting it from words to action.
Theodore Levitt

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

I've found that when it came to doing something I loved and fighting for it, things worked out. If you're going to kill yourself to develop something, you've got to enjoy it.
Jeanine Lobell

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

In business a reputation for keeping absolutely to the letter and spirit of an agreement, even when it is unfavorable, is the most precious of assets, although it is not entered in the balance sheet.
Oliver Lyttelton

Management is a calling and people ought to be dedicated to it. British managers have far too much security. A poor manager should be dumped. What's at stake is the happiness of society, not the comfort of managers.
Ian MacGregor

It is better to be impetuous than circumspect. Experience shows that (fortune) is more often subdued by men who do this than by those who act coldly.
Niccolò Machiavelli

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

If you follow your passion, the money will follow. But if you chase the almighty dollar, you can easily lose that and end up with nothing.
Elizabeth Mackay

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

Successful people are the ones who can think up stuff for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
Don Marquis

Business is a combination of war and sport.
André Maurois

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.
André Maurois

The time has now definitely come when every intelligent individual must learn to think globally, beyond the horizon of a narrow nationalist point of view.
Robert Maxwell

The fundamentals of America's economy are strong.
Bloomberg TV on April 17, 2008.
John McCain

I can tell more about how someone is likely to react in a business situation from one round of golf than I can from a hundred hours of meetings.
Mark McCormack

If new ideas are the lifeblood of any thriving organization ... managers must learn to revere, not merely tolerate, the people who come up with the ideas.
Mark McCormack

Make a suggestion or assumption and let them tell you you're wrong. People also have a need to feel smarter than you are.
Mark McCormack

Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and only the pig enjoys himself.
Mark McCormack

Today, if someone showed me a five-year plan, I'd toss out the pages detailing Years Three, Four, and Five as pure fantasy ... Anyone who thinks he or she can evaluate business conditions five years from now, flunks.
Mark McCormack

We seriously undervalue the passion ... a person brings to an enterprise. You can rent a brain, but you can't rent a heart.
Mark McCormack

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

When I find an employee who turns out to be wrong for a job, I feel it is my fault because I made the decision to hire him.
Akio Morita

I don't give a damn what the media critics say. It's what your readers say. If you haven't got any readers, you're only talking to yourself.
Rupert Murdoch

I try to keep in touch with the details - you can't keep in touch with them all, but you've got to have a feel for what's going on.
Rupert Murdoch

Monopoly is a terrible thing, till you have it.
Rupert Murdoch

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

We're not going global because we want to or because of any megalomania, but because it's really necessary.
Rupert Murdoch

I do not really understand the stock market.
Narayana Murthy

It is better to underpromise and overdeliver than vice versa. For this one need not break the law of the land. One has to only think global. Otherwise success will disappear like the dew in the morning sun.
Narayana Murthy

Organizations with decision-making speed and imagination will thrive as nobody can claim to have a monopoly over creativity.
Narayana Murthy

You do not have to be the son of a rich man to be an entrepreneur. Today kids are far more willing to take risks because they've seen high rewards.
Narayana Murthy

Truly great brands are far more than just labels for products; they are symbols that encapsulate the desires of consumers; they are standards that are held aloft under which the masses congregate.
Tony O'Reilly

Bureaucratic time ... slower than geologic time but more expensive than time spent with Madame Claude's girls in Paris.
P. J. O'Rourke

Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.
David Ogilvy

Fear leads to self-doubt, which is the worst enemy of creativity.
David Ogilvy

If it doesn't sell, it isn't creative.
David Ogilvy

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
David Ogilvy

The more prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more orders you will get. But never mistake quantity of calls for quality of salesmanship.
David Ogilvy

You don't stand a tinker's chance of producing successful advertising unless you start doing your homework. I have always found this extremely tedious, but there is no way around it.
David Ogilvy

In business as on the battlefield, the object of strategy is to bring about the condition most favorable to one's own side.
Kenichi Ohmae

In Japan, organizations and people in the organization are synonymous.
Kenichi Ohmae

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

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

Decision making by consensus has been the subject of a great deal of research ... evidence strongly suggests that a consensus approach yields more creative decisions and more effective implementation than does individual decision making.
William Ouchi

Anyone can build market share and, if you set your prices low enough, you can get the whole damn market.
David Packard

There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to the same thing. Deny your responsibility.
Nancy Peretsman

I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At General Motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is hire a consultant on snakes.
Ross Perot

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

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
Laurence J. Peter

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

The common wisdom is that ... managers have to learn to motivate people. Nonsense. Employees bring their own motivation.
Tom Peters

You have a responsibility to shape the vision of a company, and you know whatever process you choose will determine ultimately the well-being of the organization.
Eckhard Pfeiffer

Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.
T. Boone Pickens

We Bishops, in our proper dress, originated the mini-skirt. But we allowed Mary Quant to steal the thunder and make three million quid out of it last year.
Victor J. Pike

Quality is not a thing. It is an event.
Robert M. Pirsig

Stop competing on price; compete on value. Deliver total consumer solutions, rather than just your piece of the solution.
Faith Popcorn

Women are becoming enormously successful ... They're running their businesses on what we call a familial model, a family, instead of a hierarchical top-down military model. They work with, not over or for.
Faith Popcorn

Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of values.
Michael Porter

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

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Colin Powell

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

Company policy means there's no understandable reason for this action.
Herbert V. Prochnow

The trouble with opportunity is that it always comes disguised as hard work.
Herbert V. Prochnow

I doubt if there is any occupation which is more consistently and unfairly demeaned, degraded, denounced, and deplored than banking.
William Proxmire

A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.
Ronald Reagan

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.
Ronald Reagan

So little done, so much to do.
Cecil Rhodes

Wages should be left to the fair and free competition of the market, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature.
David Ricardo

In a small company, one person's hunch can be enough to launch a new product. In a big company, the same concept is likely to be buried in committee for months.
Al Ries

The customer is never wrong.
César Ritz

We should never be allowed to forget that it is the customer who, in the end, determines how many people are employed and what sort of wages companies can afford to pay.
Alfred Robens

Risk is what an entrepreneur eats for breakfast. It's what she slips into bed with at night. If you have no appetite for this stuff, or no ability to digest it, then get out of the game right now.
Heather Robertson

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.
John D. Rockefeller Jr.

By creating conversation, we let our customers spread our message by word of mouth.
Anita Roddick

If I had to name a driving force in my life, I'd name passion every time.
Anita Roddick

The cosmetics industry should be promoting health and well-being; instead it hypes an outdated notion of glamour and sells false hopes and fantasies.
Anita Roddick

The kind of brain-dead, gum chewing assistant you find in so many shops drives me wild. I want everyone who works for me to feel the same excitement that I feel.
Anita Roddick

Three components make an entrepreneur: the person, the idea and the resources to make it happen.
Anita Roddick

To run this business ... you need ... optimism, humanism, enthusiasm, intuition, curiosity, love, humour, magic and fun, and that secret ingredient - euphoria.
Anita Roddick

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

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

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

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

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

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

A banker is a man who lends another man the money of a third man.
Guy de Rothschild

To be a leader in this new economy, you have to love risk - which means patterning your life on the heroic, not on the strategic. Acting boldly is better than acting knowingly.
Harriet Rubin

The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive.
John Ruskin

Behind all its global responsibilities and impersonal style banking is still a people business ... it may be the most personal business of all for it always depends on the original concept of credit, meaning trust.
Anthony Sampson

Profits are the lifeblood of the economic system, the magic elixir upon which progress and all good things depend ultimately. But one man's lifeblood is another man's cancer.
Paul Samuelson

The consumer, so it is said, is the king ... each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.
Paul Samuelson

Finance is the art of passing currency from hand to hand until it finally disappears.
Robert Sarnoff

You can never be an entrepreneur if you're afraid to lose money. It's like being a pilot who is afraid of bad weather.
Peter de Savary

People who are successful simply want it more than people who are not.
Ian Schrager

One can't say that figures lie. But figures, as used in financial arguments, seem to have the bad habit of expressing a small part of the truth forcibly, and neglecting the other part, as do some people we know.
Fred Schwed

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

Instead of giving contracts to strangers, we decided we could just as well give contracts to our own employees. We would encourage them to leave ... and start their own satellite enterprises.
Ricardo Semler

Quality control was treated as a fad here, but it's been part of the Japanese business philosophy for decades. That's why they laugh at us.
Peter Senge

Information is like an oyster. It has its greatest value when it is fresh.
Carl Shapiro

Positive feedback makes the strong grow stronger and the weak grow weaker.
Carl Shapiro

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

Leadership is the process of achieving a dream together, especially when that dream seems impossible to achieve.
Stan Shih

For lots of big companies, their brand is worth so much to them that they can't endanger their reputation for being a quality company without really endangering their business performance.
Clare Short

Whenever we have compromised on our principles, we and our customers have been the losers.
Marcus Sieff

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

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

As an anonymous participant in financial markets, I never had to weigh the social consequences of my actions ... I felt justified in ignoring them on the grounds that I was playing by the rules.
George Soros

Financial markets ... resent any kind of government interference but they hold a belief deep down that if conditions get really tough the authorities will step in.
George Soros

I am cautious about going against the herd. I am liable to be trampled on.
George Soros

The prevailing wisdom is that markets are always right. I take the opposite position. I assume that markets are always wrong.
George Soros

It depends entirely upon the image of you that people have in their minds whether you will climb the ladder slowly, painfully, or with a rapidity that will surprise - and appall - your friends.
Gerald Sparrow

Never make concessions.
Gertrude Stein

Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy; but good administration can never save bad policy.
Adlai Stevenson

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

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

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
Rex Stout

The priority in life is to keep an eye on the business and not to get lured into the high social life with groupie-type poseurs who wish to be seen with the new blue-eyed boy.
Alan Sugar

Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
Tacitus

The religion of economics is where we should above all try to bring about this union of ours ... If this field ceases to be one of warfare, if there we can prove, that not competition but cooperation is the real truth, then indeed we can reclaim from the hands of the Evil One an immense territory for the reign of peace and goodwill.
Rabindranath Tagore

Be careful, be cautious, do not rush into negotiations ... be careful what you give away now, you may wish you had not done so should in future the balance of forces turn in your favour.
Oliver Tambo

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

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

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

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

If you don't do it excellently, 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

One of the most important tasks of a manager is to eliminate his people's excuses for failure.
Robert Townsend

No manufacturing company will ever do well if they are concerned only with calculating profits.
Shoichiro Toyoda

It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
Harry S. Truman

I wasn't satisfied just to earn a good living. I was looking to make a statement.
Donald Trump

If you're going to be thinking only one thing, you might as well be thinking big.
Donald Trump

In the end, you're measured not by how much you undertake but by what you finally accomplish.
Donald Trump

My style of dealmaking is quite simple and straightforward. I just keep pushing and pushing to get what I'm after.
Donald Trump

Sometimes your best investments are the ones you don't make.
Donald Trump

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

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

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

The timid man yearns for full value and asks a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par.
Mark Twain

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

There is no royal flower-strewn path to success. And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.
C. J. Walker

We need a can-do, vibrant, innovation-driven culture. Not wearing a tie is just a snippet of that.
Paul Walsh

Our philosophy is that management's role is simply to get the right people in the right places to do a job, and to encourage them to use their own inventiveness to accomplish the task at hand.
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

We learned from everybody else's book and added a few pages of our own.
Sam Walton

Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.
An Wang

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

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

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
Andover, Massachusetts, USA in August, 2011.
Elizabeth Warren

Look, you can take anything away from IBM ... but leave our people and this business will re-create itself overnight.
Thomas J. Watson Jr.

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 Sr.

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 Sr.

There aren't any categories of problems here. There's just one problem. Some of us aren't paying enough attention to our customers.
Thomas J. Watson Sr.

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

You cannot be a success in any business without believing that it is the greatest business in the world ... You have to put your heart in the business and the business in your heart.
Thomas J. Watson Sr.

You have to put your heart in the business and the business in your heart.
Thomas J. Watson Sr.

However many people complain about the red tape, it would be sheer illusion to think for a moment that continuous administrative work can be carried out except by means of officials working in offices ... The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dilettantism in the field of administration.
Max Weber

I don't like the word empowerment. I think the word we're really talking about is involvement ... We want everyone to have a say.
Jack Welch

The only ideas that count are A ideas. There is no second place. That means we have to get everybody in the organization involved. If you do that right, the best ideas will rise to the top.
Jack Welch

The point of work-out is to give people better jobs. When people see that their ideas count, their dignity is raised. Instead of feeling numb, like robots, they feel important.
Jack Welch

When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside, the end is in sight.
Jack Welch

My rule is always to do the business of the day in the day.
Arthur Wellesley

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

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

Carpe per diem.
Seize the check.
Robin Williams

One man's wage increase is another man's price increase.
Harold Wilson

Remember, a person who wins success may have been counted out many times before. He wins because he refuses to give up.
Kemmons Wilson

Not everyone is capable of being a CEO It means you don't get to pal around with all your employees and that you leave the sorority/fraternity approach to life behind, and you take on a role that is, in some respects, lonely.
Ann Winblad

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

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

Real salesmen stick until the buyer has used up his last No.
William Wrigley

They have this wonderful process of learning from direct experience called After Action Review, in which everyone who was involved sits down and the three questions are: What happened? Why do you think it happened? And what can we learn from it? If you were ... able to get those three questions as part of your process, you could become a learning organization.
Walter Wriston

When you retire ... you go from who's who to who's that, like stepping off the pier (or) achieving statutory senility.
Walter Wriston

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The Only Way

IN THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ... The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

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