Business Quotations
Business
From Wikiquote Jump to: navigation, searchQuotations about Business. In use the word may refer to many differing activities, such as the activity of buying or selling in trade, a commercial firm or enterprise, one’s personal affairs or concerns, one’s regular occupation, employment, or profession, something acquiring attention, or a situation, matter or happening.
Business is the "art" of making money by selling things or services people want for more than their cost. - Patrick Dixon
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- The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds.
- Russell Ackoff. Management f-laws: how organizations really work (2007)
- Nothing holds a company back – and the individuals working in it – more than a lack of interest in positive change. You cannot stand still: you either go backwards or forwards.
- John Adair (b.1934), British author, writer on business leadership. ‘Part Three: Managing for Innovation’, Effective Innovation (2009), revised edition, p.131.
- Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.
- Jane Austen, John Knighley, in Emma Ch. 34 (1815)
- In civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts.
- Francis Bacon. ‘Of Boldness’, Essays (1625).
- You cannot Adhere to the teachings of the church on Sunday and not apply to the marketplace on Monday.
- Archbishop LeRoy Bailey Jr senior pastor of The First Cathedral; From a sermon entitled: He Is Lord
- However successful a man may be in his own business, if he turns from that and engages ill a business which he don't understand, he is like Samson when shorn of his locks his strength has departed, and he becomes like other men.
- P. T. Barnum, ‘Beware of ‘‘Outside Operations’’’, The Art of Money Getting (1880)
- Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbour remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business.
- P. T. Barnum. ‘Whatever You Do, Do With All Your Might’, The Art of Money-Getting
- Corporation: A miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.
- Rick Bayan, American writer. The Cynic’s Dictionary (1994)
- Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.
- The Bible, Old Testament. Proverbs xxii. 29.
- Business has continued to be more interested in thinking, in general, than any other sector of society. The explanation for this is because there is a reality test. There is a bottom line. There are sales figures and profit figures. There are results.
- Edward de Bono. ‘Leadership and the need for creative thinking’, 3 June 2010, an article of his on Management-Issues.com website.
- I think that people have the idea of an entrepreneur being the sort of stereotype person who treads all over everybody and bullies their way to the top. There certainly are people like that, and they have managed to get away with it, but they generally get their come-uppance in the end.
- Richard Branson. From his interview with Martyn Lewis, as recorded in Lewis’ book, Reflections on Success (1997)
- What I must understand is why someone will continue to get out of bed in the morning once they have all the money they could want. Do they love the business, or do they love the money?
- Warren Buffett, ‘The Warren Buffett You Don’t Know’, Business Week article, 5 July 1999
- The man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment of ends.
- Andrew Carnegie, American Industrialist. ‘The Road to Business Success’, The Empire of Business (1913)
- The chief business of the American people is business.
- Calvin Coolidge, Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 17 January 1925
- Here's the rule for bargains: "Do other men, for they would do you." That's the true business precept.
- Charles Dickens. Joanas Chuzzlewit, in Martin Chuzzlewit, ch. 11 (1843-44)
- Business? It’s quite simple: it’s other people’s money.
- Alexandre Dumas (1824-1895), French dramatist. Giraud, in, La Question d'Argent, Act 2, sc. 7 (1857)
- Business was his aversion; pleasure was his business.
- Maria Edgeworth, ‘The Contrast’ Ch. 2
- Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. ‘Experience’, Essays, Second Series (1844)
- There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
- Milton Friedman. From, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits", an article in The New York Times Magazine, 13th September 1970.
- Business is other people's money.
- Delphine de Girardin (1804-1855), French authoress. Marguerite ou deux amours, Vol. ii. (1852)
- All businesses operate below their true potential. That is unavoidable, given the fallibility of human beings.
- Robert Heller, British management journalist and author. ‘The Competitors’, Ch. 10, The Decision makers (1989)
- The more truth you can get into any business, the better. Let the other side know the defects of yours, let them know how you are to be satisfied, let there be as little to be found as possible (I should say nothing), and if your business be an honest one, it will be best tended in this way.
- Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1875), English writer. Friends in Council (First Series), (1847) ‘Truth’, Ch. 1.
- It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.
- Eric Hoffer (1902–83), “Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: ‘Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely,’” The New York Times Magazine, 25th April 1971, p. 50
- The Businessman is one who supplies something great and good to the world, and collects from the world for the goods.
- Elbert Hubbard. ‘George Peabody’, Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen (1916)
- We now say that the Science of Economics, or Business, is the chief concern of humanity. Business is intelligent, useful activity. The word “busy-ness” was coined during the time of Chaucer by certain soldier-aristocrats, men of the leisure class, who prided themselves upon the fact that they did no useful thing. Men of power proved their prowess by holding slaves, and these slaves did all the work. To be idle showed that one was not a slave. But this word “business,” first flung in contempt, like Puritan, Methodist and Quaker, has now become a thing of which to be proud. Idleness is the disgrace, not busy-ness.
- Elbert Hubbard. ‘The American Philosophy’, The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard (1916)
- The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.
- Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), United States president. Letter, 28 December 1841, to William B. Lewis, Jackson-Lewis Papers, New York Public Library.
- 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, Crowds, Bk. II. Ch. IX
- In business everyone is out to grab, to fight, to win. Either you are the under or the over dog. It is up to you to be on top.
- Alice Foote MacDougall (1867-1945), American businesswoman. The Autobiography of a Business Woman (1928), Ch. 3
- Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm.
- A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it.
- Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects (1727)
- To business that we love we rise betime,
And go to ’t with delight.
- William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act IV. Sc. 4. L. 20
- In business affairs, it is the manner in which even small matters are transacted that often decides man for or against you.
- Samuel Smiles. ‘Men of business’, Ch. 9, Self-Help (1859)
- No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.
- Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694-1773), British statesman, man of letters. Letter, 7 August 1749, in The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son (1774)
- Despatch is the soul of business.
- Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773). Letter, 5 February 1750.
- Organizations are defined from the inside out: they are described by who reports to whom, by departments and processes and matrices and perks. A business, on the other hand, is defined from the outside in by markets, suppliers, customers, and competitors.
- Thomas A. Stewart, American business writer, management consultant. ‘Introduction to the Paperback Edition’, Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (1998)
- We all, according as our business prospers or fails, are elated or cast down.
- Terence, Hecyra, III. 2. 20
- I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.
- Izaak Walton, (1593-1683) English writer. ‘Epistle to the Reader’, The Compleat Angler (1653-1655)
- I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, “That which is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.”
- Izaak Walton. The Complete Angler. Part i. Ch. ii.
- Go, go to your business, I say, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.
- William Wycherley (1640-1716), British dramatist. In, The Country Wife, Act II (1675).
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- Business without profit is not business any more than a pickle is a candy.
- Charles F. Abbott
- No bullshit. All business. Nothing personal.
- William Blunts
- Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war."
- Christian Nevell Bovee (1820-1904), American Author, Lawyer
- The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure and pleasure my business.
- Aaron Burr, Letter to Pichon
- There's only so much room at the top. For someone to succeed, someone must fail.
- John Calvin Byrd III, Speech at UC Santa Barbara on Film Production
- Few people do business well who do nothing else.
- Business has only two basic functions: marketing and innovation.
- Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.
- Promotion should not be more important than accomplishment, or avoiding instability more important than taking the right risk.
- I think any man in business would be foolish to fool around with his secretary. If it's somebody else's secretary, fine!
- Senator Barry Goldwater
- If a man goes into business with only the idea of making money, the chances are he won’t.
- Joyce Clyde Hall, American businessman, founder of Hallmark cards.
- Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.
- Helps
- For a dream to become reality, make it real enough to believe in.
- Peter Jones (BBC Profile of this UK Businessman)
- It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a thing, his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician—I should like to be also something of a man.
- Never ask a businessman how much percentage he puts on the price.
- Swami Raj
- The great secret both of health and successful industry is the absolute yielding up of one's consciousness to the business and diversion of the hour—never permitting the one to infringe in the least degree upon the other.
- Sismondi
- To men addicted to delights, business is an interruption; to such as are cold to delights, business is an entertainment. For which reason it was said to one who commended a dull man for his application, "No thanks to him; if he had no business, he would have nothing to do."
- Steele
- Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
- Not because of any extraordinary talents did he succeed, but because he had a capacity on a level for business and not above it.
- Every great man of business has got somewhere a touch of the idealist in him.
- A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.
- Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacume and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
- To be a success in business, be daring, be first, be different.
- Marchant
- Call on a business man at business times only, and on business, transact your business and go about your business, in order to give him time to finish his business.
- Duke of Wellington
- No one fouls his hands in his own business.
- Italian Proverb
- Business makes a man as well as tries him.
- English proverb
- Business sweetens pleasure, and labour sweetens rest.
- English proverb
External links
Wikipedia has an article about: Business Look up business in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Category: Commerce
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