Business Quotes


The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
– Thomas Paine

A government, for protecting business only, is but a carcass, and soon falls by its own corruption and decay.
– Amos Bronson Alcott
If you break 100, watch your golf. If you break 80, watch your business.
– Joey 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
There is nothing more requisite in business than despatch.
– Joseph Addison
Whatever I do, it's my business. It's not my job to parent America.
– Christina Aguilera
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
People are definitely a company's greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.
– Mary Kay Ash
It takes more than capital to swing business. You've got to have the A. I. D. degree to get by - Advertising, Initiative, and Dynamics.
– Isaac Asimov
I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.
– Richard Bach
Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.
– Sir Francis Bacon
We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.
– Steve Ballmer
Kids are great. That's one of the best things about our business, all the kids you get to meet. It's a shame they have to grow up to be regular people and come to the games and call you names.
– Charles Barkley
Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.
– Dave Barry
Christ would be a national advertiser today, I am sure, as He was a great advertiser in His own day. He thought of His life as business.
– Bruce Barton
Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
– Henry Ward Beecher
Word of mouth is the best medium of all.
– William Bernbach
Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.
– Aneurin Bevan
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
A successful economic development strategy must focus on improving the skills of the area's workforce, reducing the cost of doing business and making available the resources business needs to compete and thrive in today's global economy.
– Rod Blagojevich
I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
– William Blake
Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.
– Edward de Bono
A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
– Richard Branson
Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming.
– Richard Branson
I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It's done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.
– Richard Branson
It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
– Tom Brokaw
I'd still like to see 'Survivor' minus the planned show-biz parts. That would be the purest form of show business - I want to see someone so hungry that they eat somebody else's foot.
– Albert Brooks
In business or in life, don't follow the wagon tracks too closely.
– H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
In day-to-day commerce, television is not so much interested in the business of communications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait.
– Les Brown
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
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.
– Robert Browning
If a business does well, the stock eventually follows.
– Warren Buffett
Our favorite holding period is forever.
– Warren Buffett
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
– Warren Buffett
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
– Warren Buffett
Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it's not going to get the business.
– Warren Buffett
I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
– Edmund Burke
Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.
– Leo Burnett
Most of the trouble in this world has been caused by folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus has.
– William S. Burroughs
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 Burton
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
– Samuel Butler
If we must have a tyrant, let him at least be a gentleman who has been bred to the business, and let us fall by the axe and not by the butcher's cleaver.
– Lord Byron
No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business.
– Mikhail Baryshnikov
Handsome means many things to many people. If people consider me handsome, I feel flattered - and have my parents to thank for it. Realistically, it doesn't hurt to be good-looking, especially in this business.
– Richard Chamberlain
The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.
– Raymond Chandler
We have to make America the best place in the world to do business.
– Dick Cheney
In this business it takes time to be really good - and by that time, you're obsolete.
– Cher
I am certainly not one of those who need to be prodded. In fact, if anything, I am the prod.
– Sir Winston Churchill
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
– John Cleese
I wouldn't say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one.
– Brian Clough
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
– Confucius
Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.
– Calvin Coolidge
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
In this business, until you're known as a monster you're not a star.
– Bette Davis
Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
– W. Edwards Deming
I've managed to keep a clear head and remain sane in this business because I remain a kid off-camera.
– Leonardo DiCaprio
Love, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine.
– Isak Dinesen
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 Depree
Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
– Thomas A. Edison
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
– Thomas A. Edison
Business today consists in persuading crowds.
– T. S. Eliot
All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgements of probabilities, and not on certainties.
– Charles W. Eliot
A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
– William Feather
Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.
– Edna Ferber
Our company is built on people-those who work for us, and those we do business with.
– Harvey S. Firestone
If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, don't sell it. Do this, and you will have calm and drowsy nights, with all of the good business you have now and none of the bad. If you have time, don't wait for time.
– Ernst Fischer
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.
– B. C. Forbes
Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
– B. C. Forbes
A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.
– Henry Ford
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
– Henry Ford
Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
– Henry Ford
I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.
– Henry Ford
Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
What other people think about me is not my business.
– Michael J. Fox
The first mistake in public business is the going into it.
– Benjamin Franklin
Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard.
– Edgar R. Fiedler
If you have to forecast, forecast often.
– Edgar R. Fiedler
The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
– Edgar R. Fiedler
It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises-but only performance is reality.
– Harold S. Geneen
It's better to take over and build upon an existing business than to start a new one.
– Harold S. Geneen
The worst disease which can afflict business executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.
– Harold S. Geneen
I buy when other people are selling.
– J. 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.
– J. Paul Getty
The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.
– J. Paul Getty
To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.
– J. Paul Getty
Without the element of uncertainty, the bringing off of even, the greatest business triumph would be dull, routine, and eminently unsatisfying.
– J. Paul Getty
The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and to influence their actions.
– John Hancock
Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.
– Thomas Hardy
It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
– Ernest Hemingway
It is not fit the public trusts should be lodged in the hands of any, till they are first proved and found fit for the business they are to be entrusted with.
– Matthew Henry
It's a business you go into because your an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.
– Katharine Hepburn
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 is your business when the wall next door catches fire.
– Horace
We are in danger of making our cities places where business goes on but where life, in its real sense, is lost.
– Hubert H. Humphrey
Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
– Washington Irving