Business Quotes

Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
– J. W. Eagan
The banks don't have anything - no rights whatsoever. The banks are shareholders of SLEC, and SLEC has no rights. ... I am the CEO of Formula One Management and Formula One Administration, which runs the business in F1. From this point of view, I own F1.
– Bernie Ecclestone
Facts are the most important thing in business. Study facts and do more than is expected of you.
– Frederick Hudson Ecker
Business was his aversion; Pleasure was his business.
– Maria Edgeworth
It is rare to find a business partner who is selfless. If you are lucky it happens once in a lifetime.
– Michael Eisner
The movie business has always been like the wild-catting oil business. Everyone wants a gusher.
– Michael Eisner
He has made a profession out of a business and an art out of a profession.
– Clifton Paul Fadiman
I'm in no hurry to get anywhere. I don't have any plans. I don't have a map. If you did in this business, you'd destroy yourself.
– Colin Farrell
This business about being flung out of paradise is his gift to me. I'm glad I got out; it was getting too hot in there.
– Morton Feldman
You figure they cheat at the ballpark, they'll cheat on the golf course, they'll cheat in business, and anything else in life. Players may laugh about it and say it's funny, but right down in their heart, they don't think it's funny at all, and they have no respect for a person who cheats.
– Bob Feller
German businessmen are overwhelmed by the high cost of doing business. Inflexible rules, enforced by a burgeoning bureaucracy, discourage entrepreneurship.
– Suzanne Fields
Our president has always said it was his intention to sign the world's best players - and he believes it makes good business sense.
– Luis Figo
Some of the fans here were not too sure about their club signing a player from their biggest rivals. Fortunately, we had a great season and won the League title for the first time in four years. Now, I think, everyone can say it was good business.
– Luis Figo
Capital isn't so important in business. Experience isn't so important. You can get both these things. What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn't any limit to what you can do with your business and your life.
– Harvey S. Firestone
I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone of business.
– Harvey S. Firestone
Thought, not money, is the real business capital.
– Harvey S. Firestone
Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
So people think I'm lying about my age all the time? It's the records that are wrong. I've never told anyone how old I am. The minute they ask me, I say 'That's none of your business.' So that means I've never once lied about my age. Now that's true!
– Calista Flockhart
Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business.
– Malcolm Forbes
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
– Henry Ford
The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
– Henry Ford
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.
– Michael J. Fox
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry, all things easy. He that rises late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night, while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.
– Benjamin Franklin
So much for industry, my friends, and attention to one's own business; but to these we must add frugality if we would make our industry more certainly successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, and die not worth a grout at last.
– Benjamin Franklin
Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.
– Benjamin Franklin
The safest course for all of us as public officials is simply to throw all the money in a sack. Or in the way of one servant in the Biblical parable of the talents, bury the money in the ground rather than accept any risk. The servant's business plan proved reliable but ineffective.
– Dave Freudenthal
Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.
– Robert Frost
To expose a 4.2 trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business.
– Richard Buckminster Fuller
Be the business never so painful, you may have it done for money.
– Dr. Thomas Fuller
If we persist in that kind of a system of law virtually every business in America, big and small, is going to have to be run from Sing Sing, Leavenworth or Alcatraz.
– Benjamin F. Fairless
I wanted to meet people who were outside the business. In Los Angeles, when you're successful in some way, you kind of forget the rest of the world. Here, there are doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, a lot of other worlds. And I wanted to live among people more. I live in this old house with other people. I like going downstairs and saying hello to the doorman next door.
– Barbara Feldon
There is a great deal of advertising that is much better than the product. When that happens, all that the good advertising will do is put you out of business faster.
– Jerry Della Femina
I've never felt like I was in the cookie business. I've always been in a feel good feeling business. My job is to sell joy. My job is to sell happiness. My job is to sell an experience.
– Debbi Fields
You know, Mrs. Fields was never a business. It was a part of me. It was an extension of me... I was never 9-to-5. And I never separated, oh, well, business from personal because to me they all blended together.
– Debbi Fields
You don't do business with an institution. You do business with people.
– Debbie Fields
Many people see technology as the problem behind the so-called digital divide. Others see it as the solution. Technology is neither. It must operate in conjunction with business, economic, political and social system.
– Carly Fiorina
I have always maintained that society has no business dictating morality.
– Peter Fonda
The advertising man is a liaison between the products of business and the mind of the nation. He must know both before he can serve either.
– Glenn Frank
It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
– Mahatma Gandhi
I'll be with it as long as it takes. Certainly, in this business you need a tremendous amount of inner fortitude to be in it for any kind of length of time, and I've already been doing this for twenty years. I'm just going to keep on working on the things that reach me, the things that I want to be associated with and identified with, both as an actor and a filmmaker.
– Andy Garcia
If I had it my way, I never would have left San Francisco, but things change and that's the nature of this business. We have to move on. We hopefully get opportunities down the road that we take advantage of.
– Jeff Garcia
To the extreme. Dylan was the coolest thing in the country. If you were a young person at that age, maybe you don't go for Dylan's gravelly style voice, but who he was and how different and bold his lyrics were, and his look, that was the closest thing the record business had to James Dean.
– Art Garfunkel
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
– Bill Gates
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
– Bill Gates
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
No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or get rich in business by being a conformist.
– J. Paul Getty
I grew up in a show business family, so we've always had a great sense of balance, being so close to my parents. I've always known what is and isn't reality. Even my older brothers' early success 10 years ago didn't change me since there was such an age difference. I was moving about with my own gang, the skinheads, wearing steel-toed army boots and kicking in shop windows.
– Andy Gibb
I have to take time occasionally to get away from the pressures of this business. If I don't, I think I would get stale, and that would show in my music.
– Andy Gibb
I gained a fascination for the business, for understanding it, for archaeology, for ancient civilizations.
– Barry Gibb
I like every part of the pop business - though I'm sick and tired of back-biters.
– Barry Gibb
Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.
– Emma Goldman
I've never been bored in my life working. A lot of people get bored after five minutes. They want to go home and pick up their check. That's never been the case for me. I'm always the first to arrive and the last to leave because I truly enjoy what I'm doing. That's why I've been in show business for so long-I love it!
– Gale Gordon
I believe in evolution and I think when it comes to business and the roots of business and the fundamentals of business, I don't think that ever changes. I think the idea of change is an illusion, but in nature it's necessary to change and perhaps business is a part of nature. I'm not totally sure.
– Elliott Gould
Dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas. It is no coincidence that technically inept business types are known as 'suits'.
– Paul Graham
I choose to live in Nashville because my whole family is there. I couldn't re-engage with the ever-changing face of the company, so I'm not begrudging any of that. As the music business continues to change, I don't know if it would ever make sense to sign with two majors. Record companies just have to reinvent the wheel as they go.
– Amy Grant
I was a good amateur but only an average professional. I soon realized that there was a limit to how far I could rise in the music business, so I left the band and enrolled at New York University.
– Alan Greenspan
It's been said that government doesn't create jobs, business does. For the most part, this is true. But government creates the environment in which businesses can excel and expand.
– Christine Gregoire
The terrorist attacks of September 11th did far more than destroy the World Trade Center, damage the Pentagon, and leave a scar in the heartland of Pennsylvania.The terrorists struck at the heart of business and industry, and no industry was hit harder than the tourism industry, the lifeblood of Nevada.
– Kenny Guinn
People tell me not to do a soap, but it was a great learning experience because I became familiar with the technical aspects of the business. Besides, look who came out of soaps - Julianne Moore, Demi Moore, Tommy Lee Jones, Parker Posey, Kathleen Turner. All amazing people.
– Sarah Michelle Gellar
There's an assumption by many partners that no matter what happens to their business, they'll be partners forever.
– David Gibbs
In conducting business (especially for the office) never forget that the greatest danger arises from cocksure pride.
– Cass Gilbert
You see, advertising is a substitute for a salesperson, so it should be likeable. Who would buy from a salesperson who is rude, arrogant or insulting? People like to do business with people they like, therefore they respond to advertising created by people who like people.
– Jerry Goodis
It's a strange business, all jeers and no cheers.
– Tom Gorman
I long for the day when advertising will become a business for a grown man.
– Howard Luck Gossage
There are two reasons why I'm in show business, and I'm standing on both of them.
– Betty Grable
We're on the path of creating monopoly business practices out of copyright law.
– Robin Gross
Punctuality is the soul of business.
– Thomas Chandler Haliburton
The problem that I have is with the music business. For some reason it seems almost impossible to get anything, any music, released which includes improvisation or soloing.
– Jan Hammer
We are all on the same trip in the band. We all realize that people in the music business, and the audience have an eye on us because collectively our history is extensive.
– Herbie Hancock
When I do concerts, because I've been in the business for a long time and certain pieces of music have become associated with me, I do some pieces from the past.
– Herbie Hancock
Well: what we gain by science is, after all, sadness, as the Preacher saith. The more we know of the laws and nature of the Universe the more ghastly a business we perceive it all to be - and the non-necessity of it.
– Thomas Hardy
We have in this country a federal government that increasingly is engaged in trying to determine which business, which regions, which industries will succeed, which will not through a whole range of economic development, regional development corporate subsidization programs.
– Stephen Harper
The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the most important part of happiness.
– Harry Harrison
Southeast Farallon will cure you of any notion of nature as pastoral. It's serious, deadly, full-time business here, none of it laid on for our amusement. That such a place should nonetheless be beautiful to us is one of the mysteries of evolution.
– John Hart
The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
– William Hazlitt
I love the gay community. Naturally having been in this business since I was 17, I came into contact with gay people very young in my life. To me they were always the most talented, the kindest, they have the most wicked senses of humor - I always felt comfortable. I was never threatened, ever, and I just embraced them and loved them.
– Florence Henderson
It's not my ideal place. Los Angeles is so much about Hollywood and the business is so much a part of your life. There's a different level of ego here and I don't really want that to become my daily concern. It's not a lifestyle I really want. I am still really sceptical about the whole thing and trying to remain realistic. I don't really go to any of the parties. It's not really my scene.
– Martin Henderson
Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!
– O. Henry
I don't consider stardom to be anything related with me. I hope that the only way this business will ever change me will be (giving me) a good life.
– Jennifer Love Hewitt
The last time I felt so confident and excited about a coming season was in 1996-the year I won my world title. There is a real air of expectancy surrounding the entire Jordan team, and I am itching to get down to business and race the new car in this weekend's curtain raiser in Melbourne.
– Damon Hill
If we're going to create the best business climate to create higher paying jobs and retain our young people, we're going to have to build a workforce prepared for the opportunities of the future.
– John Hoeven
Nowadays, business is all about productivity - and our folks produce.
– John Hoeven
I enjoy being part of the entertainment industry, although I'm the laziest person that I've met yet in this business.
– Paul Hogan
Most of my contemporaries at school entered the World of Business, the logical destiny of bores.
– Barry Humphries
The FBI is a fabulous crime-fighter, the best in the world, but they need to get out of the terrorism business. We need something to fight terrorism domestically that's not fighting banks. Maybe like the British MI-5.
– David Hunt
I was criticized at some level within the Republican Party by those who say government should not be in the economic development business at all. My response is that the only country I know that doesn't have an economic development plan is Papa New Guinea.
– Jon Huntsman, Jr.
It's an immensely competitive business, and I can tell you the older you get, the parts are fewer, and the people who are proven performers are greater.
– John Hurt
Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.
– John Hurt
You've got to shout to make yourself heard in this business. It's unfortunate, but true-if you don't spell everything out in your contract, you've got only yourself to blame for the treatment you get. Otherwise, whether it's having a caravan-a dressing-room trailer-on the set each day, or whatever it is, you don't get it.
– John Hurt
They thought that I did conceive there was a difference between them and Mr. Cotton... I might say they might preach a covenant of works as did the apostles, but to preach a covenant of works and to be under a covenant of works is another business.
– Anne Hutchinson
The business of a seer is to see; and if he involves himself in the kind of God-eclipsing activities which make seeing impossible, he betrays the trust which his fellows have tacitly placed in him.
– Aldous Huxley
Advertising has always been the Peck's Bad Boy of American business urging us to buy things we probably don't need and often can't afford.
– Andrew Hacker
The more business one has, the more you are able to accomplish, for you learn to economize your time.
– Matthew Hale
The business of government should be businesslike.
– Dorcas Hardy
'The bigtime for you is just around the corner.' They told me that first in 1952 - boy, it's been a long corner. If I don't hit the bigtime in the next 25 or 30 years, I'm gonna pack in the music business and become a full-time gigolo.
– Ronnie Hawkins
Know the business, learn the business, own something.
– Isaac Hayes
If you are in business and self-supporting you already have some kind of competitive advantage no matter how small or subtle.
– Bruce Henderson
If the business community and political elite want to go to war they find it easy to mobilize domestic consent.
– Edward S. Herman
All business proceeds on beliefs, or judgments of probabilities, and not on certainties.
– William Hewlett
I have a fine level of recognition in the business and among the acting community now, so I consider myself one of the lucky ones. If I didn't think that, there would be something wrong with me. I'm grateful and thankful for what I've got.
– Philip Seymour Hoffman