Quotes on Business and Managing
Opinionated quotations from the famous and not-so-famous.

Quality is not an act. It is a habit.

Aristotle

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

Thomas J. Peters

Train everyone lavishly, you can't overspend on training.

Thomas J. Peters

What helps people, helps business.

Leo Burnett

Every company's greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.

Michael LeBoeuf

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.

Ken Blanchard

Caring is a powerful business advantage.

Scott Johnson

Worry about being better; bigger will take care of itself. Think one customer at a time and take care of each one the best way you can.

Gary Comer

If you're not serving the customer, you'd better be serving someone who is.

Karl Albrecht

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

Don't open a shop unless you like to smile.

Chinese Proverb

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

John Cleese (Trivia: pronounced "cleeze")

You can accomplish by kindness what you cannot by force.

Publilius Syrus

Make every decision as if you owned the whole company.

Robert Townsend

It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.

Martin Van Buren

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you.

Henry Ward Beecher

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing another, it is the only means.

Albert Einstein

No man is fit to command another that cannot command himself.

William Penn

If you do not have the time to read, you do not have the time to lead.

Phillip Schlechty

It's easy to point a finger, but much harder to point the way.

Duane Alan Hahn

The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do.

Roy L. Smith

Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.

Antisthenes

The business that considers itself immune to the necessity for advertising sooner or later finds itself immune to business.

Derby Brown

I advertise for the same reason a pilot keeps the plane's engines running even though the plane is already in the air.

R. J. Wrigley (adapted)

Leadership is the activity of influencing people to cooperate towards some goal which they come to find desirable and which motivates them over the long haul.

Orway Tead

If your imagination leads you to understand how quickly people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have practically anything you go after.

Napoleon Hill

Excuses interest no one except the competition.

Unknown

It's said that Tom Watson, head of IBM, was asked if he was going to fire an executive whose recent mistake cost the company six hundred thousand dollars. Watson shook his head and explained, "I just spent six hundred thousand dollars training him. Why would I want anyone else to hire his experience?"

Unknown

The law of work does seem utterly unfair—but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, too.

Mark Twain (Full quote at Bartleby.com)

Adapted version:

The law of work seems unfair, but nothing can change it; the more enjoyment you get out of your work, the more money you will make.

Mark Twain (adapted)

The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.

Lady Stella Reading

The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.

Henry David Thoreau

Some folks can look so busy doing nothing that they seem indispensable.

Kin Hubbard

Never mistake activity for achievement.

John Wooden

The really idle man gets nowhere. The perpetually busy man does not get much further.

Sir Heneage Ogilvie

Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he's hired to do.

Malcolm S. Forbes

Men who do things without being told draw the most wages.

Edwin H. Stuart

The person who knows HOW will always have a job. The person who knows WHY will always be his boss.

Diane Ravitch

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

Leo Rosten

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Sir James Goldsmith

The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.

Napoleon Hill

Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own.

Charles De Gaulle

Results are often obtained by impetuosity and daring which could never have been obtained by ordinary methods.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Act as if it were impossible to fail.

James K. Van Fleet

We will either find a way, or make one.

Hannibal

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

George Eliot

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

Samuel Johnson

There are men so conservative they believe nothing should be done for the first time.

Unknown

A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.

Elbert Hubbard

Indecision and delays are the parents of failure.

George Canning

People who come up with "It may not work" or "What are we going to do if it fails?" do not have the credentials to be businessmen. If there is only a 1 percent chance of success, a true businessperson sees that 1 percent as the spark to light a fire.

Kim Woo-Choong

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

Winston Churchill

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

Benjamin Jowett

In a fight for survival, you don't lead with your chin.

Gord Kelly

I've always been worried about people who are willing to work for nothing. Sometimes that's all you get from them, nothing.

Sam Ervin

For organizations and employees alike, the only real security is the ability to grow, change and adapt.

Kearney

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