business Quotes

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”

“All the same, I should like it all plain and clear,” said [Bilbo] obstinately, putting on his business manner (usually reserved for people who tried to borrow money off him), and doing his best to appear wise and prudent and professional and live up to Gandalf’s recommendation. “Also I should like to know about risks, out-of-pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth” – by which he meant: “What am I going to get out of it? and am I going to come back alive?”

″‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!‘”

“Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.”

“It’s not my business,” Scrooge returned. “It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly.”

″[B]usiness is business! And business must grow regardless of crummies in tummies, you know.”

“I meant no harm. I most truly did not. But I had to grow bigger. So bigger I got.”

“I’ve come here to help you. I have what you need. And my prices are low. And I work at great speed. And my work is one hundred per cent guaranteed.”

“And it klonked. And it bonked. And it jerked. And it berked And it bopped them about. But the thing really worked!”

“And that handy machine working very precisely removed all the stars from their tummies quite nicely.”

“Potential ideas are in your mind. By releasing and developing these ideas you can solve your financial problem, your business situation, you can care for yourself and your family, and attain success in your ventures.”

“From a business standpoint, that makes helping mankind a very risky business. Personally, I would never help mankind.”

“The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good ever since. Idgie says that for people who know her not to worry about getting poisoned, she is not cooking.”

“Joy is the serious business of heaven.”

“There are no bad business and investment opportunities, but there are bad entrepreneurs and investors.”

“To be a successful business owner and investor, you have to be emotionally neutral to winning and losing. Winning and losing are just part of the game.”

“You must fire bad customers just as you would fire a bad employee. If you do not get rid of your bad employees, the good employees will leave. If I do not fire bad customers, not only will my good customers leave but many of my good employees will leave as well.”

“’I’m a businessman,’ he’d told her. ‘No more, no less.’”

“And if it can’t be fun, what’s the point?”

“From a pure business point of view, the benefits of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks. It’s really quite simple ... The funny thing is that even a critical story, which may be hurtful personally, can be very valuable to your business.”

“I have a very simple rule when it comes to management: hire the best people from your competitors, pay them more than they were earning, and give them bonuses and incentives based on their performance. That’s how you build a first-class operation.”

“Leverage: don’t make deals without it. Enhance”

“Some leaders think all of life and business is a start-up. ‘More, more, more,’ is their mantra. That can kill a business that could have had very good life if someone had seen that sowing had to stop and operating had to begin.”

“I’ve read hundreds of books about China over the decades. I know the Chinese. I’ve made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind.”

“For companies that operate like a family: Sometimes the commitment to being a family gets interpreted in two destructive ways that often remain unspoken. The first one is that ‘we will put up with you no matter how you perform, and you will always have a place here.’ Second, in these companies, it can also be implied that ‘if you give yourself to us, we will take care of you, almost for life.‘”

“Deals work best when each side gets something it wants from the other.”

“I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can’t be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you’ve got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops.”

“One of the keys to thinking big is total focus. I think of it almost as a controlled neurosis, which is a quality I’ve noticed in many highly successful entrepreneurs. They’re obsessive, they’re driven, they’re single-minded and sometimes they’re almost maniacal, but it’s all channeled into their work. Where other people are paralyzed by neurosis, the people I’m talking about are actually helped by it.”

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion.”

“My style of deal-making is quite simple and straightforward. I aim very high, and then I just keep pushing and pushing and pushing to get what I’m after. Sometimes I settle for less than I sought, but in most cases I still end up with what I want.”

“To this day, if I feel a contractor is overcharging me, I’ll pick up the phone, even if it’s only for $ 5,000 or $ 10,000, and I’ll complain. People say to me, “What are you bothering for, over a few bucks?” My answer is that the day I can’t pick up the telephone and make a twenty-five-cent call to save $10,000 is the day I’m going to close up shop.”

“Most people think small because they are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning.”

“You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

“I’m the first to admit that I am very competitive and that I’ll do nearly anything within legal bounds to win. Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition.”

“It is in complete alignment with the reality that both businesses and individuals will begin, gather, and have more activities than they can reasonably sustain.”

“The generous Treatment the Captain gave me, I can never enough remember; he would take nothing of me for my Passage, gave me twenty Ducats for the Leopard’s Skin, and forty for the Lyon’s Skin which I had in my Boat, and caused every thing I had in the Ship to be punctually deliver’d me, and what I was willing to sell he bought, such as the Case of Bottles, two of my Guns, and a Piece of the Lump of Bees-wax, for I had made Candles of the rest; in a word, I made about 220 Pieces of Eight of all my Cargo, and with this Stock I went on Shoar in the Brasils.”

“And hunting, remember, had been my life. I have heard that in America businessmen often go to pieces when they give up the business that has been their life.”

“To rule a country of a thousand chariots, there must be reverent attention to business, and sincerity; economy in expenditure, and love for men; and the employment of the people at the proper seasons.”

“I wanted to build something that was my own, something I could point to and say: I made that. It was the only way I saw to make life meaningful.”

“The key to a successful franchise, according to many texts on the subject, can be expressed in one word: “uniformity.” Franchises and chain stores strive to offer exactly the same product or service at numerous locations.”

“The fast food industry pays the minimum wage to a higher proportion of its workers than any other American industry. Consequently, a low minimum wage has long been a crucial part of the fast food industry’s business plan.”

“It’s never just business. It never will be. If it ever does become just business, that will mean that business is very bad.”

“Quality is the best business plan.”

“Try to create an environment where people want to hear each other’s notes even when those notes are challenging, and where everyone has a vested interest in one another’s success.”

“We found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.”

“A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising.”

“Don’t forget the real business of the War is buying and selling.”

“A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.”

“Small thinking keeps small businesses small”

“It is not the content of a company’s values that correlates with performance, but the strength of conviction with which it holds those values, whatever they might be. ”

“Take advantage of difficult economic times to hire great people, even if you don’t have a specific job in mind.”

“Do that,” Grandma said. “And one more thing. You give Effie Wilcox back her house, free and clear. It wasn’t worth nothing anyway—apart from its historical value.” “Mrs. Dowdel, that’s not business,” the banker said. “That’s blackmail.” “What’s the difference?” Grandma said.

“Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.”

“He appreciated a business-like person, but the litany of regulations that rolled off the woman’s tongue made him nervous.”

“Our business in the Universe is not to deny its existence, but to LIVE,”

“Jazz, I’m a businessman. My whole jobs is exploiting underutilized resources. And you are a massively underutilized resource.”

“My biggest problem is my brother, Farley Drexel Hatcher. He’s two-and-a-half years old. Everybody calls him Fudge. I feel sorry for him if he’s going to grow up with a name like Fudge, but I don’t say a word. It’s none of my business.”

“They could see that Miss Swamp was a real witch. She meant business. Right away she put them to work. And she loaded them down with homework.”

“There are two ways to build a career or a business. We can go through life hunting and pecking, looking for opportunities or customers, hoping that something connects. Or we can go through life with intention, knowing what our piece looks like, knowing our WHY, and going straight to the places we fit.”

“I tell you, my friends, the trouble with this whole country is that so many are selfish! Here’s a hundred and twenty million people, with 95 percent of ‘em only thinking of self, instead of turning to and helping the responsible business men to bring back prosperity!”

“There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business—or life. There are, basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character.”

“The truth is, the status quo loves to say no. It is the easiest thing in the world to say no, especially in the world of business and finance. But for the first time we were discussing civil rights, and no other civil rights issue has ever been questioned because of the cost.”

″ ‘Rabbit,’ cried the king, ‘why did you break a law of nature and go running, running, running, in the daytime?’ ‘Oh, King,’ said the rabbit, ‘it was the python’s fault. I was in my house minding my own business when that big snake came in and chased me out.’ ”

“The truth is, the folks’ fancy that such and such things cannot be, simply because they have not seen them, is worth no more than a savage’s fancy that there cannot be such a thing as a locomotive, because he never saw one running wild in the forest. Wise men know that their business is to examine what is, and not to settle what is not.”

“Your gardeners do not understand their business: but what can you expect of men whose fathers were cobblers and carpenters? How should they have learned to cultivate your garden?”

“I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he forms a good plan, and then makes the execution of that plan his sole study and business.”

“Sometimes they went because their masters were obliged to go away from home on trips or business. Sometimes a cat was sent to School to learn good manners.”

“Mind Your Own Business is silly poetry by the wonderful Michael Rosen, and it’s filled with equally silly illustrations by the amazing Quentin Blake.”

“There is none of the colour and tastiness of get-up, you will perceive, which lends such a life to the present game at Rugby, making the dullest and worst-fought match a pretty sight. Now each house has its own uniform of cap and jersey, of some lively colour; but at the time we are speaking of plush caps have not yet come in, or uniforms of any sort, except the School-house white trousers, which are abominably cold to-day. Let us get to work, bare-headed, and girded with our plain leather straps. But we mean business, gentlemen.”

“No, my business is to trade and not to fight.”

It’s simply some boss who proposes to add a little to his income.

“In business, sir,” said he, “one has no friends, only correspondents.”

I am brutal,—I not only allow it, but boast of it; it is one of the reasons of my success in commercial business.

Those gilded cashbooks, drawers locked like gates of fortresses, heaps of bank-bills, come from I know not where, and the quantities of letters from England, Holland, Spain, India, China, and Peru, have generally a strange influence on a father’s mind, and make him forget that there is in the world an interest greater and more sacred than the good opinion of his correspondents.

“Last February you were the first who told me of the Haitian funds. You had dreamed that a ship had entered the harbor at Le Havre, that this ship brought news that a payment we had looked upon as lost was going to be made. I know how clear-sighted your dreams are; I therefore purchased immediately as many shares as I could of the Haitian debt, and I gained 400,000 francs by it, of which 100,000 have been honestly paid to you. You spent it as you pleased; that was your business. In March there was a question about a grant to a railway. Three companies presented themselves, each offering equal securities. You told me that your instinct,—and although you pretend to know nothing about speculations, I think on the contrary, that your comprehension is very clear upon certain affairs,—well, you told me that your instinct led you to believe the grant would be given to the company called the Southern. I bought two thirds of the shares of that company; as you had foreseen, the shares trebled in value, and I picked up a million, from which 250,000 francs were paid to you for pin-money. How have you spent this 250,000 francs?—it is no business of mine.”

We have our clothes, some more splendid than others,—this is our credit; but when a man dies he has only his skin; in the same way, on retiring from business, you have nothing but your real principal of about five or six millions, at the most; for third-rate fortunes are never more than a fourth of what they appear to be, like the locomotive on a railway, the size of which is magnified by the smoke and steam surrounding it.

“You might as well quit, you people. We mean business, this time.”