Business quotes
3.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside business — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Creating a close connection to those you do business with has its many risks, rewards and consequences. There are few things in business I have encountered that are more difficult than firing someone, particularly if that someone has always been, or has become a friend. On the flip side, I have been rewarded with many friends."
"I just started a business called HDNet. There never is one area that has a door open to everyone. Try to find an area with something you love to do and do it. It's a lot easier to work hard and prepare when you love what you are doing."
"Don't get caught up in how many hours you work. Judge success based on having goals and measuring your results. Hard work, and lots of it, is certainly needed, but focus on what you get done."
"One thing we can all control is effort. Put in the time to become an expert in whatever you’re doing. It will give you an advantage because most people don’t do this."
"Most people think it's all about the idea. It's not. EVERYONE has ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in an industry, then doing the preparation to be able to execute on the idea."
"Without doubt machines will be able to determine the means and avenues to goals, but men will continue to set the goals themselves. For what machine can ever apply the considerations of compassion and justice which, as man's enlightenment spreads ... will enter ever more into the decisions that affect his future ... in the universe?"
"When we do not know a person - and also when we do - we have to judge his size by the size and nature of his achievements, as compared with the achievements of others in his special line of business - there is no other way."
"My axiom is, to succeed in business: avoid my example."
"The timid man yearns for full value and demands a tenth. The bold man strikes for double value and compromises on par."
"Set the mind to work, and apply the thoughts vigorously to the business, for it holds in the struggles of the mind, as in those of war, that to think we shall conquer is to conquer."
"The artist's business is to feel, although he may think a little sometimes... when he has nothing better to do."
"In business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first."
"Fella in business got to lie an' cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That's what's important. You go steal that tire an' you're a thief, but he tried to steal your four dollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business."
"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."
"Trade is a social act."
"I'm not saying that advertising is going away. But the balance is shifting. If today the successful recipe is to put 70 percent of your energy into shouting about your service and 30 percent into making it great, over the next 20 years I think that's going to invert."
"Well, California used to be in the dream-making business, and unfortunately what's happened I think we're now in the dream-breaking business."
"I think we can be the very best place to start a business, to grow a business, to invent a new technology, to change the world, to change the country. But we've got a lot of work to deliver a new California to the people of California."
"Regulation is strangling businesses of all sizes in California, and we've got to streamline regulation so it's easy, not hard. to do business."
"The arrangement bore the same relation to actual finance as fantasy football bears to the NFL."
