quotations about business
Men make it such a point of honour to be fit for business that they forget to examine whether business is fit for a man.
GEORGE SAVILE
"Moral Thoughts and Reflections"
Loose ideas on the subject of business will not answer. It must be reduced to something of a science.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The man who uses yesterday's methods in today's work won't be in business tomorrow.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
There is one and only one social responsibility of business--to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
MILTON FRIEDMAN
"The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits", The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970
I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.
IZAAK WALTON
"Epistle to the Reader", The Compleat Angler
All too often, a successful new business model becomes the business model for companies not creative enough to invent their own.
GARY HAMEL
Leading the Revolution
In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
The Count of Monte Christo
Hurried business is bad business.
PATRICK DEWITT
The Sisters Brothers
Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Few people do business well who do nothing else.
EARL OF CHESTERFIELD
letter to his son, Aug. 7, 1749
International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.
ERIC AMBLER
A Coffin for Dimitrios
Business? It's quite simple: it's other people's money.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS
La Question d'Argent
Ain't got no business doin' business today
My little woman wants to stay home and play
RAZZY BAILEY
"I Ain't Got No Business Doin' Business Today"
Clothes don't make the man, but they make all of him except his hands and face during business hours, and that's a pretty considerable area of the human animal.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
Business has continued to be more interested in thinking, in general, than any other sector of society. The explanation for this is because there is a reality test. There is a bottom line. There are sales figures and profit figures. There are results.
EDWARD DE BONO
"Leadership and the need for creative thinking", Management-Issues, June 3, 2010
Business before pleasure, I am ready to grant; but when there is none, il faut s'amuser.
LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON
Romance and Reality
It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.
ERIC HOFFER
The New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1971
Real success in business is to be found in achievements comparable rather with those of the artist or the scientist, of the inventor or statesman. And the joys sought in the profession of business must be like their joys and not the mere vulgar satisfaction which is experienced in the acquisition of money, in the exercise of power or in the frivolous pleasure of mere winning.
LOUIS BRANDEIS
"Business: The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, La Follette's Weekly Magazine
Every great man of business has got somewhere a touch of the idealist in him.
WOODROW WILSON
The Papers of Woodrow Wilson
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By "business" I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level--I mean the wages of decent living.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Statement on the National Industrial Recovery Act, Jun. 16, 1933