We’ve collected the best Business Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: Kevin O’Leary, Duke of Wellington, Smedley Butler, ASAP Rocky, Carlos Slim. Use them as an inspiration.
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Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team thinking we’re going to win.
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Profitability is coming from productivity, efficiency, management, austerity, and the way to manage the business.
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I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.
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Creativity is an import-export business.
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I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.
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My private life is my own business.
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Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I think the ordinary guy has just as much right to say ‘This is a good song‘ as somebody who is in the music business.
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To be the best CEO you can be, you have to be passionate about the business you’re running. And I have true passion for the financial markets and the financial industry.
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Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off.
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The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
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I am personally a big believer that technology is the biggest driver of human development, and if you can use technology to benefit people, then that’s the best business you can have.
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My background was computer science and business school, so eventually I worked my way up where I was running product groups – development, testing, marketing, user education.
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Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team thinking we’re going to win.
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Digitization and new technologies are rapidly changing all industries, forcing them to prepare for a tomorrow that is unpredictable. This also applies to the industry of container shipping, ports, and logistics, which largely has been driven by the traditional business models focused on optimizing how you move goods.
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Just really, really believe in what you’re trying to do. Don’t let people alter that. Let people advise you and lead you down paths to make smart business decisions. But trust your instinct and trust that overwhelming drive that made you put all your dreams and everything on the line.
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I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas.
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One of the challenges in networking is everybody thinks it’s making cold calls to strangers. Actually, it’s the people who already have strong trust relationships with you, who know you’re dedicated, smart, a team player, who can help you.
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Never argue with a profit.
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When did it become a problem to be a small businessman and become successful? The small businessman – like my father, or like me?
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Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
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The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.
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Start with good people, lay out the rules, communicate with your employees, motivate them and reward them. If you do all those things effectively, you can’t miss.
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Everybody’s business is nobody’s business, and nobody’s business is my business.
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Sustainability makes good business sense, and we’re all on the same team at the end of the day. That’s the truth about the human condition.
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I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone of business.
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Coinbase is ‘the’ brand in the Bitcoin space. Their founder Brian Armstrong was amongst the first good entrepreneurs to emerge in this space. While others championed ideological or underground/illicit interests, Brian saw an opportunity to change the world for the better and build a big business out of it.
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If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.
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Politics is the art of preventing people from busying themselves with what is their own business.
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Most people in business and within their personal lives move towards complexity. More To Dos. More projects. More products. More meetings. More possessions. More goals. The best – I suggest to you – move in the opposite direction.
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I don’t often think of Donald Trump, but his daughter is very smart. She’s a woman working in real estate, which is predominantly men, and she’s both savvy and articulate about her business and her business acumen.
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The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.
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Business is not just doing deals; business is having great products, doing great engineering, and providing tremendous service to customers. Finally, business is a cobweb of human relationships.
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In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.
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The biggest part of my job now is to quickly develop successors, and around the world I am working to develop new business leaders in the company.
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I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.
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Effective philanthropy requires a lot of time and creativity – the same kind of focus and skills that building a business requires.
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A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.
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It’s not what you pay a man, but what he costs you that counts.
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Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies.
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The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.
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The building up of a new, far-reaching system of inspection on the question of equal pay, with power to investigate every business in the United States, administered by a colossal new government agency with vast enforcement powers, would not be helpful to women, as far as I can see.
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I couldn’t sell water in a desert. I have no business acumen. I can tell you why you have no business acumen, and I can tell you why your project may or may not work, but I have no ability to make money.
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I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
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The restaurant business is something that you have to treat like a baby. You have to constantly be there. You can’t trust it to anybody else, because no one’s going to love it like you do.
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That’s what the Affordable Care Act is all about. It’s about filling the gaps in employer-based care so that when we lose a job, or go back to school, or start that new business, we’ll still have coverage.
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So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd. They are momentum investors purchasing highly illiquid investments. That is a recipe for disaster.
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My reasons for getting into the entertainment business weren’t entirely selfless. Hollywood as an industry can at times be insular and doesn’t understand the market very well. I saw an opportunity in that fact.
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Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
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What other people think about me is not my business.
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In a way, fraud in business is no different from infidelity in marriage or plagiarism in scholarly work. Even people committed to high moral standards succumb.
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I’m not a detail guy. I depend on accountants and administrators to do my detail stuff for me, but I do know the overall picture and I know that if you put business people together in a room, not just politicians, they could shrink the deficit tremendously by good business tactics.
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Despite their good intentions, today’s businesses are missing an opportunity to integrate social responsibility and day-to-day business objectives – to do good and make money simultaneously.
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I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
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John D. Rockefeller said that he found friendships based on business to be far more long lasting and profitable than the reverse. I think there’s something to that. A company can end up being very Confucian, where the good of the individual is subjugated to the good of the whole.
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What kind of business world are we living in?
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Business is all about risk taking and managing uncertainties and turbulence.
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If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.
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A well-maintained physique is a great business card. Ideas and intelligence are what matters, but if you have a well-maintained physique, it’s better.
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Business is other people’s money.
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Commitment, belief and positive attitude are all important if you’re going to be a success, whether you’re in sports, in business or, as in my case, anthropology.
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It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.
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The reason why it is so difficult for existing firms to capitalize on disruptive innovations is that their processes and their business model that make them good at the existing business actually make them bad at competing for the disruption.
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The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor and, by patient industry, close economy, determined effort and close application to business, wring success out of a number of business opportunities that lie at their very doors.
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I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.
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The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
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With success comes responsibility of playing your part, to do what you can to help not only those that helped you get to where you’re at, but the future of who’s going to be playing a part of your business and everything you do in your entire career.
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I’m actually very snobbish about directors. I have to say ‘no’ all the time. ‘No’ is the most powerful word in our business. You’ve got to protect yourself.
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Cannibals prefer those who have no spines.
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Your own business growth and success depends on many things, and along that growing path, you are going to have to concede certain responsibilities and activities – whether for your accounting, your production, or day-to-day management.
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You can’t be successful in business without taking risks. It’s really that simple.
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Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
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I believe that I have been basically anarchistic, anti-religion and anti-industry and business. In other words, anti-bureaucracy. I would like to see people behave well without having to have priests stand by, politicians stand by, or people collecting bills.
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I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan to sell a company.
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I wear two hats. The one is business and increasing my shareholders‘ value; the other is social responsibility.
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War is the business of barbarians.
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Popularity has everything to do with business and nothing to do with music.
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The biggest misconception people have about me is that when they see how young I am, they think, ‘Oh, this guy must have always wanted to be in politics; his parents must have been politically connected.’ I’m a finance major and always intended to go into business.
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Many people dream about being an entrepreneur, starting their own business, working for themselves, and living the good life. Very few, however, will actually take the plunge and put everything they’ve got into being their own boss.
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Money is always the least of the problems. It is finding the right business or growing the right business. You can’t do that without the right people.
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As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.
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There’s nobody in the business strong enough to scare me.
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I look at every business and ask, How long can this last? How can I identify the status quo and change it?
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Starting your own business isn’t just a job – it’s a way of life.
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Go to your business, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.
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Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
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If you’re not learning, then you’re stagnant. If you’re stagnant, then you’re not evolving and the business isn’t progressing.
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I worry that business leaders are more interested in material gain than they are in having the patience to build up a strong organization, and a strong organization starts with caring for their people.
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Stationary storage will be as big as the car business long term. The growth rate will probably be several times what it is for the car business.
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My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.
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You know, I look like a woman but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot. Because by the time they think that I don’t know what’s goin’ on, I then got the money, and gone.
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Every business and every product has risks. You can’t get around it.
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Our focused customers are small business and young people. We did a great job in China. How can we help those young people in India, in Pakistan, in Africa. If they can use in the same ways.
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There will always be a business cycle, and white-collar workers will get hit in the next recession like they always do in recessions.
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I have learned the hard way to mind my business, without judging who people are and what they do. I am more troubled by the lack of space being provided for the truth to unfold. Humans cannot seem to wait for or honor the truth. Instead, we make it up based on who we believe people should or should not be.
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My mom and dad – they were always there. They were always on the set. They focused on our family life. The entertainment business wasn’t the end-all. They weren’t out to get the next big paycheck or the next big movie. It was about ‘What can we do as a family.’
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If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.
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Exchange ideas frequently.
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Positive thinking is the key to success in business, education, pro football, anything that you can mention. I go out there thinking that I’m going to complete every pass.
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Longevity in this business is about being able to reinvent yourself or invent the future.
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The Kingdom is the love of God prevailing in politics, in business, in government, in media. It is all the impact of the laws of God creating a social environment where the strong help the weak, where those who have give to those who don’t. It’s a society where relationships are built on love.
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It doesn’t matter whether you are pursuing success in business, sports, the arts, or life in general: The bridge between wishing and accomplishing is discipline.
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If you’re doing business, not that simple to only buy. You have to create something. You have to create something that never exist for the future.
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A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
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We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
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In business, the idea of measuring what you are doing, picking the measurements that count like customer satisfaction and performance… you thrive on that.
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Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.
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What do I mean by concentration? I mean focusing totally on the business at hand and commanding your body to do exactly what you want it to do.
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It is usually people in the money business, finance, and international trade that are really rich.
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We don’t seem to be able to check crime, so why not legalize it and then tax it out of business?
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Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.
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The church is in the hope business. We, of all people, ought to be known most for our hope because our hope is founded on something deeper than human ability or wishful thinking.
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The business of biomedical research is mostly about failure. Few projects we commission will ultimately result in success. But every study we do contributes to the body of knowledge that brings science and society closer to a solution.
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In this business, until you’re known as a monster you’re not a star.
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Joy is the serious business of Heaven.
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Business? It’s quite simple; it’s other people’s money.
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On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a computer programmer. But in my heart, I am a gamer.
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If you spend your life competing with business men, what do you have? A bank account and ulcers!
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Team synergy has an extraordinary impact on business results.
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Reason and judgment are the qualities of a leader.
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Married couples who work together to build and maintain a business assume broad responsibilities. Not only is their work important to our local and national economies, but their success is central to the well-being of their families.
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No business in the world has ever made more money with poorer management.
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The success combination in business is: Do what you do better… and: do more of what you do.
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The real business of life is trying to understand each other.
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I learned this early on in the variety business: You’ve got to give folks responsibility, you’ve got to trust them, and then you’ve got to check on them.
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I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
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If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.
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In high school, I worked at Abercrombie & Fitch, and once I graduated from business school at USC, I started a company with my partner and had a nine-to-seven job.
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In almost every profession – whether it’s law or journalism, finance or medicine or academia or running a small business – people rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. We count on the space of trust that confidentiality provides. When someone breaches that trust, we are all worse off for it.
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I am going to enjoy some other things apart from business.
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Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
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If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
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If you have to forecast, forecast often.
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If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
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And I want to do it the right way, like everybody else, not just a famous figurehead that gets a job because he is a famous basketball player. I want to really learn the business.
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I always liked having a good time. I got into this business because I got fired from any job I ever had because I stayed out late playing music.
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A great business at a fair price is superior to a fair business at a great price.
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A manager doesn’t hear the cheers.
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Where I know I wanna go is being consistent on business, and that’s just making another artist, my clothing line – capitalizing off the moment. I wanna be consistently doing that – capitalizing off every move I make.
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Industry is fortune’s right hand, and frugality its left.
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I really love travelling to places where I get to learn something new about a new group of people or a new place. Learn some history, contemplate some business ideas, and sort of get off the beaten track a little bit.
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When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.
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The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation.
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If you want to be more productive, then start at the start: get there on time. Whether it is a meeting, a flight, an appointment or a date, it’s important to ensure you are there when you say you will be there. This may feel like an old-fashioned tip to give, but it has served me well for five decades in business.
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Details create the big picture.
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The purpose of a business is to create a customer.
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Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
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There is something sinister, something quite biographical about what I do – but that part is for me. It’s my personal business. I think there is a lot of romance, melancholy. There’s a sadness to it, but there’s romance in sadness. I suppose I am a very melancholy person.
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Girls shouldn’t worry about being the equal of men in the business world.
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If you want to avoid criticism, then you shouldn’t be a historian, because historians are trying to understand and explain. If you’re trying to please people, then you should go into the fashion business, or the candy business.
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I feel that business leaders with their ability to create businesses, with their ability to scale, need to play an important role in social service.
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Look at growth, look at how much time people spend on the Net and look at the variety of things that they are doing. It’s all really good, so I am actually encouraged by the fundamentals that underlie usage growth on the Net.
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No party or event is without a reason. This is how we foster new relationships, open doors, and launch new ideas that create business opportunities, investments, and jobs in the U.S. and Spain.
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The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.
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Microsoft has had two goals in the last 10 years. One was to copy the Mac, and the other was to copy Lotus‘ success in the spreadsheet – basically, the applications business. And over the course of the last 10 years, Microsoft accomplished both of those goals. And now they are completely lost.
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Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
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Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business. Large stores, gilt signs, flaming advertisements, will all prove unavailing if you or your employees treat your patrons abruptly. The truth is, the more kind and liberal a man is, the more generous will be the patronage bestowed upon him.
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Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Their needs and wants impact every aspect of your business, from product development to content marketing to sales to customer service.
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Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
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My innovation involved taking an idea from the telecommunications and banking industries, and applying that idea to transportation business.
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I had a band with David Gates. There was just a lot of opportunity at that time. But I left for Los Angeles the week after I graduated high school, and I actually left to try to get into the advertising business. That was really why I went out to L.A. My music career was almost an accident.
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If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
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I just wanted to be a businessman, and to me, the best way to understand business was to be an accountant.
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I’m afraid for all those who’ll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!
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An organization, no matter how well designed, is only as good as the people who live and work in it.
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Carpe per diem – seize the check.
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I rate enthusiasm even above professional skill.
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Politics is show business for ugly people.
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My father told me, never have partners.
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Small business is the backbone of our economy. I’m for big business, too. But small business is where the jobs are generated.
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We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn’t be in this business.
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I think that in any group activity – whether it be business, sports, or family – there has to be leadership or it won’t be successful.
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If you fire people, you fire customers.
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I’ve always said it ain’t ‘Show Friends.’ It’s ‘Show Business.’
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I think the path is different for everybody. Go after the doors that are open to you. That has always been my motto getting into the music business. Do the things that seem to be good opportunities and work hard at it. Try to make good decisions and be nice. Hopefully all of that will pay off at some point.
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Prophesy is a good line of business, but it is full of risks.
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School taught me how to do a 9-5 job rather than be a person who wants to start a business.
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There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.
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If you’re trying to create a company, it’s like baking a cake. You have to have all the ingredients in the right proportion.
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My parents divorced. There was the usual awkward business of going between them, but I was mostly with my mother. She remarried to a Greek painter Nico Ghika, so we were always around artists and intellectuals.
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If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.
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I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.
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If you aren’t playing well, the game isn’t as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid.
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Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write. They cannot write advertisements, and they cannot write plans. They are helpless as deaf mutes on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera.
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Rural technology is moving from kind of the back office to where everything, every company – sales, marketing, customer acquisition, new product development, media – all industries are becoming technology industries. And it’s not information technology: it’s business technology.
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I have accomplished my childhood dream: to be in show business. Everybody should be so lucky to have their dreams come true. I’ve been truly blessed.
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Public school was never in business to produce Thoreau. It is in business to produce a man like Richard Nixon and, even more, a population like the one which could elect him.
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White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life’s business being just the terrible choice.
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Inside every working anarchy, there’s an Old Boy Network.
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I don’t want to do business with those who don’t make a profit, because they can’t give the best service.
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The best in business have boundless curiosity and open minds.
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I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.
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The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.
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No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or ‘get rich’ in business by being a conformist.
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I must create a system or be enslaved by another mans; I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
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Information technology is at the core of how you do your business and how your business model itself evolves.
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Judges should be in the business of declaring what the law is using the traditional tools of interpretation, rather than pronouncing the law as they might wish it to be in light of their own political views.
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It’s not the things you don’t know that trip you up. It’s the things you think you know, but you don’t. You fail to ask a certain question because you believe you know the answer. Separating your information from your assumptions can be very tricky business.
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As Canadians who proudly demand the equal treatment of minorities, religious freedom, gender equality and basic human rights for its citizens – allowing our political leaders to shamefully ignore these values in the name of business abroad, falls short of the high standard we rightfully set for ourselves.
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If you have one good idea, people will lend you twenty.
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I don’t believe in this business of being behind, better to be in front.
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No business can stay in business without customers. How you treat – or mistreat – them determines how long your doors stay open.
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Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away products.
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I think the high-tech industry is used to developing new things very quickly. It’s the Silicon Valley way of doing business: You either move very quickly and you work hard to improve your product technology, or you get destroyed by some other company.
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We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.
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When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
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A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It’s my favorite part of the business, live concerts.
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There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
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You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.
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America isn’t Congress. America isn’t Washington. America is the striving immigrant who starts a business, or the mom who works two low-wage jobs to give her kid a better life. America is the union leader and the CEO who put aside their differences to make the economy stronger.
373
I believe in family values, and I believe that we all ought to be able to have a family and marry if you want to. I don’t think the government should be in that business of denying people the fundamental right to marry.
374
Profit is not the legitimate purpose of business. The legitimate purpose of business is to provide a product or service that people need and do it so well that it’s profitable.
375
Just because you’re working does not mean you’re making money. That’s two very different things in show business.
376
Infrastructure is the backbone of economic growth. It improves access to basic services such as clean water and electricity, creates jobs and boosts business.
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I’ve seen up close what can happen when actors talk publicly about their relationships: their personal life gets dismantled. It’s a show business game, and it’s one game I won’t play.
379
The golden rule for every business man is this: ‘Put yourself in your customer’s place.’
380
I decided that there was only one place to make money in the mutual fund business, as there is only one place for a temperate man to be in a saloon: behind the bar and not in front of it.
381
It’s a diabolical business. I can’t imagine how hellish it must be to be hounded like Amy Winehouse and people like that. I have a little peripheral place on the outskirts of celebrity, when I go to premieres and that sort of stuff, which is as close as I want to get.
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I believe people who go into politics want to do the right thing. And then they hit a big wall of re-election and the pettiness of politics. In the end, politics gets in the way of the business of people.
385
Cricket is my passion; it is my first love. So I will not act in my movies, as they will just be a side business for me.
386
What other people think of you is none of your business.
387
The most important decision I’ve made in business? The choices of people I have around me. When I first started I brought everybody with me, my homies from the neighborhood, criminals. I just said, ‘Come on everybody, we made it.’ Then I had to realize we didn’t make it. I made it.
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I was approached about having my own network many, many years ago. There were some people who wanted to start up a network, and I didn’t want to get that involved in the business aspect of it.
391
I want to put a ding in the universe.
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If you break 100, watch your golf. If you break 80, watch your business.
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Sustainability includes how you run your business, and my bottom line includes how you treat your people. Sustainability starts with your staff.
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American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.
400
Your mission is to find a product or service that can positively impact the lives of 1 billion people because that’s the game we’re playing today.
401
Journalism: A profession whose business is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.
402
I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.
403
Farming‘s always been my business.
404
I have a helicopter that I use for U.K. business trips, and I fly myself. I have a yacht in Antibes in the south of France, which is a sort of indulgence, as we only use it for about four weeks a year. The rest of the time, it is chartered out to people as a business.
405
The success I have achieved in bodybuilding, motion pictures, and business would not have been possible without the generosity of the American people and the freedom here to pursue your dreams.
406
Globalization means that business strategy and business ethics cannot be separated from each other.
407
I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.
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In business, I think the most important thing is to position yourself for long-term and not be too impatient, which I am by nature, and I have to control myself.
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A disruptive innovation is a technologically simple innovation in the form of a product, service, or business model that takes root in a tier of the market that is unattractive to the established leaders in an industry.
412
The more you drive positive change, the more enhanced your business model.
413
Music is spiritual. The music business is not.
414
People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.
415
Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people.
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I grew up in east Tennessee, and everybody knew everybody’s business.
418
Don’t ever break someone’s trust. Once you do, then nobody wants to do business with you.
419
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
420
We all get into business, and we take a risk in terms of putting capital.
421
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Business is a combination of war and sport.
423
Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.
424
There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.
425
Our movements and feelings are constantly monitored, because surveillance is the business model of the digital age.
426
When you’re eight years old nothing is your business.
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We’re in this entertainment business really to give the audience what they want.
430
People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
431
It’s all about having a product that you’re proud of and coming to work every day. Those basic building blocks are the same in any business.
432
Before you can become a millionaire, you must learn to think like one. You must learn how to motivate yourself to counter fear with courage. Making critical decisions about your career, business, investments and other resources conjures up fear, fear that is part of the process of becoming a financial success.
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We’re not uncomfortable with it, and we’ve already been through enough of the music business where I’m not really worried that commercial success is going to in some way – we’re already past saving, you know what I mean? It’s too late for us.
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Architecture is not an inspirational business, it’s a rational procedure to do sensible and hopefully beautiful things; that’s all.
439
Trying to do business without advertising is like winking at a pretty girl through a pair of green goggles. You may know what you are doing, but no one else does.
440
The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.
441
The customer reaction to Dell going private has been a lot more positive than I would have ever imagined. Customers see it as – ‘You don’t have to be distracted. Now you can totally focus on your business.’ So they see it as a positive.
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The true measure of the value of any business leader and manager is performance.
444
Employees make the best dates. You don’t have to pick them up and they’re always tax-deductible.
445
I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone’s got their own definition. Mine, I suppose, is to know myself.
446
Good design is good business.
447
If you have a business that isn’t growing the top line, it’s very hard to deliver attractive returns to shareholders.
448
Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.
449
Everything I do and everything Pixar does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period.
450
Creating a strong company culture isn’t just good business. It’s the right thing to do, and it makes your company better for all stakeholders – employees, management, and customers.
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To succeed in business it is necessary to make others see things as you see them.
453
I even don’t dare to watch our stock price, because this is what other people think who you are. I dare not watch it. I think, let the market take care of themselves; we should take care of the business.
454
Christmas is over and Business is Business.
455
Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile.
456
Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.
457
Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.
458
As you grow in this business, you learn how to do more with less.
459
Everyone is your best friend when you are successful. Make sure that the people that you surround yourself with are also the people that you are not afraid of failing with.
460
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
461
When I hear people debate the ROI of social media? It makes me remember why so many business fail. Most businesses are not playing the marathon. They’re playing the sprint. They’re not worried about lifetime value and retention. They’re worried about short-term goals.
462
An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.
463
If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
464
In this business you either sink or swim or you don’t.
465
What we have to do is support business, but also support our workers with job training programs and with reasonable wages.
466
I think if we get freedom for women, then they are probably going to do a lot of things that I wish they wouldn’t do. But it seems to me that isn’t our business to say what they should do with it. It is our business to see that they get it.
467
In this business it takes time to be really good – and by that time, you’re obsolete.
468
There is no greater feeling in business than building a product which impacts people’s lives in a profound way. When we look around at the thousands of people who have attended Summit gatherings, it makes us smile to see the new friendships, business partnerships and philanthropic initiatives that each event produces.
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Investing is a business where you can look very silly for a long period of time before you are proven right.
471
I never called my work an ‘art’. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.
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When we talk about ‘smart transportation,’ it is more than moving cargo from A to B. Digitization within transport and logistics means seamless service to our customers, visibility in the supply chain, and driving a more efficient business.
474
Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.
475
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Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
477
All things being equal, people will do business with a friend; all things being unequal, people will still do business with a friend.
478
Business can be a source of progressive change.
479
A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.
480
The way to be successful in the software world is to come up with breakthrough software, and so whether it’s Microsoft Office or Windows, its pushing that forward. New ideas, surprising the marketplace, so good engineering and good business are one in the same.
481
First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.
482
Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.
483
I got two stores, two streetwear stores, at home. Have to tend to those. Play Cloths. Have to tend to that business.
484
We need to become good citizens in the global village, instead of competing. What are we competing for – to drive more cars, eat more steaks? That will destroy the world.