My Personal Quotes

Others  

 www.brainyquote.com businessman Quotes

Never kick a fresh Turd on a hot Day - Pres. Truman

"The measure of a great leader is his willingness to do what's right, even if it costs him everything" - Jeno Paulucci

Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.

It's not my job to motivate players. They bring extraordinary motivation to our program. It's my job not to de-motivate them.
Lou Holtz 1937-, American Football Coach

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.
Lou Holtz

The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter Drucker

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Peter Drucker

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Peter Drucker

The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.

Peter Drucker

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

Peter Drucker

The new information technology... Internet and e-mail... have practically eliminated the physical costs of communications.

Peter Drucker

The only thing we know about the future is that it will be different.

Peter Drucker

The productivity of work is not the responsibility of the worker but of the manager.

Peter Drucker

The purpose of a business is to create a customer.

Peter Drucker

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.

Peter Drucker

There is an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job.

Peter Drucker

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Peter Drucker

Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.

Peter Drucker

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

Peter Drucker

Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.

Peter Drucker

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes... but no plans.

Peter Drucker

We can say with certainty - or 90% probability - that the new industries that are about to be born will have nothing to do with information.

Peter Drucker

We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.

Peter Drucker

When a subject becomes totally obsolete we make it a required course.

Peter Drucker
 

Some of us are like wheelbarrows, only useful when pushed and easily upset.
Jack Herbert

Capital isn't scarce; vision is.
Sam Walton

Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community.

Sam Walton

High expectations are the key to everything.

Sam Walton

I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time.

Sam Walton

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they've been.

Sam Walton

Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish.

Sam Walton

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

There's a lot more business out there in small town America than I ever dreamed of.

Sam Walton

We let folks know we're interested in them and that they're vital to us. cause they are.

Sam Walton

We're all working together; that's the secret.

Sam Walton

Serve the classes, live with the masses. Serve the masses, live with the classes.
John Jacob Astor

There is little success where there is little laughter.
Andrew Carnegie

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Bill Gates

Life is not fair; get used to it.
Bill Gates

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.
Bill Gates

Formula for success: rise early, work hard, strike oil.
J. Paul Getty

Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.
J. Paul Getty

To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business.
J. Paul Getty

To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success.
Henry J. Heinz

An expert is someone who knows a lot about the past.
Tom Hopkins

Today, you have 100% of your life left.
Tom Hopkins

I forgot to shake hands and be friendly. It was an important lesson about leadership.
Lee Iacocca

I have found that being honest is the best technique I can use. Right up front, tell people what you're trying to accomplish and what you're willing to sacrifice to accomplish it.
Lee Iacocca

I hire people brighter than me and then I get out of their way.

Lee Iacocca

I've always found that the speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

Lee Iacocca

Eagles don't flock, you have to find them one at a time.
Ross Perot

Inventories can be managed, but people must be led.
Ross Perot

Life is like a cobweb, not an organization chart.

Ross Perot

Don't blame the marketing department. The buck stops with the chief executive.
John D. Rockefeller

I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people's efforts than 100% of my own efforts.
John D. Rockefeller

If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
John D. Rockefeller

There's no one to stop you but yourself.
Dave Thomas

What people forget is that every movie that gets made keeps making money for somebody FOREVER.

Dave Thomas

You can do what you want to do. You can be what you want to be.

Dave Thomas

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.
- Jeff Bezos

Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they cant lose.
- Bill Gates

Business opportunities are like buses, theres always another one coming.
- Richard Branson

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.
- Henry Ford

Dont worry, be crappy. Revolutionary means you ship and then test Lots of things made the first Mac in 1984 a piece of crap - but it was a revolutionary piece of crap.
- Guy Kawasaki

For every sale you miss because youre too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because youre not enthusiastic enough.
- Zig Ziglar

A business exists to create a customer
- Peter F. Drucker

My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had - every day Im learning something new. Fantasizing about the future is one of my favorite pastimes.
- Richard Branson

You cant just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, theyll want something new.
- Steve Jobs

We dont want to climb Everest right now. Were not planning on knocking out Google. Our goal is to take our 20 million users, who are currently using us twice a month, and bump that up to four times a month. That doubles our market share.
- Jim Lanzone

Wikipedia is a non-profit. It was either the dumbest thing I ever did or the smartest thing I ever did. Communities can build amazing things, but you have to be part of that community and you cant abuse them. You have to be very respectful of what their needs are.
- Jimmy Wales

Business opportunities are like buses, theres always another one coming. - Richard Branson

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Mark Twain

 

 

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.
Warren Buffett

 

 

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin

 

Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with high standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead.

Jennifer White

  

I use not only all the brains I have but all that I can borrow.

Woodrow Wilson

  

The secret of creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Albert Einstein

  

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Woodrow Wilson

  

Don't agonize. It slows you down.

Isaac Asimov

  

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson

  

In the matter of slavish imitation, man is the monkey's superior all the time. The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving a opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor's opinion is and slavishly adopt it.

Mark Twain's Autobiography

  

It is better to read the weather forecast before we pray for rain.
Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark

 

 

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

Mark Twain

 

 

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Derek Bok

 

 

An effective executive does not need to be a leader in the sense that the term is how most commonly used. Harry Truman did not have one ounce of charisma, for example, yet he was among the most effective chief executives in U.S. History. What made them all effective is that they followed the same eight practices: They asked, "what needs to be done?"; They asked, "what is the right for the enterprise?; They developed the section plans; They took responsibility for decisions; They took responsibility for communicating; They were focused on opportunities rather than problems; They ran productive meetings; They thought and said "we" rather than "I"; The first two practices gave them the knowledge they needed. The next four helped them convert this knowledge into effective action. The last two ensured that the whole organization felt responsible and accountable.

Peter F Drucker, Harvard Business Review, June 2004

 

 

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

Albert Einstein, 'Out of My Later Years', 1950

 

 

The time will come I believe, though I shall not live to see it, when we shall have fairly true genealogical [phylogenetic] trees of each great kingdom of nature.

Charles Darwin to Thomas Huxley, 1857

 

 

The best qualities for investors are the ones Aristotle admired: moderation, common sense, restraint, modesty, and integrity. It's rare to find a successful wealth accumulator who isn't a solid citizen in the classical sense. Contrary to popular opinion, sharp dealing and a gambler's lust for the main chance are not the soul of good investing.

Glassman et al., Real world investing, The American Enterprise, July 2002

 

 

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson

 

 

Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator

 

 

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter F. Drucker
 

 

Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.
Henry Ford


To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Thomas  Edison

 

 

There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.
 Mark Twain

 


 
I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.

Golda Meir
 


 
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

  Andre Gide