Business Quotes - Page 119

I haven't done a great deal of it but this was a chance to do more and bring it to that part of the business and even more so, but the fact that it was a black superhero was really the catalyst to me.

I think one of the most difficult challenges in show business is the challenge of longevity and to constantly realize and reveal what's already been there - like doing stage and singing and dancing in New York. I haven't been that far out of my comfort zone in a while.

Creativity comes from constraint.

The desire to hit a big home run is dominating the music business.

Despatch is the soul of business.

For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few. Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy.

Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that.

It's pretty incredible to look back 30 years to when Microsoft was starting and realize how work has been transformed. We're finally getting close to what I call the digital workstyle.

...one of the most inventive forms of creative capitalism involves someone we all know very well. A few years ago, I was sitting in a bar here in Davos with Bono. Late at night, after a few drinks, he was on fire, talking about how we could get a percentage of each purchase from civic-minded companies to help change the world. He kept calling people, waking them up, and handing me the phone to show me the interest.

Most of our competitors were one-product wonders... They would do their one product, but never get their engineering sorted out.

Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don't act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.

If something's expensive to develop, and somebody's not going to get paid, it won't get developed. So you decide: Do you want software to be written, or not?

Our problem in money-making or government affairs is how to remain properly venturesome and experimental without making fools of ourselves.

Unfortunately, WorldCom is not the only company caught up in this kind of accounting scandal. The impact this will have on the general public is yet to be seen.

Now, we are seeing many of these same companies face the truth about their financial standing. Congress is faced with the challenge of reforming our accounting industry and holding corporate executives responsible for their actions.

Censor: A self-appointed snoophound who sticks his nose in other people's business.

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.

Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee.

Drive thy business or it will drive thee.

Industry pays debts, while despair increases them.

Imagine spending four billion years stocking the oceans with seafood, filling the ground with fossil fuels, and drilling the bees in honey production - only to produce a race of bed-wetters!

You owe the companies nothing. You especially don't owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for theirs.

When you delve deep enough, you find that practically every great fortune and great enterprise in America have sprung from the courageous enterprise of some individual. It was Commodore Vanderbilt's enterprise in switching first from running a ferryboat to running other ships, and then, when he was well along in years, his enterprise in switching into railroading, that created what was to become one of the most notable fortunes in the history of the world.

I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day to day affairs that they had no time for friend making.

I have known not a few men who, after reaching the summits of business success, found themselves miserable on attaining retirement age. They were so exclusively engrossed in their day-to-day affairs that they had no time for friend-making.... They may flatter themselves that their unrelaxing concentration on business constitutes patriotism of the highest order. They may tell themselves that the existing emergency will pass, and that they can then adopt different, more sociable, more friendly habits. [But] such a day is little likely to come for such individuals.