Business Quotes - Page 66

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent - for every effect a perfect cause - and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.

Less emphasis on inventories, I think, may tend to dampen business cycles, because business cycles are typically in the grasp of inventory cycles and heavy industry cycles.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.

In the four decades of philanthropy that have paralleled my business career, I've found that the same principles apply whether you're providing access to capital to grow a business, creating a new paradigm for medical research, or pioneering innovative approaches to education: Empower the most talented people in each field and encourage them to pursue their passions.

The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own.

There's no such thing as business ethics; there's just ethics. And ethics makes no concessions for the real or imagined necessities of making a profit.

Our business is about technology, yes. But it's also about operations and customer relationships.

When you believe you can... you can!

The music business is not a good place for people who don't know things.

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.

Wherever I see people doing something the way it's always been done, the way it's "supposed" to be done, following the same old trends, well, that's just a big red flag to me to go look somewhere else.

It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing Prison or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history.

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.

I have learned that trying to guess what the boss or the client wants is the most debilitating of all influences in the creation of good advertising.

I have always found that if I move with seventy-five percent or more of the facts that I usually never regret it. It's the guys who wait to have everything perfect that drive you crazy.

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

You will encounter many distractions and many temptations to put your goal aside: The security of a job, a wife who wants kids, whatever. But if you hang in there, always following your vision, I have no doubt you will succeed.

Every successful business creates or provides something of value that other people want or need at a price they're willing to pay, in a way that satisfies the purchaser's needs and expectations and provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.

No man's credit is as good as his money.

Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor.

We believe that there is no greater power in the world than the force of a great idea. We believe that people are the lifeblood of every organization. We believe that the best companies are true meritocracies, where people rise and fall through their own contributions, not through game playing or politics. We believe that work isn't simply a paycheck; it is the ultimate expression of a fully realized self. We believe that a company's obligations extend far beyond its bottom line and its shareholders - to a wider constituency that includes employees, customers, suppliers, and the community.

Forty for you, sixty for me. And equal partners we will be.