Best Business Quotes & Sayings

It's not about you, it's about the next person. The single best use of a business book is to help someone else. Sharing what you read, handing the book to a person who needs it ... pushing those around you to get in sync and to take action-that's the main reason it's a book, not a video or a seminar. A book is a souvenir and a container and a motivator and an easily leveraged tool. Hoarding books makes them worth less, not more. — Seth Godin

I'm in a little bit of a different situation, because working in the business that I do and living in the city that I live in, I haven't had a problem with people who are gay. Since I was 10 I've been working alongside them, and some of my best friends are gay. — Jason Bateman

I crossed a line by making his family's personal business my own. But isn't that what friendship is? Isn't that what love is? It's more than caring and laughing and inspiring. It's about taking hurt and anger off people's shoulders and helping to carry the weight. It's more important to love people on the worst days than their best. — Katie Kacvinsky

Worry is a complete circle of inefficient thought whirling about a pivot of fear. To avoid it, consider whether the problem in hand is your business. If it is not, turn to something that is. If it is your business, decide if it is your business now. If so, decide what is best to be done about it. If you know, get busy. If you don't know, find out promptly. Do these things; then rest your case on the determination that, no matter how hard things may turn out to be, you will amek the best of them - and more than that no man can do. Dr. Austen Fox Riggs — John Sedgwick

If your business isn't the best quality, it will not succeed. — Tracy Reese

While in Bombay, I began, on one hand, my study of Indian law and, on the other, my experiments in dietetics in which Virchand Gandhi, a friend, joined me. My brother, for his part was trying his best to get me briefs. The study of India law was a tedious business. The Civil Procedure Code I could in no way get on with. Not so however, with the Evidence Act. Virchand Gandhi was reading for the Solicitor's Examination and would tell me all sorts of stories about Barristers and Vakils. — Mahatma Gandhi

No, you don't understand, young man. You couldn't understand. Emily was my life. I got up in the morning for her, I went to work for her, I built a business for her. I couldn't wait to get home at night to tell her about my day. I went to bed with her and I dreamed about her when I slept. She was my passion, my wife, my best friend, the love of my life. And one day, without warning, she was gone and my life is a void. You couldn't possibly understand. — Christopher Moore

Eric Schlosser's book on the economy and strategies of the fast-food business should be read by anyone who likes to take their children to fast-food restaurants. I shall certainly never do that again. He employs a long, cold burn, a quiet and impassioned accumulation of detail, with calm, wit and clarity. ( ... ) Fast Food Nation is witness to the rigour and seriousness of the best American journalism, readable, reliable and extremely carefully done. — Adam Nicolson

One of the best bits of advice I can give is, early on, when you're building a new business, try to find somebody to run it on a day-to-day basis to free yourself up to look at the bigger picture. — Richard Branson

Customer Romance does not just happen; neither is it dependent on just providing product or service for customers, nor is it a puzzling set of practices. Rather, it occurs as a result of a deliberate, thoughtful plan of action. Companies that are known to provide the best customer experiences have philosophies that guide them to take actions their competitors do not even dream of. — J. N. HALM

In my 35 years in business I have always trusted my emotions. I have always believed that by touching emotion you get the best people to work with you, the best clients to inspire you, the best partners and most devoted customers. — Kevin Roberts

My best business decision was going into business for myself and owning the box my pretty face was on instead of just being the pretty face on the box. And my worst was letting other people run my business. — Kam Williams

In my view the successful companies of the future will be those that integrate business and employees' personal values. The best people want to do work that contributes to society with a company whose values they share, where their actions count and their views matter. — Jeroen Van Der Veer

Anyone who would ever think of using any other Realtor would be making an enormous mistake. Goodwin & Thyne Properties is the best real estate company with the best and smartest real estate agents and the best people to do business with! — Andy Romano

No right of preference exists in favor of person, property, or business. Personal claims and ambitions must yield in favor of whatever best serves the general welfare. — Charles Lindbergh

Children's literature as a literary aberration or at best a minor amusement is a notion held most strongly by people who read the fewest children's books. I think it was Ruth Hill Viguers who compared this attitude with asking a pediatrician when he's going to stop fooling around and get down to the serious business of treating adults. — Lloyd Alexander

This summer is going to be a different summer for a lot of people. Everyone is going to take care of their own business and everyone is going to do what's best for them, including me. — Shaquille O'Neal

If you have to fight a crowd of boys, it's best to go for the biggest one. That way you won't have to fight them all. The others will see that you mean business and you will win their respect. — Suzanne Vega

All of the development I do is with the help of business advisors who are more like my best friends than just business people. They helped me as I created Ipsy back in 2011, which is a beauty community that ships out sampling bags to subscribers. — Michelle Phan

Treat each event you attend and each person that you meet as if it were an appointment with your one of your best clients -- even if you are meeting that person for the very first time. — Timothy M. Houston

you were to ask Christians around the world what God wants from the people he has saved, most would probably answer "obedience." There is great truth in that answer, but it is not enough. If the sovereign God's primary goal in sanctifying believers is simply to make us more holy, it is hard to explain why most of us make only "small beginnings" on the road to personal holiness in this life, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it (see Catechism Q. 113). In reality, God wants something much more precious in our lives than mere outward conformity to his will. After all, obedience is tricky business and can be confusing to us. We can be obedient outwardly while sinning wildly on the inside, as the example of the Pharisees makes clear. In fact, many of my worst sins have been committed in the context of my best obedience. — Barbara R. Duguid

For ecommerce data derived from digital experiences, such as the keywords and phrases from search engines to the frequency of purchases of various customer segments, data is most often not normally distributed. Thus, much of the classic and Bayesian statistical methods taught in schools are not immediately applicable to digital ecommerce data. That does not mean that the classic methods you learned in college or business school do not apply to digital data; it means that the best analysts understand this fact. — Judah Phillips

Any man, who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong. To me-the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good. That's what I've always thought and- say, what are you laughing at? — Ayn Rand

My best friend and I got the idea about two guys who don't get along, they're at each other's throats, but if they don't keep the business running, they're going to end up dead quickly. Plus, there's supernatural elements. We're excited. It's inspired by pulp fiction movies we've seen as kids. I don't care if we have a small audience; we just want to have a good time publishing it. — K. Guillory

My financial service business is the absolute best thing I have done to empower the poor. I run many charities and fight many political causes, but my financial service company is the greatest gift I've given. — Russell Simmons

Steve Jobs is the most epic entrepreneur of all time. He served as a guiding light for any emerging businessperson who wanted to learn how things should get done. He'll be looked at as one of the best business leaders of all time, and certainly one of the best tech entrepreneurs. — Aaron Levie

Seasoning one's claims with self-irony and modesty, cultivating a tolerance for moral ambiguity, periodically practicing normative reticence, building up a resistance to the pleasure of purity, minding your own business, doing what you can to forget to wreak vengeance, defending negative freedom even if there is no such thing, and playing around are the best you can do. But that's quite a lot. — Jane Bennett

My best ideas come in the shower, where I'm showered with water, but also ideas. — Ryan Lilly

Life isn't the orderly black-and-white business we'd prefer it to be. It's messy and complicated and horribly blurred around the edges. All we can ever do is make the best of it. And maybe grab at those fleeting chances of happiness.' 'But never at the expense of anyone else's — Erica James

First one gives off his best picture, the bright and finished product mended with bluff and falsehood and humor. Then more details are required and one paints a second portrait, and third
before long the best lines cancel out
and the secret is exposed at last; the planes of the picture have intermingled and given us away, and though we paint and paint we can no longer sell a picture. We must be satisfied with hoping such fatuous accounts of ourselves as we make to our wives and children and business associates are accepted as true. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Writing is a intensely personal activity. I can pen down my best thoughts when I'm alone. But when one is elevated into the stature of an author, you have to think about your books in terms of their business angle. — Ashwin Sanghi

PRAYER IS THE serious business of the Church, the first and best business it renders for the world. — Richard J. Foster

The 'dance of love' has different themes and moods, just like every relationship has its highs and lows. Enjoy the high moments and hang-on during the downtimes. The diverse range of emotions is the experience that builds you two. Your ability to perfectly switch between these moments and make the best out of the one you find yourself per time, proves that you are not only involved in the relationship like the chicken is in the business of making eggs but also very committed to it like the pig is in the business of making bacon. — Olaotan Fawehinmi

For the best building and planting ... the architect and gardener must have some knowledge of each other's business, and each must regard with feelings of kindly reverence the unknown domains of the other's higher knowledge. — Gertrude Jekyll

Advertising is the best insurance that you can take out on your business. You can buy fire insurance on your stock of goods, but no company will issue a policy covering your business, the good will as they sometimes call it. You must insure yourself, and the best way to do it is by advertising. Good advertising kept up for a number of years gives you something that no fire can take away. — Frank Farrington

A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that a pickpocket is a champion of private property. The point about Capitalism and Commercialism, as conducted of late, is that they have really preached the extension of business rather than the preservation of belongings; and have at best tried to disguise the pickpocket with some of the virtues of the pirate. — G.K. Chesterton

Business is a game, and as with all games, the team that puts the best people on the field and gets them playing together wins. It's that simple. — Jack Welch

Everyone is on the same page and putting their best foot forward. — Wes Welker

Decision making and problem solving are not the same. To solve a problem, one needs to find a solution. To make a decision, one needs to make a choice. — Michael J. Marx

Don't forget the real business of war is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as spectacle, as diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death's a stimolous to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try 'n' grab a piece of that Pie while they're still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. — Thomas Pynchon

Movie-making is serious business. The director and the crew are already under a lot of pressure to give their best to the audience. Therefore, the best part for me as an actor is to act well in the movies and make a jolly atmosphere with the co-stars on the sets. — Abhishek Bachchan

I'm one of the best finishers in the business, so I went for it. — Billy Joe Saunders

I went from sort of trying to get work to all of a sudden being signed up for the next few years on something, and something of this scale with some of the best people in the business involved, acting and directing. It was a dream. — Chris Hemsworth

If you own a wonderful business ... the best thing to do is keep it. All you're going to do is trade your wonderful business for a whole bunch of cash, which isn't as good as the business, and you got the problem of investing in other businesses, and you probably paid a tax in between. So my advice to anybody who owns a wonderful business is keep it. — Warren Buffett

I hope the best for anybody in this business. It's hard enough as it is, and of course you don't get much respect from anybody, but when you do, you should appreciate it. — Robin Zander

The more people who own little businesses of their own, the safer our country will be, and the better off its cities and towns; for the people who have a stake in their country and their community are its best citizens. — John Hancock

When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management. — Edward Abbey

If business doesn't thrive, it hurts America. We need improved relations, more collaboration, more thought and more consistency as we go about trying to make sure we have the best country in the world. Not scapegoating and finger-pointing. — Jamie Dimon

These are the Disciplines that can change everything! — Mark Mullins

What motivates Olympic athletes to train for years for one event - in some cases, for just seconds of actual competition? It's the same thing that kept my friend Pete nosing around old bookstores for years. It's the same thing that makes a person venture out of a comfortable job to start a new business. We see it in the artist who spends day after day in a studio chipping away at a block of stone. Look closely and you'll find it in the shopper who passes up the good deal in search of the best deal. It's one of the things that makes us most human. We consciously pursue what we value. It's not simply a matter of being driven by biology or genetics or environmental conditioning to satisfy instinctive cravings. Rather, we perceive something, prize it at a certain value, then pursue it according to that assigned value because we were created that way. This ability to perceive, prize, and pursue is part of our essential humanness, and it's the essence of ambition. — Dave Harvey

Although we can't control which roles are assigned to us, it must be our business to act our given role as best we possibly can and to refrain from complaining about it. Where ever you find yourself and in whatever circumstances, give an impeccable performance. — Epictetus

I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits; a man must have courage to look after his life so, and think what'll come f it after he's dead and gone. — George Eliot

All good businesses are personal. The best businesses are very personal. — Mark Cuban

These are the rules of big business ... Get a monopoly; let society work for you; and remember that the best of all business is politics ... — Frederic C. Howe

My mom's best friend growing up was diagnosed with AIDS, and he basically raised me when my mom was launching her business. Although I didn't understand at the time what HIV or AIDS was, I knew that's what he passed away from. — Solange Knowles

The best lessons I've been taught is that you should definitely have a plan. Try to imagine yourself six months in advance, and always save your money. Because there are always going to be unintended expenses that are going to come up. Surprises always happen. — K. Guillory

My best business decision is always to have been unembarrassed about negotiating a decent deal. Not being coy or shy about money is second nature to me. — Anne Robinson

People don't turn away from an attorney sitting in a wheelchair. If the guy has got the reputation for being the best attorney around, that's who you go with. But in show business, for some reason they're still reluctant to say an attorney or a physician or an interior decorator can be in a chair, or on crutches, or blind or any of the other things. — Gerald McRaney

Find the right people, not the best people. — Jack Ma

Technology is something we buy to sell to the customers. Ericsson, Nokia and IBM do technology for a living, so let's give it to them because they know best. It has made the business model of Bharti very, very sustainable. — Sunil Mittal

Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions. If the cross is the sign of anything, it's the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world's problems without requiring a single human being to do a single religious thing. What the cross is actually a sign of is the fact that religion can't do a thing about the world's problems - that it never did work and it never will — Robert Farrar Capon

For the most part, the best opportunities now lie where your competitors have yet to establish themselves, not where they're already entrenched. Microsoft is struggling to adapt to that new reality. — Paul Allen

Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art. — Andy Warhol

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service. — Richard Bach

Overwhelmed? Delegate. For perfectionists of the world, this is often a challenge. While you may think only you can do it best, you are denying someone else an opportunity to learn when you do everything yourself. Being the bottleneck serves no one, including you. — Lisa A. Mininni

Show business is like riding a bicycle - when you fall off, the best thing to do is get up, brush yourself off and get back on again. — Gilda Radner

What's the best way to ensure your small business makes a profit? Without a doubt, it's to keep your overhead costs low, and maximize your sales per marketing dollar. — Kevin J. Donaldson

As the traditional healer Makhosi Petros Hezekial Mtshali tells us, Ancestors are benevolent beings who love us. You are their legacy, and they want the best for their progeny. Their own evolution in the Otherworld depends upon the completion of unfinished business or making amends for unkind acts or deeds that they may have committed during their lifetime. — Steven D. Farmer

The last thing I think I am is perfect. I'm just trying to do the best job I can. I'm trying to be the best father I can to my kids. I'm trying to do the best job I can running my business. — James Packer

l'after-shave, le badge, le barbeque, le best-seller, le blue-jean, le blues, le bluff, le box-office, le break, le bridge, le bulldozer, le business, le cake, la call-girl, le cashflow, le check-in, le chewing-gum, le club, le cocktail, la cover-girl, le cover-story, le dancing, le design, le discount, le do-it-yourself, le doping, le fan, le fast-food, le feedback, le freezer, le gadget, le gangster, le gay, le hall, le handicap, le hold-up, le jogging, l'interview, le joker, le kidnapping, le kit, le knock-out, le label, le leader, le look, le manager, le marketing, le must, les news, le parking, le pickpocket, le pipeline, le planning, le playboy, le prime time, le pub, le puzzle, se relaxer, le self-service, le software, le snack, le slogan, le steak, le stress, le sweatshirt, le toaster and le week-end. — Alexis Munier

First of all, I was running scams when you were at keggers at Kappa Kappa Werewolf. You don't know much about me but I am way smarter than Gabriel was. I'm a consummate liar. I can street fight with the best of them and I can cheat at cards like nobody's business. This on top of my computer skills. I may not howl at the moon and have superhuman strength but I can hold my own. — Lauren Dane

Best practices are those practices that generally produce the best results or minimize risk. — Chad White

There can be no one best way of organizing a business. — Joanne Woodward

Business judgment is best developed through professional experience. The next best alternative is to be reading business articles. We recommend Bloomberg Businessweek and Economic Times/Business Standard, if time permits. — Sankalp Kelshikar

The Male Factor is the singularly best business book for women I've read in years. This well-researched yet thoroughly readable book is rich with rare insights into how men really see women in the workplace-and how with a few simple adjustments you can even the playing field. — Lois P Frankel

His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake. — G.K. Chesterton

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it's not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don't want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it's important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere. — Subhash Chandra

2. A disregard of competition. Whoever does a thing best ought to be the one to do it. It is criminal to try to get business away from another man - criminal because one is then trying to lower for personal gain the condition of one's fellow man - to rule by force instead of by intelligence. — Henry Ford

Who ... what are they?"
"My pride and glory," Alex said fondly. "Betty and Lucy Coltrane. Best damned bouncers in the business. Though of course I'd never tell them that. Fiercer than pit bulls and cheaper to run. Married to each other. They had a dog once, but they ate it. — Simon R. Green

A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all. — Michael LeBoeuf

The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results. — Edward De Bono

You can have the best people in the business, but if they're not collaborating - and they're butting heads - then it's all going to go south. — Dana Brunetti

Capitalism drives the employers to do their worst to the employed, and the employed to do the least for them. And it boasts all the time of the incentive it provides to both to do their best! ... The reason the Capitalist system has worked so far without jamming for more than a few months at a time, and then only in places, is that it has not yet succeeded in making a conquest of human nature so complete that everybody acts on strictly business principles. — George Bernard Shaw

The best piece of advice I've ever been given was, 'Be in the business you're in.' Don't just be a satellite around it and expect it to come to you. Be in the business you're in. — Ray Stevenson

I don't know anybody in the opera business who isn't worried sick about how best to reach out to underpaid millennials who were suckled on the new on-demand pop culture, which supplies them with cheap, unchallenging amusement around the clock. — Terry Teachout

Honesty is the best policy in international relations, interpersonal relations, labor, business, education, family and crime control because truth is the only thing that works and the only foundation on which lasting relations can build. — Ramsey Clark

I run a business and go all over the world doing things for that business, things that are fairly orthogonal. But my job is to run my company, not to be the best Instagrammer. I'll let other people be awesome at it. — Kevin Systrom

The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrence to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. — John F. Kennedy

Thankfully, over time, I have come to realize those skills initially dismissed as "soft" - communicating a vision, providing feedback, or leading a team - are fundamental to everything we try to do in business. You don't create a successful, sustainable, and scalable organization unless you can engage the people within the organization to work together. The "best friend at work" from the — Morag Barrett

If a player demonstrated that he is the best, and a team decides, even so, we don't want to pay him, as in any other business, he should be able to play elsewhere. — Lynn Swann

The best predictor of a woman's involvement in terrorism, whether it's a secular or religious group, is a relationship with a terrorist: her father, brother, husband or even her son. Terrorism becomes a bit of a family business. — Mia Bloom

Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best. — Theodore Isaac Rubin

There can always be an 'Idol' without anybody. I believe that Seacrest is probably the best host in the business. — Nigel Lythgoe

I have no interest in being the biggest, the most profitable or the largest retailer. I just want The Body Shop to be the best, most breathlessly exciting company - and one that changes the way business is carried out. — Anita Roddick

The best businesses that all of us have in the entertainment business are cable content channels, which have a dual revenue stream. — Steve Burke

Recessions are the best time to start a company. Companies fail. Others hold back capital. If you are willing to do the preparation and work, it is the best time to invest in yourself and start a business. — Mark Cuban

A child dragging bent useless legs is crawling up the hill outside the village. Nose to the stones, goat dung, and muddy trickles, she pulls herself along like a broken cricket. We falter, ashamed of our strong step, and noticing this, she gazes up, clear-eyed, without resentment - it seems much worse that she is pretty. In Bengal, GS says stiffly, beggars will break their children's knees to achieve this pitiable effect for business purposes: this is his way of expressing his distress. But the child that lies here at our boots is not a beggar; she is merely a child, staring in curiosity at tall, white strangers. I long to give her something - a new life? - yet am afraid to tamper with such dignity. And so I smile as best I can, and say "Namas-te!" "Good morning!" How absurd! And her voice follows as we go away, a small clear smiling voice - "Namas-te!" - a Sanskrit word for greeting and parting that means, "I salute you". — Peter Matthiessen

It doesn't matter what I think. It matters what you think, Donny boy. Tonight was the best thing that could have happened to you. You will now either get out of the business and lead a normal life, — Ritch Shydner

Sing your song; don't let the bastards get you down. — Garrison Keillor

My business is, with all my might to serve my own generation; in doing so I shall best serve the next generation, should the Lord Jesus tarry ... The longer I live, the more I am enabled to realize that I have but one life to live on earth, and that this one life is but a brief life, for sowing, in comparison with eternity, for reaping. — George Muller