Quotes & Sayings About Big Businesses

Smart development builds on a region's own skills, resources and local businesses. Dumb growth invites a big corporation in, surrenders control and profits to a distant headquarters, undercuts local manufacturers, and risks layoffs without warning. — Donella Meadows

Quite often, people who build big businesses don't believe anyone else can run them, and you end up with an old rascal in their 70s and no one to take them on. I could name several - and I won't - who put themselves in that invidious position. — Peter Hargreaves

Here is an all-too-brief summary of Buffett's approach: He looks for what he calls "franchise" companies with strong consumer brands, easily understandable businesses, robust financial health, and near-monopolies in their markets, like H & R Block, Gillette, and the Washington Post Co. Buffett likes to snap up a stock when a scandal, big loss, or other bad news passes over it like a storm cloud - as when he bought Coca-Cola soon after its disastrous rollout of "New Coke" and the market crash of 1987. He also wants to see managers who set and meet realistic goals; build their businesses from within rather than through acquisition; allocate capital wisely; and do not pay themselves hundred-million-dollar jackpots of stock options. Buffett insists on steady and sustainable growth in earnings, so the company will be worth more in the future than it is today. — Benjamin Graham

If nations join together now, before the big collapse and share their resources, they can maintain a level of sustainability. Sustain the people that is, and not banks and businesses. — Jacque Fresco

Every day Big Government heaps demands and restrictions upon businesses that sink some enterprises, cause others to direct resources away from serving customers and instead toward jumping through hoops of lawyers and regulators, and prevent other operations from ever getting off the ground. — Joel Miller

New Hampshire state government is a big customer for prescription drug companies. Just as businesses do, we should take advantage of the bargaining power we have as a big customer. — John Lynch

Then I get worried that if anyone is really paying attention to Happy's predilections, they might become wary of his wholesale compassion and suspect him of being an imaginary character, created by a journalist, to trick businesses into inadvertently revealing their data-trafficking practices. So I untick tigers. — Jon Ronson

Baseball, like some other sports, poses as a sacred institution dedicated to the public good, but it is actually a big, selfish business with a ruthlessness that many big businesses would never think of displaying. — Jackie Robinson

How many big businesses don't resort to underhand means? — Mohsin Hamid

I think there's a need for somewhat of a mindset change. We need to have a consistent external focus. We've always had the research labs. We've always had the resources to be innovative, and we've been innovative in a number of businesses. But, in any big company, you have to constantly push people to look at markets and customers, rather than look internally at themselves. — Jeffrey R. Immelt

Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It's like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit. — Cory Doctorow

What is a danger is that we stay stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high, people who have jobs see their incomes go up, businesses make big profits. But they're learned to do more with less, and so they don't hire. — Barack Obama

The sad fact is that today most of the heads of big businesses in America have become so confused or intimidated that, so far from carrying the free market to argument to the enemy, they fail to defend themselves adequately even when attacked. — Henry Hazlitt

I think it's a competitive advantage that both Amazon and Google and other tech companies have over a lot of their counterparts. They take big risks and are pioneering new markets with the promise of big rewards. It's why Amazon is kind of reliably starting new businesses and opening kind of new frontiers. — Brad Stone

I think in the end, you know, we're just addicted to oil. We've got to overcome that addiction, and we need some serious accountability of big oil, because big oil, like so much of big businesses, has just colonized our government, colonized the regulatory agencies so we can't impose any kind of accountability on them. — Cornel West

Is now composed of older, larger companies. And old, big companies do not start new businesses, innovate in profound disruptive ways, or create jobs. — Brink Lindsey

Businesses are, in reality, quasi-religious sects. When you go to work in one you embrace a new faith. And if they are really big businesses, you progress from faith to a kind of mystique. Belief in the product, preaching the product, in the end the product becomes the focus of a transcendental experience. Through "the product" one communes with the vast forces of life, nature, and history that are expressed in business. Why not face it? Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments. — Thomas Merton

Living in the same city as Microsoft, I'm only too aware that, even in low-technology businesses like coffee, the Next Big Thing could knock the dominant player into second place tomorrow. I keep pushing to make sure that Starbucks thinks of the Next Big Thing before it has even crossed anybody else's mind. In fact, Don Valencia is working on it even as I'm writing this book. — Howard Schultz

For small businesses trying to figure out how to get big, I would say you are going to have to take some risks. And I think that is what shuts off most people. They are not willing take the risk. — Glen Taylor

The real hope of the world lies in putting as painstaking thought into the business of mating as we do into other big businesses. — Margaret Sanger

Today, a lot of people, businesses, countries and even churches have their dreams sleeping in the belly of the shark where they are starved because they chose the wrong path although they know the right destination! The consequence is "becoming uncomfortable" because you refuse to let your dreams go to let "Niviveh"! — Israelmore Ayivor

this integration of Jefferson and Jesus is in many ways how members of the evangelical right can oppose abortion yet ignore the needs of disenfranchised members of society, how they can rage against sexual revolutions and offer little critique on economic greed or mass consumption, and how they can keep labor unions and government in check while not doing the same to Wall Street, insurance companies, and other big American businesses. Of course, much of today's evangelical political doctrine has become so radical, so driven by fear and hyperbole that it's more or less a parody of the doctrines of Thomas Jefferson and Jesus, a culture where the poor in spirit are not blessed, they are marginalized and expected to care for themselves. — Matthew Paul Turner

There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks ... Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them ... Decent people lost their jobs ... Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. — Raymond Chandler

The big Wall Street firms, seemingly so shrewd and self-interested, had somehow become the dumb money. The people who ran them did not understand their own businesses, and their regulators obviously knew even less. — Michael Lewis

Big Internet companies on average are capable of generating revenue of $1 million per employee, and that compares to 10 to 20 percent of that which is normally generated by traditional offline businesses of comparable size. — Yuri Milner

He also administered the school's corporal punishment known as The Wacks - which I was told, involved being hit with a big gym shoe made heftier by a kitchen weight wedged in the toe. The gym shoes name was Charlie. It is surely one of the world's greatest sadnesess that billions of shoes go about their benevolent businesses in aid of mankind, day after day, protecting feet providing warmth and support, unselfishly getting ducked in puddles, smeared in dog shit and yet remained unnamed. Whereas this nasty cunt of a show got lavished with affection like a pet. — David Mitchell

And as a Member of this body, I believe firmly that States do have rights, and I believe that local communities have rights, and they have made decisions to allow these businesses to prosper as they are a big part of their economy. — Jon Porter

As African economies boom and businesses are created, one of the big questions this growth raises is that of third-level education: how can Africa develop a knowledge infrastructure to rival that of the west, a sort of Harvard University in Africa? — Richard Attias

Our party [Republicans] has been focused on big business too long. I came through small business. I understand how hard it is to start a small business. That's why everything I'll do is designed to help small businesses grow and add jobs. I want to keep their taxes down on small business. I want regulators to see their job as encouraging small enterprise, not crushing it. — Mitt Romney

You can invest to create the new growth business while the core business is still growing, because new business units don't need to get big fast. But when the core business stops growing, investing to create new growth businesses becomes impossible. — Clayton Christensen

I'm a big fan of doing 'Triple D.' But I don't want to do it forever, don't get me wrong! Travel away from my family, are you crazy? But do you know what it does for these mom-and-pop restaurant joints? It changes their lives forever. I mean, their businesses will never be the same. — Guy Fieri

There is less difference than many suppose between the ideal Socialist system, in which the big businesses are run by the State, and the present Capitalist system, in which the State is run by the big businesses. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

The mass media. What are they? They're huge corporations, massive corporations, linked up with even bigger corporations. They sell audiences to other businesses, namely advertisers. So when you turn on the television set, CBS doesn't make any money. They make money from the advertisers. You're the product that they're selling, and the same is true of the daily newspaper. They're huge corporations, selling audiences, potential consumers, to other businesses, all linked up closely to the government, especially the big media. What picture of the world do you expect them to present? — Noam Chomsky

Kyoto protocol is not a simple environmental issue, where you can say scientists are not unanimous. This is about international relations, this is about the economy, about trying to create a level playing field for big businesses throughout the world. You have to understand what is at stake, and that is why it is serious, ... — Margot Wallstrom

Polak, a psychiatrist, has applied a behavioral and anthropological approach to alleviating poverty, developed by studying people in their natural surroundings. He argues that there are three mythic solutions to poverty eradication: donations, national economic growth, and big businesses. Instead, he advocates helping the poor earn money through their own efforts of developing low-cost tools that are effective and profitable. — Amy Lockwood

To finish first you have to first finish. Don't get in a position where you go back to go. What's interesting is that some guy whose grandfather was a lawyer and a judge-hurriedly going to Harvard Law with a wave of veterans-I was willing to go into so many different businesses. I was constantly going right into the other fellow's business and doing better than the other fellow did. The reason it was possible? Self-education- developing mental discipline, big ideas that really work. — Charlie Munger

Mom & pop stores are not about something small; they are about something big. Ninety percent of all U.S. businesses are family owned or controlled. They are important not only for the food, drink, clothing, and tools they sell us, but also for providing us with intellectual stimulation, social interaction, and connection to our communities. We must have mom & pop stores because we are social animals. We crave to be part of the marketplace. — Robert Spector

I am the candidate of tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, repealing Dodd-Frank, letting the markets work, coming up with patient-and-doctor-centered healthcare solutions instead of more big government - and just generally getting government off the backs of small businesses. — Wendy E. Long

Capitalism defines a profit-driven empire, not one that is driven to benefit the goodwill of its citizens by placing their needs and security first. Not only that, people have plutocracy confused with democracy. A true democratic society is supposed to serve its people, not big businesses. The welfare of its citizens, not corporate pockets. But when you have corporations buying the seats of our political leaders, who do you think they will serve? — Suzy Kassem

Student loan debt is crushing young people. And so they're not doing the things we would expect them to do. They're not moving out of their parents' homes in as big a numbers, they're not saving up money for down payments, they're not buying homes or cars or starting small businesses or doing any of the things that help move this economy forward. — Elizabeth Warren

predictive Analytics enabled the Big Data to deliver the actual usage and value to the businesses by putting the processed information to a real use. — Salvatore Gaukroger

Republicans have been very successful. There are three things Americans don't like: big unions, big government and big corporations. So Republicans go after big government and big unions, and only talk about small businesses. — Andy Stern

There are lots of small businesses in Britain that have a pretty tough time but many of them are also parts of supply chains, the leave side roll out JCB but that's one company, all the experts are saying the economy would take a big hit if we came out of the EU. — Frances O'Grady

Our Bar franchise program, which seeks to lift sales by targeting entrepreneurs in Brazil's slums, known as favelas. The company helps spruce up taverns and ofers management training. It's joining retailers and other businesses trying to reach out to the new middle class in Brazil's gritty neighborhoods in and around its big cities. — Anonymous

Big businesses aren't the only ones in the economic ecosystem. Nobody should fall behind because of an unfair structure. — Park Geun-hye

Small businesses pay 18 percent more than big businesses for health care, the same health care, just because they're small and they have too small a pool of risk. — Karen Mills

After adding trillions to the debt on big-government policies most Americans didn't ask for and which we couldn't afford, Democratic leaders say they need more money, which they intend to take from small business, even though small businesses create the majority of new jobs. — Mitch McConnell

While big business gain subsidies and political access, small businesses drown in red tape, and individuals now risk being classified as terrorists for complaining about it. Economic globalisation is about homogenising differences in the worlds' markets, cultures, tastes and traditions. It's about giving big business access to a global market. — Zac Goldsmith

Small businesses already struggle to compete with big businesses that enjoy the luxury of a tax code filled with corporate loopholes. — Kevin McCarthy

I do think that there is a big difference between family farms and agri-business, and one of the distressing things that I think has occurred is with consolidation of farm lands. You've seen large agri-businesses benefit from enormous profits from existing farm programs, and I think we should be focusing most of those programs on those family farmers. — Barack Obama

Mom-and-pop businesses have the same issues as the Fortune 500. The difference is that big companies spend millions on consultants to fix them. — Christopher Myers

Cloud computing offers individuals access to data and applications from nearly any point of access to the Internet, offers businesses a whole new way to cut costs for technical infrastructure, and offers big computer companies a potentially giant market for hardware and services. — Jamais Cascio

Calling someone equally as anxious on the phone makes you feel less alone. Sometimes the best thing to hear is not "Don't worry, it's going to be okay" but actually "Tell me about it! The whole world is going to explode and I haven't slept for weeks. Now let me tell you about my specific fears of small boats and big businesses! — Amy Poehler

Due to our act of Personal Irresponsibility, illegal businesses are set-up, our neighbourhoods are not secured and the economy directly and indirectly takes a big hit. The government alone cannot be blamed for this, because this is our neighbourhood and if we cannot take care of our immediate surroundings, then we are clearly not carrying out our responsibilities and we don't have any business blaming someone else. — Sunday Adelaja

There's an ongoing competition by global companies across all areas from products, technology development and hiring talented people to patent disputes. The market is big and opportunities are wide open, so we should find out new businesses that Samsung's future will hinge on. — Lee Kun-hee

Capping the size of American banks won't eliminate the needs of big businesses; it will force them to turn to foreign banks that won't face the same restrictions. — Jamie Dimon

All the present bureaucracies of political governments, great religious organizations, and all big businesses find that physical success for all humanity would be devastating to the perpetuation of their ongoing activities. This is because all of them are founded on the premise of ameliorating individual cases while generally exploiting on behalf of their respective political, religious, or business organizations the condition of no-where-nearly-enough-life-support-for-all and its resultant great human suffering and discontent. — R. Buckminster Fuller

We have accepted there is a big role for government to create a framework where businesses can grow in all parts of the country. — George Osborne

When the corporation's investment capital becomes impatient for growth, good money becomes bad money because it triggers a subsequent cascade of inevitable incorrect decisions. Innovators who seek funding for the disruptive innovations that could ultimately fuel the company's growth with a high probability of success now find that their trial balloons get shot down because they can't get big enough fast enough. Managers of most disruptive businesses can't credibly project that the business will become very big very fast, because new-market disruptions need to compete against nonconsumption and must follow an emergent strategy process. Compelling them to project big numbers forces them to declare a strategy that confidently crams the innovation into a large, existing, and obvious market whose size can be statistically substantiated. This means competing against consumption. — Clayton M Christensen

My job is to support businesses, that means promoting British commerce in the big emerging markets that have been neglected in the past. It means keeping Britain open to inward investors, trade and skilled workers. It means cutting red tape which is suffocating growing companies which create jobs. — Vince Cable

I believe in businesses where you engage in creative thinking, and where you form some of your deepest relationships. If it isn't about the production of the human spirit, we are in big trouble. — Anita Roddick

Here are white men poised to run big marijuana businesses, dreaming of cashing in big - big money, big businesses selling weed - after 40 years of impoverished black kids getting prison time for selling weed, and their families and futures destroyed. Now, white men are planning to get rich doing precisely the same thing? — Michel'le

Although Herbert Hoover in many ways prefigured him, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who first tried to create an explicit corporate state in America with his National Recovery Administration (NRA). With its fascist-style Blue Eagle emblem, the NRA coordinated big business and labor in a central plan, and outlawed competition. The NRA even employed vigilante groups to spy on smaller businesses and report if they violated the plan. Just as in Mussolini's Italy, the beneficiaries of the U.S. corporate state were - in addition to the government itself - established economic interest groups. NRA cheerleaders included the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, the United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and - above all - Gerard Swope of General Electric, who helped draft the NRA act. Only — Ludwig Von Mises

Big businesses are beginning to realize that the employee who puts his job before his home life is not as effective as the one who has a happy, fulfilling marriage. — Kevin Leman

It's businesses versus big government. We don't need big government. We need a more efficient, lean government, and that's exactly the kind of government we intend to deliver. — Sher Valenzuela

For the last hundred years the big organizational question has been whether any given task was best taken on by the state, directing the effort in a planned way, or by businesses competing in a market. — Clay Shirky

I had learned that some people feel that books are "intrusive," in the sense that books put things in their heads that they don't want there. Some people call these things "ideas." Maybe they're right. Sometimes these ideas sprout into what are known as "thoughts," and you know my feelings about school, government, and big businesses
thoughts are the last things they want rattling around inside people's heads because thoughts inevitably lead to consumer protection, free speech and hippies. — Gary Reilly

What we need to do is to inspire businessmen and businesswomen to open up small businesses and medium businesses, and have big businesses come and relocate to New Jersey. — Joseph M. Kyrillos

We must plant trees, grow gardens instead of lawns, ride bicycles when we can and support responsible local businesses over big brands. — Bryant McGill

A lot of young people just starting out unskilled, as all Americans do when they're born here, come to this country, and so the business community is for immigration. Big businesses, small businesses, high-tech, low-tech, the communities of faith, and the Republican leadership. — Grover Norquist

Oh, I'm all about small business. I think what we've learned from big business and big Wall Street is that unchecked greed and the creation of false value gets us all in trouble. If we look at the American economy, who's really creating value? It's the small businesses. — Robert Herjavec

I think in terms of businesses, in terms of things that are really big and marry technology with entertainment. That's where I like to spend my time. — Nolan Bushnell

Big businesses can help by engaging aspiring entrepreneurs and promoting initiatives which support small businesses from within. — Tory Burch

The best way to support dreams and stretch is to set apart small ideas with big potential, then give people positive role models and the resources to turn small projects into big businesses. — Jack Welch

I was more of kind (who was better at) building businesses and selling them. That was a big thing for me. I was very good at that. I wasn't good as a boss. I was either your best friend or your worst enemy. I didn't balance the two very well. (So) I sold them. — Drew Waters

I'm fighting for small businesses. I'm not fighting for big oil. Don't be confused. And there are thousands of businesses in this state that are at great risk. Meanwhile, the country keeps guzzling the oil, but we're out of work down here. We need to get back to work to build this region, and we intend to do so. — Mary Landrieu

Aside from the movies, examples of positive-Black Swan businesses are: some segments of publishing, scientific research, and venture capital. In these businesses, you lose small to make big. You have little to lose per book and, for completely unexpected reasons, any given book might take off. The downside is small and easily controlled. The problem with publishers, of course, is that they regularly pay up for books, thus making their upside rather limited and their downside monstrous. (If you pay $10 million for a book, your Black Swan is it not being a bestseller.) Likewise, while technology can carry a great payoff, paying for the hyped-up story, as people did with the dot-com bubble, can make any upside limited and any downside huge. It is the venture capitalist who invested in a speculative company and sold his stake to unimaginative investors who is the beneficiary of the Black Swan, not the "me, too" investors. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I talked with people starting up in the middle of the recession and employees, and supplies and office space were cheap. As far as companies that are already in existence, many became more creative with how they spent their money. A lot of them stopped wasting money that they didn't know they were wasting after they looked hard at their businesses. Some had to change business models because of the economy. Their market didn't exist or wasn't as big anymore. — JJ Ramberg

Clearly, Valdez was an apologist for the industrialists and polluters, the big American companies that dominated Costa Rica and other Latin American countries. Not surprising to find such a person here, since the CIA had controlled Costa Rica for decades. This wasn't a country; it was a subsidiary of American business interests. And American businesses did not give a damn for the environment. — Michael Crichton

I'm a big advocate of the power of positive thinking, particularly for small businesses. — Kevin Plank

After the Big Recession of 2008, many Americans found themselves without jobs, homes, and savings. We realized that we really can't rely on our 401k's to keep us safe. It's up to us to achieve financial freedom for ourselves. And home-based businesses is the way to go. — Kevin J. Donaldson

When President Obama speaks about raising taxes on the rich, he speaks about high-income employees and small business owners, not entrepreneurs who build big businesses. — Robert Kiyosaki

As a broad generalization, big businesses have no moral objections to being whores. Getting into bed with Uncle Sam is all a question of price, not principle. — Jonah Goldberg

I think one of the big errors people are making right now is thinking that old-style businesses will be obsolete, when actually they will be an important part of this new civilization. Some retail groups are introducing e-commerce and think that the bricks are no longer useful. But they will continue to be important. — Carlos Slim

I'd say that Berkshire Hathaway's system is adapting to the nature of the investment problem as it really is. We've really made the money out of high quality businesses. In some cases, we bought the whole business. And in some cases, we just bought a big block of stock. But when you analyze what happened, the big money's been made in the high quality businesses. And most of the other people who've made a lot of money have done so in high quality businesses. — Charlie Munger

I don't understand small businesses, only big ones. Marriage is the hardest small business. — Mikhail Prokhorov

We live in an adolescent society, Neverland, where never growing up seems more the norm than the exception. Little boys wearing expensive suits and adult bodies should not be allowed to run big corporations. They shouldn't be allowed to run governments, armies, religions, small businesses and charities either and just quietly, they make pretty shabby husbands and fathers too. Mankind has become Pankind and whilst "lost boys" abound, there is also an alarming increase in the number of "lost girls. — Daniel Prokop

On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big. — Jeff Bezos

A large machine was brought into an office. The beast put his mark on it, and his voice came out of it. There was also a "big brother" machine that could see into homes and businesses. Only a single machine of this type existed, and it belonged to the beast. The part of the machine that was located in the homes of the people was invisible to the naked eye, but it could and did report to the beast every move the people made. I watched as the beast turned his throne around and faced toward me. On his forehead was the number 666. — Mary K. Baxter

When the war ended, more than twelve million men and women put their uniforms aside and returned to civilian life. They went back to work at their old jobs or started small businesses; they became big-city cops and firemen; they finished their degrees or enrolled in college for the first time; they became schoolteachers, — Tom Brokaw

As an investor, what we're not looking for is 'oh this is a cool app,' it's 'is this something that can become a big business?' You need to find those that can become real businesses. — Niklas Zennstrom