Business Books Quotes & Sayings

Your seeds of success won't grow unless you plant them. Intentions won't produce the results you want. — Clay Clark

You don't buy poetry. (Neither do I.)
Why?
You cannot afford it? Bosh! You spend
Editions de luxe on a thirsty friend.
You can buy any one of the poetry bunch
For the price you pay for a business lunch.
Don't you suppose that a hungry head,
Like an empty stomach, ought to be fed?
Looking into myself, I find this true, So I hardly can figure it false in you. — Edmund Vance Cooke

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

Quotes = Success
Music = Success
Failure = Success
Loyalty = Success
Books = Success
Mistakes = Success
...
These are the lessons for today, try to put them in your bag and start using them one by one! — Deyth Banger

The business of books is the business of life. — George Whitman

Books are so cheap and easy to get that people don't bother stealing them, which is the essential rule of piracy that the music business learned much too late. — Tucker Max

People naturally are attracted to the best of anything. Top people want to work where the best and most incredible products on the planet are designed, produced, and sold. — Clay Clark

Commercial books don't even get covered. The reason why so many book reviews go out of business is because they cover a lot of stuff that nobody cares about. Imagine if the movie pages covered none of the big movies and all they covered were movies that you couldn't even find in the theater? — James Patterson

Carrie lay on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. She was back in business. It was a day to remember. December 7, the same day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day America declared war on Japan.
America declared war. And she was a whore again. — Jackie Collins

The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were: father, mother, and five of the children. Mary was just now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling "business. — George Eliot

There are some things which have no business being put into books for all the world to read. — Susanna Clarke

I didn't have anyone, but every time I walked through those doors I felt like each of those authors was my family and the characters they created were all my friends. I counted on them. They were all I ever had. All I still have. Now that the store may go out of business I feel like I'm losing my family and friends. I love all my books. Being a book lover saved my life. — J.L. Mac

I liked books - the respite and privacy of them - books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free. — Tim Winton

Melrose was so concerned that the [book]shop might close for lack of business, that he had suggested he would like to invest in it or even become a silent partner. "You see, books have always been a hobby of mine." Books had never been a hobby; they were a necessity. — Martha Grimes

I only know two cats in this business that really had it all; Elvis was one of those guys, the other was Ricky Nelson. There was a difference in those two guys though. Elvis moved ... Ricky never had to; he stood flat footed and captivated his audience with his good looks. We grew up with him; those who didn't missed something. History books are gonna have to say that he played a big role in Rock 'n' Roll music ... and he did it his way. — Carl Perkins

She remembers this phrase from his final months of law school, when he brought home the books on starting up a business. He'd read ravenously for several weeks and then predicted: "Well, darling, we're going to be rich." Now he slaps shut the last of his books and announces, with equal assurance: "We're all going to die. — Jacob Appel

You have ink in your blood, boy, and no help for it. Books will never be just a business to you. — Rachel Caine

Businesses, like babies and books, need nurturing, time, energy, love, planning and, yes, money to develop, grow and prosper. — Rachael Bermingham

My friend, temporary setbacks and failures are prerequisites to success. They aren't signs that, "maybe it's just not supposed to be. — Clay Clark

A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfully unaware of it! — Christopher Morley

I am writing this book so the doers, the drivers, and the hard
workers out there will have a Step-By-Step ultra-practical
guide that will teach the specific action steps one must take to
start and grow a successful business. If you take action and do
everything this book tells you to do, you will make millions. If
you just intend on doing everything in this book you will make
a mediocre living or you will be poor and it will be your own
fault. — Clay Clark

I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr. — John Green

I do not believe in God. I have no religion. But this to me is as close to a church as I have known in this life. It is a holy place. With bookstores like this, I feel confident in saying that there will be a book business for a very long time. — Gabrielle Zevin

A history of the working class in the United States should, first of all, give a sense of what is meant by "the working class in the United States." It means most of us who live in the United States of America-which, unfortunately, has not been the focus of a majority of history books that claim to tell the story of this country. This doesn't make sense because without the working class there would be no United States. (From a certain point of view, this history book deficiency does make sense, given the biases built into our business-dominated culture.) — Paul Le Blanc

You MUST know You to do YOU! — Anne Thomas

People encounter God under shady oak trees, on riverbanks, at the tops of mountains, and in long stretches of barren wilderness. God shows up in whirlwinds, starry skies, burning bushes, and perfect strangers. When people want to know more about God, the son of God tells them to pay attention to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to women kneading bread and workers lining up for their pay. Whoever wrote this stuff believed that people could learn as much about the ways of God from paying attention to the world as they could from paying attention to scripture. What is true is what happens, even if what happens is not always right. People can learn as much about the ways of God from business deals gone bad or sparrows falling to the ground as they can from reciting the books of the Bible in order. They can learn as much from a love affair or a wildflower as they can from knowing the Ten Commandments by heart. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Confirmation bias is probably the single biggest problem in business, because even the most sophisticated people get it wrong. People go out and they're collecting the data, and they don't realize they're cooking the books. — Chip Heath

Books were always important. I have to thank my father, he filled my life with books. He didn't write but he always read. He was a merchant, he filled the store with cigarette smoke and his friends, all talking about books and politics. It was bad for business. He dealt in women's clothing. — Rawi Hage

McSweeney's as a publishing company is built on a business model that only works when we sell physical books. So we try to put a lot of effort into the design and production of the book-as-object. — Dave Eggers

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

The resulting scrambling to get the next big shiver and shake novel produced some really terrible books. As a further result, the wave had begun to withdraw by the mid 70s, and more traditional bestsellers began to re-appear: stories of sex, big business, sex, spies, gay sex, doctors in trouble, kinky sex, historical romances, sexy celebrities, war stories, and sex. — Stephen King

Let's see, you will need a project plan, resource allocation, a timeline, test cycles, a budget, a contingency budget, lots of diagrams, flowcharts, a media release, a strategic vision, a charter, technical specifications, business rules, travel expenses, a development environment, deployment instructions, a user acceptance test, stationary, overtime schedule, a mock-up, prototypes ... "
"Tell me," she said, "did the people who built the pyramids have any of those?"
"Mostly, they had beer. Come to think of it, if there had been such a thing as a Business Analyst in ancient Egypt, then the hieroglyph for it would have been very graphical, if you know what I mean. — Sorin Suciu

You shouldn't spend your time listening to the advice of
people who have never done what you want to do. You
should never get fitness tips from an over-weight trainer,
business tips from your broke Uncle Jim, or marital tips from
someone who has been divorced three times. If you think like a successful entrepreneur and do what a successful entrepreneur does wouldn't you become successful? If you only get your advice from some college professor or academic who has never achieved business or financial success, isn't it likely that you will never achieve success as well? My friend you need to listen to a successful entrepreneur. — Clay Clark

I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business , after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the Plantations . — Edmund Burke

Books are such quiet things - created in silence, read in silence - yet publishing a book has become a very noisy business. I've been noisy, too. I felt like I had to be in order to connect with my readers. — Ellen Potter

Things to know from books to read — Kip Koehler

I saw that on Small Business Saturday, the president went shopping at a bookstore and bought 17 books, including "The Laughing Monsters," "Being Mortal," and "Heart of Darkness." Or as the cashier put it, "You OK, man? Maybe a little 'Chicken Soup for the Presidential Soul?' — Jimmy Fallon

All my scripts have artistic backgrounds
ballet, concert hall, opera
and all the suspects and corpses are cultured, maybe I'll do one about the rare book business in your honor, do you want to be the murderer or the corpse? — Helene Hanff

There are several books that I have-the Physics of Star Trek, Star Trek and Business, there are manuals on command style and countless scholarly papers that have been written about the significance of Next Generation. — Patrick Stewart

There is something about human nature that just doesn't want to face the reality that we live in two worlds. We live in the physical, material world where we have jobs, read books, and go about our business. And we live in a spiritual world - and that is a world at war. — John Eldredge

There's a lot of books out there about how you lead change in business, but I've certainly not seen any ... on how you do that in public institutions. — Robert M. Gates

Like any small business owner, I experienced the pressures of building a company from the ground up - developing a business plan, balancing the books, meeting payroll and building a customer base. — Gavin Newsom

My daughter Penelope has just looked over my shoulder to see what I have done so far. She remarks that it is beautifully written, and every word of it true. But she points out one objection. She says what I have done so far isn't in the least what I was wanted to do. I am asked to tell the story of the Diamond and, instead of that, I have been telling the story of my own self. Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. I wonder whether the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects, like me? If they do, I can feel for them. In the meantime, here is another false start, and more waste of good writing-paper. What's to be done now? Nothing that I know of, except for you to keep your temper, and for me to begin it all over again for the third time. — Wilkie Collins

To say the Internet is the death of books and movies is like saying someone invented a new, more efficient kind of cup and it heralds the death of coffee - a new improved form of carrying something, which is essentially what the Internet is, should be helpful to our business. — Alison Owen

I wonder whether the gentlemen who make a business and a living out of writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects, like me? — Wilkie Collins

When you decide to write and publish a book, you go into business - no matter how you publish that book. You enter the publishing business, which is the business of selling books. Consider your book the foundation of your business. — Nina Amir

That's your business, isn't it, cousin? To make nothing your business. Even your own sons going to war. How I pleaded with you. But you buried your nose in those cursed books and let our sons go like they were a pair of haramis. — Khaled Hosseini

The essential criterion for running a bookstore is less "Do you like books?" than "Do you like people?" Ironically, we find that having unlimited access to more reading material than we ever could have imagined means we read less. Chuck and Dee Robinson own Village Books [...]He once said in an interview with business writer Rober Spector, "If you're opening a bookstore because you love reading books, then become a night watchman because you'll be able to read more books that way." He was right. It's amazing how just the sight of so much intellectual fodder quells the appetite, let alone how little time remains to read once the shelves have been straightened, the day's swap credits assessed and put away, and the sales taxes tallied. — Wendy Welch

I don't read many business books. I read good fiction. Business is about people, so my favorite business books are anything by Dickens. — Tom Peters

There are no easy answers for the balance of how you protect the core business of the books with what the digital future will look like, but that would be our job with DC Comics, to figure that out and experiment and take some risks while always protecting the core business. — Diane Nelson

My friend, doubt is the opposite of faith and the two cannot exist together in the same time and place. Either you believe or you don't. To build your faith and to absolutely hammer home the incredible importance of embracing the reality that success is a choice. — Clay Clark

He (Mario Vargas Llosa) looks grave, transported. And there, I think, is the personality that wrote the books: one in which a subversive comic sense and appetite for the ridiculous jostle with an intense, statesmanlike seriousness about the business of being alive. — Tim Martin

You kids today don't understand. You go into the stalls, and you sit on the toilets, and you read your comic books. But you never think about the brave cleaning supplies that gave their lives so you could have a safe place to do your business. — Beth Labonte

Living your life is a long and doggy business ... And stories and books help. Some help you with the living itself. Some help you just take a break. The best do both at the same time. — Anne Fine

Writing blurbs for books means you have to read the book, and it cuts into the business of bookselling. So every time I get a blurb from a bookseller, I try to write a thank you note. — Gabrielle Zevin

It's embarrassing to be involved in the same business as the mainstream comic thing. It's still very embarrassing to tell other adults that I draw comic books - their instant, preconceived notions of what that means. — Daniel Clowes

Thinking, Fast and Slow, mentioned above, and Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. One of the handful of books that provides advice on making decisions better is Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, which was written for "choice architects" in business and government who construct decision systems such as retirement plans or organ-donation policies. It has been used to improve government policies in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries. — Chip Heath

The marketplace for books when I entered the business shortly after World War II consisted of a thousand or so well stocked independent booksellers in major towns and cities supplemented by thousands of smaller shops that carried limited stocks of mostly current titles along with greeting cards, toys and so on. — Jason Epstein

Real orgies are never so exciting as pornographic books. In a volume by Pierre Louys all the girls are young and their figures perfect; there's no hiccoughing or bad breath, no fatigue or boredom, no sudden recollections of unpaid bills or business letters unanswered, to interrupt the raptures. Art gives you the sensation, the thought, the feeling quite pure
chemically pure, I mean, ... not morally. — Aldous Huxley

I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act. — Steve Martin

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agree on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. At the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much: Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy: Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late, Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty ... It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. — Umberto Eco

I was inspired to write Countdown 'til Daddy Comes Home when I searched for books to help my 4 year daughter cope with her father deploying to Afghanistan and found nothing that quite fit our situation. My book is not only a great story for kids it has real suggestions for parents on how to keep you family connected during deployments or frequent business travel. — Kristin Ayyar

I'm trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief ... I'm not in the business of offending people. I find the books upholding certain values that I think are important, such as life is immensely valuable and this world is an extraordinarily beautiful place. We should do what we can to increase the amount of wisdom in the world.
[Washington Post interview, 19 February 2001] — Philip Pullman

There may be little room for the display of this supreme qualification in the retail book business, but there is room for some. Be enterprising. Get good people about you. Make your shop windows and your shops attractive. The fact that so many young men and women enter the teaching profession shows that there are still some people willing to scrape along on comparatively little money for the pleasure of following an occupation in which they delight. It is as true to-day as it was in Chaucer's time that there is a class of men who "gladly learn and gladly teach," and our college trustees and overseers and rich alumni take advantage of this and expect them to live on wages which an expert chauffeur would regard as insufficient. Any bookshop worthy of survival can offer inducements at least as great as the average school or college. Under pleasant conditions you will meet pleasant people, for the most part, whom you can teach and form whom you may learn something. — A. Edward Newton

I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote. — William James

My friend, nearly all major purchases and decisions are made by people for emotional reasons and your goal as an honest salesperson is to prove how your product or service
can help your clients feel the way they want to feel, because your product or service will deliver the results for them that they need to solve their problems now. — Clay Clark

I dislike reading business books, although I skim a lot of them. — Brad Feld

The most perfect character is supposed to lie between those extremes; retaining an equal ability and taste for books, company, and business; preserving in conversation that discernment and delicacy which arise from polite letters; and in business, that probity and accuracy which are the natural result of a just philosophy. — John Locke

In my own experience as a C.E.O., I would find myself laying awake at 3 A.M. asking questions about my business, and there weren't management books out there that could help me. — Ben Horowitz

Some people read business books looking for confirmation. I read them in search of disquiet. Confirmation is cheap, easy and ineffective. Restlessness and the scientific method, on the other hand, create a culture of testing and inquiry that can't help but push you forward. — Seth Godin

Remember, she who keepeth the Books runneth the Business. — Thomas Pynchon

If it is not measurable it is not manageable. — Clay Clark

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

At heart, Pearson is in the intellectual property business, be it through publishing books or the 'Financial Times'. — Marjorie Scardino

Laura's bored expression had gradually fallen away as he spoke, and now she looked at him in amazement.
'You do realize I was being rude? Are you being polite because I am a guest and guests are like, what, gods in Indian culture?'
'Only in the history books. We treat guests the same as most people do around the world. Guests are fine as long as they respect boundaries and don't wear out their welcome. But you are more than a guest, Ms Mackenzie, you are a client. And clients are the gods of any business, anywhere in the world. — Indu Muralidharan

In a sense one should not go to books for ideas; the business of books is to make one think. We are not gramophone records, we are to think originally. What we preach is to be the result of our own thought. We do not merely transmit ideas. The preacher is not meant to be a mere channel through which water flows; he is to be more like a well. So the function of reading is to stimulate us in general, to stimulate us to think, to think for ourselves. Take all you read and masticate it thoroughly. Do not just repeat it as you have received it; deliver it in your own way, let it emerge as a part of yourself, with your stamp upon it. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Working together as a team helps build a cohesive organization. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

In that six months, so much happened that death seemed, primarily, inconvenient. The trial period was extended. I seem to keep extending it. There are many things to do. There are books to write and naps to take. There are movies to see and scrambled eggs to eat. Life is essentially trivial. You either decide you will take the trite business of life and give yourself the option of doing something really cool, or you decide you will opt for the Grand Epic of eating disorders and dedicate your life to being seriously trivial. — Marya Hornbacher

So I've got five books, a building, and a hundred bucks.
I'm starting my business tomorrow. — Vaunda Micheaux Nelson

Read an hour every day in your chosen field. This works out to about one book per week, fifty books per year, and will guarantee your success. — Brian Tracy

The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own ... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism. — James Gleick

I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon, and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books. — Lev Grossman

What better way to earn a living than by doing something you love? That's the position you could be in by following the steps and tips offered by our expert authors in this eBook! The four books sampled in this ebook (Turn Your Talent into a Business, Cook Wrap Sell, Design Create Sell and Design Grow Sell) have all been produced in partnership with Country Living Magazine after witnessing the success of the Kitchen Table Talent Awards, the most popular competition run by the magazine, as well as sell-out audiences at the Country Living Spring Fair for talks on how to turn a hobby into a business. The team at Country Living know their readers have bags of talent; what was becoming increasingly clear is how many of them are considering turning that talent into turnover! — Emma Jones

But the last forty years had witnessed the professionalization of property management. Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers had more than quadrupled.8 As more landlords began buying more property and thinking of themselves primarily as landlords (instead of people who happened to own the unit downstairs), professional associations proliferated, and with them support services, accreditations, training materials, and financial instruments. According to the Library of Congress, only three books offering apartment-management advice were published between 1951 and 1975. Between 1976 and 2014, the number rose to 215.9 Even if most landlords in a given city did not consider themselves "professionals," housing had become a business. — Matthew Desmond

My friend, only focus on things that you can control. If you have a fixable problem, fix it. If it is not fixable, move on to something that is. — Clay Clark

Books proliferate, and occasionally sell in very large numbers, which claim to have found the rule, or small set of rules, which will guarantee business success. But business is far too complicated, far too difficult an activity to distil into a few simple commands ... It is failure rather than success which is the distinguishing feature of corporate life. — Paul Ormerod

While self-help and science-of-happiness books fill whole quadrants of bookstores, the fact that business is booming is a verdict unto itself: We may buy each new bestseller on the power of positivity, but each fresh purchase suggests its lack. As much as we wish it were true, we can't seem to prove that the positive thinking industry is working itself out of a job. — William McDavid

Without the book business it would be difficult or impossible for true books to find their true readers and without that solitary (and potentially subversive) alone with a book the whole razzmatazz of prizes, banquets, television spectaculars, bestseller lists, even literature courses, editors and authors, are all worthless. Unless a book finds lovers among those solitary readers, it will not live ... or live for long. — John McGahern

If you are ever going to become the kind of person who achieves huge amounts of success, you must learn to focus only on what you can control. You can't control the weather. You can't control the thoughts of other people. You can't control the overall economy. However you can control your thoughts, your expectations and your luck. — Clay Clark

Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader. — Paul Krugman

Don't go on tours with people who have never been there. — Clay Clark

At the end of the day, businesses should exist to provide profits for their team to share as a result of solving problems for their customers. — Clay Clark

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing
and reading
is a solitary business. And it's good to know I'm not alone. — Shannon Celebi

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a state has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. — Thurgood Marshall

Starting a successful business is not tricky. Starting a successful business does not require above average intelligence. Starting a successful business does require having a pig-headed, purpose-driven tenacity about achieving your life goals and fulfilling your life's vision through providing products and services that offer
uncompromising quality in a scalable and duplicatable way. — Clay Clark

President Obama shopped at a book store to help support Small Business Saturday. He bought fifteen books. His tax policies and his health care law have been so brutal on small businesses the only way they can survive is if he shops there personally. — Argus Hamilton

MIND YOUR OWN SOCIAL MEDIA BUSINESS — Qwana M. BabyGirl Reynolds-Frasier

People are not interested in your product or your business; they are interested in solving their own problems. — James Dillehay

If it's not duplicatable and scalable, it's not worth doing. — Clay Clark

Waiting to be discovered, hoping to be seen, wishing someone else would do the work, wanting to make it big while dreaming of being rich and famous just like your heroes is submissive, passive, foolish, weak, and ineffective. Take your desire for your dreams, your goals, and your ambition, then make them fuel for the fire to light your ass up, to get to work and on the path to make it happen. — Loren Weisman