Quotes & Sayings About Doing Honest Business

Nothing keeps a company honest and efficient like the threat of other companies coming along and taking its business away. — John Stossel

We select such investments on a long-term basis, weighing the same factors as would be involved in the purchase of 100% of an operating business: (1) favorable long-term economic characteristics; (2) competent and honest management; (3) purchase price attractive when measured against the yardstick of value to a private owner; and (4) an industry with which we are familiar and whose long-term business characteristics we feel competent to judge. — Warren Buffett

I think if you're an unhappy person, you're always going to be an unhappy person. You're probably going to be less unhappy if your business is doing well, if I'm being honest. — Simon Cowell

Let's be honest. Physicality is going to have a bearing on the parts you get. And if you think differently, you're in the wrong business. — Jonathan Rhys Meyers

Columbia Business School even has a term for it now. They call it "honest overconfidence" and they have found that men on average rate their performance to be 30 percent better than it is. — Katty Kay

I found myself wanting the monster because it was honest, a level of honesty most go their entire lives without confronting, always content to hide behind their social masks and business cards. It — Kitty Thomas

Something worth doing might take a while, so really flesh out the potential of the business and be honest about whether it's worth doing. If it's not a $100 million company in five years, maybe it'll take 10 or 15 years. If you're doing something that has a universal, timeless need, then you need to think of the company in a timeless way. — Scott Heiferman

Gandhi was only minding his own business when he took a walk to get some salt and ended up overthrowing the British Empire. You can't set out to overthrow an empire, but if you have to get some salt then get some salt. If you have to write some independent songs that are honest, just write them. If you have to do a day job stacking shelves, so be it. — David Knopfler

I can see why we need fellows who know how to light fires," Bluth said. "But I don't see why we need people to use fancy words."
"Shhhh," Shallan said. "Don't say that so loudly. If the lighteyes hear, they might stop wasting their time making up new words, and instead start interfering with the business of honest men. — Brandon Sanderson

Having the ability to be brutally honest with yourself is the greatest challenge you face when creating a business model. Too often we oversell ourselves on the quality of the idea, service, or product. We don't provide an honest assessment of how we fit in the market, why customers will buy from us, and at what price. — Mark Cuban

It is not the crook in modern business that we fear, but the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing. — Owen D. Young

[you'll acquire] A certain amount of cynicism. This business works on you. When you were in law school you had some noble idea what a lawyer should be. A champion of individual rights; a defender of the Constitution; a guardian of the oppressed; an advocate for your client's principles. Then after you practice for six months you realize you were nothing but hired guns. Mouthpieces for sale to the highest bidder, available to anybody, any crook, any sleazebag with enough money to pay your outrageous fees. Nothing shocks you. It's supposed to be an honorable profession, but you'll meet so many crooked lawyers you'll want to quit and find an honest job. Yeah Mitch, you'll get cynical. And it's sad, really. — John Grisham

I do not regard the procuring of peace as a matter in which we should play the role of arbiter between different opinions ... more that of an honest broker who really wants to press the business forward. — Otto Von Bismarck

Public business must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise man decline, others will not; if honest man refuse it, others will not. — John Adams

Where will you go?" "To the safest place in London," he says with a rueful smile. "A place that loved your husband and will never forgive Duke Richard for betraying him. The only honest business in London." "Where d'you mean?" "The whorehouse," he says with a grin. — Philippa Gregory

Hank Nearly was an avid reader. He arrived early in his brown corduroy coat, with a book taken from the library, copied all the pages on the Xerox machine, and sat at his desk reading what looked passebly like the honest pages of business. He's make it through a three-hundred-page novel every two or three days. — Joshua Ferris

To be a Christian in business, then, means much more than just being honest or not sleeping with your coworkers. It even means more than personal evangelism or holding a Bible study at the office. Rather, it means thinking out the implications of the gospel worldview and God's purposes for your whole work life - and for the whole of the organization under your influence. — Timothy J. Keller

The government being the peoples business, it necessarily follows that its operations should be at all times open to the public view. Publicity is therefore as essential to honest administration as freedom of speech is to representative government. Equal rights to all and special privileges to none is the maxim which should control in all departments of government. — William Jennings Bryan

I do not pretend to give such a sum; I only lend it to you. When you shall return to your country with a good character, you cannot fail of getting into some business, that will in time enable you to pay all your debts. In that case, when you meet with another honest man in similar distress, you must pay me by lending this sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with such another opportunity. I hope it may thus go through many hands, before it meets with a knave that will stop its progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money. — Benjamin Franklin

This business of 'kidding yourself' worries me. I don't even know how much self-deception I'm involved in. It's hard to get down to the truth about yourself. Any time I feel like I'm finally being honest with myself I wonder if there's some deeper truth I'm shying away from. It amazes me how I can know something and avoid it at the same time. — Seth

One right and honest definition of business is mutual helpfulness. — William Feather

Sir Templeton was not feeling himself last night," said Aunt Saffronia, her eyes flicking from plate to Jane and back to plate, "so Mr. Nobley offered to accompany him to see an apothecary in town, and Colonel Andrews went as well, having some business to attend to there. They are so attentive, such honest, caring lads. I shall feel their loss when they leave."
"I feel it today." Miss Charming pursed her lips. "Eating breakfast with no gentlemen and that Heartwright girl poaching on my men
this isn't what I was promised." She looked at Aunt Saffronia with the eye of a haggler.
Aunt Saffronia placed her hands in her lap, a calming gesture. "I know, my dear, but they will be back, and in the meantime ... "
"I didn't come here for the meantime. I came for the men. — Shannon Hale

During the day I negotiated buying mom and pop companies and incorporating them into our larger network. Sometimes we let the original owners stay on as consultants. Rarely, actually, if I'm being honest and, even when we did, it never usually lasted for very long. Mostly, those once proud owners would see the box store makeover of their businesses and decide that retirement in some warm locale really did seem the better option. Did I ever feel guilty looking at these hardworking people and taking everything they'd assembled? Not even a little. Would you feel guilty handing someone hundreds of thousands or, in some cases, millions of dollars to go do whatever tickles their fancy? — Mandy Nachampassack-Maloney

Closeness to people may look like scary, mind-boggling business, but it doesn't have to be that scary. And it's not that difficult. It even feels good, when we relax and let it happen. It's okay to feel afraid of closeness and love, but it's also okay to allow ourselves to love and feel close to people. It's okay to give and receive love. We can make good decisions about who to love and when to do that. It's okay for us to be who we are around people. Take the risk of doing that. We can trust ourselves. We can go through the awkwardness and friction of initiating relationships. We can find people who are safe to trust. We can open up, become honest, and be who we are. We can even handle feeling hurt or rejected from time to time. We can love without losing ourselves or giving up our boundaries. We can love and think at the same time. We can take off our track shoes. — Melody Beattie

Most people have a regulator between their mind and mouth that modulates their brutish sentiments and spikiest impulses. Not Jobs. He made a point of being brutally honest. My job is to say when something sucks rather than sugar coat it, : he said. This made him charismatic and inspiring, yet also,, to use the technical term, an asshole at times. — Walter Isaacson

I think there are a lot of honest people doing honest business on online auctions. But the control on these Web sites is pretty minimal. — Dan Butler

Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it's integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards. — Kerry Stokes

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

There is a great deal we never think of calling religion that is still fruit unto God, and garnered by Him in the harvest. The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, patience, goodness. I affirm that if these fruits are found in any form, whether you show your patience as a woman nursing a fretful child, or as a man attending to the vexing detail of a business, or as a physician following the dark mazes of sickness, or as a mechanic fitting the joints and valves of a locomotive; being honest true besides, you bring forth truth unto God. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

To be entirely honest, I am an extremely confident person, and I don't think I would have gotten into this business if I felt that I wasn't going to succeed and I intend to be in this business, for the rest of my life. — Erika Christensen

In most cases, the best strategy for a job interview is to be fairly honest, because the worst thing that can happen is that you won't get the job and will spend the rest of your life foraging for food in the wilderness and seeking shelter underneath a tree or the awning of a bowling alley that has gone out of business. — Lemony Snicket

I wasn't even going to do acting. I don't know how it even happened, to be honest. I was going to go into psychology or something like that. Or business. And then some moment of madness took over and I decided, 'Oh, I'm gonna go to London and try to be an actor.' — Amrita Acharia

American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference between the men's room and the women's room without having little pictures on the doors. — Dave Barry

Public business, my son, must always be done by somebody. It will be done by somebody or other. If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not. — David McCullough

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

A guilty man is punished as an example for the mob; an innocent man convicted is the business of every honest citizen. — Jean De La Bruyere

Nowadays ... deals are transactional rather than personal. Instead of placing your faith in a person, you get lawyers to write safeguards into the contract. This is an historic shift from a trust economy to a risk economy. But trust is not a dispensable luxury. It is the very basis of our social life. Many scholars believe that capitalism had religious roots because people could trust other people who, feeling that they were answerable to God, could be relied on to be honest in business. A world without trust is a lonely and dangerous place. — Jonathan Sacks

Economists get very uncomfortable when you talk about virtue and vice. It doesn't lend itself to a lot of columns with numbers. But I would argue that there are big virtue effects in economics. I would say that the spreading of double-entry bookkeeping by the Monk, Fra Luce de Pacioli, was a big virtue effect in economics. It made business more controllable, and it made it more honest. — Charlie Munger

There's one thing very important to me in business and for the long-term: always be honest with people. For the past 60 years, I always pay my debts. — Andrew Gotianun

But I tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a business man 'listens and goes on eating' you up. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every client is an opportunity. Every sermon is an opportunity. Every business transaction is an opportunity, an opportunity to be polite, an opportunity to be manly, an opportunity to be honest, an opportunity to make friends. — Orison Swett Marden

Ivanov: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you're still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. Don't marry a Jew or a psychopath or a bluestocking but choose yourself someone ordinary, someone a shade of grey, with no bright colour and no superfluous noises. In general, construct your whole life on a conventional pattern. The greyer, the more monotonous the background, the better. My dear fellow, don't do
battle against thousands all on your own, don't tilt against windmills, don't beat your head against walls ... And may
God preserve you from all kinds of rational farming, newfangled schools, fiery speeches ... Shut yourself in your shell and do your little God-given business ... It's snugger, healthier and more honest. — Anton Chekhov