Investment Return Quotes & Sayings

No one wants to pursue anything creative anymore, because that's too risky. They may not get the kind of return on the financial investment they've made in their education that they think they should. — Meg Cabot

Many of the Abbott disciplines trace back to 1968, when it hired a remarkable financial officer named Bernard H. Semler. Semler did not see his job as a traditional financial controller or accountant. Rather, he set out to invent mechanisms that would drive cultural change. He created a whole new framework of accounting that he called Responsibility Accounting, wherein every item of cost, income, and investment would be clearly identified with a single individual responsible for that item.4 The idea, radical for the 1960s, was to create a system wherein every Abbott manager in every type of job was responsible for his or her return on investment, with the same rigor that an investor holds an entrepreneur responsible. There would be no hiding behind traditional accounting allocations, no slopping funds about to cover up ineffective management, no opportunities for finger-pointing. — James C. Collins

My God, these guys don't even know what the return-on-investment will be on this thing. — James C. Collins

Being the highly trained investment mogul that I am, I could certainly find places to put that money where it would earn more. Or would it? Remember, personal finance is personal. I have come to realize that Sharon's peace of mind bought with the oversized emergency fund is a great return on investment. Guys, this can be a wonderful gift to your wife. An Emergency Fund Can — Dave Ramsey

We invest in things like the future, like our children, like education. In other words, we invest in things that we understand we will not see an immediate return of investment but everybody knows it will have a positive impact and you can easily measure it over the course of time. Your why is exactly the same thing. — Simon Sinek

You should consider search-based campaigns as the foundation of your online advertising. This is because search advertising typically sees higher conversion rates and better return on investment (ROI) than display or social campaigns. — Benjamin Mangold

First of all, the Social Security money belongs to Main Street, not to Wall Street. It needs to be said very clearly here that privatization is off the table ... Social Security, as a matter of fact, is a better investment now than the stock market. There's a higher return. There's guaranteed cost-of-living increases. Privatization you have to worry about the value of your account. — Dennis Kucinich

The Human Resources Scorecard: Measuring the Return on Investment (ButterworthHeinemann, 2001), — Patricia Pulliam Phillips

I will tell you, in the case of education, you have to make the investment if you're going to get the return. There's no doubt about that. It's a proven fact the return is there if you make the investment. It really is about priorities. — Jon Tester

What you give becomes an investment that will return to you multiplied at some point in the future. — Jim Rohn

Prayer is an investment. The time you dedicate to prayer isn't lost; it will return dividends far greater than what a few moments spent on a task ever could. If we fail to cultivate this discipline, prayer winds up being our last resort rather than our first response. — Charles R. Swindoll

I have run large organizations, I know what it takes to create a healthy business climate, and I have more experience than Jerry Brown doing that. So it'll be a stark contrast, a career politician vs. someone who has met a payroll, gotten a return on investment, knows how to use technology to do more with less. — Meg Whitman

If you give your people halfhearted leadership, you'll get a halfhearted following. But if you invest yourself in them, if you have a heart for them, your people will return your investment with a heartfelt following. — Kevin Leman

On Sunday morning, April 12th, my wife woke from what was really a deep, profound sleep and as she was waking a voice distinctly spoke to her; and the voice spoke to her; and the voice spoke with great authority and it said to her: "You must stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money; everything in life must be an investment." So she quickly wrote it down and went straight to the dictionary to look up the two important words in the sentence, 'spending' and 'investing': the dictionary defines 'spending' as "to waste, to squander, to layout without return." To 'invest' is to "layout for a purpose, for which a profit is expected". — Neville Goddard

Experience conclusively shows that index-fund buyers are likely to obtain results exceeding those of the typical fund manager, whose large advisory fees and substantial portfolio turnover tend to reduce investment yields. Many people will find the guarantee of playing the stock-market game at par every round a very attractive one. The index fund is a sensible, serviceable method for obtaining the market's rate of return with absolutely no effort and minimal expense. — Burton Malkiel

What is the ROI (return on investment) of your suffering? — Lisa Cypers Kamen

As an investor with small capital, one should prefer businesses that have high returns on capital and that require little incremental investment to grow. — Warren Buffett

Self-giving means that we have to understand the nature of giving. When most people give, they give expecting a return on their investment. — Frederick Lenz

We understand that you have to create an environment where that those men and women who are entrepreneurs can risk their capital and have an opportunity to get a return on their investment. That's how jobs are created. And that's what Americans are looking for, is that type of vision. — Rick Perry

It is a certainty that Keegan would not have agreed to return unless Mike Ashley had committed to sanctioning a mammoth spending spree. The downside, which Keegan will soon discover, is the law of diminishing returns in a league that is now the richest in the world. The type of multi-million-pound investment that bankrolled the first Newcastle revival under Keegan is now two-a-penny. Buying success just isn't as easy as it used to be. The Premiership's paradox is that the more money there is, the more the art of management gains in value. — Pete Gill

Producers are not gamblers. They want a good return on their investment. — Max Von Sydow

If your broker or investment advisor is not familiar with the concept of standard deviation of returns, get a new one. — William J. Bernstein

That's the value of a college education ... I don't know anywhere in the world where you can make an investment and make that kind of return. — Gaston Caperton

The question is not about whether it will work or not. It's how quickly we can pull it off. Structural change will happen. When economies grow, there comes a time when you cannot rely on investment alone. We had that. The return on investment is becoming less and less. So we have to change. The old model doesn't work anymore. It's a question of speed. — Zhang Xin

The return on investment in global health is tremendous, and the biggest bang for the buck comes from vaccines. Vaccines are among the most successful and cost-effective health investments in history. — Seth Berkley

I can find lots of examples where a game won't make you rich, but I can't find a reasonable case where a Linux port doesn't have at least a small, positive return on investment. — Ryan C. Gordon

A recession doubles the necessity to be really focused on three or four tactics that can prove a return on investment. — David Gates

What's the return on investment of college? What's the return on investment of having children, spending time with friends, listening to music, reading a book? The things that are most worth doing are worth doing for their own sake. Anyone who tells you that the sole purpose of education is the acquisition of negotiable skills is attempting to reduce you to a productive employee at work, a gullible consumer in the market, and a docile subject of the state. What's at stake, when we ask what college is for, is nothing less than our ability to remain fully human. — William Deresiewicz

Of course, giving is deeply emotional. But supplementing emotion with research makes it more likely that a gift can have a bigger impact. It's like any investment. After all, you wouldn't put funds into stocks or bonds without understanding the potential return. Why wouldn't you do the same when investing in society? — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Some critics have challenged what the return on investment is for engagement in social media. Others have complained that the metrics don't exist to demonstrate value. — Simon Mainwaring

To be sure, the cost of managing capital and of "formal" financial intermediation (that is, the investment advice and portfolio management services provided by a bank or official financial institution or real estate agency or managing partner) is obviously taken into account and deducted from the income on capital in calculating the average rate of return (as presented here). But this is not the case with "informal" financial intermediation: every investor spends time - in some cases a lot of time - managing his own portfolio and affairs and determining which investments are likely to be the most profitable. This effort can in certain cases be compared to genuine entrepreneurial labor or to a form of business activity. — Thomas Piketty

To reap a return in ten years, plant trees. To reap a return in 100, cultivate the people. — Ho Chi Minh

You don't have to do everything right as a parent, but there is one thing you cannot afford to get wrong. That one thing is prayer. You'll never be a perfect parent, but you can be a praying parent. Prayer is your highest privilege as a parent. There is nothing you can do that will have a higher return on investment. In fact, the dividends are eternal. Prayer turns ordinary parents into prophets who shape the destinies of their children, grandchildren, and every generation that follows. — Mark Batterson

My name," he said, "is Dr. Hyde. I have a first name, of course. So far as you are concerned, it is Doctor. Your parents pay a great deal of money so that you can attend school here, and I expect that you will offer them some return on their investment by reading what I tell you to read when I tell you to read it and consistently attending this class. And when you are here, you will listen to what I say. — John Green

Foreign Cash is not the answers to our problems, my friend. Africa needs the hearts and minds of its sons and daughters to nurture it. You were our pride, Mukoma Bryon. When you did not return, a whole village lost its investment. Africa is all that we have. If we do not build it, no one else will. — J. Nozipo Maraire

As I have mentioned before, we cannot make the same sort of money out of permanent ownership of controlled businesses that can be made from buying and reselling such businesses, or from skilled investment in marketable securities. Nevertheless, they offer a pleasant long term form of activity (when conducted in conjunction with high grade, able people) at satisfactory rates of return. — Warren Buffett

Targeting investment returns leads investors to focus on potential upside rather on downside risk ... rather than targeting a desired rate of return, even an eminently reasonable one, investors should target risk. — Seth Klarman

Activity is the enemy of investment returns. — Warren Buffett

I think Barack Obama is a socialist. I think he cares for his country - don't get me wrong about that - but I think he truly misunderstands what this country was based upon, the values that America was based upon, which was free enterprise and having the ability to risk your capital and having a chance to have a return on your investment. — Rick Perry

When you're a 20-something grassroots activist, and you're deciding how to spend your time and money to make a difference, it makes a lot of sense to cause a million in damage with just $100 of investment. That's a better return than any other form of activism I've been involved in. — Rod Coronado

It takes time, patience, productivity and persistence to 'pop the oil'; just keep digging. Worthy investments take time to show positive returns. — T.F. Hodge

Most people try to be all things to all people and, in so doing, achieve nothing. Elite performers have a laser-like focus on their highest priorities and an acute awareness of the best uses of their time. In fact, they build their whole lives around the activities that offer them the highest return on investment. They are good at saying no. — Robin S. Sharma

While business advertises, charity is taught to beg. While business motivates with a dollar, charity is told to motivate with guilt. While business takes chances, charity is expected to be cautious. We measure the success of businesses over the long term, but we want our gratification in charity immediately. We are taught that a return on investment should be offered for making consumer goods, but not for making a better world. — Dan Pallotta

It is not the return on my investment that I am concerned about; it's the return of my investment — Will Rogers

Uncertainty is seen to retard investment independently of considerations of risk or expected return. — Ben Bernanke

We are not so brazen as to believe that we can perfectly calibrate valuation; determining risk and return for any investment remains an art not an exact science — Seth Klarman

Investment in girls' education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world. — Lawrence Summers

Then resold their loans in bulk to Wall Street banks. The banks, in turn, bundled the loans into high-yielding residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and sold them on to investors around the world, all eager for a few hundredths of a percentage point more return on their capital. Repackaged as collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), these subprime securities could be transformed from risky loans to flaky borrowers into triple-A rated investment-grade securities. — Niall Ferguson

A gym for the soul is a place where personal investment is required and the return is real. — Anne Bogart

Reading is the best return on investment. You have to live your entire life in order to know one life. But with reading you can know 1000s of people's lives for almost no cost. What a great return! — James Altucher

We are called to give God a return on the investment of brilliance, genius and ingenuity that was engrained in our souls before we took our first breath. — Shannon Tanner

Each one, then, should love his life, even though it be not very attractive, for it is the only life. It is a boon that will never return and that each person should tend and enjoy with care; it is one's capital, large or small, and can not be treated as an investment like those whose dividends are payable through eternity. Life is an annuity; nothing is more certain than that. So that all efforts are to be respected that tend to ameliorate the tenure of this perishable possession which, at the end of every day, has already lost a little of its value. Eternity, the bait by which simple folk are still lured, is not situated beyond life, but in life itself, and is divided among all men, all creatures. Each of us holds but a small portion of it, but that share is so precious that it suffices to enrich the poorest. Let us then take the bitter and the sweet in confidence, and when the fall of the days seems to whirl about us, let us remember that dusk is also dawn. — Remy De Gourmont

Some investments do have higher expected returns than others. Which ones? Well, by and large they're the ones that will do the worst in bad times. — William Forsyth Sharpe

In tennis, you strike a ball just after the rebound for the fastest return. It's the same with investment. — Masayoshi Son

Quality investing focuses on a company's ability to invest capital at high rates of return: post-tax levels of high-teens (and higher) are possible. Three elements drive corporate cash return on investment: asset turns, profit margins and cash conversion. Asset turns measure how efficiently a company generates sales from additional assets, which can vary greatly depending on the asset intensity of the industry itself; margins reflect the benefits of those incremental sales; and cash conversion reflects a company's working capital intensity and the conservatism of its accounting policies. — Lawrence A. Cunningham

An education is the investment with the greatest returns. — Benjamin Franklin

Twitter is like hugging. Just because it's hard to measure the return on investment doesn't mean there isn't value there. — Tony Hsieh

For a long time, the film business was a single-digit business on investment return. Now, because of home video, it's a low double-digit business, and the studios want to make sure it doesn't go back into the single-digit business. — Charles Roven

Future U.S. political leaders, those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me, may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost. — Robert M. Gates

Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style. The exception was Wells Fargo, a superbly-managed, high-return banking operation in which we increased our ownership to just under 10%, the most we can own without the approval of the Federal Reserve Board. — Warren Buffett

in the future, the defining metric for organizations won't be ROI (Return on Investment), but ROL (Return on Learning). — Salim Ismail

Love invests with no guarantee of a ROI. (Return On Investment) — T. Webb

Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, has launched a movement to convince people to not go to college.3 It's a waste of money. The return on investment isn't there anymore. School has gotten too expensive. . . If writing [computer] code is your deal and you're able to go to a trade school that enables you to write code, that's far better than a computer science degree from a four-year college or university that looks great on paper, but doesn't give you the skills you need when you graduate. — John Dearie

In the post-industrial economy, ideas and great minds often provide far greater return on investment than any other resources or capital investments. — Marvin Ammori

Practice love in your relationships. The key to this is avoiding expectation. It's expectation that makes most people miserable in love - the return on the investment. — Frederick Lenz

Efficiency innovations provide return on investment in 12-18 months. Empowering innovations take 5-10 years to yield a return. We have ample capital - oceans of capital - that is being reinvested into efficiency innovation. — Clayton Christensen

But a lot of businesses out there don't see the return on investment, they look at it as a liability, and until they can understand that proactive security actually returns, gives them a return on investment, it's still a hard sell for people. — Kevin Mitnick

Here's something else, something important: Love is not transactional. It is not a bank account, you don't always get what you put in. Sometimes you put in so much and get very little return on your investment, at least that you can see right away. — Jenny Han

What is the return on investment of being wedded to your suffering? What do you receive from stewing in victim consciousness? Righteous indignation or an excuse not to change? — Lisa Cypers Kamen

Isn't it ironic that pay, perks, and benefits all cost your company at the bottom line, but authentic recognition, especially when it's most unexpected, costs very little and gives the most impressive return on investment? — Chip Conley

What matters in the new economy is not return on investment, but return on imagination — Gary Hamel

Our goal is not to produce immediate results. We've been tasked with producing long-term results. That means that there's more risk in any individual thing we take on. But we still aspire to a strong return on investment. — Astro Teller

An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return. — Benjamin Graham

No other investment yields as great a return as the investment in education. An educated workforce is the foundation of every community and the future of every economy. — Brad Henry

Staying, we all know, is not the norm in our mobile culture. A great deal of money is spent each day to create desires in each of us that can never be fulfilled. I suspect that much of our restlessness is a return on this investment. — Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Public support must be husbanded as a finite national resource. It must be spent wisely, sparingly, and with the greatest return on your investment. — Max Brooks

Smaller games with smaller budgets and smaller audiences have the luxury of being more experimental or bizarre or interesting than 12 million dollar games that need to play it as safely as possible to ensure a return on investment. — Anna Anthropy

The 'Occupy' movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable lethargic pseudo-university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole. — Mark Steyn

The shareholders who own the businesses in this book have other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they don't want to earn a good return on their investment, but it's not their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They're also interested in being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and finding great ways to lead their lives. They've learned, moreover, that to excel in all those things, they have to keep ownership and control inside the company and, in many cases, place significant limits on how much and how fast they grow. The wealth they've created, though substantial, has been a byproduct of success in these other areas. I call them small giants. — Bo Burlingham

In order to access private capital, you have to provide competitive return on investment. In order to give competitive returns to investors, you've got to operate on a profitable basis and be thinking of yourself as a business. — Pierre Omidyar

The thing about movies these days is that the commerce end of it is so inflated and financiers are just expecting this enormous return on their investment. — Alex Winter

Finding a single investment that will return 20% per year for 40 years tends to happen only in dreamland. In the real world, you uncover an opportunity, and then you compare other opportunities with that. And you only invest in the most attractive opportunities. That's your opportunity cost. That's what you learn in freshman economics. The game hasn't changed at all. That's why Modern Portfolio Theory is so asinine. — Charlie Munger

It's good to have a special price to pay for the future and it will pay you in return, in the exact way you would wish to be paid. — Auliq Ice

I look at my annual budgets for everything and anything, and I look to see where I can save the most money on those items. Saving 30% to 50% buying in bulk - replenishable items from toothpaste to soup, or whatever I use a lot of - is the best guaranteed return on investment you can get anywhere. — Mark Cuban

The essence of investment management is the management of risks, not the management of returns. — Benjamin Graham

The structure of the corporation is a telling case in point - and it is no coincidence that the first major joint-stock corporations in the world were the English and Dutch East India companies, ones that pursued that very same combination of exploration, conquest, and extraction as did the conquistadors. It is a structure designed to eliminate all moral imperatives but profit. The executives who make decisions can argue - and regularly do - that, if it were their own money, of course they would not fire lifelong employees a week before retirement, or dump carcinogenic waste next to schools. Yet they are morally bound to ignore such considerations, because they are mere employees whose only responsibility is to provide the maximum return on investment — David Graeber

In my career, I learned that giving your services for free gives you a good return on your investment, not just financially but morally. It supplements your personal integrity. — Stevie Wonder

For people who have for been putting their hard-earned money into the system for years, the president's idea would replace their safety net with a risky gamble with no assurance of a stable return of investment. — Grace Napolitano

So this is the goal: To make money by increasing net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow. — Eliyahu M. Goldratt

I focus on supporting high quality early childhood health care and education. By betting my resources on very young children, I know I'm making an investment that pays guaranteed dividends with a high rate of return. — J. B. Pritzker

Who says that big-budget films are safer than mid-range films? In terms of return on investment, I'd rather have 'Sling Blade' and 'Shine' than 'Volcano.' — Sidney Sheinberg

When you say ROI, do you mean return on investment or risk of inaction. — Paul Gillin

Pay It Forward: A random act of kindness towards another person with no expectation of return on investment. (my own definition) — Michele Spry

I have long felt that an investment by the Department of Energy of a million dollars a year for the next 30 years would pay a higher return than any other investment this country could ever make. — Wilson Greatbatch

The Rule of 72 is useful in determining how fast money will grow. Take the annual return from any investment, expressed as a percentage, and divide it into 72. The result is the number of years it will take to double your money. — Peter Lynch

You can increase conversion rates and return on investment (ROI) by several times by making PPC landing pages extremely relevant. — Brian Halligan

Unlike return, however, risk is no more quantifiable at the end of an investment that it was at its beginning. Risk simply cannot be described by a single number. Intuitively we understand that risk varies from investment to investment: a government bond is not as risky as the stock of a high-technology company. But investments do not provide information about their risks the way food packages provide nutritional data. — Seth Klarman

We need a president that is sitting down, getting Americans to work, getting this economy going. That is the single most important thing that the president of the United States does, is create a climate where job creators know that they're going to be able to risk their capital and have a chance to have a return on the investment. And it's never too late to start that. — Rick Perry

in the evolution of a society, continued investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy yields a declining marginal return. — Joseph A. Tainter

Gone are the days when Virgin Records was owned by Richard Branson, a fan of music. Now they're all owned by some guy who bought it off some guy who bought it off some guy who wants a return on his investment. — Noel Gallagher