Past Present Future Business Quotes & Sayings

Accountants are in the past, managers are in the present, and leaders are in the future. — Paul Orfalea

It is important to focus on present work. It is more important to align your present work with future outlook and desires. — Abhishek Ratna

If there is any political moral to be found in this world," Stencil once wrote in his journal, "it is that we carry on the business of this century with an intolerable double vision. Right and Left; the hothouse and the street. The Right can only live and work hermetically, in the hothouses of the past, while outside the Left prosecute their affairs in the streets by manipulated mob violence. And cannot live but in the dreamscape of the future.
"What of the real present, the men-of-no-politics, the once-respectable Golden Mean? Obsolete; in any case, lost sight of. In a West of such extremes we can expect, at the very least, a highly 'alienated' populace within not many more years. — Thomas Pynchon

Given the complexity in strategy, governance and relationships involved in family business, one might marvel that a family ever emerges on the other side and wants to find a permanent way to continue together. But many families that have successfully accumulated significant wealth begin to search for a means to preserve it for present and future generations. One way to do so is to form a family office. Although definitions differ, a family office is generally organized to manage and leverage the family's collective wealth, with an emphasis on stewardship rather than growth. Stewardship implies a long-term view and looks at inherited wealth as something to be treasured and preserved, in real terms, for future generations of family. A sense of stewardship is a powerful motivator, in the first place, not to destroy the financial and philosophical legacy of the founder and, second and ideally, to extend the reach of these resources into the modern day. We are going to talk extensively — Joachim Schwass

[T]he concern of man is not his future but his present, not the world but his soul. We must be just, we must strive, we must engage ourselves with the business of the world for our own sake, because through that, and through contemplation in equal measure, our soul is purified and brought closer to the divine ... Thought and deed conjoined are crucial ... The attempt must be made; the outcome is irrelevant. Right action is a pale material reflection of the divine, but reflection it is, nonetheless. Define your goal and exert reason to accomplish it by virtuous action; successs or failure is secondary. — Iain Pears

Research can only present data about the past. No one seriously believes that people's answers to hypothetical questions about the future accurately represent their future behaviour; they merely represent a current attitude, which may or may not be translated into future behaviour. — Stephen King

In the wink of an eye, all quaint days of the past, the present, and future will meld together into the bottomless unknown of perpetuity. Only trace evidence of our invertebrate existence will anoint future generations. In the crinkle of time, our houses will crumble apart. Companies that we worked for will go out of business or merge with other nameless conglomerates. What will survive us are our children and our words. — Kilroy J. Oldster

See things in the present, even if they are in the future. — Larry Ellison

A successful business maximizes the present value of future earnings. The first requirement, therefore, of business success is sustainable profits. One-time winnings, in business as in casinos, are disappointing. We expect more from our investments than that. — Stephen Young

An enlightened person or business is not concerned primarily with making money, because when you are concerned with making money you want the future more than the present. Whenever you want the future more than you want the present, true intelligence cannot flow into what you do, because it can do so only when you are totally aligned with the present moment. — Eckhart Tolle

For it is the business and duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Long range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions. — Peter Drucker

Artists of today can be inspired by the past, but they have to apply present methods if they want a future in music. — Loren Weisman

No use kidding herself. This situation with Jarrod was a slippery slope. She'd had plenty of men since Sam, attractive, well endowed, charming in many ways. Jarrod was different, and she needed to figure out why before she found herself in the middle of stupid. She had a business to think of, people who depended on her for their livelihood, even more people present and future who needed the services she offered. It wasn't just a job, damn it, it was a mission. No one should be as out of touch with themselves as thoroughly as she had been. For as long. — Lizzie Ashworth

I realized sometime in the early '80s that if I didn't do something - like planning for the future in a way, a kind of pension or something - that if I didn't do something there and then, I was going to be condemned to forever present my three years as a pop star, condensed, as a stage act for the rest of my life. Because that's normally what happens to people in the pop business. — Nick Lowe

Financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long-run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with Communism, lies the threat to Capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I turned away from him and went on my way, up the street and about my business. The past was dead. The future was resignation, fatality, and could only end one way now. The present was numbness, that could feel nothing. Like Novocaine needled into your heart. What was there in all the dimensions of time for me? ("Life Is Weird Sometimes" first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER) — Cornell Woolrich

Today's partners can be your competitors tomorrow. And today's competitors can be your partners tomorrow. — Suzy Kassem

The present and future of knowledge attainment and essential business skills. — Bill Gates