Top 5 Business Quotes & Sayings

We are in the entertainment business and we all know if you are top of the tree you get the big money. Those of us who have been in it are the fortunate ones but we understand that we probably don't deserve it as much as the nurses or teachers. — Gary Lineker

Fact is, the work place to a great extent is "where we live." We need star accountants. Boffo saleswomen. Over-the-top creatives in marketing and new product development. And so on. But, since we're effectively talking about "where we live," good sense and good business and "good" engagement throughout the "supply chain," from vendor's vendor to customer's customer, we would benefit mightily-including on the P & L-if we insisted (!) on: "Pleasant." "Caring." "Engaged." — Tom Peters

Squash was my livelihood and as in business, I had to stay on top. — Jahangir Khan

It's just become such a business, getting into college. I see that a lot in my friends, their parents were so on top of them about getting into an Ivy League school since they were so young, they were just drilled and drilled and drilled, to the point that they just don't know why they want to go. — Nat Wolff

I am convinced that most companies don't maximize their barter possibilities. Instead of aggressively reducing costs by trading their services with those of their suppliers, they seem content to pay top dollar for everything. — Mark McCormack

I do believe that any successful business starts from the top and works its way down. — Dolly Parton

We must limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, "Whither are you going?" he will answer, "By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something." They wander purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of restless indolence. — Seneca.

I took a dozen of our top managers to Argentina, to the windswept mountains of the real Patagonia, for a walkabout. In the course of roaming around those wild lands, we asked ourselves why we were in business and what kind of business we wanted Patagonia to be. A billion-dollar company? Okay, but not if it meant we had to make products we couldn't be proud of. And we discussed what we could do to help stem the environmental harm we caused as a company. We talked about the values we had in common, and the shared culture that had brought everyone to Patagonia, Inc., and not another company. — Yvon Chouinard

I didn't plan to be this dysfunctional at 27, but dysfunctionality has a way of creeping up on you. One second, you're 22, wrapping up your undergraduate degree from a top business school, and then suddenly, you're sitting alone in your car at 27, wondering how five years slipped trough your fingers without so much as a blink. — R.S. Grey

Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people. People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-respect, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning. The forces of destruction begin with toddlers - a prize for the best Halloween costume, grades in school, gold stars - and on up through the university. On the job, people, teams, and divisions are ranked, reward for the top, punishment for the bottom. Management by Objectives, quotas, incentive pay, business plans, put together separately, division by division, cause further loss, unknown and unknowable. — Peter M. Senge

You have tens, hundreds of thousands of people in government, and just as many among contractors, who feel totally comfortable writing at the top of the document "internal use only," "official use only," and a million other synonyms, all of which amount to "none of your business" to the public. — Ted Gup

The country as a whole is far too complex and poor compared to Gujarat, which has been business-friendly and advanced in both governance and physical infrastructure (like roads, ports, etc.) over many decades now. On top of this, Modi's rather high-handed autocratic personal style (which is resented by many even within his own party) does not augur well for the intricate negotiations with diverse groups, state leaders and coalition partners he will necessarily have to work with at the all-India level. His polarising personality is not conducive to the tasks of compromise and consensus-building a leader inevitably faces in a highly fragmented polity like India's. — Anonymous

It all came back to something I'd figured out once about the detective business. There were two ways to go along: underground or on top. I never found out which was best. Underground you had the element of surprise on your side, but it was harder to move around. On top you went everywhere, taking cracks at everybody, and everybody taking cracks at you. You had to be tough to play it that way. Well, I was tough. — Jonathan Latimer

The business world traditionally rewards people for being closer to the top (case in point: outrageous CEO salaries) or for being closer to the transactions (investment bankers, salespeople). — Eric Schmidt

In my new business, this is one of the things we work actively with CEOs to see: how one idea from the top can spiral into 100 projects for the team and overwhelm them in ways the CEOs can't even imagine. But — Jonathan Raymond

It is no accident that our business, The University of Phoenix, is one of the top 50 community-minded companies in America. My father and I are strong believers in the concept of community. — Peter Sperling

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce. — Bill Gates

In the top centile, by contrast, financial and business assets clearly predominate over real estate. In particular, shares of stock or partnerships constitute nearly the totality of the largest fortunes. Between 2 and 5 million euros, the share of real estate is less than one-third; above 5 million euros, it falls below 20 percent; above 10 million euros, it is less than 10 percent and wealth consists primarily of stock. — Thomas Piketty

To succeed in business, to reach the top, an individual must know all it is possible to know about that business. — J. Paul Getty

God is a good God, and He gives good things to his children. No matter who has denigrated you or how much pain you've experienced in life, no matter how many setbacks you have suffered, you cannot allow yourself to accept that as the way life is supposed to be. No, God has better things in store for you. You must reprogram your mind with God's word; change that negative, defeated self-image, and start seeing yourself as winning, coming out on top. Start seeing that marriage as restored. See your business as flourishing. See your children as enjoying the good things of God. You must see it through your eyes of faith, and then it will begin to happen. — Joel Osteen

Communication can't always follow the top-down model. With the fluidity of information in business today, leaders need to be masterful listeners; they need to be able to receive as well as send. — Joseph Badaracco

I couldn't be an ingenue today, because the business has changed. I remember when you could dress for a premiere just by putting on a cute top. Now you have to be perfect and fabulous in every way, or you're ridiculed. — Julia Roberts

When you break it down, Yahoo! is a Very Large Display Advertising business, with a hefty side of search and a bit of this and that on top. — John Battelle

Some of the biggest bores I've ever known are men who have been highly successful in business, particularly self-made heads of big companies. Before the first olive has settled into the first martini, they pour the stories of their lives into the nearest and sometimes the remotest ears capturable ... These men have indeed paid the price of success. To rise to the top of a big company often takes a totality of effort, concentration and dedication. Others, too, have to pay part of the price. Wife and children are out of mind even when in sight ... — Malcolm Forbes

I see top business schools working to bridge this gap [between academic research and business application] by respecting executive education, by having more mature students who proactively draw from faculty what they know they need, and by having faculty who are willing to leave their ivory towers for the murky world of business reality. Unfortunately, at other times, business professors have little or not interest or savvy about business issues. — Dave Ulrich

There is the general belief that the corporation income tax is a tax on the "rich" and on the "fat cats." But with pension funds owning 30% of American large business-and soon to own 50%-the corporation income tax, in effect, eases the load on those in top income brackets and penalizes the beneficiaries of pension funds. — Peter Drucker

We're workers, they say. Work, they call it! That's the crummiest part of the whole business. We're down in the hold, heaving and panting, stinking and sweating our balls off, and meanwhile! Up on deck in the fresh air, what do you see?! Our masters having a fine time with beautiful pink and perfumed women on their laps. They send for us, we're brought up on deck. They put on their top hats and give us a big spiel like as follows: "You no-good swine! We're at war! Those stinkers in Country No. 2! We're going to board them and cut their livers out! Let's go! Let's go! We've got everything we need on board! All together now! Let's hear you shout so the deck trembles: 'Long live Country No. 1!' So you'll be heard for miles around. The man that shouts the loudest will get a medal and a lollipop! Let's — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrence to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system, and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963. — John F. Kennedy

Ooh. Top secret angel business, huh? What're you going to do? Dance on a pinhead? Lobby for National Cute Puppy Day? — Richelle Mead

Instead of working hard to keep their share of a shrinking pie, or working even harder to make sure the industry stays as is, I think the most essential thing legacy book industry players can do is set up independent ventures with great people and little interference and work really hard to put themselves out of business by starting at the bottom, not by reinforcing the top. — Seth Godin

When I entered films, I rose to the top. In business, too, I want to be at the top. — Preity Zinta

First of all, I was running scams when you were at keggers at Kappa Kappa Werewolf. You don't know much about me but I am way smarter than Gabriel was. I'm a consummate liar. I can street fight with the best of them and I can cheat at cards like nobody's business. This on top of my computer skills. I may not howl at the moon and have superhuman strength but I can hold my own. — Lauren Dane