459 Business Quotes

I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.

A lot of musicians don't learn the business. You just have to be well-rounded in both areas. You have to understand publishing. You have to understand how you make money, what's in demand, what helps you make the most out of your talent.

The Bollywood distribution system is so corrupt that they have trouble making money off movies. So they sell shoes that an actress stepped in. If they turned up the amps some, maybe they could sell the actresses.

I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

After a while the press of business in the province put an end to our philosophizing, and I returned with increased determination to my plans to fly to the Moon.

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.

Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

I used to be opposed to the idea of social entrepreneurship. I said, you know, let business be business, and philanthropy be philanthropy. Keep the two separate, don't mix it up, and this is what I did, and I did that rather successfully, but I now recognize that actually you do need to mix it up and I think there is room for social entrepreneurship.

I'm very excited about this wonderful opportunity to take part in the evolution of a company that is integral to the Hispanic community and a powerful force in all areas of the media.

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.

In a nation that has developed to a high art advertising, the creator who refuses to advertise himself is immediately suspected of having no product worth selling.

Never work for a company that says people are its most important asset. If you wanted to get a mortgage and you said that your only asset was people you would end up living in a tent.

But it must not be thought that I say this out of personal experience: for in the many years that I have been before the public my secret methods have been steadily shielded by the strict integrity of my assistants, most of whom have been with me for years.

When I see an Alfa Romeo go by, I tip my hat.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.

Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.

I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based.

As freak legislation, the antitrust laws stand alone. Nobody knows what it is they forbid.

'Tolerance' is not only the acceptance that people, as diverse they may be, have the right to be as they are and to live in peace together. Tolerance-in the context of business-is also the recognition that to get what you want, you have to give something in return.

People of different ethnic and religious backgrounds were able to do business together despite language and other barriers. They recognized that to get what they wanted; they had to give something in return. There was a form of partnership based on mutual benefit. That partnership was underpinned by 'tolerance'.

Business is globalizing so fast that it has led to the often quoted 'clash of civilizations'. People simply have not had time to get to know and understand people of other cultures sufficiently to live and work in harmony.

Micro-finance is a wonderful opportunity for businesses. By investing a small portion of their income in micro-finance projects, they not only take an active part in business ethics, but they also gain future business partners and consumers.

I can't say that I love it with a fierce passion - indeed as a profession it's rather disappointing since it is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.

Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

Mainstream films have occupied Hollywood but you can get bored very easily. It can be very repetitive and I think now we want something fresh and something inspiring and different, daring. The mainstream film is very expensive to make and it scares people. It's made for the worldwide audience, you have to please so many people, and the business men start running the movies rather than artists. This is back to the oldest way of Hollywood filmmaking, creating a fantasy, but it has been lost. It seems to take a foreign language film to recoup that ultimate movie viewing experience.

American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.

It is well-known what a middleman is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.

What usually comes first is the contract.

Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that.

One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.

There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft.[3]

Bill Gates is a very rich man today ... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.

It's a business I don't know anything about, but I admire Bill Gates enormously. I know him individually, and I think he's incredible in business.

There never was a chip, it is said, that Bill Gates couldn't slow down with a new batch of features.

Probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age.

[Gates] apparently has made more money than anyone else his age, ever, in any business.

He is divisive. He is manipulative. He is a user. He has taken much from me and the industry.

You either make sense or you make money.

Question: I'm asking If Nintendo is discussing another Zelda game for the N64. Answer: No. Nintendo should not make another Zelda game for N64. Not unless they get someone else to write the screen text! But what you really want to know is, WILL Nintendo make another Zelda game for N64. Sure. Why not? It would sell a lot of copies, and Nintendo's purpose, like most businesses, is to make gobs of money. You can't argue with that kind of logic, and I dare you to try!

There's often a lot of stupid ideas like 'you all dress as fruits and pretend you're selling underpants' or 'we'll put you on a bed of nails and drive a truck over the top and photograph you' for the cover.

Thare is no chance of hurrying bussiness here like in the legeslature of a State thare is such a desposition here to Show Eloquence that this will be a long Session and do no good...

[On the most beautiful words in the English language] The ones I like...are 'cheque' and 'enclosed.'

Jazz is music-Swing is business.

Whereas if the film did any little bit of business in America, if the film did some decent bit of business, then Hollywood would take it, and they'd remake it and up the budget by 50 million and it would be called The Room With a View of Hell! : Staircase of Satan! : Pond of Death.

'My name is Mrs. Smith, I've made apples out of bread and dripping, a bit of green paint, and corrugated iron.' 'No, these are horrible apples, Mrs. Smith. Go away, Mrs. Smith! Go away until your daughter has a baby.' 'Shag, daughter, shag! It's a marketing idea, shag for babies! (mimes running back) My daughter's had a baby, I'm Granny Smith now!' 'Come in, Granny Smith! You're a wonderful idea, you! Come in with your shiny apples.'

The major five religions being Christianity, Judaism, Islam, RCA, Sony, Buddhism and Hinduism. Because apart from the two silly ones, they've all got Jesus in them. I'm not telling you about the two silly ones. ('RCA, they're in the Middle East, aren't they?') Cost if you can't work out what they are, you're probably the person in the plane who watches when they do the belt bit.

Would you please publish the enclosed manuscript or return it without delay, as I have other irons in the fire.

At my lemonade stand I used to give the first glass away free and charge five dollars for the second glass. The refill contained the antidote.

Die Leugner des Zufalls. - 'Kein Sieger glaubt an den Zufall.'

It is possible to tell things by a handshake. I like the 'looking in the eye' syndrome. It conveys interest. I like the firm, though not bone crushing shake. The bone crusher is trying too hard to 'macho it.: The clammy or diffident handshake - fairly or unfairly - get me off to a bad start with a person.

There is reason to think the most celebrated philosophers would have been bunglers at business; but the reason is because they despised it.

The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?

Richard Nixon: was just offered $2 million by Schick to do a television commercial - for Gillette.

We'll put free sheets on all the beds, there'll be no cover charge.

I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract.

The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made.

Shaking hands across the table means that two parties are lazy.

As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.

Be at the pains of putting down every single item of expenditure whatsoever every day which could possibly be twisted into a professional expense and remember to lump in all the doubtfulls.

Now, we own a publishing house that's way up in the billions of dollars and gets bigger and bigger. That's probably the only thing that makes me look like Bill Gates!

Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.

It is so difficult to mix with artists! You must choose business men to talk to, because artists only talk of money.

The owner approached my publicist about two years after the incident and thanked her. Said, 'It was so great for us that Johnny got arrested at our hotel and sent to jail. You can't imagine the business we got out of it.' (2003)

Maybe I'm a dummy, but I don't worry that a lot of my films haven't had big results at the box office, because I'm not a businessman. Believe me, I would love for one of my movies to be accepted by a wide audience, but I'm not going to do a film just because it's going to do that. (1999)

I've never had an allergy to the idea of commercial success. When you put a movie out and it's successful, that's great. I just wanted to get there in the right way, in a way that's not too compromising or demeaning or ugly. (2004)

[About Tracey Jacobs, his agent]: Tracey's taken a lot of heat over the years. She has bosses and higher-ups, and every time I take on another strange project, they're going, Jesus Christ! When does he do a movie where he kisses the girl? When does he get to pull a gun out and shoot somebody? When does he get to be a fucking man for a change? When is he finally going to do a blockbuster? (2004)

It's easy to make a million bucks in this business doing stuff that would exploit the piss out of you. It's like fast food. Get in frame, get the product out there, and sell it quick. (1988)

It's a business you go into because you're an egocentric. It's a very embarrassing profession.

A working liaison requires people on airplanes.

We're ashamed of what we are. That's why we feel that we have to get rid of the values of our glorious history and run to learn from other, new nations. Don't I look to you like a man of the world? Don't I speak to the leading businessmen in the world? And it's no problem that I'm a Jew, and a proud Jew who wears a skullcap everywhere. That's my symbol and my identity.

I come to eat with very important people in the world, and I say 'only kosher', and always with a skullcap. I don't recall that my business ever suffered from that.

There ought to be but one large art warehouse in the world, to which the artist could carry his art-works, and from which he could carry away whatever he needed. As it is, one must be half a tradesman.

It may seem paradoxical to say that there are similarities between a poetical and a commercial mind, but it is a fact that both a poet and a businessman are constantly dealing with problems that are directly related to people and for which sensitivity is of prime importance. The business-like mind is sometimes described as being cold, sober, calculating, hard; but perhaps these are simply qualities that are necessary for dealing with people if one wants to achieve anything. One is always concerned with the mysterious, incalculable, dark, hidden aspects for which there is no easy formula, but which form essentially the same human element as that which inspires the poet.

If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.

One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.

I fully realize that no wealth or position can long endure, unless built upon truth and justice, therefore, I will engage in no transaction which does not benefit all whom it affects.

If I had to start it all over again, the only thing I would change is I'd learn to read a contract better.