Never give advice — sell it instead.
— Unknown Wise Person
Banking may well be a career from which no man really recovers.
— John Kenneth Galbraith
If small money does not go out, big money will not
come in.
— Chinese proverb
Creativity in business is coming up with an idea; innovation is
getting off your butt and doing something about it.
— Unknown wise person
There are an enormous number of managers who have retired on
the job.
— Peter Drucker
In business, I loved cars. I couldn’t wait to get to work in the
morning. Only in America can you decide to get a good education and pursue what you like.
— Lee Iacocca
The fame of great men ought always to
be estimated by the means used to acquire it.
— Unknown wise person
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art
. . . Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.
— Andy Warhol
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, say, to
life itself than
this incessant business.
— Henry David Thoreau
Having taught economics courses at private vocational schools
and universities, I have always had a problem with GNP as a yardstick of prosperity. GNP is improved by
increases in questionable activities such as consumption of cigarettes and the production of weapons.
Moreover, a substantial increase in car accidents will favorably affect GNP [and apparently national
prosperity] because more funerals, hospital visits, car repairs, and new car purchases will
result.
— from
The Joy of
Not Working by Ernie Zelinski
If you want to sell 'em fish, sell 'em big fish. That's the secret
to success.
— Jack Solomons
People that pay for things never complain. It's the guy you give something
to [for free] that you can't please.
— Will Rogers
I find that reading great retirement quotes at work help me make
it throughout the day without having to think about suicide.
— Dave Erhard
You think your job is tough — try trading with Ernie Zelinski. His job is not working, and he's been
doing it successfully for the last 14 years.
— Keiko Ohnuma, Business Writer, Oakland Tribune writing about the book
The Joy of
Not Working and it's author
What Is Your WOW Factor?
This applies to both the service
that you provide to the world
and the way you market it.
Make it edgy, make it snappy,
and make it punchy.
Even make it raunchy — but
make it different!
Real different!
— from Life's Secret Handbook by Ernie J. Zelinski
As a novelist, I tell stories, and people give me money. Then financial
planners tell me stories, and I give them money.
— Martin Cruz Smith
Retirement has cured many businessman's ulcers — and given his wife
one!
— Author Unknown
An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed, the Managing Director's chance to kiss the tea-girl.
It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to
anyone who has seen the Managing Director face on).
— Katherine Whitehorn
Much of our American progress has been the product of the individual who
had an idea; pursued it; fashioned it; tenaciously clung to it against
all odds; and then produced it, sold it, and profited from it.
— Hubert H. Humphrey
The more unpredictable the world becomes, the more we rely on
predictions.
— Steve Rivkin
There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate — when he can't afford it and when he
can.
— Mark Twain
This, then, is held to be the duty of the [American] man of wealth: First,
to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately
for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues
which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called
upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his
judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community — the man of wealth
thus becoming the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior
wisdom, experience and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for
themselves.
— Andrew Carnegie, American industrialist and philanthropist
When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use.
— Joseph Stalin
The factory of the future will only have two employees, a man and a dog.
The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the
equipment.
— Warren G. Bennis, University of California Professor, School of Business
Business is the art of extracting money from another man's pocket without resorting to violence.
— Max Amsterdam
Isn't it strange that the same people who laugh at gypsy fortune tellers
take economists seriously?
— Unknown wise person
Everyone who does not work has a scheme that does.
— Unknown wise person
How
to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free on Facebook
You are only as rich as the enrichment you bring to the world around
you.
— Rajesh Setty
The reason we do not have inflation or unemployment in Austria is, we've exported all our economists to
the United States and Canada.
— Unknown wise Austrian diplomat
Management by objectives works if you know the objectives. Ninety percent
of the time you don't.
— Peter Drucker
The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.
— George Bernard Shaw
Don't do business with anyone who has a history of suing people.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
— Honoré de Balzac
Part of the reason many gifted spiritual people have problems manifesting
and expanding their life's mission is because they have a judgment towards advertising and marketing and so
do not do enough of it. If they do, they do not know how to do it right; and they only do it some of the
time, and only when they do not have clients. This creates a 'feast and famine' syndrome. How about having
a constant flow of clients? Doesn't anyone want that?
— Shamala Tan
It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
— "Canada Bill" Jones
He without benefit of scruples.
His fun and money soon quadruples.
— Ogden Nash
Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we
have failed in.
— Gustave Flaubert
I always wanted to excel. I never wanted to be common or ordinary.
— Rex Maughan, Forever Living Products
Any great accomplishment in the history of humanity has started with one
small thought. We all have these thoughts. Few people do anything with theirs, however. What do you intend
to do with yours?
— from Look Ma, Life's
Easy (An Inspirational Novel about
How Ordinary People Attain Extraordinary Results)
It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely
in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit
and sense of duty.
— Albert Einstein
In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.
— Pauline Kael, U.S. Film Crtic
The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see
clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.
— Jean de La Bruyére
An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.
— Fred Allen
The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business
shall become wise.
— Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus 38:25.
Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
— Samuel Johnson
No one can possibly achieve any real and lasting success or “get rich” in
business by being a conformist.
— J Paul Getty
The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
— J. Enoch Powell
Repetition makes reputation and reputation makes customers.
— Elizabeth Arden
Society drives people crazy with lust and calls it advertising.
— John Lahr
I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of
all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement. .
. . It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring
critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying
public.
— Aldous Huxley
We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one
can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
— Zelda Fitzgerald
Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one
coming.
— Richard Branson
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.
— Norman Douglas
The more products you have, the more likely you are to sell something.
— Scott Ginsberg
It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business .... What is true is that honesty
is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.
— Moxandas K. Gandhi
Some people look for things that went wrong and try to fix them. I look for
things that went right and try to build on them.
—Bob Stone
A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that
it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
— Karl Marx
You are who you go to lunch with! Break bread with cool and you will
become more cool. Conversely: break bread with dull and well, you can figure it out.
— Tom Peters
If you need to bring in a business partner, make sure your partner brings
along some money.
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but, disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his
flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
— Marshall McLuhan
The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
— Noel Coward
Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to to it.
— Andrew Young
When producers want to know what the public wants, they graph it as curves. When they want to tell the
public what to get, they say it in curves.
— Marshall McLuhan
Those who are different change the world.
Those who are ordinary do their best to keep it the way it is.
— Unknown wise person
If you are looking for a kindly, well-to-do older gentleman who is no longer interested in sex,
take out an ad in The Wall Street Journal.
— Abigail Van Buren
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening
with an insurance salesman?
— Woody Allen
Every child should be placed on a doorstep to sell something. It's the best possible training for
life.
— Robert Morley
Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making
deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.
— Donald Trump
Business is a good game — lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You
keep score with money.
— Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
Sell to people who drive Rolls Royces and you ride the subway. Sell to
people who ride the subway and you drive Rolls Royces.
— Unknown wise business person
It's not enough to be the best at what you do. You must be perceived as the only one who does what you
do.
— Jerry Garcia
If you aren't an authority on the product or service you're offering, get
out of the business!
— Paul Hartunian
Do it big or stay in bed.
— Larry Kelly
Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.
— Josh Billings
Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything.
— David Ogilvy
A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly
saturated with a bad one.
— Henry Ford
If you don't feel well, tell your doctor, but not the marketplace.
— Jim ohn
Fifteen Minutes of Notoriety Beats the Best Advertising Money Can Buy
— from Career Success Without a Real Job
Everyone lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it.
— Robert Louis Stevenson
Nothing sells by itself.
— Ellen Chodosh
A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.
— Richard Branson
WORK ON YOUR STORY!
He/she who has the best story wins!
In life!
In business!
The White House!
— Tom Peters
My son is now an “entrepreneur.” That's what you're called when you don't have a job.
— Ted Turner
I wanted to be an editor or a journalist. I wasn't really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I
soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.
— Richard Branson
A Bit of Craziness Is Good for Business
— from Career Success Without a Real Job
I'd rather live precariously in my own office than comfortably in somebody else's.
— Peter Mayle
Real wealth equals ideas plus energy.
— Buckminster Fuller
Business is not financial science; it's about trading, buying, and selling. It's about creating a
product or service so good that people will pay for it.
— Anita Roddick
Being in business is not about making money. It is a way to become who you
are.
— Paul Hawken
It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.
— Gertrude Stein
For every back there is a knife.
— Corporate proverb
Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.
— George Soros
I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all
the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money's sake.
— John D. Rockefeller
The wages of sin are unreported.
— Unknown wise person
Honor before profit; where practical.
— Gerald Barzan
A criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient capital to form a corporation.
— Howard Scott
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of
lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
— Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under socialism the reverse is
true.
— Polish Proverb
Only one fellow in ten thousand understands the currency question, and we meet him every day.
— Kin Hubbard
Tell me quick,
And tell me true;
Otherwise sir,
To hell with you.
— An Old Marketing Axiom
Don't become a slave to non-crucial matters.
— Robert J. Ringer
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who had to worry
where the next meal would come from.
— Peter Drucker
A good business manager hires optimists as salesmen and pessimists to run the credit department.
— Unknown wise businessperson
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a
conclusion.
— George Bernard Shaw
If all economists were laid end to end, it would not be a bad idea.
— Unknown wise person
Corruption is simply business without scruples.
— Unknown wise businessperson
There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the
appearance of business.
— Samuel Johnson
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
— Andrew Young
An accountant is a man hired to explain that you didn't make the money you
did.
— Anonymous
If you hype something and it succeeds, you're a genius — it wasn't a hype. If you hype it and it fails,
then it was just a hype.
— Neil Bogart
The value of anything is not what you get paid for it, nor what cost to produce, but what you can get
for it at an auction.
— Robert Rice
It is well known what a middle man is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Financial sense is knowing that certain men will promise to do certain things and fail.
— Edgar Watson Howe
If you see a snake, just kill it — don't appoint a committee on
snakes.
— H. Ross Perot
Don't take a nickel, just hand them your business card.
— Richard M. Daley, advising on the safe enjoyment of graft
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital and labour. As matters stand,
their only common interest is that of cutting each other's throat.
— Brooks Atkinson
There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush does little but clean teeth.
Aspirin does little but dull pain. Alcohol is important mostly for making people more or less drunk ...
There being so little to be said, much is to be invented.
— John Kenneth Galbraith
Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.
— Gore Vidal
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ... in time every post tends to
be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties . . . Work is accomplished by those
employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
— Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle
A hustler is a man who will talk you into giving him a free ride and make it seem as if he is doing you
a great favour.
— Bill Veeck
It comes down to that . . . business tactic: the guy that yells loudest is right.
— Irving Azoff
The business world worships mediocrity. Officially we revere free
enterprise, initiative and individuality. Unofficially we fear it.
— George Lois, The Art of Advertising
The arms business is founded on human folly. That is why its depths will never be plumbed and why it
will go on forever. All weapons are defensive and all spare parts are non-lethal. The plainest print cannot
be read through a solid gold sovereign, or a ruble or a golden eagle.
— Sam Cummings
The most
important actions are never comfortable.
— Tim
Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Work Week
The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is
frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself.
— John Kenneth Galbraith
Management: an activity or art where those who have not yet succeeded and those who have proved
unsuccessful are led by those who have not yet failed.
— Paulsson Frenckner
Contract: an agreement that is binding on the weaker party.
— Frederick Sawyer
Here's the rule for bargains: `Do other men, for they would do you'. That's the true business
precept.
— Charles Dickens
It is well known what a middle man is: he is a man who bamboozles one party and plunders the other.
— Benjamin Disraeli
Look, we trade every day out there with hustlers, deal-makers, shysters,
con-men. That's the way businesses get started. That's the way this country was built.
— Hubert Allen
Financial sense is knowing that certain men will promise to do certain things and fail.
— Edgar Watson Howe
An actuary is someone who moved out of accountancy because he couldn't
stand the excitement.
— Anonymous
The business of government is to keep the government out of business — that is, unless business needs
government aid.
— Will Rogers
I think any man in business would be foolish to fool around with his
secretary. If it's somebody else's secretary, fine!
— Senator Barry Goldwater
Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are
those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.
— Winston Churchill
A banker is a person who is willing to make a loan if you present sufficient evidence to show you don't
need it.
— Herbert V. Prochnow
Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
— Ambrose Bierce
The rushed existence into which industrialized, commercialized man has
precipitated himself is actually a good example of an inexpedient development caused entirely by
competition between members of the same species. Human beings of today are attacked by so-called manager
diseases, high blood pressure, renal atrophy, gastric ulcers, and torturing neuroses: they succumb to
barbarism because they have no more time for cultural interests.
— Konrad Lorenz
Capital formation is shifting from the entrepreneur who invests in the future to the pension trustee who
invests in the past.
— Peter Drucker
American business needs a lifting purpose greater than the struggle of materialism.
— Herbert Hoover
Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the
soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties.
— Henry David Thoreau
Enthusiasm for conservation can be fashioned into a nasty weapon for those who dislike business on
general principles.
— William F. Buckley, Jr.
Having served on various committees, I have drawn up a list of rules:
Never arrive on time; this stamps you as a beginner. Don't say anything until the meeting is half over;
this stamps you as wise. Be as vague as possible; this avoids irritating the others. When in doubt, suggest
a subcommittee be appointed. Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you popular; it's what e
eryone is waiting for.
— Harry Chapman
It is probably safe to say that over a long period of time, political morality has been as high as
business morality.
— Henry Steele Commager
I niver knew a pollytician to go wrong ontil he's been contaminated by contact with a business man.
— Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
In the modern world of business it is useless to be a creative original
thinker unless you can also sell what you create.
— David M. Ogilvy
I do not dislike but I certainly have no especial respect or admiration for and no trust in, the typical
big moneyed men of my country. I do not regard them as furnishing sound opinion as respects either foreign
or domestic business.
— Theodore Roosevelt
Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their
tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work.
— Joseph Conrad
A man is known by the company he organizes.
— Ambrose Bierce
Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere.
— Ronald Reagan
You don't need a Harvard MBA to know that the bedroom and the boardroom are just two sides of the same
ballgame.
— Stephen Fry
A man may be a tough, concentrated, successful money-maker and never
contribute to his country anything more than a horrible example. A manager may be tough and practical,
squeezing out, while the going is good, the last ounce of profit and dividend, and may leave behind him an
exhausted industry and a legacy of industrial hatred. A tough manager may never look outside his own
factory walls or be conscious of his partnership in a wider world. I often wonder what strange cud such men
sit chewing when their working days are over, and the accumulating riches of the mind have eluded them.
— Robert Menzies, Australian Liberal politician, prime minister
Every great man of business has got somewhere a touch of the idealist in him.
— Woodrow Wilson
In business, the earning of profit is something more than an incident of success. It is an essential
condition of success. It is an essential condition of success because the continued absence of profit
itself spells failure.
— Justice Louis D. Brandeis
Profitability is the sovereign criterion of the enterprise.
— Peter Drucker
Money-getters are the benefactors of our race. To them . . . are we indebted for our institutions of
learning, and of art, our academies, colleges and churches.
— P. T. Barnum
Business succeeds rather better than the state in imposing its restraints upon individuals, because its
imperatives are disguised as choices.
— Walton Hamilton
If the government was as afraid of disturbing the consumer as it is of
disturbing business, this would be some democracy.
— Kin Hubbard
The egalitarianism of the present tax structure is thought to be seriously dampening individual effort,
initiative, and inspiration ... [it] destroys ambition, penalizes success, discourages investment to create
new jobs, and may well turn a nation of risk-taking entrepreneurs into a nation of softies.
— Fred Maytag II
Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man
winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm.
— C. Wright Mills
Businessmen are notable for a peculiarly stalwart character, which enables them to enjoy without loss of
self-reliance the benefits of tariffs, franchises, and even outright government subsidies.
— Herbert J. Muller
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital
and labour. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting each other's
throat.
— Brooks Atkinson
There is little that can be said about most economic goods. A toothbrush
does little but clean teeth. Aspirin does little but dull pain. Alcohol is important mostly for making
people more or less drunk ... There being so little to be said, much is to be
invented.
— John Kenneth
Galbraith
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behaviour that is often considered perfectly respectable in
legitimate business.
— Robert Rice
Business needs more orders from customers and fewer from the government.
— Unknown Wise Person
Modern business has made buying easy, but paying is as hard as it ever was.
— Unknown Wise Person
Business is like a bicycle — when it isn't moving forward at a good speed it wobbles.
— Unknown Wise Person
A person or persons may decide to go into business, but the public decides whether or not a business
stays in business.
— Unknown Wise Person
The customer's always right. The son-of-a-bitch is probably rich.
So smile with all your might.
— Noel Coward
The secret of business is to count your blessings while others are adding up their troubles.
— Unknown Wise Person
Business will continue to go where invited and will remain where
appreciated.
— Unknown Wise Person
The reason some folks can't mind their own business is because they have very little mind and no
business.
— Unknown Wise Person
A shady business never produces a sunny life, or much prosperity.
— Unknown Wise Person
A businessman needs three umbrellas — one to leave at the office, one to leave at home, and one to leave
on the train.
— Paul Dickson
Business is the only thing which can be dead and still have a chance to survive.
— Unknown Wise Person
People would be delighted to attend to their own business if the government would give it back to
them.
— Unknown Wise Person
Anyone who thinks the customer isn't important should try doing without him for a period of ninety
days.
— Unknown Wise Person
The best way to go into business is with high hopes and low overhead.
— Unknown Wise Person
A successful executive in business is the one who can delegate all the responsibility, shift all the
blame, and appropriate all the credit.
— Unknown Wise Person
As to the idea that advertising motivates people, remember the Edsel.
—Peter Drucker
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
— Louis B. Mayer
He who has the habit of smiling at the cash register instead of the customer won't be smiling long.
— Unknown Wise Person
Business forecasters are uncertain about the future and hazy about the present.
— Unknown Wise Person
A shady business never produces a sunny life.
— Unknown wise person
Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successful in business. Cheat.
— Ambrose Bierce
Business is like an automobile. It won't run itself, except downhill.
— Unknown Wise Person
Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it
in your subordinates.
— Don Marquis
Think big, be big..
— Barry Minkow (former ZZZZ Best "Carpet King," who was sentenced to a 20-year prison sentence for
securities fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering)
Beware of the man who will not engage in idle conversation; he is planning to steal your walking stick
or water your stock.
— William Emerson
Business is the art of extracting money from another man's pocket without
resorting to violence.
— Unknown Wise Person
Capitalism, communism . . . it's all garbage.
— Msistslav Rostropovich
Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.
—Frank Zappa
Most people find that running a business is no trouble at all — as long as it's the other fellow's.
— Unknown Wise Person
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
— Thoreau
The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
— Aristotle Onassis
Don't do anything you wouldn't be willing to explain on television.
— Arjay Miller
Dear, never forget one little point: It's my business. You just work
here.
— Elizabeth Arden to her husband
Call upon a man of business during hours of business only to transact your business. Then go about your
business and give him time to attend to his business.
— Unknown Wise Person
Whenever you're sitting across from some important person, always picture him sitting there in a suit of
long underwear. That's the way I always operated in business.
— Joseph P Kennedy
You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and
the budget is big enough.
— Joseph E. Levine
