Best 5548 quotes in «business quotes» category

I think re-engineering or restructuring or downsizing or rightsizing or whatever you want to call it, it's basically firing, has gone way too far. Employees, as I've talked to them across the country, feel that they are not respected, they are not valued, they are worried about their jobs. They simply feel that the company is no longer loyal to them. Why should they be loyal to the company, they ask me. Why should I go the extra mile? Why should I care?

I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.

I think that maybe in every company today there is always at least one person who is going crazy slowly.

I think that the best companies are companies that have a real purpose.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

I think that the Bible as literature should be a compulsory part of the national curriculum.. you can't understand English literature and culture without it. But insofar as theology studies the nature of the divine, it will earn the right to be taken seriously when it provides the slightest, smallest smidgen of a reason for believing in the existence of the divine. Meanwhile, we should devote as much time to studying serious theology as we devote to studying serious fairies and serious unicorns.

I think that today, more so than ever, corporate responsibility is the best strategic as well as financial path that most businesses can follow. For most businesses there are both compelling reasons to be responsible and compelling statistics that validate that responsible businesses do better according to traditional financial metrics. Of course, how you define "responsible" is somewhat of a conundrum.

I think the biggest single thing that causes difficulty in the business world is the short-term view. We become obsessed with it. But it forces bad decisions.

I think the important thing to learn is that we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.

I think the motion picture industry is a stupid business and I despise acting the scenes in short snatches, one at a time. I hate this film work. I am disgusted with myself. On the stage I could never play a part unless I felt it with all my heart and soul.

I think the most important CEO task is defining the course that the business will take over the next five or so years. You have to have the ability to see what the business environment might be like a long way out, not just over the coming months. You need to be able to both set a broad direction, and also to take particular decisions along the way that make that broad direction unfold correctly.

I think the people who did well, or are happy, in a youth industry, they define themselves out of the business after a decade or so.

I think up until the point when we started in the business, which was in the early 70s, most of the humor was political. The smart humor was political satire.

I think Virgin Blue is still a very promising and exciting business. Now, I know that's not a view that's widely held in the market but I think the market is simply throwing it into the too-hard basket at the present time because of the oil price events. But we think it is still a very exciting business.

I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.

I think we can be the very best place to start a business, to grow a business, to invent a new technology, to change the world, to change the country. But we've got a lot of work to deliver a new California to the people of California.

I think we're having fun. I think our customers really like our products. And we're always trying to do better.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

I thought of myself as an atheist until I realized it was a belief, too. It's a shame everything has to have a label. I feel that if I was figuratively dropped on the Earth and there was a political line, I would be just left of center. The difference for me is that conservatives are more interested in property values and rights and free markets, and liberals are more interested in human rights. In the end, there are people who don't fit into the marketplace and are not equipped. I believe the government should step in where the free market fails.

I think you've got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.

It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it.

It is all one to me if a man comes from Sing Sing Prison or Harvard. We hire a man, not his history.

It is, after all, only common sense to realize that, but for the fact that economic life is a process of incessant internal change, the business cycle, as we know it, would not exist.

... it is a lonely programme. The very virtues you cultivate become walls that inevitably separate you from your kind.... A new danger comes to your soul, and intolerance and impatience with those who are as you have been all but destroy that which you have taken such pains to build up. Not alone are there spiritual barriers between you and the friends that you have, but your business training has made your mind incisive. In the swift rush of business you have no time for small debates and petty dilemmas.

It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost, and at any risk to the rest of the community.

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, a symbol rather than reason by which men are moved.

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster. There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference.

It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.

It is as if evolution has built a safety device in our nervous system that allows us to experience full happiness only when we are living at 100%-when we are fully using the physical and mental equipment we have been given.

It is as true as that night follows day, that the man who does more than he is paid for, and does it in a pleasant mental attitude, sooner or later is paid for more than he does.

It is a striving to attain the best. To throttle it would mean to stop all progress. Certain men do not need to compete. They are pioneers.

It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

...it is business that can exercise the fastest degree of change by seeing the opportunity rather than the threat

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our every man must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

It is clear that global challenges must be met with an emphasis on peace, in harmony with others, with strong alliances and international consensus. Imperfect as it may be, there is no doubt that this can best be done through the United Nations, not merely to preserve peace but also to make change, even radical change, without violence.

It is expedient to have acquaintance with those who have looked into the world, who know men, understand business, and can give you good intelligence and good advice when they are wanted.

It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.

It is futile to assume that an initially ineffective advertisement still needs to wear in; wear-in either happens quickly or it does not happen at all.

It is high time the ideal of success should be replaced with the ideal of service.

It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form... they shall do so under absolutely truthful representations... Great corporations exist only because they were created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.

It is not fit the public trusts should be lodged in the hands of any, till they are first proved and found fit for the business they are to be entrusted with.

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

It is the business of a comic poet to paint the vices and follies of human kind.

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.

It is surprising, in the welter of questions that one gets at (AGMs), how few actually relate to the performance of the company, or the decisions taken by the board in particular areas.