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Quotes about business

69 quotes from 46 people

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With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
Milton Friedman1912–2006Lecture “The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community” (1983); cited in Filters Against Folly (1985) by Garrett Hardin
Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gatesborn 1955Business @ The Speed of Thought (1999)
In this business, by the time you realize you’re in trouble, it’s too late to save yourself. Unless you’re running scared all the time, you’re gone.
Bill Gatesborn 1955
The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Bill Gatesborn 1955
- Technology
I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everyone to tell me the truth⁠—even if it costs him his job.
Samuel Goldwyn1882–1974
Better to be cheated by the price than by the merchandise.
Baltasar Gracián1601–1658The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647), Maxim 157 (p. 89)
- Money
This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations.
Rutherford B. Hayes1822–1893Diary (11 March 1888)
- Democracy
- Government
When a man is trying to sell you something, don’t imagine he is that polite all the time.
E. W. Howe1853–1937Country Town Sayings (1911), p. 34.
I hope we shall… crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826to George Logan, 1816
- Government
The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Larkin Smith (1809)
- Money
It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.
Steve Jobs1955–2011At a retreat in September 1982, as quoted in John Sculley and John A. Byrne, Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple – A Journey of Adventure, Ideas, and the Future (1987), p. 157
You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.
Steve Jobs1955–2011Interview with Inc. Magazine for its “The Entrepreneur of the Decade Award” (1 April 1989)
We’re gambling on our vision, and we would rather do that than make “me too” products. Let some other companies do that. For us, it’s always the next dream.
Steve Jobs1955–2011Interview about the release of the Macintosh (24 January 1984)—(online video)
- Risk
If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.
Henry Kissinger1923–2023
If the businessman would stop talking like a computer printout or a page from the corporate annual report, other people would stop thinking he had a cash register for a heart.
Henry Kissinger1923–2023