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Business Success Quotes

 

Top 40 Business Success Quotes

 

No 1 (Best quote!)Business Success Quotes

You cannot be a success in any business without believing that it is the greatest business in the world…You have to put your heart in the business and the business in your heart.

- Thomas Watson Snr. 1874–1956 Chairman of IBM 1914–52, pictured right.

 Business Success Quotes

Watson's son, Thomas Watson Jnr,  in A Business and Its Beliefs (1963), pictured right, also says:

I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have a sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and actions...if an organization is to meet the challenges of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself except those beliefs as it moves through corporate life. 

 

Business Success Quotes

 

No 2

Every day we’re saying ‘How can we keep the customers happy? How can we get ahead in innovation by doing this?’ Because, if we don’t, somebody else will.Business Success Quotes

- Bill Gates (1955- ), American co-founder of Microsoft, pictured right above.

 

Kjell Nordstom, pictured right, and  Jonas Ridderstrale, below, in Funky Business (2000), add humorously that the key to business success is asking the question:Business Success Quotes

During the last two years how many of your customers have tattooed your brand on one of their biceps?

 

 

No 3Business Success Quotes

The organization must learn to think of itself not as producing goods or services but as buying customers as doing the things that make people want to do business with it.

Theodore (Ted) Levitt (pictured right) in The Marketing Imagination (1983)  - also in Marketing Myopia (1960 Harvard Business Review article)Business Success Quotes

 

Tom Peters (pictured right) and Robert Waterman (pictured right below) ) in In Search of Excellence (1982) agree:

Far too many managers have lost sight of the basics...quick action, service to customers, practical Business Success Quotesinnovation and the fact that you can’t get any of these without virtually everyone’s commitment.  

 

 

No 4Business Success Quotes

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.

- Andrew Grove (1936- ) American boss of Intel 1987-98, pictured right.


So Grove concludes that:

Success sows the seeds of its own destruction.

 

Two other thinkers come to a similar conclusion:

 Business Success Quotes

Nothing fails like success.

- Richard Pascale (pictured right) in Managing on the Edge,1991.

 Business Success Quotes

Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.

- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Spanish artist (pictured right)

 

Business Success Quotes

 

No 5

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

- Walt Disney (1901-1966), pictured right.

 

 

No 6Business Success Quotes

In retailing the formula happens to be a basic liking for human beings, plus integrity, plus industry, plus the ability to see the other fellow’s point of view.

- J.C. Penney (1875-1971), co-founder of the American department store, J.C. Penney, pictured right.

 

Business Success Quotes

Howard Schultz, founder and boss of Starbucks (pictured right), gives another success factor in retailing:

Retail is detail

 

 

No 7Business Success Quotes

The pertinent question is not how to do things right but how to find the right things to do.

- Peter Drucker, pictured right in Managing for Results (1964).

 

Drucker, also says in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973)

Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things,  

 

 

No 8Business Success Quotes

My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation.

- Steve Jobs (1955-2011), American co-founder of Apple (pictured right)

 

Jobs also says:

About half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

 

 

Business Success QuotesNo 9

The excellent companies require and demand extraordinary performance from the average man.

Tom Peters (pictured right) and Robert Waterman (pictured right Business Success Quotesbelow) in In Search of Excellence (1982). 

 

 

No 10Business Success Quotes

Control your destiny or someone else will.

- Jack Welch (1935- ), American boss of General Electric 1981-2001, pictured right.

 

 

No 11 Business Success Quotes

When we build, let us think that we build forever

John Ruskin (1819-1900), the English artist and philosopher (pictured right)

 

 

Business Success QuotesNo 12

In business, as in art, what distinguishes leaders from laggards, and greatness from mediocrity, is the ability to uniquely imagine what could be.

Business Success QuotesGary Hamel (pictured right above) and CK Prahalad (pictured right) in Competing for the Future (1996)

 

 

No 13Business Success Quotes

If you can’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent, it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

- Robert (Bob) Townsend, pictured right, Up the Organization (1970)

 

 

No 14Business Success Quotes

Customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and cash flow.

- Jack Welch (General Electric’s boss 1981-2001, pictured right) on the three most important measures of company performance.

 

 

No 15Business Success Quotes

YCDBSOYA: 'You can't do business sitting on your arse [or ass]'

- Jack Cohen (1898-1979), pictured right, founder of the British supermarket, Tesco

 

 

No 16Business Success Quotes

Business is giving people in their lifetime what they need and what they want.

- Richard Branson (1950-), founder of the British company, Virgin, pictured right.

 

 

No 17Business Success Quotes

Individuals, not organizations, create excellence

- Craig Hickman (pictured right) and Michael Silva, Creating Excellence (1985)

 

 

No 18Business Success Quotes

There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

(Brutus in Julius Caesar).

- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English playwright, pictured right

 

 

No 19Business Success Quotes

The growth of a large business is merely a survival of the fittest.

- John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American businessman, pictured right.

 

 

No 20Business Success Quotes

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.

- Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, pictured right.

 

 

No 21Business Success Quotes

Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.

- Henry Ford (1863–1947) American car manufacturer, pictured right.

 

 

No 22Business Success Quotes

It's a pretty hairy existence, and nobody has it made. The minute you do, you don't.

- Katherine Graham (1907-2001), publisher of the Washington Post (pictured right). 

 

 

No 23Business Success Quotes

We are genuinely customer centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented, and we genuinely like to invent.

- Jeff Bezos (1964-), American founder of Amazon (pictured right).

 

 

Business Success Quotes

No 24

Perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.

- George Washington (1732-99), American president (pictured right).

 Business Success Quotes

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), the French leader (pictured right), agrees:

Victory belongs to the most persevering,

 

 

No 25Business Success Quotes

To remain static is to lose ground.

- David Packard (1912-96), American co-founder of Hewlett-Packard (HP), pictured right.

 

 

No 26Business Success Quotes

Your spirit is the most powerful thing of all.

Herb Kelleher (1931-), American boss of Southwest Airlines 1982-2001 (pictured right).

 

 

No 27Business Success Quotes

Every business is built on friendship.

- J.C. Penney (1875-1971), American co-founder of J. C. Penney department stores (pictured right).

 

 

No 28Business Success Quotes

Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else.

- Sam Walton (1918-1992), American founder Wal-Mart,the world’s biggest retailer(pictured right).

 

 

No 29Business Success Quotes

It is harder to keep a business great than it is to build it.

- Thomas Watson Sr.(1874–1956), chairman of IBM 1914–52, pictured right.

 

 

No 30Business Success Quotes

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

 - Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher and politician (pictured right).

 

 

No 31Business Success Quotes

The beginnings of all things are small.

- Cicero (106-43 BC), Roman philosopher and politician(pictured right).

 

 

No 32Business Success Quotes

Whatever you do, do with all your might.

- Cicero (106-43 BC), Roman philosopher and politician (pictured right).

 

 

No 33Business Success Quotes

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

- Lao Tzu (c604-c531 BC), Chinese philosopher(pictured right).

 

 

No 34Business Success Quotes

Take calculated risks. Act boldly and thoughtfully. Be an agile company,

- Ray Kroc (1902-84), founder of McDonald's (pictured right)

 

 

No 35Business Success Quotes

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.

(Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged)

- Ayn Rand (1905-1982), Russian-born American writer, pictured right  

 

 

No 36Business Success Quotes

To be built to last you must be built to change 

- Jim Collins ,pictured right (from the preface, 2004 edition of Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last).

 

 

No 37Business Success Quotes

Trust - or the lack of it - is at the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business.

- Stephen Covey (pictured right) in Principle-Centred Leadership (1992)

 

 

No 38Business Success Quotes

Managing a business always comes back to the human element – no matter how sound the business economics, how careful the analysis, how good the tools.

-Peter Drucker (pictured right) in The Practice of Management (1954)

 

 

No 39Business Success Quotes

There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.

- Henry Ford (1863-1947), American car maker (pictured right) - in  My Life and Work ,1922)

 

 

No 40Business Success Quotes

Successful businesses are created by excitement and inspiration, innovation and ideas.

Lynda Gratton (pictured right) in Living Strategy (2000)

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