My Favorite Business Quotes

Attitude determines outcome. - Jim McGraw, COO of Marion Laboratories 

Be the first, be the best, or be different. - Jacyln Easton 

Chance favors the prepared mind. - Louis Pasteur 

Elegance is for tailors. Don’t always believe in the numbers. There is always room for human judgment. - Albert Einstein 

Great ideas come into the world as gently as doves. - Albert Camus 

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, and the trouble is, I don’t know which half. - John Wanamaker 

I do not love the money. What I love is the making of it. - Philip Armour 

I guess we can make them, although we never have. - Benjamin Franklin Goodrich 

I never gamble. - J. P. Morgan 

A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing. - Charles Schwab 

If I could get $25,000, I would spend $24,000 on advertising, the remainder in making Coca-Cola. Then we would all be rich. - John Pemberton 

If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four sharpening the axe. - Abraham Lincoln 

The best way to really enter minds that hate complexity and confusion is to oversimplify your message. The lesson here is not to try to tell your entire story. Just focus on one powerful differentiating idea and drive it into the mind. That sudden hunch, that creative leap of the mind that “sees” in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. If there’s any trick to finding that simple set of words, it’s one of being ruthless about how you edit the story you want to tell. Anything that others could claim just as well as you can, eliminate. Anything that requires a complex analysis to prove, forget. Anything that doesn’t fit with your customers’ perceptions, avoid. - Jack Trout

If you’re going to lose money, lose it. But don’t let ‘em nose you out. - Gustavus Swift 

If you love an idea, that is good. If you have ideas as to how to work it out, that is better. - Henry Ford 

It’s a barrier to entry because you’re shooting at a moving target. - Bill George, CEO, Medtronics 

Name the greatest inventors. Accident. - Mark Twain 

Nothing, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo 

Perceived truth is more powerful than truth itself. - Michel Fortin 

Purchasers are made, not born. - Henry Ford

Success depends on how you react to unexpected opportunities. - Ross Perot

The ancestor to every action is a thought. - Ralph Waldo Emerson 

The march of improvement in any given field is always marked by periods of inactivity and then by sudden bursts of energy which revolutionize existing methods sometimes in a day. - George Eastman 

There was never a great character who did not sometimes smash the routine regulations and make new ones for himself. - Andrew Carnegie 

Think a lot. Say little. Write nothing. - J. P. Morgan 

If first an idea is not absurd, it has no hope for survival. - Albert Einstein 

To lead people, walk behind them. - Sun Tzu 

We study the methods of improving our business as we would a science. We imitate no one. - A. Montgomery Ward 

We took what was a luxury and made it into a necessity. Our only advantage was lack of precedent. - Henry Ford 

We want character to go with our goods. And 16 ounces is a Swift pound. - Louis Swift

What others could not or would not do we would attempt, and this was a rule of business which was strictly adhered to. - Andrew Carnegie 

What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality. - Gary Zukav 

You can’t get wet from the word “water”. - Alan Watts 

You can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it. - Albert Einstein