The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.
Peter Drucker
Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun
Don Marquis
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
Laurence J. Peter
The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.
Confucius
Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.
Robert H. Schuller
We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
Napoleon Hill
Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.
Peter Drucker
Business is a combination of war and sport.
Andre Maurois
The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis
The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead even more than teamwork.
Igor Sikorsky
Do more than is required. What is the distance between someone who achieves their goals consistently and those who spend their lives and careers merely following? The extra mile.
Gary Ryan Blair
If you don’t drive your business, you will be driven out of business.
B. C. Forbes
Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
Paul Tournier
When times are bad is when the real entrepreneurs emerge.
Robert Kiyosaki
A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
Jeff Bezos
A company is only as good as the people it keeps.
Mary Kay Ash
We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.
Peter Drucker
Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
Theodore Isaac Rubin
Our work is the presentation of our capabilities.
Edward Gibbon
Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body – the producers and consumers themselves.
Herbert Hoover
Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
W. Edwards Deming
Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.
Howard Aiken
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.
W. Clement Stone
Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities.
Walter Scott
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.
Peter Drucker
The great leaders are like the best conductors – they reach beyond the notes to reach the magic in the players.
Blaine Lee
A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.
Stephen Covey
If you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work.
Khalil Gibran
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
Charles Baudelaire
No employer today is independent of those about him. He cannot succeed alone, no matter how great his ability or capital. Business today is more than ever a question of cooperation.
Orison Swett Marden
Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
Peter Drucker
Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Steve Jobs
When you are in any contest, you should work as if there were – to the very last minute – a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
If there is anything that a man can do well, I say let him do it. Give him a chance.
Abraham Lincoln
Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.
Peter Drucker
Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I’m not there, I go to work.
Robert Orben
All lasting business is built on friendship.
Alfred A. Montapert
If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.
Jane Fonda
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you’re playing by somebody else’s rules, while quietly playing by your own.
Michael Korda
Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.’ Never forget this message when working with people.
Mary Kay Ash
Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.
Peter Drucker
Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight.
Henry R. Luce
Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn’t always have to be their top priority.
William Arthur Ward
Everyone is your best friend when you are successful. Make sure that the people that you surround yourself with are also the people that you are not afraid of failing with.
Paula Abdul
I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.
Henry David Thoreau
I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for – getting paid for doing what you love.
Tiger Woods
Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed.
Peter Drucker
Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.
Winston Churchill
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
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives’ decisions matter. This is a dangerous mistake.
Peter Drucker
The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
Henry Ford
In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later.
Harold S. Geneen
The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
Napoleon Hill
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
Peter Drucker
Don’t let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn’t go with it.
Colin Powell
If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.
Robert H. Schuller
Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.
An Wang
Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
Henry Ford
Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.
Thomas J. Watson
The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.
Andre Maurois
Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information.
Peter Drucker
The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
Walter Lippmann
The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
Edgar Fiedler
There was a point in the late ’90s where all the graduating M.B.A.’s wanted to start companies in Silicon Valley, and for the most part they were not actually qualified to do it.
Marc Andreessen
People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.
Peter Drucker
Your mission is to find a product or service that can positively impact the lives of 1 billion people because that’s the game we’re playing today.
Peter Diamandis
You can’t operate a company by fear, because the way to eliminate fear is to avoid criticism. And the way to avoid criticism is to do nothing.
Steve Ross
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 Gates
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. As a peacemaker the lawyer has superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
Abraham Lincoln
Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. Their needs and wants impact every aspect of your business, from product development to content marketing to sales to customer service.
John Rampton
To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.
Thomas J. Watson
The most efficient way to produce anything is to bring together under one management as many as possible of the activities needed to turn out the product.
Peter Drucker
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
Warren Buffett
I never trust an executive who tends to pass the buck. Nor would I want to deal with him as a customer or a supplier.
James Cash Penney
Business, that’s easily defined – it’s other people’s money.
Peter Drucker
A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.
John D. Rockefeller
A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.
Michael LeBoeuf
Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.
Peter Drucker
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
Helen Keller
The business of business is relationships; the business of life is human connection.
Robin S. Sharma
I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone of business.
Harvey S. Firestone
Everybody’s business is nobody’s business, and nobody’s business is my business.
Clara Barton
When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.
Jocko Willink
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
Steve Jobs
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.
Warren Buffett
Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.
Peter Drucker
I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.
Mark Zuckerberg
I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence I can reach for; perfection is God’s business.
Michael J. Fox
Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it’s integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards.
Kerry Stokes
The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.
Simon Sinek
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
Warren Buffett
Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.
Steve Jobs
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
Peter Drucker
Emotions have no place in business, unless you do business with them.
Friedrich Durrenmatt
The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than of fears to win in this business.
Rutherford B. Hayes
The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you.
Charles Dickens
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
Peter Drucker