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Ben Franklin Popularized the Use of Quotes in his "Poor Richards Almanac"
Business Quotes

Over 300 business quotes and motivational thoughts organized under 44 categories. Use for business presentations or just plain business inspiration. Contributions welcome. Also features business related quotes from Ben Franklin who popularized short one-liners in the 1750's within his publication Poor Richard's Almanac. Visit Smallbusinesshumor.com for funny business quotes.


Accounting

It has been my experience that competency in mathematics, both in numerical manipulations and in understanding its conceptual foundations, enhances a person's ability to handle the more ambiguous and qualitative relationships that dominate our day-to-day financial decision-making.
Alan Greenspan

Now, we are seeing many of these same companies face the truth about their financial standing. Congress is faced with the challenge of reforming our accounting industry and holding corporate executives responsible for their actions.
Bennie Thompson

Unfortunately, WorldCom is not the only company caught up in this kind of accounting scandal. The impact this will have on the general public is yet to be seen.
Bennie Thompson

I have no use for bodyguards, but I have very specific use for two highly trained certified public accountants.
Elvis Presley

In the business world, allegations of accounting irregularities is tantamount to yelling fire in a crowded theater, except, today, in our Internet world, instead of people running for the exit signs, they just push the button on their computer.
Jeffrey Skilling

Many firms seem to have the potential for success, yet because of poor financial management, they fail. An accountant is the one member of your professional team who can best help keep your finances in order. In fact, many consider finding a good accountant the most vital ingredient for success.
Peter J. Patsula, GB89 "Finding a Good Accountant, Banker, Insurance Agent & Lawyer"

Mention the word accounting, and otherwise competent business men and women suddenly grit their teeth, furrow their foreheads, and start uncontrollably pulling out chunks of their own hair. Why is this? How can a craft, which is nothing more than a tool to keep track of the inflow and outflow of cash, be thought of with such contempt and fear? The mystery becomes even more puzzling once you realize that ACCOUNTING is essentially the discipline of counting money. And since most people start a business to make money, it seems rather silly they shouldn't enjoy counting it.
Peter J. Patsula, GB28 "Adopting an Easy-to-Use Accounting System"

Your accountant is your best friend when it comes time to doing your taxes. However, although they are essential to a good tax strategy, keep in mind that they aren't as specifically motivated as you are to save your money.
Peter J. Patsula, GB86 "Reducing Your Taxes"

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It's done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.
Richard Branson

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.
Thomas Sowell

The reaction of weak management to weak operations is often weak accounting.
Warren Buffet

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Advertising

Advertising in the final analysis should be news. If it is not news it is worthless.
Adolph S. Ochs

The best ad is a good product.
Alan H. Meyer

Advertising is of the very essence of democracy. An election goes on every minute of the business day across the counters of hundreds of thousands of stores and shops where the customers state their preferences and determine which manufacturer and which product shall be the leader today, and which shall lead tomorrow.
Bruce Barton, Chairman of BBDO

Advertising is the life of trade.
Calvin Coolidge

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.
David Ogilvy

You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising budget is big enough.
Ed Rollins

Advertising is the principal reason why the business man has come to inherit the earth.
James Randolph Adams

Advertising is the art and sole of capitalism. It captures a moment of time through the lens of commerce, reflecting and affecting our lives, making us laugh and cry, while simultaneously giving traction to the engine that propels this free market economy forward into the future.
Jef I. Richards, Advertising Professor

Advertising is the 'wonder' in Wonder Bread.
Jef I. Richards, Advertising Professor

Advertising is "the lubricant for the free-enterprise system."
Leo-Arthur Kelmenson

I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death.
Leo Burnett

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.
Marshall McLuhan, Canadian Social Scientist

Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.
Marshall McLuhan, Canadian Social Scientist

Advertising - a judicious mixture of flattery and threats.
Northrop Frye

Don't bore your reader. You can't bore people into buying your products or services. If your ad is boring than it probably means, your company and your products are also boring.
Peter J. Patsula, GB57 "Writing & Editing Like a Pro"

The word "you" is the most important word in the English language, as far as writing advertising copy is concerned. People respond to this word because they like talking about themselves and being talked about in a positive manner.
Peter J. Patsula, GB59 "Using Words that Sell"

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
Samuel Johnson

Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their products as they do advertising and they wouldn't have to advertise it.
Will Rogers

Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.
William Bernbach

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Ambition

Achievement results from work realizing ambition.
Adam Ant

Ambition can creep as well as soar.
Edmund Burke

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
Elvis Presley

Everyone is ambition. The question is whether he is ambitious to be or to do.
Jean Monnet

The man who starts out simply with the idea of getting rich won't succeed, you must have a larger ambition.
John D. Rockefeller

Act like you expect to get into the end zone.
Joe Paterno

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.
Kenneth Kaunda

Aerodynamically, the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway.
Mary Kay Ash (1915-2001) U.S. Business Executive

Without purpose ... goals, ambitions, and dreams aren't worth the paper they're written on. Without direction, a business plan, no matter how carefully written, is simply a bunch of words ruining a perfectly good blank sheet of paper.
Peter J. Patsula, Author of Successful Business Planning in 30 Days

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Branding

A branding program should be designed to differentiate your cow from all the other cattle on the range. Even if all the cattle on the range look pretty much alike.
Al Ries

Customers want brands that are narrow in scope and distinguishable by a single word, the shorter the better.
Al Ries

For a branding strategy to be successful, there must be a vision, a
top-down commitment and a long-term financial investment to start,
and keep, the effort alive.
David Gordon, Channel Marketing Group

My name is my brand.
Jason Hartman, Brandofchoice.com

Money and power are not your true rewards. Your name, your principles,
your impeccable standards, your virtuous conduct, and remains an
influence with others long after you are gone.
Jason Hartman, Brandofchoice.com

It is important to distinguish between corporate identity, brand identity, and brand image: 1) Corporate identity is concerned with the visual aspects of a company's presence. 2) Brand identity is the total proposition that a company makes to consumers - the promise it makes. 3) Brand image, on the other hand, is the totality of consumer perceptions about the brand, or how they see it, which may not coincide with the brand identity.
Paul Temporal, Brandingasia.com

Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
Peter Drucker

1. Brand is mission.
2. Brand is marketing.
3. Brand is business.
Peter J. Patsula and Michael Pucci (after a long branding debate)

Real branding is personal.
Real branding is integrity.
Real branding is why I/you/we[all] get out of bed in the morning.
Tom Peters

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Buying/Selling

Business is not financial science, it's about trading.. buying and selling. It's about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it.
Anita Roddick

The Internet will help achieve "friction free capitalism" by putting buyer and seller in direct contact and providing more information to both about each other.
Bill Gates

I am convinced that most companies don't maximize their barter possibilities. Instead of aggressively reducing costs by trading their services with those of their suppliers, they seem content to pay top dollar for everything.
Mark H. McCormack, Author of What They Still Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School

In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative original thinker unless you can also sell what you create. Management cannot be expected to recognize a good idea unless it is presented to them by a good salesman.
David M. Ogilvy

I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for
people to buy.
F. W. Woolworth

There are more fools among buyers than among sellers.
French Proverb

A man trying to sell a blind horse always praises its feet.
German Proverb

The buyer needs a hundred eyes; the seller but one.
Italian Proverb

Always plan what you are going to sell to your customers next. Never send a package to a customer without including an order form for reorders and sales literature on other products you think they might need.
Peter J. Patsula, GB72 "Fostering Repeat Business"

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Capitalism

Today we have a temporary aberration called “industrial capitalism” which is inadvertently liquidating its two most important sources of capital.. the natural world and properly functioning societies. No sensible capitalist would do that.
Amory Lovins

For all of its faults (capitalism), it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few. Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy.
Bill O'Reilly

The chief business of the American people is business.
Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933), Speech in Washington, 1925

If we are not careful, capitalism will self-destruct. We will destroy it as the companies have no conscience and do not really compete. They are so big they can't go broke, so they simply acquire everything.
Dick Smith

Personally I think social entrepreneurism is fantastic, I feel all this movement is great. However I think that ultimately capitalism will have to evolve, and with it there will be changes in reporting requirements which will pull different kinds of corporate decisions.
Jessica Margolin

As more and more people wake up to the fact that further growth does not necessarily bring improvements in quality of life (and often exactly the opposite), sustainability is going to become one of the key characteristics with which places want to be associated.
Jonathon Porritt

Sustainable development is the thinking man's user-friendly capitalism.
Unknown

The inherent vice of capitalism is the uneven division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal division of misery.
Winston Churchill

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Commitment

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.
Bill Gates

I quickly learned that if I kept at it and plowed right through the rejections I would eventually get somebody to buy my wares.
Charles R. Schwab, Founder of the Charles Schwab Corporation

The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
Ferdinand Foch

My first six years in the business were hopeless. There are a lot of times when you sit and you say "Why am I doing this? I'll never make it. It's just not going to happen. I should go out and get a real job, and try to survive.
George Lucas, American Film Producer

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German Novelist and Philosopher

There are only two options regarding commitment. You're either in or out. There's no such thing as a life in-between.
Pat Riley

We’ve had some tough times, but we’ve hung in there.
Paul Allen, Co-Founder of Microsoft Corporation with Bill Gates

I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it’s not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.
Philip Green, Billionaire Entrepreneur

Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community
Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart

You have to have your heart in the business and the business
in your heart.
Thomas J. Watson

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.
Vincent Lombardi

The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
Vincent Lombardi

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Companies

There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment - and you start to decline.
Andy Grove

Most of today's market leaders are those companies who had the foresight to recognize the changing landscape in today's modern business world. The new business 'battle ground' has been very cruel to those companies that have fallen behind the information curve.
Futurevisionweb.com

Every company has two organizational structures: The formal one is written on the charts; the other is the everyday relationship of the men and women in the organization.
Harold S. Geneen, American Businessman

While the hype surrounding Web services may soon reach proportions comparable to the bygone portal era, many companies are betting that Web services will deliver.
Mark W. Vigoroso, E-Commerce Times, Dec. 2002

Being BIG is no good if your foundation is weak. A giant with skinny legs is an invitation to be tripped.
Peter J. Patsula, GB38 "Weighing the Pros & Cons of Expansion"

Companies succeed because they are . . . value driven. Excellent companies believe that the basic philosophy of an organization has far more to do with its achievements than do technological or economic resources as well as organizational structures and innovation. In other words, companies succeed if its members share a common vision of their future, feel they are important part of the whole, and look out for each other.
Peter J. Patsula, GB1 "Learning Why Companies Succeed and Why They Fail"

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every three weeks.
William Lyon Phelps (1865-1943) Journalist and Professor

In a start-up company, you basically throw out all assumptions every
three weeks.
Scott Mcnealy

Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
Ted Levitt

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Competition

Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best
man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm.
C. Wright Mills

Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people.
David Sarnoff

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
Henry Ford

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.”
Herbert Hoover (1874-1964) American President

If you're not making mistakes, you're not taking risks, and that means you're not going anywhere. The key is to make mistakes faster than the competition, so you have more changes to learn and win.
John W. Holt

Goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell
or destroy.
Marshall Field

Every business has competition. Even the American Football League has to compete with basketball, hockey and other forms of entertainment. Every business also wants to beat the competition, steal its market share or perhaps even drive it into bankruptcy. But when starting out, realize that competition isn't necessarily a bad thing. It shows there's already some demand for the goods or services you intend to offer. In fact, no competition is usually something that should be treated with caution not jubilation.
Peter J. Patsula, GB47 "Spying on the Competition"

Take a good look at competitors who are superior due to better service, quality, promotion, location, pricing strategies, displays, packaging, and market timing. Also look at additional benefits competitors offer con-sumers specific to your industry. Pay attention to that nebulous, some-times indefinable ingredient called “brand image.” In short, learn every-thing you can. In business, what you don’t know can hurt you.
Peter J. Patsula, Author of Successful Business Planning in 30 Days

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of
his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.
Walter Wriston

In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running; if
you stand still, they will swallow you.
William Knudsen

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Customers

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates

Never say no when a client asks for something -- even if it is
the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time
afterward to explain that it was not possible.
Caesar Ritz

The question is, then, do we try to make things easy on ourselves
or do we try to make things easy on our customers, whoever they
may be?
Erwin Fran

If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper.
Frederic Bastiat

In the United States, you say the customer is always right. In Japan, we say the customer is God. There is a big difference.
Japanese Businessman

Always do what you say you are going to do. It is the glue and fiber
that binds successful relationships.
Jeffry A Timmons

Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.
Jimmy Stewart

We've believed for 50 years that the Japanese are small Americans who
wanted to be like us. They are not.
Lester Thurow, Economist

Above all, we wish to avoid having a dissatisfied customer.
We consider our customers a part of our organization, and we want
them to feel free to make any criticism they see fit in regard
to our merchandise or service. Sell practical, tested merchandise
at reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings --
and they will always come back.
L. L. Bean

We should never be allowed to forget that it is the customer who,
in the end, determines how many people are employed and what sort
of wages companies can afford.
Lord Robens, National Coal Board

Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, 'Make me feel important.' Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life.
Mary Kay Ash (1915-2001) U.S. Business Executive

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find
out what the customer needs you have to understand what the
customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build
what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.
Nicholas Dewolf

When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on
to grow so that you can skin them again.
Nikita Krushchev

A courteous, creative initial contact with the customer can go a long way to promote sales. If a customer has to wait for you say, "I'll be with you in a moment." Such actions will reduce the number of customers who leave without being served. When your are free to help the waiting customer, your initial comment should be, "Thank you for waiting."
Peter J. Patsula, GB6 "Sharpening Selling & Negotiating Skills"

Customers can be a great and inexpensive source of information. They can tell you facts, not only about your business, but about your competitors as well. They can also tell you much about their buying habits and help you detect trends. Make it a habit of asking them what they like, need, and read. Jot down their requests and suggestions for new products and services. Keep a notebook near the cash register.
Peter J. Patsula, GB42 "Starting & Operating a Retailing Business"

If you work just for money, you'll never make it, but if you love what you're doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.
Ray Kroc

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody
in the company, from the chairman on down, simply by spending
his money somewhere else.
Sam Walton

Letting your customers set your standards is a dangerous game, because the race to the bottom is pretty easy to win. Setting your own standards--and living up to them--is a better way to profit. Not to mention a better way to make your day worth all the effort you put into it.
Seth Godin

The absolute fundamental aim is to make money out of satisfying
customers.
Sir John Egan

A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.
Steve Jobs

Rule 1: The customer is always right.
Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, reread Rule 1.
Stew Leonard

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.
Theodore Leavitt

Give the public everything you can give them, keep the place as clean as you can keep it, keep it friendly.
Walt Disney

Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.
Zig Ziglar

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Decisions

A man who cannot make mistakes cannot do anything.
Bernard's Bingo Magazine

I found every single successful person I've ever spoken to had a turning point. The turning point was when they made a clear, specific unequivocal decision that they were going to achieve success. Some people make that decision at 15 and some people make it at 50, and most people never make it at all.
Brian Tracey

Each indecision brings its own delays and days are lost lamenting over lost days...
Goethe

Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.
H. L. Hunt

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.
Peter Drucker

Wherever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.
Peter Drucker

Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.
Peter Marshall

You can't build a strong corporation with a lot of committees and a Board that has to be consulted every turn. You have to be able to make decisions on your own.
Rupert Murdoch

Decisions are a way of defining ourselves. There comes a time in life when there is nothing else to do but go your own way. Where you are headed there are no trails, no paths, just your own instincts.
Sergio Bambaren

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Unknown

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Determination

It's the constant and determined effort that breaks down all resistance and sweeps away all obstacles.
Claude M. Bristol

I studied the lives of great men and famous women, and I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.
Harry Truman

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
Henry Ward Beecher

Rise early, work hard, strike oil.
J. Paul Getty

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.
Peter Marshall

Perserverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.
Walter Elliott

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Dreams

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery, French Author

Nothing happens unless first a dream.
Carl Sandburg

Remember, happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.
Dale Carnegie

Dreams come true if you survive the hard times!
George William Curtis

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot.
I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London, American Author

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift

Dreams do not vanish, so long as people do not abandon them.
Phantom F. Harlock

Some people dream of success... while others wake up and work hard at it.
Unknown

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.
William A. Ward

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Economy

The message from Wal-Mart today to the rest of the business community is there need not be any conflict between the environment and the economy. We will find the way not only to reconcile (those), but to find new profits and new opportunities as we do the right thing.
Al Gore

In the new economy, information, education, and motivation are everything.
Bill Clinton

We have to shift our emphasis from economic efficiency and materialism towards a sustainable quality of life and to healing of our society, of our people and our ecological systems.
Janet Holmes a Court

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Milton Friedman

Poverty has been created by the economic and social system that we have designed for the world. It is the institutions that we have built and feel so proud of, which created poverty them.
Muhammad Yunus

If we are going to carry on growing, and we will, because no country is going to forfeit its right to economic growth, we have to find a way of doing it sustainably.
Tony Blair

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Entrepreneurs

Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.
Anita Roddick

The entrepreneur is our visionary, the creator in each of us. We're born with that quality and it defines our lives as we respond to what we see, hear, feel, and experience. It is developed, nurtured, and given space to flourish or is squelched, thwarted, without air or stimulation, and dies.
Michael Gerber

Working for someone else is nothing like being an entrepreneur and
the boss of your own business. To become an entrepreneur requires
a different plan or map. You’ll be taking a different road, to a different
destination.
Noel Peebles, Author of Sell Your Business The Easy Way

Entrepreneurs must learn to be like bloodhounds. Except instead of sniffing out escaped convicts, lost children, or perhaps drugs in the handbag of a little old lady from Pasadena, they must learn how to sniff out the unmet needs of the people they wish to serve. To win new customers, ask the golden question: "What's the unmet want and how can we meet this unmet want before anybody else does?"
Peter J. Patsula, GB73 "Creating New Market Opportunities"

I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn't really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.
Richard Branson

The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and actualizer... He can visualize something, and when he visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.
Robert L. Schwartz

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Ethics

Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others; it is the only means.
Albert Einstein

Conducting your business in a socially responsible way is good
business. It means that you can attract better employees and that
customers will know what you stand for and like you for it."
Anthony Burns

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.
BC Forbes

Seven deadly sins: politics without principle; wealth without work; pleasure without conscience; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.
E. Stanley Jones

If something is wrong outside the realm of business, then it's wrong inside the realm of business.
Ken Iverson, Author of Plain Talk

Good actions ennoble us, we are the sons of our own deeds.
Miguel de Cervantes

A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not.
Oprah Winfrey

Show class, have pride, and display character.
Paul Bryant

We must intertwine business and ethics in a very fundamental way.
Robert Bruner, Author of The Portable MBA

There are no second chances for those who violate the ethical code.
Robert Slater, Author of Jack Welch and the GE Way

It has become dramatically clear that the foundation of corporate integrity is personal integrity.
Sam DiPiazza
, CEO of PriceswaterhouseCoopers

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
William James

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Failure

May you live in interesting times.
Chinese Curse

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.
Dale Carnegie

Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
Dale Carnegie

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.
Elbert Hubbard

When I was a young man I observed than nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn’t want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work
George Bernard Shaw

Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.
Henry Ford

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.
Laurence J. Peter

Don't be afraid of failure; be afraid of petty success.
Maude Adams

More can be learned from what works than from what fails.
Rene Dubois

Remember the two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach.
Roger Von Oech

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

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Finance

Business is not financial science, it's about trading.. buying and selling. It's about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it.
Anita Roddick

Yet in buying goods it is best to pay ready money, because he that sells upon credit expects to lose five per cent, by bad debts; therefore he charges on all he sells upon credit an advance that shall make up that deficiency.
Benjamin Franklin

Before you can really start setting financial goals, you need to determine where you stand financially.
David Bach

Usually with things, you go where you can find the financing to do it.”
Don Bluth

Happiness is a positive cash flow.
Fred Adler, Venture Capitalist

He that hath lost his credit is dead to the world.
George Herbert, 17th Century

Literature was formerly an art and finance a trade; today it is the reverse.
Joseph Roux

A banker: the person who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it rains.
Mark Twain

Revenue is vanity....margin is sanity....cash is king.
Unknown

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Goals

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.
Abraham Lincoln

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.
Aristotle

Make your life a mission-not an intermission.
Arnold H. Glasgow

If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else.
David Campbell

The secret to productive goal setting is in establishing clearly defined goals, writing them down and then focusing on them several times a day with words, pictures and emotions as if we've already achieved them.
Denis Waitle

All you have to do is know where you're going.
Earl Nightingale

Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.
Elbert Hubbard

Developing the plan is actually laying out the sequence of events that have to occur for you to achieve your goal.
George L. Morrisey

There is no top. There are always further heights to reach.
Jascha Heifetz

The true worth of a man is to be measured by the objects he pursues.
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

A goal is a dream with a deadline.
Napoleon Hill

All successful people have a goal. No one can get anywhere unless he knows where he wants to go and what he wants to be or do.
Norman Vincent Peale

All who have accomplished great things have had a great aim, have fixed their gaze on a goal which was high, one which sometimes seemed impossible.
Orison Swett Marden

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.
Louis Pasteur

Business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.
Peter F. Drucker

Your long-term goals should be realistic, challenging, and attainable statements of where you want your company to be in three to five years following the direction outlined in your mission statement. Long-term goals function as starting and organizational points, to make it easier to process, prioritize, allocate resources, and coordinate related short-term goals and objectives.
Peter J. Patsula, Author of Successful Business Planning in 30 Days

A person who aims at nothing is sure to hit it.
Unknown

Four steps to achievement: Plan purposefully. Prepare prayerfully. Proceed positively. Pursue persistently.
William A. Ward

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Greatness

All great deeds and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning. Great works are often born on a street corner or in a restaurant's revolving door.
Albert Camus

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

The greatest power is often simple patience.
E. Joseph Cossman

Great work is done by people who are not afraid to be great.
Fernando Flores

We may affirm that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hege

Heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, they were toiling upward in the night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.
L. Motley

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson

Great lives are the culmination of great thoughts followed by great actions.
Peter Sinclair

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh

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Greed

The essence of good advertising is not to inspire hope, but to create greed.
Charles Adams

To do all the talking and not be willing to listen is a form of greed.
Democritus

Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.
Maurice Setter

It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.
Seneca

Do not hold grain waiting for higher prices when people are hungry.
Zoroaster

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Ideas

I am aware that success is more than a good idea. It is timing too.
Anita Roddick

The simple joy of taking an idea into one's own hands and giving it proper form, that's exciting.
George Nelson

Information is the seed for an idea, and only grows when it's watered.
Heinz V. Bergen

You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can dramatically increase your income, power, influence and success. The problem is, you just don't see them.
Jay Abraham

A single idea, if it is right, saves us the labor of an infinity of experiences.
Jacques Maritain

We live in an age in which superfluous ideas abound and essential ideas are lacking.
Joseph Joubert

We are governed not by armies and police, but by ideas.
Mona Caird

Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.
Nolan Bushnell

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.
Steve Jobs

The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible.
Yale Professor, Comment on Frederick W. Smith's Idea for FedEx Delivery Service

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Imagination

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein

Imagine.
Apple Slogan

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
Anatole France

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 M. Schwab, American Stockbroker

The soul never thinks without a mental picture.
Aristotle

There is nothing that cannot be achieved by firm imagination.
Japanese Proverb

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Innovation

We are always saying to ourself.. we have to innovate. We got to come up with that breakthrough. In fact, the way software works.. so long as you are using your existing software.. you don't pay us anything at all. So we're only paid for breakthroughs.
Bill Gates

Everything can be improved.
C. W. Barron

The winner is the chef who takes the same ingredients as everyone else and produces the best results.
Edward de Bono

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George Patton

When you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.
Larry Ellison

The only purpose of a business is to bring in a customer; and there are
really only two ways to do it - through marketing or innovation.
Noel Peebles, Author of Sell Your Business The Easy Way

Necessity is the mother of invention.
Proverb

I invent nothing, I rediscover.
Rodin

If a man can .... make a better mousetrap, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
Steve Jobs, Apple

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
Thomas Carlyle

Champions are pioneers, and pioneers get shot at. The companies that
get the most from champions, therefore, are those that have rich
support network so their pioneers will flourish. This point is so
important it's hard to overstress. No support systems, no champions.
No champions, no innovations.
Tom Peters, Author of In Search of Excellence

They say a year in the Internet business is like a dog year.. equivalent to seven years in a regular person's life. In other words, it's evolving fast and faster.
Vinton Cerf

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Inspiration

A moments insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

What turns a mediocre mission statement into one that makes you misty eyed every time you think of it is not a well-thought-out company policy, goal, or target market, but rather a why that makes it all worthwhile, a little piece of magic that comes to you in the middle of the night—a seed for great inspiration.
Peter J. Patsula, Author of Successful Business Planning in 30 Days

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Accordingly a genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.
Thomas Edison

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Investing

When somebody buys a stock it's because they think it's going to go up and the person who sold it to them thinks it's going to go down. Somebody's wrong.
George Ross

When I'm bearish and I sell a stock, each sale must be at a lower level than the previous sale. When I am buying, the reverse is true. I must buy on a rising scale. I don’t buy long stocks on a scale down, I buy on a scale up.
Jesse Livermore

When buying shares, ask yourself, would you buy the whole company?
Rene Rivkin

I have a problem with too much money. I can't reinvest it fast enough, and because I reinvest it, more money comes in. Yes, the rich do get richer.
Robert Kiyosaki

No one was ever ruined by taking a profit.
Stock Exchange Maxim

Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years.
Warren Buffett

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Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few.
Cadillac Motor Company, Saturday Evening Post, January 2, 1915, "The Penalty of Leaderhip"

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Nobody motivates today's workers. If it doesn't come from within, it doesn't come. Fun helps remove the barriers that allow people to motivate themselves.
Herman Cain

A true measure of a leader's greatness is how big they make others feel. 
Jeff Korbman

Leadership happens at every level of the organization and no one can shirk from this responsibility. 
Jerry Junkins

The cynic says, "One man can't do anything".
John W. Gardner

In the past a leader was a boss. Today’s leaders must be partners with their people.. they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.
Ken Blanchard

The group will not prosper if the leader grabs the lion's share of the credit for the good work that has been done. 
Lao Tzu

The best vision is insight.
Malcolm S. Forbes

There is nothing more difficult...than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli

Effective leaders use charisma, not managerial manipulation, to get others to perform beyond expectations. They avoid acting like cops, referees, ivory tower decision-makers or indifferent analysts. They understand that leadership is often like show business - symbolic and dramatic - and that they must occasionally play the role of a cheerleader, coach, nurturer of heroes or coxswain in addition to their main role as a builder and facilitator.
Peter J. Patsula, GB5

The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A leader is someone who holds a vision and courageously implements that vision in such a way that it resonates with the souls of people. 
Richard Barrett, Author of Liberating the Corporate Soul 

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.
Theodore Hesburgh

Leaders aren't born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.
Vincent Lombardi

The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.
Woodrow Wilson

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Luck

I've found that luck is quite predictable.
Brian Tracy

A great fortune depends on luck, a small one on diligence.
Chinese Proverb

Chance favors only the prepared mind.
Louis Pasteur

Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.
Ray Kroc, Founder of MacDonald's

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit.
R. E. Shay

All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck - who keeps right on going - is the man who is there when the good luck comes - and is ready to receive it.
Robert Collier

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
Stephen Leacock

Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
William Shakespeare

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Management

The "Nine-Minute Rule" is based on research that shows that effective managers don't regularly block out large chunks of time for planning, organizing and other management related tasks. Rather, their time is fragmented, the average interval devoted to any one issue being nine minutes.
GB3 "Studying Time Management Skills" by Peter J. Patsula

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenity.
General George S. Patton

If you don't hire at least one or two people that are smarter than you are, then you're a terrible manager and I don't need you.
Nolan Bushnell (1943-) Entrepreneur

Management by objective works - if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.
Peter Drucker

Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.
Peter Drucker

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
Theodore Roosevelt

The person who figures out how to harness the collective genius of his or her organization is going to blow the competition away.
Walter Wriston

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Marketing

Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is make by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected.
George Soros

It's just called "The Bible" now - we dropped the word "Holy" to give it a more mass-market appeal.
Hodder & Stoughton, Publisher

We're obviously going to spend a lot in marketing because we think the product sells itself.
Jim Allchin

The image-managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.
John Garnder

No great marketing decisions have ever been made on quantitative data.
John Scully

A market is the combined behavior of thousands of people responding to information, misinformation and whim.
Kenneth Chang

People don’t believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.
Marketing Dictum

Positioning is the marketing tool that helps prospects and customers 
identify what's unique about your product, service or company. Use 
positioning to give your advertising purpose, to give it a message, and 
to give it the appropriate tone. Then and only then, are you on your 
way to developing a good advertising strategy.
Noel Peebles, Author of Sell Your Business The Easy Way 

Is the target market responsive? If you can't answer this question 'yes' without reasonable confidence, then the answer is 'no.' A market can only be considered responsive if the majority of people who make up that market, have in the recent past purchased a product or service similar to the one you are considering.
Peter J. Patsula, GB16 "Evaluating Business Opportunities"

Mass marketing is a little like firing a shotgun into a flock of geese and hoping to hit a few. Although having the potential to be extremely profitable, it is often ineffective in today's highly sophisticated and segmented markets, and what's even worse, can easily set you back a small fortune.
Peter J. Patsula, GB48 "Pinpointing Target Markets with Unmet Needs"

The social sciences have given marketing researchers the basics for understanding why people buy certain products and services as opposed to others. Psychologists and sociologists have probed motives, wants, perceptions, attitudes, how people learn and forget, and individual needs both learned and innate. However, most will agree that the key to understanding why people buy, and for that matter all human behavior, it to first understand what they believe in.
Peter J. Patsula, GB46 "Understanding Why People Buy"

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The point to remember about selling things is that, as well as creating atmosphere and excitement around your products, you've got to know what you're selling.
Stuart Wilde

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Unknown

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Motivation

Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Motivation is simple. You eliminate those who are not motivated.
Lou Holtz

Motivation is like food for the brain. You cannot get enough in one sitting. It needs continual and regular top up's.
Peter Davies

We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.
Peter F. Drucker

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.
Rita Mae Brown

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
Stephen R. Covey

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Negotiation

In business, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.
Chester L. Karrass

Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or
write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals.
That's how I get my kicks.
Donald Trump

My father said: "You must never try to make all the money that's in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won't have many deals.
J. Paul Getty

He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of a diplomat.
Robert Estabrook

The first principle of contract negotiation is don't remind them of what you did in the past; tell them what you're going to do in the future.
Stan Musial

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Opportunity

You've got to seize the opportunity if it is presented to you.
Clive Davis

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
Eric Hoffer

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.
Karl Marx

Each of my days are miracles. I won't waste my day; I won't throw away miracle.
Kelley Vicstrom

Always think outside the box and embrace opportunities that appear, wherever they might be.
Lakshmi Mittal

If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.
Milton Berle (1908-2002) Comedian and Actor

Be ready when opportunity comes...Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.
Roy D. Chapin Jr.

Men who are resolved to find a way for themselves will always find opportunities enough; and if they do not find them, they will make them.
Samuel Smiles

God gives every bird a worm, but he does not throw it into the nest.
Swedish Proberb

Don't wait for opportunity to come knocking on your door ... go out and give it directions.
Unknown

The sign on the door of opportunity reads PUSH.
Unknown

Partnership

A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.
John D. Rockefeller

Creating a close connection to those you do business with has its many risks, rewards and consequences. There are few things in business I have encountered that are more difficult than firing someone, particularly if that someone has always been, or has become a friend. On the flipside, I have been rewarded with many friends
Mark Cuban

The primary advantage of [a partnerhip] business formation is the pooling of talent, experience, and capital. However, dual or multiple ownership structures can lead to serious complications if the relationships between individuals break down. Quite often, the pool becomes a drain.
Peter J. Patsula, Author of Successful Business Planning in 30 Days

If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.
Winston Churchill

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Planning

When men speak of the future, the Gods laugh.
Chinese Proverb

It's not the plan that is important, it's the planning.
Dr. Graeme Edwards

If a man will begin with certainties he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
Goethe

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
Henry Ford

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
James Thurber

We always plan too much and always think too little.
Joseph Schumper

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

A business plan is primarily an organizing tool used to simplify and clarify business goals and strategies, which might otherwise appear complex and intimidating. However, a business plan is also a sales tool. If it cannot convince at least one other person of the value of your business idea, then either your idea is not worth pursing, or your plan needs major rewriting.
Peter J. Patsula, GB11 "Writing a Business Plan"

Having no plan is like sailing the seven seas without a compass, digging a ditch without a shovel, or hunting for pirate's treasure without an 'x' marks the spot. Without one, you're better off heading down to the horse races and betting on the 'Win Three.' A plan helps keep you on schedule, makes it easier to recognize success and failure, helps pump you up when things aren't going so well, and most importantly, provides an essential focus - a beacon of light in an ocean full of treachery. In fact, a plan not only acts as your road map for success (a metaphor that's been beaten to death), it is your vehicle for prosperity, or if you prefer, your own personal prescription for greatness.
Peter J. Patsula, GB9 "Supercharging Promising Projects with a Plan of Action"

Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression.
Sir John Harvey-Jones

The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.
Sun Tzu

Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal.
Unknown

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Products

Your business relies upon passion - your passion for your products and service. For it is your passion that will sustain you over the long haul.
Greg Arnett

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.
Henry Ford

Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.
Mark Cuban

No matter what your product is, you are ultimately in the education business. Your customers need to be constantly educated about the many advantages of doing business with you, trained to use your products more effectively, and taught how to make never-ending improvement in their lives.
Robert G Allen

The lifeblood of our business is that R&D spend. There's nothing that flows through a pipe or down a wire or anything else. We have to continuously create new innovation that lets people do something they didn't think they could do the day before.
Steve Ballmer

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Profit

The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.
Brian Tracy

Getting money is like digging with a needle; spending it is like
water soaking into sand.
Japanese Proverb

I do not believe maximizing profits for the investors is the only acceptable justification for all corporate actions. The investors are not the only people who matter. Corporations can exist for purposes other than simply maximizing profits.
John Mackey

I think one of the most misunderstood things about business in America is that people are either doing things for altruistic reasons or they are greedy and selfish, just after profit. That type of dichotomy portrays a false image of business ... the whole idea is to do both.
John Mackey

Going after a target market larger than your ability to serve, can lead to bankruptcy, not fortune—greed is no substitute for good planning. On the other hand, going after a target market too small to support your busi-ness is just plain silly. A target market must be big enough to earn a profit.
Peter J. Patsula, Author of Successful Business Planning in 30 Days

The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to
operate at a profit.
Samuel Gompers

Profit is an illusion, cashflow is fact.
Unknown

Rule number 1: Never lose money.
Rule number 2: Never forget rule no. 1.
Warren Buffett

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Quality

Quality begins on the inside... and then works its way out.
Bob Moawad

Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount of money, and on the best terms. Only the individuals and companies that provide absolutely excellent products and services at absolutely excellent prices will survive.
Brian Tracy

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.
Jonannes Brahms, Composer

I think it's very important that whatever you're trying to make or sell, or teach has to be basically good. A bad product and you know what? You won't be here in ten years.
Martha Stewart

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

A quality control system asks the following fundamental question: "What needs to be done to see that the product is done right the first time?" Poorly made products will cause you to lose customers in a hurry. In addition, when a product fails to perform adequately, orders are placed on hold, inventory starts piling up and returns start pouring. All this results in serious cash flow problems.
Peter J. Patsula, GB40 "Starting & Operating a Manufacturing Business"

Quality is everyone's responsibility.
W. Edwards Deming

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.
William A. Foster

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Risk

Every day, you'll have opportunities to take chances and to work outside your safety net. Sure, it's a lot easier to stay in your comfort zone.. in my case, business suits and real estate.. but sometimes you have to take risks. When the risks pay off, that's when you reap the biggest rewards.
Donald Trump

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller

We don't grow unless we take risks. Any successful company is riddled with failures.
James E. Burke

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Startups

To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe.
Anatole France

Behold the turtle, he makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.
Bruce Levin

I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.
Clint Eastwood

Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
David Starr Jordan

The winners in life think constantly in terms of I can, I will, and I am. Losers, on the other hand, concentrate their waking thoughts on what they should have or would have done, or what they can't do.
Dennis Waitley

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard

All glory comes from daring to begin.
Eugene F. Ware

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
Johann von Goethe

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.
John Henry Cardinal

A hard beginning maketh a good ending.
John Heywood

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Lao Tsu

Just Do It.
Nike

Just Redo It.
Peter J. Patsula

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.
Sydney Smith

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
Thomas h. Huxley

Make voyages! Attempt them... there's nothing else.
Tennessee Williams

Starting a business is like getting married. There is no good time and no bad time.
Unknown

You miss 100% of the shots your never take.
Wayne Gretzky

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers

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Success

A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.
Charles M. Schwab

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success.
Irving Berlin

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
Jim Carrey

Businesses are successful because someone makes the sacrifices
other are unwilling to.
Kijung Kim

What is it that you like doing? If you don't like it, get out of it, because you'll be lousy at it. You don't have to stay with a job for the rest of your life, because if you don't like it you'll never be successful in it.
Lee Iacocca

If, at first, you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment.
Los Angeles Times

To be a success in business, be daring, be first, be different.
Marchant

Successful entrepreneurs are able to make great discoveries . . . because they keep alive within themselves the curiosity and wonderment of a small child exploring the universe . . . for the first time.
Peter J. Patsula, GB1 "Discovering if You Have Entrepreneurial Talent"

True wealth is the harmonious coexistence of all there is, was and ever shall be. It is a combination of self-determination, self-expression, self-realization and complete unreserved love for humanity, life and the universe. It is also, unfortunately, a sucker's trap - its reality infinitely intangible, its possession as feasible as playing hopscotch on the shadows of Jupiter.
Peter J. Patsula, GB90 "Arming Yourself with "Kamikaze Survival Techniques"

Passion is the single most powerful competitive advantage an organization can claim in building its success. 
Richard Chang, Author of The Passion Plan at Work

Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.
Sam Ewing

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Taxes

In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.
Benjamin Franklin

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.
Denis Healey

Be at the pains of putting down every single item of expenditure whatsoever every day which could possibly be twisted into a professional expense and remember to lump in all the doubtfulls.
Hilaire Belloc

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.
John Maynard Keynes

There is no such thing as a good tax.
Winston Churchill

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Teamwork

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.
Andrew Carnegie

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success.
Babe Ruth

Today’s organizations thrive when they maximize what they know. Results depend on the collective talents and creativity of people.
Evangeline Caridas

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation. It is better be alone than in bad company.
George Washington

There is one rule for industrialists and that is: make the best quality goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
Henry Ford

Motivate them, train them, care about them, and make winners out of them... they'll treat the customers right. And if customers are treated right, they'll come back.
J. Marriott

People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. It doesn't make any difference whether the product is cars or cosmetics. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.
Mary Kay Ash (1915-2001) U.S. Business Executive

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best executive has the sense enough to pick good men, and the self-restraint enough to keep from meddling.
Theodore Roosevelt

Individual commitment to a group effort -- that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.
Vince Lombardi

Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale.
Vincent Lombardi

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Technology

A computer doesn't charge for overtime and doesn't get healthcare benefits.
Adam Smith

I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.
Bill Gates

The computer is no better than its programme.
Elting E. Morison

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
Mitch Ratliffe

Technology has spearheaded the home-based and home-office business back into the entrepreneurial consciousness. In fact, with advances in portable computers, cellular phones, modems, and Fax machines, this type of business is fast becoming the ONLY solution to escalating retail and office location costs.
Peter J. Patsula, GB13 "Exploring Top Businesses of the Future"

Software cannot replace greyware.
Unknown

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Benjamin Franklin

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.
B. Franklin

Diligence is the mother of good luck.
B. Franklin

Drive your business! Let not that drive thee.
B. Franklin

Do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
B. Franklin

Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.
B. Franklin

God helps them that help themselves.
B. Franklin

Industry pays debts, while despair increases them.
B. Franklin

Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee.
B. Franklin

Little strokes fell great oaks.
B. Franklin

The borrower is slave to the lender and the debtor to the creditor.
B. Franklin

The sleeping fox catches no poultry.
B. Franklin

There will be sleeping enough in the grave.
B. Franklin

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