Business

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Business may refer to many differing activities, such as the activity of buying or selling in trade, a commercial firm or enterprise, one's personal affairs or concerns, one's regular occupation, employment, or profession, something acquiring attention, or a situation, matter or happening.

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  • The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds.
    • Russell Ackoff. Management f-laws: how organizations really work‎ (2007).
  • Nothing holds a company back – and the individuals working in it – more than a lack of interest in positive change. You cannot stand still: you either go backwards or forwards.
    • John Adair (b.1934), British author, writer on business leadership. 'Part Three: Managing for Innovation', Effective Innovation (2009), revised edition, p.131.
  • Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.
  • In civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness. And yet boldness is a child of ignorance and baseness, far inferior to other parts.
  • Come home to men's business and bosoms.
    • Francis Bacon, Essays (1625), Dedication of edition 9. To the Duke of Buckingham. Also in Ed. 1668.
  • However successful a man may be in his own business, if he turns from that and engages ill a business which he don't understand, he is like Samson when shorn of his locks his strength has departed, and he becomes like other men.
    • P. T. Barnum, 'Beware of Outside Operations', The Art of Money Getting (1880).
  • Many a man acquires a fortune by doing his business thoroughly, while his neighbour remains poor for life, because he only half does it. Ambition, energy, industry, perseverance, are indispensable requisites for success in business.
    • P. T. Barnum. 'Whatever You Do, Do With All Your Might', The Art of Money-Getting.
  • Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men.
    • The Bible, Old Testament. Proverbs xxii. 29.
  • Business has continued to be more interested in thinking, in general, than any other sector of society. The explanation for this is because there is a reality test. There is a bottom line. There are sales figures and profit figures. There are results.
    • Edward de Bono. 'Leadership and the need for creative thinking', 3 June 2010, an article of his on Management-Issues.com website.
  • In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end. Neither can mere growth of bulk or power be admitted as a worthy ambition. Nor can a man nobly mindful of his serious responsibilities to society view business as a game; since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven.
    • Louis Brandeis, "Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
  • Real success in business is to be found in achievements comparable rather with those of the artist or the scientist, of the inventor or statesman. And the joys sought in the profession of business must be like their joys and not the mere vulgar satisfaction which is experienced in the acquisition of money, in the exercise of power or in the frivolous pleasure of mere winning.
    • Louis Brandeis, "Business — The New Profession", La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 4, No. 47 (November 23, 1912), p. 7.
  • I think that people have the idea of an entrepreneur being the sort of stereotype person who treads all over everybody and bullies their way to the top. There certainly are people like that, and they have managed to get away with it, but they generally get their come-uppance in the end.
  • What I must understand is why someone will continue to get out of bed in the morning once they have all the money they could want. Do they love the business, or do they love the money?
    • Warren Buffett, 'The Warren Buffett You Don't Know', Business Week article, 5 July 1999.
  • The man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment of ends.
    • Andrew Carnegie, American Industrialist. 'The Road to Business Success', The Empire of Business (1913).
  • There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
  • Here's the rule for bargains: "Do other men, for they would do you." That's the true business precept.
    • Charles Dickens. Joanas Chuzzlewit, in Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter 11 (1843-44).
  • Business? It's quite simple: it's other people's money.
    • Alexandre Dumas (1824-1895), French dramatist. Giraud, in, La Question d'Argent, Act 2, sc. 7 (1857).
  • Business was his aversion; pleasure was his business.
  • Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. 'Experience', Essays, Second Series (1844).
  • We believe that there is one economic lesson which our twentieth century experience has demonstrated conclusively—that America can no more survive and grow without big business than it can survive and grow without small business…. the two are interdependent. You cannot strengthen one by weakening the other, and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the legs of a giant.
    • Benjamin Franklin Fairless, president of United States Steel Corporation, Congressional testimony (April 26, 1950); reported in Study of Monopoly Power, hearings before the Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 81st Congress, 2nd session, part 4A, "Steel" (1950), p. 466.
  • You can hardly have too much harmony in business. But you can go too far in picking men because they harmonize.
    • Henry Ford (1863-1947), American automobile industrialist. 'Democracy and industry', Chapter XVIII, My Life and Work (1922), written in collaboration with Samuel Crowther.
  • Some day the ethics of business will be universally recognized, and in that day business will be seen to be the oldest and most useful of all the professions.
    • Henry Ford. 'What we may expect', Chapter XIX, My Life and Work (1922), written in collaboration with Samuel Crowther
  • There is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
    • Milton Friedman. From, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits", an article in The New York Times Magazine, 13th September 1970.
  • In every age and clime we see,
    Two of a trade can ne'er agree.
    • John Gay, Fables (1727), Rat-Catcher and Cats, line 43.
  • What is the single most important thing for a company? ...Is it the building? Is it the stock? Is it the turnover? It’s the people, investment in people.
    • Ricky Dene Gervais, English comedian, actor. As spoken by his character, Brent, in the BBC series, The Office, Episode 2. The Office: The Scripts (Series 1), by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant (2002), p 62.
  • Business is other people's money.
  • All businesses operate below their true potential. That is unavoidable, given the fallibility of human beings.
    • Robert Heller, British management journalist and author. 'The Competitors', Chapter 10, The Decision makers (1989).
  • The more truth you can get into any business, the better. Let the other side know the defects of yours, let them know how you are to be satisfied, let there be as little to be found as possible (I should say nothing), and if your business be an honest one, it will be best tended in this way.
    • Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1875), English writer. Friends in Council (First Series), (1847), 'Truth', Chapter 1.
  • Pleasing ware is half sold.
  • It is probably true that business corrupts everything it touches. It corrupts politics, sports, literature, art, labor unions and so on. But business also corrupts and undermines monolithic totalitarianism. Capitalism is at its liberating best in a noncapitalist environment.
    • Eric Hoffer (1902–83), "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely,'" The New York Times Magazine, 25th April 1971, p. 50.
  • The Businessman is one who supplies something great and good to the world, and collects from the world for the goods.
    • Elbert Hubbard. 'George Peabody', Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen (1916).
  • We now say that the Science of Economics, or Business, is the chief concern of humanity. Business is intelligent, useful activity. The word "busy-ness" was coined during the time of Chaucer by certain soldier-aristocrats, men of the leisure class, who prided themselves upon the fact that they did no useful thing. Men of power proved their prowess by holding slaves, and these slaves did all the work. To be idle showed that one was not a slave. But this word "business," first flung in contempt, like Puritan, Methodist and Quaker, has now become a thing of which to be proud. Idleness is the disgrace, not busy-ness.
    • Elbert Hubbard. 'The American Philosophy', The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard (1916).
  • The duty of government is to leave commerce to its own capital and credit as well as all other branches of business, protecting all in their legal pursuits, granting exclusive privileges to none.
    • Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), United States president. Letter, 28 December 1841, to William B. Lewis, Jackson, Lewis Papers, New York Public Library.
  • A man's success in business today turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want.
  • In business everyone is out to grab, to fight, to win. Either you are the under or the over dog. It is up to you to be on top.
    • Alice Foote MacDougall (1867-1945), American businesswoman. The Autobiography of a Business Woman (1928), Chapter 3.
  • A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it.
  • Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear view mirror.
    • Dame Anita Roddick, British entrepreneur and businesswoman. From the Independent (UK) newspaper, 22nd August 1997.
  • You don't make money in buses, you save it. Find your revenue source and keep your costs under it and put your team together to make sure that happens.
    • John King, CEO of Premier Motor Service, a large Australian bus company, Australasian Bus and Coach magazine, October 2010, p. 41.
  • The merchant's function (or manufacturer's, for in the broad sense in which it is here used the word must be understood to include both) is to provide for the nation. It is no more his function to get profit for himself out of that provision than it is a clergyman's function to get his stipend.
    • John Ruskin (1819-1900), English writer, art critic and social thinker. 'The Roots of Honour,' Unto This Last (1862).
  • I'll give thrice so much land
    To any well-deserving friend;
    But in the way of bargain, mark ye me,
    I'll cavil on the ninth part of a hair.
  • Losses,
    That have of late so huddled on his back,
    Enow to press a royal merchant down
    And pluck commiseration of his state
    From brassy bosoms and rough hearts of flint.
  • In business affairs, it is the manner in which even small matters are transacted that often decides man for or against you.
  • No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.
    • Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694-1773), British statesman, man of letters. Letter, 7 August 1749, in The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to His Son (1774).
  • Despatch is the soul of business.
  • Of course, there's a different law for the rich and the poor: otherwise, who would go into business?
    • E. Ralph Stewart, reported in Christina Stead, House of all nations (1966) , p. xi.
  • Organizations are defined from the inside out: they are described by who reports to whom, by departments and processes and matrices and perks. A business, on the other hand, is defined from the outside in by markets, suppliers, customers, and competitors.
    • Thomas A. Stewart, American business writer, management consultant. 'Introduction to the Paperback Edition', Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations (1998).
  • There's two words to that bargain.
  • Omnia inconsulti impetus cœpta, initiis valida, spatio languescunt.
    • All inconsiderate enterprises are impetuous at first, but soon languish.
    • Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), III. 58.
  • Par negotiis neque supra.
    • Neither above nor below his business.
    • Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), VI. 39.
  • We all, according as our business prospers or fails, are elated or cast down.
  • I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.
  • Most of those who say so easily that this is our way out do not, I am convinced, understand that fundamental changes of attitude, new disciplines, revised legal structures, unaccustomed limitations on activity, are all necessary if we are to plan. This amounts, in fact, to the abandonment, finally, of laissez faire. It amounts, practically, to the abolition of "business".
    • Rexford Guy Tugwell, "The Principle of Planning and the Institution of Laissez Faire", paper presented at the 44th annual meeting of the American Economic Association; reported in The American Economic Review (March 1932), vol. 22, no. 1, supplement, p. 76.
  • I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.
    • Izaak Walton, (1593-1683), 'Epistle to the Reader', The Compleat Angler (1653-1655).
  • I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."
    • Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653-1655), Part I, Chapter II. Quoted.
  • Go, go to your business, I say, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.
    • William Wycherley (1640-1716), British dramatist. In, The Country Wife, Act II (1675).

[edit] Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 85-87.
  • Nation of shopkeepers.
    • Attributed to Samuel Adams, oration, said to have been delivered at Philadelphia State House (Aug. 1, 1776). Printed in Phil., reprinted for E. Johnson, 4 Ludgate Hill, London. (1776). According to W. V. Wells—Life of Adams: "No such American edition has ever been seen, but at least four copies are known of the London issue. A German translation of this oration was printed in 1778, perhaps at Berne; the place of publication is not given".
  • Talk of nothing but business, and dispatch that business quickly.
    • On a placard placed by Aldus on the door of his printing office. See Charles Dibdin, Introduction, Volume I, p. 436.
  • Business tomorrow.
    • Founded on the words of Archias of Thebes.
  • The soul's Rialto hath its merchandise,
    I barter curl for curl upon that mart.
  • Business dispatched is business well done, but business hurried is business ill done.
  • When we speak of the commerce with our colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.
  • In matters of commerce the fault of the Dutch
    Is offering too little and asking too much.
    The French are with equal advantage content—
    So we clap on Dutch bottoms just 20 per cent.
    • George Canning's dispatch to Sir Charles Bagot, Jan. 31, 1826. See Notes and Queries (Oct. 4, 1902), p. 270. Claimed for Marvell in London Morning Post (May 25, 1904). "In making of treaties the fault of the Dutch, / Is giving too little and asking too much."—Given as a verbatim copy of the dispatch.
  • Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee. Light gains make heavy purses. 'Tis good to be merry and wise.
    • George Chapman, Eastward Ho, Act I, scene 1. (Written by Chapman, Jonson and Marston).
  • You foolish man, you don't even know your own foolish business.
    • Lord Chesterfield to John Anstis, the Garter King of Arms. Attributed to him in Jesse's Memories of the Courts of the Stuarts—Nassau and Hanover.
  • This business will never hold water.
  • They (corporations) cannot commit treason, nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.
    • Edward Coke, Reports, Volume V. The Case of Sutton's Hospital, Campbell, Lives of the Lords Chancellors.
  • A business with an income at its heels.
  • Swear, fool, or starve; for the dilemma's even;
    A tradesman thou! and hope to go to heaven?
  • The greatest meliorator of the world is selfish, huckstering trade.
  • A manufacturing district * * * sends out, as it were, suckers into all its neighborhood.
    • Henry Hallam, View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Chapter IX.
  • Lord Stafford mines for coal and salt,
    The Duke of Norfolk deals in malt,
    The Douglas in red herrings.
  • They [corporations] feel neither shame, remorse, gratitude, nor goodwill.
  • Those that are above business.
  • The potter is at enmity with the potter.
  • Mr. Howel Walsh, in a corporation case tried at the Tralee assizes, observed that a corporation cannot blush. It was a body, it was true; had certainly a head—a new one every year—an annual acquisition of intelligence in every new lord mayor. Arms he supposed it had, and very long ones too, for it could reach at anything. Legs, of course, when it made such long strides. A throat to swallow the rights of the community, and a stomach to digest them. But who ever yet discovered, in the anatomy of any corporation, either bowels or a heart?
  • Quod medicorum est
    Promittunt medici, tractant fabrilia fabri.
    • Physicians attend to the business of physicians, and workmen handle the tools of workmen.
    • Horace, Epistles, II. 1. 115.
  • Sed tamen amoto quæramus seria ludo.
    • Setting raillery aside, let us attend to serious matters.
    • Horace, Satires, I. 1. 27.
  • Aliena negotia curo,
    Excussus propriis.
    • I attend to the business of other people, having lost my own.
    • Horace, Satires, II. 3. 19.
  • Whose merchants are princes.
    • Isaiah, XXIII. 8.
  • Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay.
  • The sign brings customers.
  • Business today consists in persuading crowds.
  • It is never the machines that are dead.
    It is only the mechanically-minded men that are dead.
  • Machinery is the subconscious mind of the world.
  • A man's success in business today turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want.
  • Consilia callida et audacia prima specie læta, tractatu dura, eventu tristia sunt.
    • Hasty and adventurous schemes are at first view flattering, in execution difficult, and in the issue disastrous.
    • Livy, Annales, XXXV. 32.
  • There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business.
  • As touching corporations, that they were invisible, immortal and that they had no soul, therefor no supœna lieth against them, because they have no conscience or soul.
    • Sir Roger Manwood, Chief Baron of the Exchequer (1592). See Dictionary of National Biography.
  • You silly old fool, you don't even know the alphabet of your own silly old business.
  • A blind bargain.
    • Merrie Tales of the Madmen of Gottam (1630). No. 13.
  • Curse on the man who business first designed,
    And by't enthralled a freeborn lover's mind!
  • Negotii sibi qui volet vim parare,
    Navem et mulierem, hæc duo comparato.
    Nam nullæ magis res duæ plus negotii
    Habent, forte si occeperis exornare.
    Neque unquam satis hæ duæ res ornantur,
    Neque eis ulla ornandi satis satietas est.
    • Who wishes to give himself an abundance of business let him equip these two things, a ship and a woman. For no two things involve more business, if you have begun to fit them out. Nor are these two things ever sufficiently adorned, nor is any excess of adornment enough for them.
    • Plautus, Pœnulus, I. 2. 1.
  • Non enim potest quæstus consistere, si eum sumptus superat.
    • There can be no profit, if the outlay exceeds it.
    • Plautus, Pœnulus, I. 2. 74.
  • Nam mala emptio semper ingrata est, eo naxime, quod exprobrare stultitiam domino idetur.
    • For a dear bargain is always annoying, particularly on this account, that it is a reflection on the judgment of the buyer.
    • Pliny the Younger, Epistles, I. 24.
  • The merchant, to secure his treasure,
    Conveys it in a borrow'd name.
  • We demand that big business give people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right, he shall himself be given a square deal.
  • Omnibus nobis ut res dant sese, ita magni atque humiles sumus.
    • We all, according as our business prospers or fails, are elated or cast down.
    • Terence, Hecyra, III, 2, 20.
  • Cujuslibet tu fidem in pecunia perspiceres,
    Verere ei verba credere?
    • Do you fear to trust the word of a man, whose honesty you have seen in business?
    • Terence, Phormio, I, 2, 10.
  • Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?
  • Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you.
  • A silly old man who did not understand even his silly old trade.
  • The way to stop financial "joy-riding" is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile.
    • Woodrow Wilson, reported in Richard Linthicum, Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson.

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