Quotes
Quotes about Wit
The City's reluctance to take a stand on an issue like the British Gas pay row makes a mockery of corporate governance and shareholders' ability to influence annual general meetings. Institutions should be obliged to make public how they vote at such events. They should be obliged to provide customers with a record of how they vote on every kind of issue.
You cannot have the success without the failures.
Everything starts with the customer.
The manager with the in basket problem does not yet understand that he must discipline himself to take care of activities that fail to excite him.
Managers have traditionally developed the skills in finance, planning, marketing and production techniques. Too often the relationships with their people have been assigned a secondary role. This is too important a subject not to receive first line attention.
This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.
The rich swell up with pride, the poor from hunger.
The world does not pay for what a person knows, but it pays for what a person does with what he knows.
When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.
Since man does not create physical matter, those who handle material objects in the production process are not producers in that sense. Economic benefits result from the transformation of matter in form, location, or availability (intellectually or temporally). It is these transformations that create economic benefits valued by consumers, and whoever arranges such transformations contributes to the value of things, whether his hands actually come into contact with physical objects or not.
The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.
Value is not intrinsic; it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment.
The entire essence of America is the hope to first make moneyâthen make money with moneyâthen make lots of money with lots of money.
The buck stops with the guy who signs the checks.
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
The problem with the person who thinks he's a long-term investor and impervious to short-term gyrations is that the emotion of fear and pain will eventually make him sell badly.
Money isn't everything⦠but it ranks right up there with oxygen.
It is your people who make the ultimate difference. You put the investment into training the people and then, when you get invited to the party with the big boys, that is a unique selling point.
You can't run a business without taking risks.
A man with a surplus can control circumstances, but a man without a surplus is controlled by them, and often has no opportunity to exercise judgment.
Usually the greatest boasters are the smallest workers. The deep rivers pay a larger tribute to the sea than shallow brooks, and yet empty themselves with less noise.
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
Capitalism needs to function like a game of tug-of-war. Two opposing sides need to continually struggle for dominance, but at no time can either side be permitted to walk away with the rope.
Every company's greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.
The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing.
