Book of Business
Quotations
Edited by Bill Ridgers
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Economist Business Quotations.indd 4 02/05/2012 10:20
Contents
About this book / xii
Introduction / xiii
A
Accountants and accountancy / 1
Advertising / 3
Advice / 6
Agriculture business / 9
The airline industry / 9
Ambition / 10
America / 12
Appraisals / 14
The arts / 15
B
Banks and bankers / 18
Bills / 20
The board / 21
The boss / 22
Branding / 23
Bureaucracy / 24
Business education / 26
Business entertaining / 27
Business travel / 28
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vi Contents
C
Capitalism / 29
The car industry / 32
Change / 33
Civility / 36
Joking aside: five quotes from comedians / 37
Committees / 38
Communication / 38
Communism and socialism / 39
Competition / 40
Complacency / 43
Conferences / 43
Conflict and the arms industry / 44
Consultants and consulting / 45
Consumerism / 46
Corporations / 49
Costs / 50
Creativity / 51
Credit / 54
Crime / 55
Culture / 55
Customers and customer service / 56
Cynicism / 60
D
Data, information and statistics / 61
Debt / 63
Decision-making / 64
Delegation / 66
Design / 66
Development / 67
Discipline / 68
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Contents vii
Dishonesty / 68
Diversity / 69
Downturns and economic turmoil / 70
The drugs industry / 70
E
Economics / 72
In brief: five epigrams / 74
Education / 76
Egotism / 76
Emerging markets / 77
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurialism / 77
The environment / 80
Envy and jealousy / 81
Ethics / 82
Europe / 85
Experience / 86
Expertise / 87
F
Failure / 89
Showing character: five quotes from film
and TV / 91
Family business / 92
The film industry / 93
Financial crises / 93
Following the herd / 94
Foot-in-mouth and blunt honesty / 95
Friendship / 96
Fulfilment / 97
Fun / 97
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viii Contents
G
Gambling / 99
Globalisation / 99
Greed / 101
Growth / 102
H
Happiness / 104
Hard work / 105
Hiring / 108
Honesty / 109
Hubris / 111
I
Innovation / 112
Insurance / 118
The internet / 118
Intuition / 119
Investing / 120
K
Knowledge / 124
Knowledge workers / 125
L
Labour / 127
Novel thoughts: five quotes from
literature / 130
Lawyers and the law / 131
Laziness / 133
Leadership / 135
Luck / 138
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Contents ix
M
Management speak and jargon / 140
Management thinking / 142
Managers and management / 142
Words from the wise: five quotes from
management gurus / 143
Manufacturing / 147
Market research / 147
Marketing / 148
Markets / 151
The media / 152
Meetings / 154
Mergers, demergers and acquisitions / 155
Money / 156
Motivation / 159
The music industry / 160
N
Negotiation and dealmaking / 162
O
Obsession / 163
Obstacles / 163
Office life / 164
The oil and gas industry / 166
The oldest profession / 168
Operations / 169
Optimism / 170
P
Performance / 171
Philanthropy / 171
Philosophy / 172
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x Contents
Planning / 172
Poverty / 173
Power / 174
Predictions / 175
Price / 175
Procrastination / 176
Products / 177
The despatch box: five quotes from
politicians / 178
Progress / 179
Promotion / 180
Purpose / 181
R
Regulation / 182
Remuneration / 183
Reputation / 185
Responsibility / 186
Retirement / 186
Risk / 187
S
The sack / 189
Science / 190
Secretaries / 190
Self-employment / 191
Self-interest / 191
Selling / 192
Show business / 193
Small and medium-sized businesses / 194
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Contents xi
Sport / 194
Start-ups / 195
Strategy / 196
Success / 200
Supply chains / 204
T
Talent / 205
Taxes / 207
Teamwork / 208
Technology / 210
The tobacco industry / 214
Training / 214
U
Unemployment / 215
Unions and industrial relations / 216
V
Value / 219
W
Wealth / 221
Women in business / 225
Work-life balance / 227
Acknowledgements / 229
Index / 230
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About this book
This book is not meant to represent an exhaustive list
of business quotations. Rather it is a collection of
quotations that the editor believes to be particularly
pertinent, witty and enjoyable. Where possible they
have been taken from the original source and this
has been noted in the text. Some quotations have
been widely attributed to their author but the
original source could not be found; these have been
left without sources. In rare cases where there is a
reasonable chance that the quotation is apocryphal,
this has been noted in the text as “attributed”.
Economist Business Quotations.indd 12 02/05/2012 10:20
Introduction
From the day that humans first learned to write, they
have written about business. When archaeologists
discovered Sumerian tablets dating from the 4th
millennium BC, considered to be the first examples
of the written word, they uncovered not musings on
love, family or war, but a record of trade. No sooner
had writing developed to encompass abstract
thought than man was aphorising on the vagaries of
commerce. “Choose a job you love and you will
never have to work a day in your life,” wrote
Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, in 500BC. It is a
trend that has continued ever since. Two-and-a-half-
thousand years later, a philosopher for a different
age, Homer Simpson, was telling his colleagues at a
nuclear power plant: “If you don’t like your job you
don’t strike. You just go in every day and do it really
half-assed. That’s the American way.”
Why do we find business quotations so compelling?
There are several reasons. The first is aesthetic. In a
world often thought of as cold and calculating, there
is art to be found the pithy quotation that
encapsulates a deeper truth, as the quotes from
Confucius and Homer demonstrate. Even better if it
is plain funny: “If I was as rich as Rockefeller,” said
Ronnie Barker, a British comedian, “I’d be richer than
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xiv Book of Business Quotations
Rockefeller, because I’d do a bit of window cleaning
on the side.”
Then there is reflection, writing about business as an
academic pursuit. From Francis Bacon to Karl Marx
to Thomas Friedman, it is a noble tradition. Is there a
better definition of capitalism than Joseph
Schumpeter’s phrase “creative destruction”? Has
anyone understood the role of the company better
than Peter Drucker, when he said that “there is only
one definition of business purpose: to create a
customer”?
But we also have a desire to learn from the success of
others. We think we can distil the philosophy of
Warren Buffett, Henry Ford or Jack Welch in just a
few of their well-chosen words. If we condense
everything that made Steve Jobs great, we are left
with just one simple sentence: “Simple can be harder
than complex: you have to work hard to get your
thinking clean to make it simple.”
Lastly, if we are honest, we read business quotations
because we love a cutting comment – and a good
moan. Most of us will have to endure the drudgery
of work, and it makes us feel better that we are not
alone. “When you grow up you’ll be put in a
container called a cubicle. The bleak oppressiveness
will warp your spine and destroy your capacity to
feel joy. Luckily you’ll have a boss like me to
motivate you with something called fear.” So said
Dilbert, a character in a comic strip, who can speak
to our souls.
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Introduction xv
Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be
Given that 6,000 years have passed since that
trailblazing Mesopotamian first picked up a stylus
and etched his labour costs into a rock, we might ask
whether the golden age of the business quotation
has now passed. Businessmen, in general, have
become more anodyne. The quotation hunter, you
might imagine, pines for the heady days of the “Mad
Men”. If we are to believe the glitzy drama, this was
a time when an executive’s day was spent guzzling
Scotch and, it seemed, spouting one memorable line
after another. But, in fact, the businessmen of the
1950s and 1960s have left us with surprisingly few
zingers. (Perhaps they were just too drunk to
remember all the clever lines they came out with.)
A Scotch before noon is now frowned upon in most
businesses. Much of the business world bows to
24-hour news and public-relations despots, who
strangle interesting statements at birth for fear of
causing offence and a slide in the share price. This
has led to a depressing escalation in euphemism and
management speak: the art of sounding as if you are
saying something when you are not. “Negative
growth”, explains the PR director, sounds more
impressive than “loss”; “rationalisation” is more
intellectually defensible than “job cuts”.
But business has not really changed. There are still
plenty of places where you can find shoot-from-the-
hip chief executives. Indeed, today may well be the
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xvi Book of Business Quotations
quotation’s golden age. Silicon Valley has given us
the wisdom of Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos. Airlines still
throw up loud-mouthed executives such as Michael
O’Leary and Herb Kelleher. And the normally
strait-laced world of investment has given us perhaps
the most quotable businessman of our age, Warren
Buffett. The sage of Omaha recently wrote in a letter
to his shareholders:
In a bull market, one must avoid the error of
the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a
torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills
have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking
duck would instead compare its position after the
downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond.
It is at once pithy and reflective, and says much
about why he is so successful. And, of course, it is a
delightfully cutting swipe at those masters of the
universe who bestride Wall Street. In other words, it
is perhaps the perfect quotation.
Economist Business Quotations.indd 16 02/05/2012 10:20
Accountants and accountancy
When you make a mistake of adding the date to the
right side of the accounting statement, you must add
it to the left side too.
Anon
The term “earnings” has a precise ring to it. And
when an earnings figure is accompanied by an
unqualified auditor’s certificate, a naive reader might
think it comparable in certitude to pi, calculated to
dozens of decimal places. In reality, however,
earnings can be as pliable as putty when a charlatan
heads the company reporting them.
Warren Buffett, investor (1930–), letter to shareholders of
Berkshire Hathaway
Mr Anchovy, but you see your report here says that
you are an extremely dull person. You see, our
experts describe you as an appallingly dull fellow,
unimaginative, timid, lacking in initiative, spineless,
easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious
company and irrepressibly drab and awful. And
whereas in most professions these would be
A
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2 Book of Business Quotations
considerable drawbacks, in chartered accountancy
they are a positive boon.
John Cleese, comedian (1939–), “Vocational Guidance
Counsellor”, Monty Python sketch (British TV series, 1969)
An accountant applied for a job. The interviewer
asked him, “How much is two and two?” The
accountant got up from his chair, went over to the
door and closed it then came back and sat down. He
leaned across the desk and said in a low voice, “How
much do you want it to be?”
Joke
Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your
suspicions.
A.A. Latimer, author
Accounting and control – that is mainly what is
needed for the “smooth working”, for the proper
functioning, of the first phase of communist society.
Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), The State and Revolution (1917)
There’s no business like show business, but there are
several businesses like accounting.
David Letterman, chat-show host (1947–)
I have no use for bodyguards, but I have very specific
use for two highly trained certified public
accountants.
Elvis Presley, musician (1935–77)
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Advertising 3
Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to
produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely
balanced budgets.
Thomas Sowell, economist (1930–)
Advertising
Let me try and clarify some of this for you. Best
Company Supermarkets are not interested in selling
wholesome foods. They are not worried about the
nation’s health. What is concerning them, is that the
nation appears to be getting worried about its health,
and that is what’s worrying Best Co, because Best Co
wants to go on selling them what it always has, ie
white breads, baked beans, canned foods, and that
suppurating, fat-squirting little heart attack
traditionally known as the British sausage.
Denis Dimbleby Bagley, character in How to Get Ahead in
Advertising (feature film, 1989)
Without promotion something terrible happens …
Nothing!
P.T. Barnum, showman (1810–91)
Doing business without advertising is like winking at
a girl in the dark.
Stuart Henderson Britt, academic (1907–79), New York Herald
Tribune, October 1956
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4 Book of Business Quotations
Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting
to look at. Make it fun to read.
Leo Burnett, advertising executive (1891–1971)
Any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius
to keep his hands off a good one.
Leo Burnett
Fun without sell gets nowhere, but sell without fun
tends to become obnoxious.
Leo Burnett
There was a time when I used to get lots of ideas … I
thought up the Seven Deadly Sins in one afternoon.
The only thing I’ve come up with recently is
advertising.
Peter Cook, satirist (1937–95), as the devil in Bedazzled
(feature film, 1967)
If you don’t like what’s being said, change the
conversation.
Donald Draper, character in Mad Men (American TV series)
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied
on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson, American president (1743–1826), letter to
Nathaniel Macon
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Advertising 5
Advertising may be described as the science of
arresting the human intelligence long enough to get
money from it.
Stephen Leacock, writer (1869–1944), The Garden of Folly
(2004)
Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th
century.
Marshall McLuhan, teacher and philosopher (1911–80),
Advertising Age, 1976
The business of the advertiser is to see that we go
about our business with some magic spell or tune or
slogan throbbing quietly in the background of our
minds.
Marshall McLuhan, Commonweal, September 1953
The modern Little Red Riding Hood, reared on
singing commercials, has no objection to being eaten
by the wolf.
Marshall McLuhan, philosopher (1911–80), “Book of the
Hour”, The Mechanical Bride (1951)
The medium is the message.
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of
Effects (1967)
Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t
want your own family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies
to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as you
would be done by. If you tell lies about a product,
you will be found out – either by the Government,
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6 Book of Business Quotations
which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who
will punish you by not buying your product a
second time. Good products can be sold by honest
advertising. If you don’t think the product is good,
you have no business to be advertising it.
David Ogilvy, advertising executive (1911–99) Confessions of
an Advertising Man (1961)
The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a
stick inside a swill-bucket.
George Orwell, author (1903–50), Keep the Aspidistra Flying
(1936)
In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising,
we sell hope.
Charles Revson, founder of Revlon (1906–95)
Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the
trouble is I don’t know which half.
John Wanamaker, merchant (1838–1922), attributed
Advertising is legalised lying.
H.G. Wells, author (1866–1946)
Advice
The first thing a new employee should do on the job
is learn to recognise his boss’s voice on the phone.
Martin Buxbaum, author and humorist (1912–)
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Advice 7
The only unforgivable sin in business is to run out of
cash.
Harold Geneen, businessman, (1910–97)
Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained
by incompetence.
Robert J. Hanlon, Hanlon’s razor (1980) (sometimes
attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte)
The main thing to remember is, the main thing is the
main thing.
Brigadier General Gary E. Huffman
Simple can be harder than complex: you have to
work hard to get your thinking clean to make it
simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you
get there, you can move mountains.
Steve Jobs, founder of Apple (1955–2011), quoted in
BusinessWeek, May 1998
Ten minutes are not just one-sixth of your hourly
pay. Ten minutes are a piece of yourself. Divide your
life into ten-minute units and sacrifice as few of them
as possible in meaningless activity
Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA (1926–)
Never pick up someone else’s ringing phone.
Mark McCormack, writer (1930–2003), What You’ll Never Learn
on the Internet (2001)
Don’t worry about your physical shortcomings. I am
no Greek god. Don’t get too much sleep and don’t tell
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8 Book of Business Quotations
anybody your troubles. Appearances count: get a sun
lamp to keep you looking as though you have just
come back from somewhere expensive; maintain an
elegant address even if you have to live in the attic.
Never nickel when short of cash. Borrow big, but
always repay promptly.
Aristotle Onassis, shipping magnate (1906–75)
If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention.
Tom Peters, management writer (1942–)
I want to share something with you: the three little
sentences that will get you through life. Number 1:
Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, boss!
Number 3: It was like that when I got here.
Homer Simpson, character in The Simpsons (American TV
series)
Son, you be sure to set your goals so high you can’t
possibly accomplish them in one lifetime … I made
the mistake of setting my goals too low and now I’m
having a hard time coming up with new ones
Robert Turner, father of Ted Turner, media mogul
Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the
conventional wisdom.
Sam Walton, founder of Walmart (1918–82)
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The airline industry 9
Agriculture business
He who works his land will have abundant food, but
he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.
The Bible, Proverbs 12:11
Agriculture is now a motorised food industry, the
same thing in its essence as the production of
corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination
camps, the same thing as blockades and the
reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as
the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.
Martin Heidegger, philosopher (1889–1976), lecture, 1949
When you concentrate on agriculture and industry
and are frugal in expenditures, Heaven cannot
impoverish your state.
Xun Zi, Confucian philosopher (312–230BC)
The airline industry
If the Wright brothers were alive today Wilbur would
have to fire Orville to reduce costs.
Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines (1931–), quoted
in USA Today, June 1994
We need a recession. We have had ten years of
growth. A recession gets rid of crappy loss-making
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10 Book of Business Quotations
airlines and it means we can buy aircraft more
cheaply.
Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair (1961–), quoted in the Daily
Telegraph, November 2008
If we went into the funeral business, people would
stop dying.
Martin Shugrue, PanAm executive (1941–99)
A recession is when you have to tighten your belt;
depression is when you have no belt to tighten.
When you’ve lost your trousers – you’re in the airline
business.
Adam Thomson, former chairman of British Caledonian
(1926–2000)
In one fell swoop, we have shrunken the earth.
Juan Tripp, founder of PanAm (1899–1981), on the
introduction of the first jet-engine planes
Running an airline is like having a baby: fun to
conceive, but hell to deliver.
C.E. Woolman (1889–1966), founder of Delta Air Lines
Ambition
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense
enough to be lazy.
Edgar Bergen, ventriloquist (1903–78)
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Ambition 11
[Ambitious men] may not cease, but as a dog in a
wheel, a bird in a cage, or a squirrel in a chain, so
Budaeus compares them; they climb and climb still,
with much labour, but never make an end, never at
the top.
Robert Burton, scholar (1577–1640), The Anatomy of
Melancholy (1621)
The great Western Disease lies in the phrase, “I will
be happy when …”
Marshall Goldsmith, management writer (1949–), “Making a
Resolution that Matters”, Fast Company, February 2004
The worst fault of the working classes is telling their
children they’re not going to succeed, saying: “There
is life, but it’s not for you.”
John Mortimer, barrister (1923–2009)
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty
heads and empty hearts can do that.
Norman Vincent Peale, church minister (1898–1993),
Enthusiasm Makes a Difference (1967)
Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.
Elvis Presley, musician (1935–77)
Why should we be in such desperate haste to
succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man
does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it
is because he hears a different drummer. Let him
Economist Business Quotations.indd 11 02/05/2012 10:20
12 Book of Business Quotations
step to the music which he hears, however measured
or far away.
Henry David Thoreau, author (1817–1862), Walden (1854)
America
The chief business of the American people is
business.
Calvin Coolidge, American president (1872–1933), address to
the American Society of Newspaper Editors
I was slightly cynical of the American mentality
before I came over here, but now I preach it. Here, no
one’s going to tear you down if you buy yourself a
$300,000 car. They’re likely to say: “Well, you
probably worked hard for it. Good luck to you.”
Simon Cowell, showbusiness man (1959–), quoted in the New
York Times, May 2004
If you were really, really, really rich … what part of
your life would be American? If you had the money,
I’d bet you’d drive a German car, wear British shoes
and an Italian suit, keep your savings in a Swiss
bank, vacation in Koh Samui with shopping
expeditions to Cannes, fly Emirates, develop a palate
for South African wine, hire a French-trained chef,
buy a few dozen Indian and Chinese companies, and
pay Dubai-style taxes. Were you to have the
untrammelled economic freedom to, I’d bet you’d
run screaming from big, fat, wheezing American
Economist Business Quotations.indd 12 02/05/2012 10:20
America 13
business as usual, and its coterie of lacklustre, slightly
bizarre, and occasionally grody “innovations”: spray
cheese, ATM fees, designer diapers, disposable
lowest-common-denominator junk made by prison
labour, Muzak-filled big-box stores, five thousand
channels and nothing on but endless reruns of
“Toddlers in Tiaras”.
Umair Haque, consultant, Harvard Business Review, October
2011
Americans are apt to be unduly interested in
discovering what average opinion believes average
opinion to be; and this national weakness finds its
nemesis in the stock market.
John Maynard Keynes, economist (1883–1946), The General
Theory of Employment Interest and Money (1936)
The problem with American management today is
that it has succeeded in assuming many of the
appearances and privileges of professionalism while
evading the attendant constraints and responsibilities.
Rakesh Khurana, Nitin Nohria and Daniel Penrice, HBS
Working Knowledge, February 2005
Businessmen are the one group that distinguishes
capitalism and the American way of life from the
totalitarian statism that is swallowing the rest of the
world. All the other social groups – workers, farmers,
professional men, scientists, soldiers – exist under
dictatorships, even though they exist in chains, in
terror, in misery, and in progressive self-destruction.
But there is no such group as businessmen under a
Economist Business Quotations.indd 13 02/05/2012 10:20
14 Book of Business Quotations
dictatorship. Their place is taken by armed thugs: by
bureaucrats and commissars. Businessmen are the
symbol of a free society – the symbol of America.
Ayn Rand, author (1905–82), Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
(1966)
Americans used to be “citizens.” Now we are
“consumers.”
Vicki Robin, writer (1945–), Your Money or Your Life (1999)
What’s great about this country is America started
the tradition where the richest consumers buy
essentially the same things as the poorest. You can
be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can
know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor
drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.
A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get
you a better Coke than the one the bum on the
corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all
the Cokes are good.
Andy Warhol, artist (1928–87)
Appraisals
An appraisal is where you have an exchange of
opinion with your boss. It’s called an exchange of
opinion because you go in with your opinion and
leave with their opinion.
Guy Browning, humorist (1964–), Office Politics: How Work
Really Works (2006)
Economist Business Quotations.indd 14 02/05/2012 10:20
The arts 15
The arts
The culture industry not so much adapts to the
reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.
Theodor Adorno, sociologist (1903–69)
Charge less, but charge. Otherwise, you will not be
taken seriously, and you do your fellow artists no
favours if you undercut the market.
Elizabeth Aston, author, The True Darcy Spirit (2006)
I’m not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I
never think about money. Beautiful things make
money.
Geoffrey Beene, fashion designer (1924–2004)
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being
bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally
to me.
John Cleese, comedian (1939–)
I can’t change the fact that my paintings don’t sell.
But the time will come when people will recognise
that they are worth more than the value of the paints
used in the picture.
Vincent van Gogh, artist (1853–90)
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind
of art. Making money is art and working is art and
good business is the best art.
Andy Warhol, artist (1928–87)
Economist Business Quotations.indd 15 02/05/2012 10:20
