Business Quotes

"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning."

"Your margin is my opportunity."

"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose."

"Don't just satisfy your customers—delight them."

"Investing in people is how we grow."

"A leader works for those they lead."

"Every business is a living document, an algorithm that needs to be improved."

"Believe in big ideas."

"The four most important words in business are ‘What do you think?"

"Companies will succeed and fail based on their ability to translate data into insights, actions, and products."

"Your goal should never be starting a company. Focus on the change you want to make."

"Don't take ‘no’ when your gut tells you ‘yes."

"Maintain a culture of respect."

"Treat and pay your staff exactly the way you'd want to be treated if you were in their place."

"Today customers can tell whether product and service is good because there's so much transparency."

"Sometimes the best way to make money is when most people say you are wrong and nuts."

"Curiosity has kept me young as I have gotten older."

"Companies must have a soul. The soul is the people who work for it and the people who buy its products."

"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."

"The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing."

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

"Opportunities don't happen. You create them."

"Chase the vision, not the money; the money will end up following you."

"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming."

"If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time."

"Your reputation is more important than your paycheck, and your integrity is worth more than your career."

"Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends."

"Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people."

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."

"Play by the rules, but be ferocious."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

"I'm convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance."

"Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm."

"An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down."

"The best businesses come from a very specific kind of gap, when someone experiences a need that isn't being met."

"Your best source of ideas—big and small—are the people who work with you or for you."

"You cannot over-invest in communication skills."

"What you don't know can become your greatest asset because it will ensure that you're going to do it differently."

"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

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

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."

"Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision."

"Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them."

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

"Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. And that is why it is always Day 1."

"The courage to be vulnerable is not about winning or losing, it's about the courage to show up when you can't predict or control the outcome."

"I define a leader as anyone who takes responsibility for finding the potential in people and processes, and who has the courage to develop that potential."

"Lose money for the firm, and I will be understanding. Lose a shred of reputation for the firm, and I will be ruthless."

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

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

"Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility."

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit for doing it."

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business."

"The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife."

"Content is king."

"I might regret not trying."

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

"Whether you think you can, or think you can’t—you’re right."

"Every problem is a gift—without problems we would not grow."

"You must always be able to predict what’s next and then have the flexibility to evolve."

"If you don’t build your dream, someone else will hire you to help them build theirs."

"You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and falling over."

"Have the end in mind and every day make sure you’re working toward it."

"If you must doubt something, doubt your limits."

"The only thing worse than starting something and failing is not starting something."

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."

"The best way to get the best out of people is to not force them to be something other than they naturally are."

"Happy employees lead to happy customers, which leads to more profits."

"Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard."

"The secret to successful hiring is this: look for the people who want to change the world."

"Obviously, everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world."

"The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand."

"Nothing will work unless you do."

"Don’t worry about being successful, but work toward being significant and the success will naturally follow."

"If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way."

"The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me?"

"When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it."

"The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it’s so easy to be motivated."

"People don’t take opportunities because the timing is bad, the financial side unsecure. Too many are overanalyzing. Sometimes you just have to go for it."

"It doesn’t matter how many times you have failed. You only have to be right once."

"Whatever you do, be different—that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out."

"Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going."

"Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a new way to stand."

"The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall."

"Management is about human beings. Its task is to make people capable of joint performance, to make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant."

"If you broke a lot of rules as a kid, you’d probably make a great entrepreneur."

"It’s important to be willing to make mistakes. The worst thing that can happen is you become memorable."

"I definitely see a correlation between how many things a company gets right and how fast a company grows."

"In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks."

"All humans are entrepreneurs, not because they should start companies, but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA, and creation is the essence of entrepreneurship."

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

"Winners never quit and quitters never win."

"My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long university education that I never had—every day I’m learning something new."

"Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself."

"It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure."

"Good ideas are common—what's uncommon are people who'll work hard enough to bring them about."

"It's not about ideas. It's about making ideas happen."