Business quotations

Here are some of our favourite business quotations to inspire, challenge and sometimes surprise you.

About leadership and success

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Jack Welch

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

Peter Drucker

“The success combination in business is do what you do better and do more of what you do.”

David Joseph Schwartz

“The most successful businessman is the one who holds onto the old just as long as it is good and grabs the new just as soon as it is better.”

Lee Iacocca

“A leader is the one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.”

John C Maxwell

“The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity.”

Peter Drucker

“The secret of success is constancy of purpose.”

Benjamin Disraeli

Back to top ^

About customers

“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Peter Drucker

“The fact is, everyone is in sales. Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell.”

Jay Abraham

“You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.”

Steve Jobs

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises; he is not dependent on us, we are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work, he is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business, he is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him, he is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

Mahatma Gandi

“The purpose of an enterprise is to create and keep a customer.”

Theodore Levitt

“Before you build a better mousetrap, it helps to know if there are any mice out there.”

Mortimer B Zuckerman

“Every sale has five basic obstacles; no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”

Zig Ziglar

“Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your product and service and that bring friends with them.”

W Edwards Deming

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

Bill Gates

Back to top ^

About competitors

“If you do not have a competitive advantage, don't compete.”

Jack Welch

“There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.”

Winston Churchill

“Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.”

Margaret Thatcher

“The fish is last to know if it swims in water.”

Chinese proverb

“Only the paranoid survive.”

Andrew Grove

“If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.”

Bill Shankly

“Generally, he who occupies the field of battle first and awaits his enemy is at ease; he who arrives later and joins battle in haste is weary. And, therefore, one skilled in war brings the enemy to the field of battle and is not brought there by him.”

Sun Tzu

Back to top ^

About marketing

“Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two - and only these two - basic functions: marketing and innovation.”

Peter Drucker

“The challenge for top management is to establish a vision of marketing as a process not a function, as cross-functional not a free-standing specialisation, and as strategic not tactical.”

Professor N Piercy

“Marketing should focus on market creation, not market sharing.”

Regis McKenna

Back to top ^

About strategy and planning

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

Anatole France

“To be prepared is half the victory.”

Miguel Cervantes

“A poorly observed fact is more treacherous than a faulty train of reasoning.”

Paul Valery

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Sun Tzu

“Chance favours the prepared mind.”

Louis Pasteur

“Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.”

John Tukey

“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.”

George Bernard Shaw

“If you don't know where you're going, you might end up somewhere else.”

Casey Stengel

“Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions.”

Sun Tzu

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

Will Rogers

“The most effective way to cope with change is to help create it.”

I W Lynett

“All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which great victory is evolved.”

Sun-Tzu

“Results are gained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems.”

Peter Drucker

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Peter Drucker

“Structure follows strategy.”

Alfred Chandler Jr

“You can't do today's job with yesterday's methods and still be in business tomorrow.”

Anon

“In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.”

Warren Buffett

“Expect the best, prepare for the worst, capitalize on what comes.”

Zig Ziglar

Back to top ^

About business

“If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”

Anita Roddick

“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 first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Bill Gates

“If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside, the end is in sight.”

Jack Welch

Back to top ^