Management

"Formerly when great fortunes were only made in war, war was a business; but now, when great fortunes are only made by business, business is war."

"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."

"Let the business of the world take care of itself … My business is to get the world saved; if this involves the standing still of the looms and the shutting up of the factories, and the staying of the sailing of the ships, let them all stand still. When we have got everybody converted they can go on again, and we shall be able to keep things going then by working half time and have the rest to spend in loving one another and worshipping God."

"A man who is totally a business man is a stylite who never comes down from his column. He must have thoughts, feelings, eyes, ears, nose, taste, a sense of touch and a stomach only for Business. The business man knows neither father nor mother, neither uncle nor aunt, neither wife nor children, neither the beautiful nor the ugly, neither the clean nor the dirty, neither hot nor cold, neither God nor devil. He is wildly ignorant of letters, art, science, history, law. He must recognize and know only Business."

"Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete Successfully in business. Cheat."

"Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men."

"General Systems Theory, as originally intended by Von Bertalanffy, is an ideal framework for the modeling of a business enterprise. Work, in its most civilized form should enrich, empower and emancipate. Thus we must continue to find ways to support work as a humanistic, not mechanistic endeavor. We must continue to seek out new models of business that support and enhance the individual as well as the collective whole. Given all this new technology, we need new institutions for handling it."

"The business changes. The technology changes. The team changes. The team members change. The problem isn't change, per se, because change is going to happen; the problem, rather, is the inability to cope with change when it comes."

"Where is Christ, the King? In heaven, to be sure. Thither it behooves you, soldier of Christ, to direct your course. Forget all earthly delights. A soldier does not build a house; he does not aspire to possession of lands; he does not concern himself with devious, coin-purveying trade. … The soldier enjoys a sustenance provided by the king; he need not furnish his own, nor vex himself in this regard."

"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."

"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."

"Consequently, American businesses must meet the challenge of poorly- educated people in today's workforce by strengthening employee training programs."

"Come home to men's business and bosoms."

"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."

"Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does."

"We were sinning by writing or reading or studying less than our assigned lessons. For I did not, O Lord, lack memory or capacity, for, by thy will, I possessed enough for my age. However, my mind was absorbed only in play, and I was punished for this by those who were doing the same things themselves. But the idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men. For will any common sense observer agree that I was rightly punished as a boy for playing ball—just because this hindered me from learning more quickly those lessons by means of which, as a man, I could play at more shameful games?"

"The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call the Philistines. Culture says: “Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?”"

"Business tomorrow."

"When a business is bought, it is bought for its potential—for its future, not its past."

"A mission statement should define the business that the organization wants to be in, not necessarily what it is in."

"Men make it such a point of honour to be fit for business that they forget to examine whether business is fit for a man."

"The first mistake belonging to business is the going into it."

"I never can make out how it is that a knight-errant does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a peddler-errant always does."

"When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the colour-petals out of a fruitful flower;—when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly."

"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."

"The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance."

"A friendship founded on business, which Mr. Flagler used to say was a good deal better than a business founded on friendship."

"The business point of view, so called, has been the winding-sheet of many a fine mind."

"[A Jew] should make Torah his principal occupation and his work his casual one. He should minimize his business pursuits and occupy himself with Torah. And he should remove fleeting pleasures from his heart, and work each day enough to maintain himself. ... The rest of the day and night, he should occupy himself with Torah."

"A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practice it."

"Socrates makes me admit to myself that, even though I myself am deficient in so many regards, I continue to take no care of myself, but occupy myself with the business of the Athenians."

"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."

"Labour as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No man, being a soldier to God, entangleth himself with secular businesses."

"Ninety-nine men in a hundred are natural men, that is, beasts of prey; and it is mere insanity, in business matters, to deal with a stranger upon any other assumption than that he is a natural man, though we should veil our knowledge of the actual fact by a courteous recognition in words and manners of his better possibilities."

"It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a thing, his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business. I should not like to be merely a great doctor, a great lawyer, a great minister, a great politician—I should like to be also something of a man."

"Curse on the man who business first designed, And by't enthralled a freeborn lover's mind!"

"Business is business. There is no special business for man or for woman."

"I don't think that corporations are these big bogeymen that a lot of people paint them to be. … A corporation is a group of people, and if you want to come together for profit or nonprofit, that's your business—whatever you want to do."

"From all business, my favorite case on incentives is Federal Express. The heart and soul of their system — which creates the integrity of the product — is having all their airplanes come to one place in the middle of the night and shift all the packages from plane to plane. If there are delays, the whole operation can't deliver a product full of integrity to Federal Express customers. And it was always screwed up. They could never get it done on time. They tried everything — moral suasion, threats, you name it. And nothing worked. Finally, somebody got the idea to pay all these people not so much an hour, but so much a shift — and when it's all done, they can all go home. Well, their problems cleared up overnight."

"We all learn by imitating, as children, as students, as novices in the world of business. And then we grow up and learn to blend our innate abilities with the rules or principles we have learned."

"Most American men of affairs have learned well the rhetoric of public relations, in some cases even to the point of using it when they are alone, and thus coming to believe it."

"You silly old fool, you don't even know the alphabet of your own silly old business."

"An artisan busies himself with his work for three hours each day and spends nine hours in study."

"Everybody's business is nobody's business."

"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."

"There is no better ballast for keeping the mind steady on its keel, and saving it from all risk of crankiness, than business."

"A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business — business that must be done."

"These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on."

"Business today consists in persuading crowds."

"A man's success in business today turns upon his power of getting people to believe he has something that they want."