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Business Quotes

Most of the names at the top of this page are working executives and entrepreneurs, Strive Masiyiwa, Barbara Corcoran and Peter Drucker among them. The older sourced material is better. Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler (1653), says he has laid aside business and gone a-fishing, and also that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s business. Thoreau, in Life Without Principle (1863), thought nothing, not even crime, was more opposed to poetry and philosophy than incessant business.

“The business of business is business” is attributed to both Milton Friedman and Alfred P. Sloan, and it is marked disputed for both. The line about corporations having no body to be kicked and no soul to be damned is credited to Lord Thurlow and is disputed too. The notes cite a 1981 Michigan Law Review article that takes its title from it.

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Most quoted on business:

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

Robert Louis Stevenson Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1881)

Nothing will ever die so long as it knows what to do under the circumstances, in other words so long as it knows its business.

Samuel Butler The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)

The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.

Frank Zappa

Another busy day! So let’s to business. The clock moves forward; wasted time is life defeated!

Jack Vance To Live Forever (1956)

Most men of business think "Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still."

Walter Bagehot Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (1873)

Organizations need to undergo fundamental changes, both in order to adapt to the new business environment and to become ecologically sustainable.

Fritjof Capra The Hidden Connections (2002)

Self-doubt is part of being human...but the main thing is to get on with the business of survival.

Stephen Baxter Raft (1991)

My father invested his money so securely in the banking business that he was never able to get any of it out again.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich The Story of a Bad Boy (1870)

The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business.

Jack Steinberger

The last business of Christ's life was the saving of a poor penitent thief.

Dwight L. Moody Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Your salvation is His business; make His service your business and delight.

Richard Fuller Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

I'm seeing businesses embrace the Quiet Revolution as the next great diversity issue of our time.

Susan Cain

I have learned that success in business, and perhaps in most aspects of life, requires both self-discipline and objectively imposed discipline from outside.’

Edgar Bronfman Sr.

If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the Wiki, then ignore them and go about your business.

Lee Daniel Crocker

Rwanda has a huge economic potential, great opportunities, and a good business environment, and so is the Agriculture Sector.

Gérardine Mukeshimana

I tell the story of my life, how I got into show business, my two husbands and, of course, we show a lot of photographs.

Shirley Jones

The business people have to make sure that what they produce is of good quality because everybody wants to buy what is of good quality.

Nike Akande

And I had been manipulated, surely, but an actor, of all people, has no business complaining he has been tricked.

Adrian Tchaikovsky Dress Rehearsal (2016)

The business of business is relationships; the business of life is human connection.

Robin Sharma

We need a massive patriotic tax cut that will re-energize and reinvigorate our businesses and workers to take on their American competitors and the world.

Pierre Poilievre

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