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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:

She had a yearning to lose herself in this noisy throng of people going about the business of staying alive.

Nalo Hopkinson Brown Girl in the Ring (1998)

That's what show business is—sincere insincerity.

Benny Hill

I am in the hunger business; it is what we do exclusively, 24/7, and I am sorry to tell you that business is booming.

Josette Sheeran

I think reporting in England is a load of filth, and that's why I'm going into the newspaper business there.

James Goldsmith

When Lenovo suffered a difficulty, I returned in spite of getting older because this is the business I created with my colleagues.

Liu Chuanzhi

I think I would be more suited to the couture side of the business!

Christian Dior

The business world is littered with the fossils of companies that failed to evolve. Disrupt or be disrupted. There is no middle ground.

Jay Samit Disrupt You! (2015)

Markets are social constructs that reflect the unique political-cultural construction of their business enterprises and nations.

Neil Fligstein

The most challenging question confronting business leaders and managers in the new millennium is not "How do we succeed?" It’s: "How do we stay successful?"

Peter S. Pande

I believe the old way of doing business is dying, and the sooner it's dead and buried the better off we all will be.

Ricardo Semler The Seven-Day Weekend (2004)

Target SME's and you target women because that is where they access the business sector.

Linah Mohohlo

It is not every business one ventures into that one would succeed at.

Folorunsho Alakija

Businesses and financial sponsors associated with supporters of Taiwan independence will be penalized according to law.

Zhu Fenglian

"Start a business to solve a problem, Don't just start a business because you like something."

Ciiru Waithaka

“At this juncture, allow me to mention five main projects for which we are here to seek partnership from the international business community.”

Samia Suluhu Hassan

“Women farmers are not waiting for handouts; they are already feeding their communities, running small businesses, and managing natural resources.”

Gérardine Mukeshimana

ARCAFIM’s ambition is to make rural climate adaptation a recognizable, viable and sustainable business line for African financial institutions.”

Gérardine Mukeshimana

When the procedures for starting a business and the licenses are expensive with tedious procedures, entrepreneurs avoid that cost by operating informally.

Margaret Mwanakatwe

I felt as I had failed, especially because I had thought that business will pick up.

Mo'Cheddah

We're about sustainability because it is the smartest, most effective, most profitable business strategy.

Amy Jadesimi

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