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.
As quoted in Life of Johnson (1791) by James Boswell, Vol. viii., p. 67, note.
Business models and value propositions expire like a yogurt in the fridge.
Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business.
When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined.
It is important to realize that cults are a dime a dozen and that a great many businesses are cults.
Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.
It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.
One finds many companions for food and drink, but in a serious business a man's companions are few.
Musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.