Business related quotes 101 to 150

101. ‘If you’re doing something you care that much about, and you believe in its purpose deeply enough, then it is impossible to imagine not trying to make it great. It’s just a given.’ Jim Collins
102. ‘You’re far more likely to become a billionaire in Silicon Valley than on Wall Street. Wall Street becomes far more important later on when you’re preserving their wealth.’ Mark Martiak
103. ‘Work should be personal. For all of us. Not just for the artist and the entrepreneur. Work should have meaning for the accountant, the construction worker, the technologist, the manager, and the clerk.’ Howard Schultz
104. ‘I think the meaning of life is to find something you’re good at, something you love, and work to make that situation just a little bit better than it would have been without you.’ Mike Mayo
105. “I would advise any young person thinking of starting their own business to take the plunge. Life is not a rehearsal, don’t be the person who spends his life thinking, ‘I wish I had done that’.” Luke Johnson
106. ‘We had the bright idea to charge our friends (club) entry, and that was it for me. I knew there and then that this was what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to ultimately run my own companies.’ Luke Johnson, recalling the times he went clubbing
107. ‘I have a restless personality, like other entrepreneurs, that keeps me going. Business is what I do, and I believe that all people need work of a sort, they need to be proactive.’ Luke Johnson
108. ‘Boredom is a great enemy in my life. I like to avoid getting bored.’ Luke Johnson
109. ‘My satisfaction comes from being good at my job, not buying stuff. The process of shopping, even for luxurious things, isn’t at all enjoyable to me.’ Mike Mayo
110. ‘I felt like the world has stopped, and I was just hanging around, taking naps on the couch every afternoon instead of doing the work I loved. Pretty quickly I started to wonder why my existence mattered. What difference was I making in the world? It really hit me that life without purpose is an empty existence.’ Mike Mayo, when he was dismissed from his job
111. ‘When all these pieces come together, not only does your work move towards greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.’ Jim Collins
112. ‘We try to remember that medicine is for the patient…it is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered the larger they have been.’ George Merck
113. ‘You don’t need to have some grand existential reason for why you love what you’re doing or to care deeply about your work. All that matters is that you do love it and that you do care.’ Jim Collins
114. ‘You must find an edge they (ordinary investors) don’t have. You must think of something they haven’t thought of, see things they miss or bring insight they don’t possess. You have to react differently and behave differently. In short, being right may be a necessary condition for investment success, but it won’t be sufficient. You must be more right than others…which by definition means your thinking has to be different.’ Howard Marks, on how to achieve superior returns in the market
115. ‘But in business as in life, people have to stay true to their guiding principles. To their cores. Whatever they may be. Pursuing short-term rewards is always short-sighted.’ Howard Schultz
116. ‘When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls.’ Jim Collins
117. ‘Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not gall in your corporate life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a non-profit organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.’ Jim Collins
118. ‘Pain + reflection = progress’ Ray Dalio
119. ‘…having a lot of money isn’t a lot better than having enough to cover the basics. That’s because, for me, the best things in life – meaningful work, meaningful relationships, interesting experiences, good food, sleep, music, ideas, sex, and other basic needs and pleasures- are not, past a certain point, materially improved upon by having a lot of money.’ Ray Dalio
120. ‘While most others seem to believe that pain is bad, I believe that pain is required to become stronger.’ Ray Dalio
121. ‘In order to be motivated, I needed to work for what I wanted, not what other people wanted me to do. In order to be successful, I needed to figure out for myself how to get what I wanted, not remember the facts I was being told to remember.’ Ray Dalio
122. ‘I learned that failure is by and large due to not accepting and successfully dealing with the realities of life, and that achieving success is simply a matter of accepting and successfully dealing with all my realities.’ Ray Dalio (Principles)
123. ‘Reality + dreams + determination = A successful life’ Ray Dalio
124. ‘In fact, I believe that without pursuing dreams, life is mundane.’ Ray Dalio (Principles)
125. ‘Being open-minded is far more important than being bright or smart.’ Ray Dalio
126. ‘While most others seem to believe that learning what we are taught is the path to success, I believe that figuring out for yourself what you want and how to get it is a better path.’ Ray Dalio (Principles)
127. ‘My dad advised me that choosing the right job was not a sudden lightning bolt of realization, nor was it for most of us something we knew we wanted to do since we were kids. Rather, it was a process of trial and error – a voyage of discovery.’ Brad Smith
128. ‘A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between work and play.’ L. P. Jacks
129. ‘Nobody tells people who are beginners is that all of us who do creative work…we get into it because we have good taste. But there’s a gap. For the first couple of years what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good but it’s not quite that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. A lot of people at that point…they quit. Everybody who does interesting, creative work, went through a phase of years where they had really good taste but they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. It didn’t have this special thing that we wanted it to have. Everybody goes through that. It’s totally normal. And the most important possible thing you can do is a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close the gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions. It’s going to take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You just have to fight your way through.’ Ira Glass
130. ‘If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But, if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.’ David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy and Mather
131. ‘How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Answer: Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.’ Anonymous
132. ‘It’s not what you’ve got – it’s what you do with what you’ve got.’ Mae West
133. ‘Let me tell you something. There’s no nobility in poverty. I’ve been a poor man, and I’ve been a rich man. And I choose rich every fucking time.’ Jordan Belfort (Wolf on Wall Street)
134. ‘Don’t try to control people by giving them orders. They will likely resent the orders, and when you’re not looking, defy them.’ Ray Dalio (Principles)
135. ‘My name is Jordan Belfort. Not him. Me. That’s right. I’m a former member of the middle class raised by two accountants in a tiny apartment in Bayside Queens. The year I turned 26 as the head of my own brokerage firm, I made 49 million dollars, which really pissed me off because it was three shy of a million a week.’ Jordan Belfort
136. ‘I believe in total immersion, if you want to be rich, you have to program your mind to be rich. You have to unlearn all the thoughts that were making you poor and replace them with new thoughts—rich thoughts.’ Jordan Belfort (Wolf on Wall Street)
137. ‘Just try to find out what is true. Don’t try to “win” the argument. Finding out that you are wrong is even more valuable than being right, because you are learning.’ Ray Dalio (Principles)
138. ‘You can successfully run a restaurant that serves hamburgers or, alternatively, one that serves Chinese food. But you can’t switch capriciously between the two and retain the fans of either.’ Phil Fischer, on the need for a consistent dividend policy
139. ‘Not everyone can be a dropout like Bill Gates or Zach or [Mark] Zuckerberg, so do take that extra loan and get a degree.’ Angel Gurria
140. ‘Everything seems impossible until it’s done, so if you find something that you’re passionate about – pursue it.’ Leanna Archer
141. ‘We weren’t doing it for money. I don’t think anybody would have quit if Steve (Jobs) had come and said: “You guys don’t get paid.” I think we would have still had a group and we still would have been working.’ Rod Holt
142. ‘People are in a rush to start their lives, and it’s sad. I didn’t go out with the idea of making a big empire. I set goals for myself at being the best I could be at whatever I did.’ Al Merrick, on the key to passion
143. ‘For my tastes, if I had to choose, I’d rather be a backpacker who is exploring the world with little money than a big income earner who is in a job I don’t enjoy.’ Ray Dalio, a hedge fund manager (Principles)
144. ‘I don’t go to work each day or even each year consciously thinking about the grand purpose I serve. Like most people, I simply think about doing a good job. I still have major professional goals. But, mostly, I think I’ve learned that the work is its own reward. The meaning of life? For me, it’s getting up every morning, kissing my wife, hugging my kids, and heading off to work.’ Mike Mayo
145. ‘Money can accomplish a lot of things, but it’s not going to get you off the hook for the challenges and problems of life. It’s not inherently good or bad – it’s a tool, noting more. But when money is put ahead of other considerations, including professional scruples, things can go wrong.’ Mike Mayo
146. ‘As analysts, we’re at the intersection between the interests of corporations and the interests of investors. We provide institutional memory, act skeptically, challenge corporate authority, question assumptions, and speak up if something does not smell right. We are on the front lines of holding corporations accountable.’ Mike Mayo
147. ‘I was still torn between competing goals. I didn’t think there had to be a dichotomy between material success and the sense I got at the Fed of being a warrior of capitalism. I wanted to be a cross between Gordon Gekko and the Men of Silver – I wanted it both ways, which is easier said than done. There’s so much money on Wall Street that it’s easy to lose your way.’ Mike Mayo
148. ‘That willingness to trade personal sacrifice for patriotic goals really resonated with me. It wasn’t just about getting ahead and taking care of yourself- there were larger principles at work.’ Mike Mayo
149. ‘Sometimes, people with the best ideas aren’t very good at blind dating. When I decided to run a hedge fund out of school, I’d meet with 100 people before one or two would finally agree to invest with me. In order to be successful, you have to make sure that being rejected doesn’t bother you at all. So for example, in college when I was dating and a girl didn’t like me, I didn’t get upset. I thought that if she didn’t like me, then she clearly wasn’t right for me. You should surround yourself with people that believe in you, in life, and in business.’ Bill Ackman
150. ‘Investing is one of the few things you can learn on your own. I felt I had the basic skills to be a successful investor, and if you think you’re Picasso, you’re not sure you want to learn from another artist. I had an unlevered strategy, doing plain-vanilla value investing – not something complicated or particularly risky. I thought, in the worst case, if I fail, I’ll be able to get a job.’ Bill Ackman