When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

The value of a dollar is social, as it is created by society.

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.

If you don’t understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

When a team takes ownership of its problems, the problem gets solved. It is true on the battlefield, it is true in business, and it is true in life.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

When I started my last business, I didn’t receive a paycheck for 13 months. The average person can’t handle that pressure.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

War is the business of barbarians.

You get a reputation for stability if you are stable for years.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.

Real art has been… what’s the word? Kidnapped? No, that’s not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

England is a nation of shopkeepers.

As a producer, as a CEO of Hartbeat Productions, I am making deals to put my company in place to win, to put my staff to work so that while all this stuff is going on, they’re in the kitchen cooking. So it’s understanding the longevity of the entertainment business; you get out of it what you put into it.

Everybody could be an entrepreneur, but very few will become very rich entrepreneurs.

Percentage margins don’t matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.

I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.

I don’t think the government should be in the trailer-park business. I don’t think they know how to run a trailer park.

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.

The true cost to the world of a burger is far greater than the money you hand over to buy it.

I am a child but I have to think and act like a woman, this business forces you to.

I think I’ve got my business notions and my sense for that sort of thing from my dad. My dad never had a chance to go to school. He couldn’t read and write. But he was so smart. He was just one of those people that could just make the most of anything and everything that he had to work with.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

Netscape was able to get the government working on its behalf.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it’s not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that’s not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.

The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credit… a reputation, character.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.

If I have cash and I can’t figure a way to put it into real estate or my business, I hold it in gold and silver.

How great are the dangers I face to win a good name in Athens.

The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now.

There’s no point in starting a business unless you’re going to make a dramatic difference to other people’s lives. So if you’ve got an idea that’s gonna make a big difference to other people’s lives, then just get on and do it.

Outsourcing is inevitable, and I don’t think it’s necessarily treating people like things.

Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving.

If you have to control people, you have to have an administrative force that does it. So in U.S. industry, even more than elsewhere, there’s layer after layer of management – a kind of economic waste, but useful for control and domination. And the same is true in universities.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

I think business has to be stupider. I want to do really straightforward, stupid business – just talk to me like a 4-year-old. And I refuse to negotiate. I do not negotiate. I can collaborate. But I’m an artist, so as soon as you negotiate, you’re being compromised.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

That’s when it becomes a business. When you’ve been public a long time, when it’s a career. You do certain films, you sell them.

The ways of the Lord are different from the ways of man. Man’s ways remove people from office or business when they grow old or become disabled. But man’s ways are not and never will be the Lord’s ways.

I got an album concept called ‚Exit Strategy,‘ that might be one of my last ones. It’s a term they use in business when you build companies. You create an exit strategy as you make a company. You don’t wait till you’re five years in it; you create a exit strategy as you make the company.

Your premium brand had better be delivering something special, or it’s not going to get the business.

Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

People invest in businesses that they believe have the leadership, mission and team to grow and operate profitably.

All you have in business is your reputation – so it’s very important that you keep your word.

Achieving the highest possible return on human capital must be every manager’s goal.

When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn’t set out to build a business empire… For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that’s going to make a real difference to other people’s lives.

I just hate meetings. Though it’s true that once you’ve made a lot of money, people around you might be full of ideas about ways to make lots more money and might be disappointed that you don’t want to seize every opportunity to do so.

To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

I feel that the best companies are started not because the founder wanted a company but because the founder wanted to change the world… If you decide you want to found a company, you maybe start to develop your first idea. And hire lots of workers.