Work and Profession

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.

Every man lives by exchanging.

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

Just as a poetic discussion of the weather is not meteorology, so an issuance of moral pronouncements or political creeds about the economy is not economics. Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.

The absolute fundamental aim is to make money out of satisfying customers.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practise it.

I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Advertising is legalized lying.

Objectives are not fate; they are direction. They are not commands; they are commitments. They do not determine the future; they are means to mobilize the resources and energies of the business for the making of the future.

The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.

In business the man who engages in the most adventures is surest to come out unhurt.

It is difficult, but not impossible, to conduct strictly honest business.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. –

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance one cannot fly into flying.

Every habit makes our hand more witty, and out wit more handy.