American Businessman Quotes

The death of Walt Disney is a loss to all the people of the world. In everything he did Walt had an intuitive way of reaching out and touching the hearts and minds of young and old alike. His entertainment was an international language. For more than forty years people have looked to Walt Disney for the finest in family entertainment.

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

To be a success in advertising you must want to fill other people with a passion for possession.

Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Innovation, I believe, is the only way that America will regain the initiative in a global dynamic economy.

I had no idea this was going to be an accurate prediction, but amazingly enough instead of 10 [years] doubling, we got nine over the 10 years, but still followed pretty well along the curve.

If you're not called crazy when you launch something new, it means you're not thinking BIG enough.

Linda Rottenberg

The only way to consistently stay ahead of the game is to adopt a long-term view and, if appropriate, with a strong contrarian spin.

We're working to overcome the overly macho nature of the current online console game world, where a handful of the high testosterone crowd fight for supremacy, while the mass of casual game players stay away.

Reggie Fils-Aimé

For over a half century now I've watched office obesity develop into a full-blown, crippling disease. As our office clutter mounts, we're ever more intimidated and frustrated by it. We engineer drainage and removal of water and liquid wastes from society to prevent hazardous buildup, but the effluent that pours into our offices-paper-is never flushed out.

Bad news sells because the amygdala is always looking for something to fear.

Peter Diamandis

The purpose of this book is to show how economic analysis can be used in formulating business policies. It is therefore a departure from the main stream of economic writings on the theory of the firm, much of which is too simple in its assumptions and too complicated in its logical development to be managerially useful. The big gap between the problems of logic that intrigue economic theorists and the problems of policy that plague practical management needs to be bridged in order to give executives access to the practical contributions that economic thinking can make to top-management policies.

I feel like I'm 80 years young. Make life exciting and you live longer.

Ignore the people who tell you it won't work, and hire people who embrace your vision.

If you have to have a policy manual, publish the 'Ten Commandments.'

Robert Townsend (author)

Wall Street sometimes gets confused between risk and uncertainty, and you can profit handsomely from that confusion. The low-risk, high-uncertainty [situation] gives us our most sought after coin-toss odds. Heads, I win; tails, I don't lose much.

We are not to judge thrift solely by the test of saving or spending. If one spends what he should prudently save, that certainly is to be deplored. But if one saves what he should prudently spend, that is not necessarily to be commended. A wise balance between the two is the desired end.

Independent thinking is not just helpful in becoming a successful investor, it's required.

The greater the handicap, the greater the triumph.

John H. Johnson

As educators, our challenge is to match the needs of our learners to a world that is changing with great rapidity. To meet this challenge, we need to become strategic learners ourselves by deliberately expanding our perspectives and updating our approaches.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

The market has a simple way of whittling all excessive pride and overblown egos down to size. After all, the whole idea is to be completely objective and recognize what the marketplace is telling you, rather than try to prove that the thing you said or did yesterday or six weeks ago was right. The fastest way to take a bath in the stock market or go broke is to try to prove that you are right and the market is wrong.

Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future. Each of those many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone's day.

Finding an excuse not to buy a brand can be just as enjoyable as finding an excuse to buy one. That, too, is human nature.

David F. D'Alessandro

Like sheep that get lost nibbling away at the grass because they never look up, we often focus so much on ourselves and our problems that we get lost.

I stand here as a son, father, uncle who is tired of being scared for our boys. I'm tired of telling our young men how they can't dress, where they can't go and how they can't behave.

Benjamin Jealous

Money makes people listen. When you have it, then you have something others want and need. When you don't, you become invisible.

Earl G. Graves, Sr.