Business Ethics Quotes

• It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.

  Warren Buffett

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Success

  Richard J. Connors, Warren Buffett (2010). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.5, John Wiley & Sons

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

  Henry Ford

  Inspirational, Success, Graduation

  "Mansfield News Journal" Newspaper, August 3, 1965.

  66 Copy quote

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• Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do.

  Potter Stewart

  Differences, Knowing, Ethics

  85 Copy quote

• If ethics are poor at the top, that behavior is copied down through the organization.

  Robert Noyce

  Business, Responsibility, Organization

  110 Copy quote

• Using the phrase business ethics might imply that the ethical rules and expectations are somehow different in business than in other contexts. There really is no such thing as business ethics. There is just ethics and the challenge for people in business and every other walk in life to acknowledge and live up to basic moral principles like honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness and caring.

  Michael Josephson

  Honesty, Responsibility, Caring

  19 Copy quote

• Play fair, be prepared for others to play dirty, and don't let them drag you into the mud.

  Richard Branson

  Dirty, Play, Mud

  68 Copy quote

• If you don't have integrity, you have nothing. You can't buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.

  Henry Kravis

  Money, Integrity, World

  172 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as business ethics. There is only one kind -- you have to adhere to the highest standards.

  Marvin Bower

  Business, Ethics, Kind

  64 Copy quote

• If you build that foundation, both the moral and the ethical foundation, as well as the business foundation, and the experience foundation, then the building won't crumble.

  Henry Kravis

  Integrity, Foundation, Moral

  19 Copy quote

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

  Bill Gates

  Leadership, Business, Motivation

  Bill Gates (2009). “Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy”, p.86, Hachette UK

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• Being good is good business

  Anita Roddick

  Leadership, Business, Responsibility

  14 Copy quote

• It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

  Josiah Stamp

  Integrity, Responsibility, Community

  82 Copy quote

• There's no such thing as business ethics; there's just ethics. And ethics makes no concessions for the real or imagined necessities of making a profit.

  Michael Josephson

  Business, Real, Imagination

  13 Copy quote

• Living up to your commitments is part of business ethics. My word is my bond.

  Isadore Sharp

  Commitment, Ethics

  27 Copy quote

• The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Loyalty, Peace, Rhyming

  Albert Schweitzer (1966). “The Teaching of Reverence for Life”

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• A business is successful to the extent that it provides a product or service that contributes to happiness in all of its forms.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Happiness, Business, Successful

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2004). “Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning”, p.25, Penguin

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• Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

  Wayne Dyer

  Spiritual, Time, One Day

  Dyer, Wayne (2005). “Everyday Wisdom”, p.235, Hay House, Inc

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• Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Business

  "Steve Jobs, the Journey Is the Reward". Book by Jeffrey S. Young, 1988.

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• The more moral the people are in their business dealings, the less paperwork you need, the more handshakes you can have, the more the wheels of capitalism work better because there's trust in the marketplace. Business ethics is not a joke. And, in fact, I think most businesses that I've dealt with encourage exactly that type of behavior.

  Rick Santorum

  Thinking, People, Needs

  10 Copy quote

• You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Educational

  "The Entrepreneur of the Decade Award". Inc. Magazine, April 1, 1989.

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• The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.

  Theodore Hesburgh

  Leadership, Business, Blow

  79 Copy quote

• The market has no morality

  Michael Heseltine

  Responsibility, Ethics, Morality

  9 Copy quote

• We have to shift our emphasis from economic efficiency and materialism towards a sustainable quality of life and to healing of our society, of our people and our ecological systems.

  Janet Holmes a Court

  Life, Business, Healing

  "Visions: Turkish Earthquake - an Islamic apocalyptic sign? The dream of Janet Holmes a' Court and a republican prophet - John Dunmore Lang". Interview with John Cleary, www.abc.net.au. August 25, 1999.

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• In the modern world of business, it is useless to be a creative, original thinker unless you can also sell what you create.

  David Ogilvy

  Inspirational, Business, Creativity

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

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• Many business leaders are asking fundamental questions about what business they're in, why they are doing it and how it can be used as a means of healing human and natural communities.

  Amory Lovins

  Life, Leadership, Healing

  12 Copy quote