Business Writing Quotes

• You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere.

  Lee Iacocca

  Inspirational, Motivational, Business

  Lee Iacocca, William Novak (2011). “Iacocca: An Autobiography”, p.16, Bantam

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• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

  35 Copy quote

• I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

  Confucius

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  337 Copy quote

• The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it.

  Seth Godin

  Writing, Mean, People

  15 Copy quote

• Imagination is more important than knowledge.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Positive, Leadership

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.32, St. Martin's Press

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• Developing excellent COMMUNICATION skills is absolutely essential to effective leadership. The leader must be able to share knowledge and ideas to transmit a sense of urgency and enthusiasm to others. If a leader can't get a message across clearly and motivate others to act on it, then having a message doesn't even matter.

  Gil Amelio

  Motivational, Leadership, Communication

  67 Copy quote

• You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

  Jack London

  Inspirational, Funny, Witty

  Jack London (2015). “Jack London on Adventure: Words of Wisdom from an Expert Adventurer”, p.5, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Funny, Writing

  33 Copy quote

• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, Writing, May

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

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• Publishing is a business. Writing may be art, but publishing, when all is said and done, comes down to dollars.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Art, Writing, Dollars

  8 Copy quote

• The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

  John Steinbeck

  Horse, Book, Writing

  "The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights". Book by John Steinbeck, 1976.

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• You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere. Lee Iacocca
  
  Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

  Mark Twain

  Communication, Love Is, Skills

  30 Copy quote

• I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.

  John Steinbeck

  Prayer, Writing, Color

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.12, Penguin

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• My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

  Anton Chekhov

  Lying, Writing, Stories

  45 Copy quote

• It's a dismally lonely business, writing.

  Toni Cade Bambara

  Lonely, Writing, Being Lonely

  8 Copy quote

• Keep things informal. Talking is the natural way to do business. Writing is great for keeping records and putting down details, but talk generates ideas. Great things come from out luncheon meetings which consist of a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a good idea or two. No martinis.

  T. Boone Pickens

  Communication, Writing, Talking

  14 Copy quote

• A pathological business, writing, don't you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!

  Hans Magnus Enzensberger

  Writing, Thinking, Doe

  7 Copy quote

• Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?

  Connie Willis

  Writing, Cat, Conceited

  4 Copy quote

• On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true.

  James Surowiecki

  Moving, Writing, Play

  "Face Time". www.newyorker.com. March 18, 2013.

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• I will never stop writing. People often ask when I will retire, but I say it's none of their business. Writing defines who I am. I love the feeling of holding a finished book in my hands, and then I can't wait to start the great adventure of writing the next one.

  Barbara Taylor Bradford

  Book, Writing, Adventure

  9 Copy quote

• That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

  Jackson Browne

  Song, Writing, Play

  11 Copy quote