Work Ethic

Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Put 100% of your effort into any task that you undertake and you'll receive 100% satisfaction in return.

Commercial competition evolves from a warrior ethic and is about blood lust.
Dynamics of Software Development, 1995
Jim McCarthy

You are not your work

...this is business after all, and we are certainly playing to win.
Kent Beck

Every job is a self-portrait of the person who does it. Autograph your work with excellence.

If a man does only what is required of him, he is a slave. If a man does more than is required of him, he is a free man.
Chinese proverb

If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
John Paul Getty,American Industrialist (1892-1976)

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say; I just watch what they do.
Andrew Carnegie

We see customers as invited guests to a party and we are the hosts. It's our job everyday to make every important aspect of the customer's experience a little better.
Jeff Bezos

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.
Andrew Carnegie

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
Andrew Carnegie

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.
Andrew Carnegie

The morality of compromise' sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness, or an admission of defeat. Strong men don't compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised.
Andrew Carnegie

Upon the sacredness of property civilization itself depends - the right of the laborer to his hundred dollars in the savings bank, and equally the legal right of the millionaire to his millions.
Andrew Carnegie

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison

I start where the last man left off.
Thomas A. Edison

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
Henry Ford

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Henry Ford

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.
Henry Ford

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.
Henry Ford

Money doesn't change men, it merely unmasks them. If a man is naturally selfish or arrogant or greedy, the money brings that out, that's all.
Henry Ford

Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Henry Ford

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
Henry Ford

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.
Henry Ford

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
Henry Ford

Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
Henry Ford

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
Henry Ford

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
Henry Ford

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.
Bill Gates

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Bill Gates

Its easy to have principles when you're rich. The important thing is to have principles when you're poor.
Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald's

The way to get things done is to stimulate competition. I do not mean in a sordid, money-getting way, but in the desire to excel.
Charles Schwab

You don't hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.
Thomas J. Watson

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Aristotle

Find something you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life.
Harvey Mackey

Never complain and never explain.
Benjamin Disraeli

I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell the truth, even if it costs them their jobs.
Samuel Goldwyn

Appreciation is the most neglected - yet the most powerful - marketing tool available.
John R. Graham

My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they're not really interested in.
Bertrand Russell

Corruption and dishonesty seem to occur when the leader loses sight of the fact that he or she is given power for one purpose - to please others.

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
Donald A. Adams

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill

People don't want to be �marketed too�; they want to be �communicated with.�
Flint McGlaughlin

The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.
Alan Greenspan

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
Richard Bach

Lead the life that will make you kindly and friendly to everyone about you, and you will be surprised what a happy life you will lead.
Charles Schwab, American stockbroker

I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America. I am just trying to get ideas, any kind of ideas that will help our company. Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.
Sam Walton, 1918-1992, American Businessman, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores

We let folks know we're interested in them and that they're vital to us. cause they are.
Sam Walton, 1918-1992, American Businessman, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores

Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. A paycheck is one thing, hearing how much we are appreciated is something else. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune.
Sam Walton, 1918-1992, American Businessman, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores

Motivate your partners. Money and ownership aren't enough.....Set high goals, encourage competition and then keep score.
Sam Walton, 1918-1992, American Businessman, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores

Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners. The more they know, the more they'll understand.... Information is power and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.
Sam Walton, 1918-1992, American Businessman, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores

Commit to your business. If you love your work, you'll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can , and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever!
Sam Walton, 1918-1992, American Businessman, Founder of Wal-Mart Stores

I don't think you ever stop giving. I really don't. I think it's an on-going process. And it's not just about being able to write a check. It's being able to touch somebody's life.
Oprah Winfrey

I'm not, you know, particularly good at this. Maybe I'll never be good at it. But to walk around to each patient and ask, you know, what is your problem? And be respectful of, you know, their desire for privacy. But I think it is very important. If people got out like that, you know these problems would get addressed.
Bill Gates

I don't think it's constructive to grow up having billions of dollars... The idea that I will take a sizeable portion of my fortune and have them inherit that, I don't think that would be to society's benefit or to their benefit. I've spoken out about this before... my philosophy of giving back my wealth to society.
Bill Gates

To be humble to superiors is duty, to equals courtesy, to inferiors nobleness.
Benjamin Franklin

Be civil to all, sociable to many, familiar with few, friend to one, enemy to none.
Benjamin Franklin

God heals, and the Doctor takes the Fees.
Poor Richard's Almanack
Benjamin Franklin

Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and governments.
Benjamin Franklin

If you'd lose a troublesome Visitor, lend him Money.
Benjamin Franklin

All things are cheap to the saving, dear to the wasteful.
Benjamin Franklin

He that sells upon trust, loses many friends, and always wants money.
Poor Richard's Almanac
Benjamin Franklin

Pay what you owe, and you'll know what's your own.
Benjamin Franklin

When it comes time to hang the capitalists they will compete with each other to sell us the rope at a lower price.
Lenin

Men of business must not break their word twice.
Thomas Fuller

There are only two times in a man`s life when he should not speculate; when he can`t afford it, and when he can.
Mark Twain

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson

Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry leads to truth.
Thomas Jefferson

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.
Richard Nixon

A friendship founded on business is better than business founded on friendship.
John Davision Rockefeller

Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and nobody to be kicked?
Edward Thurlow, British Lawyer

Here's the rule for bargains: Do other men, for they would do you. That's the true business precept.
Charles Dickens, British novelist

People are not against you; they are merely for themselves.
Gene Fowler

The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of meeting the schedule has been forgotten.

If you can't say why you actually make your company a better place, you're out.
Cynthia Kellams

It is amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.
John Wooden, former UCLA basketball coach

I felt sorry about having no shoes - until I met a man with no feet.
W. Cohen

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to be in the first group; there was much less competition.

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.
Moliere

We are much more like flies in our development than you might think.
Lewis Wolpert, Principles of Development

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.
Henry David Thoreau

When a fellow says it ain't the money but the principle of the thing, it's the money.
Artemus Ward

There is nothing that puts a man more in your debt than that he owes you nothing.
Mark Caine

I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
Emile Henry Gauvreay

Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Warren Buffett

You have to think for yourself. It always amazes me how high IQ people mindlessly imitate. I never get good ideas talking to other people.
Warren Buffett

What's the sense in getting rich if you just stare at the ticker tape all day?
Warren Buffett

Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
Warren Buffett

We believe that according the name 'investors' to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a romantic.
Warren Buffett

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.
Warren Buffett

We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.
Warren Buffett

Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for the reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.
John Maynard Keynes

If I had to live my life over again, I would elect to be a trader of goods rather than a student of science. I think barter is a noble thing.
Albert Einstein##

It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
Sir Philip Gibbs

In the takeover business, if you want a friend, you buy a dog.
Carl Ichan

The trouble in American life today, in business as well as sports, is that too many people are afraid of competition. The result is that, in some circles, people have come to sneer at success, if it costs hard work and training and sacrifice.
Knute Rockne

We have a love-hate relationship. We hate inflation, but we love everything that causes it.
william Simon

Markets change, tastes change, so the companies and the individuals who choose to compete in those markets must change.
Dr. An Wang

Nothing is illegal is a hundred businessmen decide to do it, and that's true anywhere in the world.
Andrew Young