One should act as he may, not as he would like to.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall be given a square deal.

If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.

There is only one way to make a great deal of money, and that is in a business of your own.

Keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.

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

'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.

The golden rule for every business man is this: ‘Put yourself in your customer’s place.’

While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.

Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak. But experience more than sufficiently teaches that men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues.

Anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

The charges we bring against others often come home to ourselves; we inveigh against our faults which are as much ours as theirs; and so our eloquence ends by tellings against ourselves.

An undutiful daughter will prove an unmanageable wife.

You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man’s actions are, such must be his spirit.

Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked, and never mended well.

Kindly words do not enter so deeply into men as a reputation for kindness.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

You and only you are responsible for your life choices and decisions.

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else.

Champions take responsibility. When the ball is coming over the net, you can be sure I want the ball.

You cannot subsidize irresponsibility and expect people to become more responsible.

We do not do what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are—that is a fact.

We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation.