Top 100 A Great Company Quotes
#1. I've always found a way to make my way, and now I've had the fortune of being hired by a great company - Chrysler Corporation - one of the original Big Three.
Joe Wurzelbacher
#2. Building a great company that can build great products over and over and over is the hardest of all.
Anonymous
#3. To make HP a great company once again, we need more than competitive costs and operational efficiency. We're in the process of assessing and refining our growth strategy, and the same concepts that were behind our operational changes will be at work here: simplicity, focus, alignment, and execution.
Bill Vaughan
#4. Essentially, you have to be aware of a crisis happening: 'Can the company go on if I get hit by a bus?' That's, I think, how you build a great company and something that can scale.
Osman Rashid
#5. I built a great company, one of the - some of the most iconic assets in the world, $10 billion of net worth, more than $10 billion of net worth, and frankly, I had a great time doing it.
Donald Trump
#6. Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo - there's a common theme. None of these companies ever sold. By staying independent, they were able to build a great company.
Jan Koum
#7. Ed Catmull has thought a lot about the role luck plays at a great company, and how businesspeople manage that luck. It's all in the preparedness, he says, and in creating a culture that can adapt to the unexpected. "These things are always going to happen. What separates you is your response,
Brent Schlender
#8. To build a great company, which is a CEO's job, sometimes you have to stand up against conventional wisdom.
Carly Fiorina
#9. Focusing on the long term and building a great product that is scalable ultimately leads to a great company.
Craig Sherman
#10. It's like athletes: To be a great company you need great competitors ... It's what keeps you alive and keeps you honest.
Craig R. Barrett
#11. If you want to grow, find a good opportunity. Today, if you want to be a great company, think about what social problem you could solve.
Jack Ma
#12. A good company offers excellent products and services. A great company also offers excellent products and services but also strives to make the world a better place.
Philip Kotler
#13. A great company is not a great investment if you pay too much for the stock.
Benjamin Graham
#14. Years and years ago, I did a game based on 'Hitchhiker's Guide' with a company called Infocom, which was a great company. They were doing witty, intelligent, literate games based on text.
Douglas Adams
#15. I am confident that partnering my Dollywood Company with a great company like Gaylord will create something truly special.
Dolly Parton
#16. I think Google is a great company, and they're doing really cool things. But they're not doing things that are going to put us, I think, into the next generation of technology.
Sandra Lerner
#17. I've never invested in any airline. I'm an airline manager. I don't invest in airlines. And I always said to the employees of American, 'This is not an appropriate investment. It's a great place to work and it's a great company that does important work. But airlines are not an investment.'
Robert Crandall
#18. Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious-but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
James C. Collins
#19. As the company grows and about this 25 or so employee size, your main job shifts from building a great product to building a great company.
Sam Altman
#20. As a founder, your first job is to get the first things right, because you cannot build a great company on a flawed foundation.
Peter Thiel
#21. Forget luxury; as a great company you have to keep evolving.
Angela Ahrendts
#22. Over the last ten years, technological advances have dramatically lowered the financial bar for starting a new company, but the courage bar for building a great company remains as high as it has ever been.
Ben Horowitz
#23. A great company in the media business needs visionary leaders, not a conglomerate structure headquartered in Columbus Circle that second guesses.
Carl Icahn
#24. These guys sit in the Senate - even though he misses most of the votes, by the way - but he sits in the Senate and listens to this stuff all the time.I'm out working, producing jobs all over the place and building a great company.
Donald Trump
#25. I don't know anything about directing, but if you love actors, know your story and hire a great company, then anyone can direct a film.
Peter Hedges
#26. We're building a great company, and we're very excited about the future of the company.
Jim Barksdale
#27. I think Yahoo is a great company, with great assets.
Jack Ma
#28. We're enamored with the concept that there's always a price. But sometimes, your goal is to build a great company, not sell it.
Aaron Levie
#29. A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.
James C. Collins
#30. Groupon looked like a very high valuation, but any investment in a great company at any stage is almost always a good investment.
Ben Horowitz
#31. If you want to build a great company, get the hell out of Silicon Valley.
Bill Gates
#32. All over the world, I do business. I make great deals. I've made hundreds of millions of dollars against China. All over the world I make money and I build great things. Who's going to build a wall like me on the southern border? I built a great company.
Donald Trump
#34. In other words, I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.
Tom Watson
#35. EBay is a great company. There are a lot of good assets and good customers, and the U.S. people love it.
Jack Ma
#36. The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that's hidden from the outside. A great company is a conspiracy to change the world; when you share your secret, the recipient becomes a fellow conspirator.
Peter Thiel
#37. One of our first customers asked me how big we want to be. I said I want to be really big. Later, it bothered me that I answered that way. Now I say I just want to be a great company.
Kevin Plank
#38. No sector will ever be so important that merely participating in it will be enough to build a great company.
Peter Thiel
#39. The best thing that happens to us is when a great company gets into temporary trouble ... We want to buy them when they're on the operating table.
Warren Buffett
#40. With Twitter and other social networking tools, you can get a lot of advice from great people. I learn more from Twitter than any survey or discussion with a big company.
Daniel Ek
#41. Obviously I've got a great team of people within the company. You can't operate all by yourself. We have a good board of directors and a big bench, and they can make decisions if I'm not around.
Roger Penske
#42. I started a production company out of necessity, the need for great narratives for actors of color.
Viola Davis
#43. We tried to set up a company that patterned ourselves after Southwest in all the fun, the spirit, the great people, the smile, the efficiency side of it, but we've added some extras that people aren't used to finding on Southwest.
David Neeleman
#44. A great sports car that goes from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds is just a fact. To the wrong audience, it's irrelevant. But to the right audience, it's a passion.
David Brier
#45. The successful companies try to keep the new entrants down. Now that's great for a company like ours. We make more money that way because we have less competition and less innovation. But for the country as a whole, it's horrible.
Charles Koch
#46. I've always liked the fact that anyone with a great idea, access to the Internet, and an unrelenting will can spark a world-beating company simply by standing up code on the Internet and/or leveraging the information and relationship network that is the web. That's how Facebook started, after all.
John Battelle
#47. Enduring great companies don't exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed, in a truly great company, profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point of life.
James C. Collins
#48. Great men taken up in any way are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man without gaining something by him.
Thomas Carlyle
#49. Anybody can build a company and sell the company the next day. That doesn't make you special, it doesn't make you unique, it doesn't make you all that great.
Jan Koum
#50. 'She's Dynamite' was a 100 years ago, and I recorded that song because the company thought that it was a great song and it was hot. That was the beginning of rock n' roll, and I guess they thought it would be a BB King version of rock n' roll.
B.B. King
#51. My dad had a commercial film company, so he had a videotape player before anyone. So he got Mel Brooks movies or Citizen Kane or some classic old movies. And every summer the revival house in Evanston would show the great films from the '50s and '60s and '70s.
John Cusack
#52. I thought a company that provides mutual-fund information could be a great business, because you could construct an effective moat by building large financial databases and customer lists and a strong brand name.
Joe Mansueto
#53. I built a tremendous company and all I want to do is make America great again.
Donald Trump
#54. The King's son, who was told that a great princess, whom nobody knew, was come, ran out to receive her. He gave her his hand as she alighted from the coach, and led her into the hall where the company were assembled.
Charles Perrault
#55. Surprisingly, it was not an American but a British company that opened an amusement park in 2007 called Dickens World, located in the English county of Kent, complete with an Ebenezer Scrooge Haunted House, a Great Expectations Boat Ride and the as-advertised 'costumed Dickensian characters.'
Matthew Pearl
#56. Why can't it be awesome to work for a food company? Why can't we create an environment where people are trying to push each other to do great things, and we're not trying to steal from anybody - we're trying to be good to our farmers and run an honorable business, if there is such a thing anymore?
David Chang
#57. To have the universe bear one company, would be a great consolation in death.
Publilius Syrus
#58. When I'm traveling on tour, one of my favorite things to do is to throw a baseball cap on and go to a Target. The company has always been good to me. They've got such a great creative team.
Christina Aguilera
#59. In order to build a great technology company, you have to hire lots of incredibly smart people. It's a total waste to have lots of big brains but not let them work on your biggest problems.
Ben Horowitz
#60. Here is a dirty little secret: Stock-picking is wildly overrated. Sure, it makes for great cocktail party chatter, and what is more fun than delving into a company's new products? But the truth is that individual stocks are riskier than broad indices.
Barry Ritholtz
#61. A very good senior programmer (who might get paid $200,000) gets paid about the same as a great programmer, who delivers $5 million worth of value for the same price. That's enough of a difference to build an entire company's profit around. Do it with ten programmers and you're rich.
Seth Godin
#62. I have great respect for Jaypee Greens as a company that has produced a truly world class, 24-carat, championship golf course. I am happy to be associated with a company with such outstanding qualities.
Kapil Dev
#63. The main point is first get the right people on the bus (and wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor in people decisions in order to take a company from Good to Great.
James C. Collins
#64. It's difficult for a company to be anywhere interesting in a world that is so dominated by prototypes and great and bright ideas.
Marcel Wanders
#65. Doing theater anywhere, especially in L.A., is a constant uphill battle, and there's also the unsexy parts of the business that you're faced with, like getting money. It's a really great thing to do. You feel like you're really an artist when you're doing that and you're in a company of artists.
Finn Wittrock
#66. You'll be a poorer person all your life if you don't know some of the great stories and great poems.
Walt Disney Company
#69. I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.
Henry David Thoreau
#70. We come into this world alone. You're going to die alone. That's the way it is.
I think a really great interpretation of love is: feeling alone with someone else.
The times in my life, if you want to qualify as "being in love", when you feel almost like being alone with company.
Chris Evans
#71. Everything I have is a private company. And even though a public company's a great thing, it's great for financing and all of the stuff you need to do. I'm not answering to anybody but my wife and my children and the people who work for me, and my partners.
Henry Blodget
#72. Most businesses think that product is the most important thing, but without great leadership, mission and a team that deliver results at a high level, even the best product won't make a company successful.
Robert Kiyosaki
#73. The most direct path to achievement whether you're an entrepreneur, a company executive, or a pro soccer player is to be a great performer and a great team member. This is also the secret to a meaningful career and self-fulfillment.
Maynard Webb
#74. Good is somebody who delivered and allowed the company to overcome obstacles, without leaving a profound impact on its culture. Great is somebody who leads his company to achievements and performance and value that nobody was expecting it had.
Carlos Ghosn
#75. I would say a good leader brings results. A great leader writes a new story, it's different. Obviously a new story has to incorporate a lot of results. But a story is a chapter in the life of a company that people want to write and want to remember.
Carlos Ghosn
#76. And you have a record company behind it, this is a key too, you need people to fight for your records, at least a little bit. So if you have a great song, it's catchy, and you've got a little bit of help, I think that's all you need. But there hasn't been that in music.
Joan Jett
#77. If you ask a founder how their company is doing, they always say, 'Oh it's great. We're totally crushing it,' and that's almost never true.
Sam Altman
#78. We have nothing to fear and a great deal to learn from trees, that vigorours and pacific tribe which without stint produces strengthening essences for us, soothing balms, and in whose gracious company we spend so many cool, silent, and intimate hours.
Marcel Proust
#79. Indeed, if there is any one "secret" to an enduring great company, it is the ability to manage continuity and change - a discipline that must be consciously practiced, even by the most visionary of companies.
James C. Collins
#80. I think as a company, if you can get two things right
having a clear direction on what you are trying to do and bringing in great people who can execute on the stuff
then you can do pretty well.
Mark Zuckerberg
#81. Being a part of SKECHERS is exciting. It is such a hip company with a great attitude and image.
Carrie Underwood
#82. It is never an idea, technology, market forces, or access to capital that makes a company innovative. What differentiates an innovative company from an average company is the people working inside the company.
Jag Randhawa
#83. Dwarves are not heroes, but a calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#84. An MBA is a great degree for career paths like investment banking, finance, consulting, and large companies. An MBA is not necessarily the right path for starting a tech company. You should be building a prototype, not getting an MBA in that case.
Guy Kawasaki
#85. Toronto's likable, but it could be a lot more, as I think Montreal is, lovable. What we need more than anything, I think, is a great pedestrian promenade. Pick a busy streetscape, close it to cars forever, and it will fill with people enjoying nothing more than the pleasure of their own company.
Andy Barrie
#86. TNT is a really great company to do a show for. They really believe in their shows and give shows a lot of support. They have it all worked out before you start shooting. Everybody's on the same page.
Timothy Hutton
#87. A teacher who is only interested in great talents is like a man who only seeks the company of rich people.
Carl Flesch
#88. A lot of people have said a lot of great things about Steve Jobs. And for good reason: he built the world's second-most valuable company, with billions in profits and products that have improved every aspect of our lives. But Steve didn't get there by being a soft, fluffy, Kumbaya-type leader.
Kevin O'Leary
#89. One of the great things about building a tech company is the amazing people that you can hire.
Ben Horowitz
#91. I do think a lot of people are trying to do important things still, and I think it is really a great thing that entrepreneurship is getting easier. When I started, it was just much harder to begin a company.
Ben Horowitz
#92. If you can build a company and make money, great. But eventually, my intention is to give all my money away. I told my kids that. [Wealth] is not particularly helpful to kids. It's almost a burden. It's better to allow them to do their own thing and have their own successes.
Steve Case
#93. My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits were the motivation.
Steve Jobs
#94. Every great brand goes back to a courageous individual who dared to say 'NO' to the status quo.
David Brier
#95. My husband and I oddly have worked together a couple of times. We did a 'Veronica Mars' episode together. We didn't work together, but we were both in 'Ghost World.' We had a theater company in L.A., for a bunch of years. So, we've worked together a fair amount, and it's always just great fun.
Lauren Bowles
#96. In not having an appointment at Harvard, I'm in the company of a great many people whose work I admire tremendously, in particular women of color.
Catharine MacKinnon
#97. In 2009, South Carolina was blessed to welcome a great American company that chose to stay in our country to continue to do business. That company was Boeing.
Nikki Haley
#98. I made so many mistakes in running the company so far, basically any mistake you can think of I probably made. I think, if anything, the Facebook story is a great example of how if you're building a product that people love you can make a lot of mistakes
Mark Zuckerberg
#99. I've worked over four dozen nine-to-five jobs before taking the chance to chase my dream of wanting to become an actor and filmmaker. Growing up in Brooklyn and Harlem, working at jobs like the bus company were great. I had benefits, a great salary, and security. But it wasn't my dream.
Malcolm Goodwin
#100. Given a choice between great food and boring company or boring food and great company, I'll take the great company any day.
Ruth Reichl
