Peter Lynch Quotes

When everyone is looking for gold, it's a good time to be in the pick and shovel business.

You can make money, you can lose money in Africa. But opportunities, boy oh boy, they exist.

Nothing wrong with making money.

The word 'commercial' implies a notion of profit.

I'm just trying to make a buck like everyone else.

To me, job titles don't matter. Everyone is in sales. It's the only way we stay in business.

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Necessity, n. The mother of invention. Profit is the father.

The discovery of these vast deposits of gold has entirely changed the character of Upper California. Its people, before engaged in cultivating their small patches of ground, and guarding their herds of cattle and horses, have all gone to the mines, or are on their way thither. Laborers of every trade have left their work-benches, and tradesmen their shops; sailors desert their ships as fast as they arrive on the coast; and several vessels have gone to sea with hardly enough hands to spread a sail. Two or three are now at anchor in San Francisco, with no crew on board….I have no hesitation now in saying, that there is more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers than will pay the cost of the present war with Mexico a hundred times over. No capital is required to obtain this gold, as the laboring man wants nothing but his pick and shovel and tin pan, with which to dig and wash the gravel, and many frequently pick gold out of the crevices of rocks with their knives, in pieces of from one to six ounces.

Everybody was talking of “Gold! gold!!” until it assumed the character of a fever. Some of our soldiers began to desert; citizens were fitting out trains of wagons and pack-mules to go to the mines. We heard of men earning fifty, five hundred, and thousands of dollars per day, and for a time it seemed as though somebody would reach solid gold. Some of this gold began to come to Yerba Buena [San Francisco] in trade, to disturb the value of merchandise, particularly of mules, horses, tin pans, and articles used in mining.

When you have a good idea, the money flows.

It doesn't take anything to be a businessman.

I see myself as a bit of a capitalist really - I like enterprise and making money.

If you can't sell your product, it's not a product-it's a hobby.

Commerce can never be at a stop while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit.

The craft of the merchant is this bringing a thing where it abounds to where it is costly.

Capitalism gives all of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and hang on to it.

Profit and morality are a hard combination to beat.

Teaching young people to sell is a priceless gift.

Hard work. Well, that=s all right for people who don=t know how to do anything else. It=s all right for people who aren=t lucky. But once you==re lucky, you don=t have to work for other people. You make them work for you.

Business is not financial science, it's about trading.. buying and selling. It's about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it.

Everyone can tell you the risk. An entrepreneur can see the reward.

I've opened the way for others to make fortunes, but a fortune for myself was not what I was after.

Risk is not a dirty word.

It is within everyone's grasp to be a CEO.