Anita Roddick Quotes

I don't want our success to be measured only by financial yardsticks, or by our distribution or number of shops. What I want to be celebrated for - and it's going to be tough in a business environment - is how good we are to our employees and how we benefit our community. It's a different bottom line.

We are a company that lives and breathes a philosophy that's centered on not only making sound business decisions but also personally and professionally finding ways to contribute to the well being of society. We are also a company that understands community.

The history of business has shown that companies usually only regulate themselves if they're forced to by legislation, or out of self-interest - often in the shape of a marketable message that will help sell more products.

At a lot of companies founded on principles, the notion of making money is almost antithetical to the ethos of the place. From the very beginning, our business has existed to meet the needs and desires of multiple constituencies: customers, team members, vendors, shareholders, the community.

Companies should increasingly see themselves as major corporate citizens with a wider responsibility to the community. Nothing less than their reputation - their image - is at stake.

We've somehow allowed ourselves to think it's okay to neglect and abandon our responsibility to ourselves and to our community. Everything cannot be blamed on the system.

Since when do corporations not have responsibility to the community? Since when to the not have responsibility to their employees?

I pretty much believe, as everyone in the B Team does, that business must succeed beyond the bottom line. More important than profits is how you get to them. Measuring financial earnings and losses only is definitely not enough and has led us astray from creating a better world for all.

So much business is based on the belief that we should do whatever we can within legal limits to make as much money as we can. Ben & Jerry's was based on values, and we try to operate a business that not just sells ice cream but partners with all our stakeholders - whether that's suppliers or customers - to bring about a more sustainable world.

It is a sort of great Victorian truth that actually, trying to do the right thing is pretty good for you and pretty good for business as well, by and large.

People in business generally have a responsibility to the community. They have to put back into the community from which they take. I think I've adopted that all through my life. Caring and sharing are two major fundamentals of life.

One of my frustrations is that we in society generally have this bifurcation in how we see the world. That's probably a little less true with business audiences, but in general, there tends to be this view that for-profit companies are greedy, and nonprofits are noble. It's absolutely more complicated than that.

I am not in this business as a calling. I don't do what I do to right any wrongs.

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 himself be given a square deal.

Corporations are not capable of doing things out of the goodness of their hearts. They don’t have hearts.

Let’s put common decency ahead of corporate profits.

Business rests squarely on the law of service. It has for its main reliance truth and faith and justice …. It is one of the greatest contributing forces to the moral and spiritual enhancement of the race.

Any business whose sole purpose is making money is not worth doing. Business must serve a larger purpose.

There's no sense that you can knock on your neighbor's door or be part of a local community group, and that's part of your responsibility as a human being.

Some people would argue the other side: that the business of business is business, and companies should only be focused on profits. But in today's world, I don't think corporations can only be focused on profits, because they are inextricably linked with the communities that they serve. I do not believe you can be a leader in your industry without being a leader in your community. It's a fundamental shift in how you think about business.

We believe responsible business can be profitable business

Business need to go beyond the interest of their companies to the communities they serve.

There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

Corporations are social institutions. If they don't serve society, they have no business existing

The corporation cannot be ethical, its only responsibility is to make a profit.