John Wanamaker Quotes

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.

Corporate executives and business owners need to realize that there can be no compromise when it comes to ethics, and there are no easy shortcuts to success. Ethics need to be carefully sown into the fabric of their companies.

We mean to make little business big, and all business honest, instead of striving to make Big Business little, and yet letting it remain dishonest.

Work with integrity and succeed with integrity

It is difficult, but not impossible, to conduct strictly honest business.

In matters of business, no woman stops at integrity.

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.

Look at the Quakers - they were excellent business people that never lied, never stole; they cared for their employees and the community which gave them the wealth. They never took more money out than they put back in.

I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently... This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.

The Golden Rule finds no limit of application in business.

It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. What is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.

A show of a certain amount of honesty is in any profession or business the surest way of growing rich.

There is no such thing as business ethics. There is only one kind -- you have to adhere to the highest standards.

Google's a strange place. When I met Eric Schmidt, he said, "If you are kind to everybody, then you will make good decisions because people will give you good information, and if you are truthful to everybody, they will be truthful to you." That's what's different about Google. They screw up and make mistakes, but they genuinely mean the good stuff about "don't be evil."

If you pretend that business is beyond morality, that's the kind of morality you get.

Speeches by businessmen on social responsibility...may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the pursuit of profits is wicked.... There is one and only one social responsibility of business-to...engage in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

If a business is not ethical, it will fail, perhaps not right away but eventually.

A business is seldom if ever built up except on lines of strictest integrity.

Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it's integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards. And it's much easier to do business with someone when you look them in the eye and say, "This is what we're going to do," and you understand what you each mean, and you can go away and get it done.

The bud of victory is always in the truth.

I'm just in an unfortunate business where if you ask me a question I have to answer it honestly and if I don't answer it truthfully then I'm not respected.

The greatest asset, even in this country, is not oil and gas. It's integrity. Everyone is searching for it, asking, 'Who can I do business with that I can trust?'

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?

Without question, the single most important attribute of a successful entrepreneur is integrity. And that's not some philosophical or theoretical malarkey; it's hard-nosed fact.

I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.