David Neeleman Quotes

Don't go in and tell somebody else how to run their business.

The Arena League is the best thing that could have happened to me because I get to run the whole process. I'm seeing not only the football side but the business side.

We would rather have our employees running our business.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

I don't want to run around and look at a shot through a monitor. That doesn't improve what I'm trying to do. I figure, once I've done my job, it's none of my business.

The restaurant business is something that you have to treat like a baby. You have to constantly be there. You can't trust it to anybody else, because no one's going to love it like you do.

When you're invested in your own business, you're going to run it better. When people are financially responsible for whether their store succeeds, they're going to have that kind of entrepreneurial spirit that's harder to get if headquarters is running things.

I am a very hands-on person, and I like to be involved in driving my business.

I've got to let the people who are in the business run the business. I can help them think through their decisions about products, about partners, about hiring. But in the end, the decisions are theirs, and so is the responsibility.

I'm a very hands-on person; I don't just want to give my name to something and not be a big part of it.

No partnership between two independent companies, no matter how well run, can match the speed, effectiveness, responsiveness and efficiency of a solely owned company.

We must keep decision-making in our own hands when we employ foreign personnel. Don’t let foreigners control everything and make crucial decisions for us.

Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there?

When you make a business, you get to make a little universe where you control all the laws.

I used to be very hands-on, but lately I've been more hands-off and I plan to become more hands-on and less hands-off and hope that hands-on will become better than hands-off, the way hands-on used to be.

My only role in the opening of the schools has been to suggest and encourage opening them. But it is impossible for there to be a [central authority] controlling the schools. They are in more than 100 countries, and there must be many different companies that have opened and run them.

It's not going to be sitting there producing The Apprentice. I can assure you of that. It's something that [Donald Trump] owns. It's a title he owns, but I'm telling you he's going to be 100 percent focused in the White House.

The virtue of small government is that the mistakes are small as well...If you want to leave a nation you think is corrupt, inefficient, militaristic, oppressive, repressive, but you don't want to move to Canada or France, what do you do? Well, the way is through secession, where you could stay home and be where you want to be.

It's exciting to do something you're writing. And it's also a lot easier to memorize because you wrote it.

My father has created an enormous business and he's created an enormous brand for himself, and I'm contributing to the business that he's built every day at The Trump Organization

They've changed the salesman but they haven't changed the product.

You could transfer Congress over to run Standard Oil or General Motors, and they would have both things bankrupt in two years.

I like to be directed, but when I'm flying and I'm on fire, I don't want someone coming and getting in my way just because they feel like they need to.

Commerce is the agency by which the power of choice is obtained.

The biggest mistake you could ever make is to think you work for anyone but yourself