Ethical Business Quotes

Markets work; morals matter.

A lot of people think big business in America is a bad thing. I think it's a really good thing. Most people in business are ethical, hard-working, good people. And it's a meritocracy.

One can be in business and pursue bad profit. That is, by practicing cronyism—rigging the system to undermine competition, innovation and opportunity, making others worse off. Good profit should lead you to improve your ability to help others improve their lives. But that’s not how many businesses act today.

Making money and making the world a better place are not contrary to one another.

My father said, 'You must never try to make all the money that's in a deal. Let the other fellow make some money too, because if you have a reputation for always making all the money, you won't have many deals'.

I have been in Wall Street all of my life. I love it. It has been good to me. I know many wonderful, decent, honorable, ethical, hard-working people that were in Wall Street with me.

Let’s put common decency ahead of corporate profits.

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.

What we are trying to do is to create a new business paradigm, simply showing that business can have a human face and a social conscience.

I discovered a long time ago that if I focus on doing the right thing for the long term to improve the lives of consumers and customers all over the world, the business results will come.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

Microsoft is not about greed. It's about innovation and fairness.

Good businesses generate missions to drive their profits. Great businesses generate profits to drive their missions.

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.

How much harm does a company have to do before we question its right to exist?

In seeking to serve social needs because it makes good business sense to do so, a corporation is doing what it knows how to do best.

In the final analysis, finding a way to do clean business and not to pay bribes actually improves your bottom line.

The business of America is business, but it's about high-integrity business. It's about a business where you keep your word, where you make square deals.

Interest in business ethics courses has surged, and student activities at leading business schools are more focused than ever before on making business serve long-term social values.

Now I know that Wal-Mart's policies do not reflect the best way of doing business and the values that I think are important in America.

If you're thinking about your brand over your people, you've lost yourself.

I think it's important for industry to do well. But I want them to do well and do good at the same time.

Companies should have a due diligence process to determine the likelihood that their technologies will be used to carry out human rights abuses before doing business with a particular country or distributor.

To those men and women in business, remember the ultimate end of your work: to make a better product, to create better lives. I ask you to plan for the longer term and avoid that temptation of quick and easy paper profits.

Being good is good business