Quotes About Value

There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. Peter Drucker

There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.

1. What is our mission? 2. Who is our customer? 3. What does the customer value? 4. What are our results? 5. What is our plan?2

There is no such thing as a "good man." Good for what? is the question.

Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. Innovation, indeed, creates a resource. There is no such thing as a 'resource' until man finds a use for something in nature and thus endows it with economic value. Until then, every plant is a weed and every mineral just another rock.

Knowledge workers who do not ask themselves, "What can I contribute?" are not only likely to aim too low, they are likely to aim at the wrong things. Above all, they may define their contribution too narrowly.

What is our mission? Who is our customer? What does the customer value? What are our results? and What is our plan?

But a company which wants economic results has to have leadership in something of real value to a customer or market. It may be in one narrow but important aspect of the product line, it may be in its service, it may be in its distribution, or it may be in its ability to convert ideas into salable products on the market speedily and at low cost.

People, I realized, were what I valued, and I saw no point in being the richest man in the cemetery.

And you seem to spend a lot of energy on the question of how to be successful. But that is the wrong question." He paused, then like the Zen master thwacking the table with a bamboo stick: "The question is: how to be useful!" A great teacher can change your life in thirty seconds.

Its five business principles are "respect for humans," "customer satisfaction," "social responsibility," "value creation," and "innovation orientation.

It won't necessarily last, they know, but they cherish it all the more for that. You only know luck by its opposite.

It is reasonable to love the Absolute absolutely for the same reason it is reasonable to love the relative relatively.

If human life becomes cheapened, it becomes cheapened at both ends. Parents are killed, by euthanasia, when they become a "burden" to their children; and children are killed, by abortion, when they become a "burden" to their parents. All societies in history would regard these two sins as two of the most heartless and inhuman possible sins. To kill your parents is to kill yourself, your own past; and to kill your children is to kill yourself, your own future.

The root reason for this is the denial of the human essence, the human equality, the human family—judging people's worth only by how efficiently or intelligently or quickly they function. This is confusing the essence with the nonessential.

But a sneer can be a greater crime than a murder subjectively, for a sneer means "You are beneath contempt, you are sub-human, you are worthless scum, you are not even worth taking the trouble and time to kill", while a murder may mean "You are important and formidable and you are my enemy, and thus I must kill you." That can be a compliment, compared to a sneer.

Unworthy" does not mean "undeserving", for we are all undeserving! It means "incapable of receiving.

martyrdom is not only not the same as suicide, it is the polar opposite of suicide, since the suicide loves nothing in life enough to keep living, while the martyr loves something so much that he gives up everything for it, even life. The suicide sees less value and meaning in life than anyone else, while the martyr sees more.

Our lives teem with numbers, but we sometimes forget that numberss are only tools. They have no soul; they may indeed become fetishes.

The] utility resulting from any small increase in wealth will be inversely proportionate to the quantity of goods previously possessed.

The best way to handle a situation in which you love the company but not the current price is to make a small commitment and then increase it in the next sell-off.

If my favorite Internet company sells for $30 a share, and yours sells for $10, then people who focus on price would say that mine is the superior company. This is a dangerous delusion. What Mr. Market pays for a stock today or next week doesn't tell you which company has the best chance to succeed two to three years down the information superhighway.

It's best to divide your money among three or four types of stock funds (growth, value, emerging growth, etc.) so you'll always have some money invested in the most profitable sector of the market.