James Cash Penney

The art of effective listening is essential to clear communication, and clear communication is necessary to management success.

We can serve our customers well only if our buying jobs are right. You cannot sell if you haven’t ordered wanted goods into your store.

The best of merchandise will go back to the shelf unless handled by a conscientious, tactful salesman.

Luck is always the last refuge of laziness and incompetence.

There has never been a time when a career in the Penney Company was not a challenge that brought out the best in a man.

Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it.

Do not spend too much time planning or trying to anticipate and solve problems before they happen. That is just another kind of excuse for procrastination. Until you start, you won’t know where the problems will occur. You won’t have the experience to solve them. Instead, get into action, and solve the problems as they arise.

A monopoly of jobs in this country is just as bad as a monopoly of bread!

Listen more than you talk. Nobody learned anything by hearing themselves speak.

My dream was to have a steady job, was not to be on the road, to exist like a guy that goes to work as a mechanic or a carpenter and knows he’s gonna have a job.

Every business is a monarchy with, not a man, but an idea as king.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

Investors are visionaries in some respects – they look beyond the present.

Our clients pay for value. London is the top city in the world, the best tax haven in the world for some and the top residential site in the city is One Hyde Park at the top end of Sloane Street.

Our friendship was based on my payouts. That wasn’t a friendship when – as, for example, it’s me, my friends, we are friends for many years, and it doesn’t matter for me what the position is, where they work; we simply are friends. And with Mr. Berezovsky, our friendship was based on my payoffs.

Cutting wages is not the way to recovery. Raise wages and improve the product.

I avoid clients for whom advertising is only a marginal factor in their marketing mix. They have an awkward tendency to raid their advertising appropriations whenever they need cash for other purposes.

Businesses that grow by development and improvement do not die.

Work is our sanity, our self-respect, our salvation. The day’s work is the center of everything.

They encouraged me to always look for the good in people instead of assuming the worst and trying to find fault.

After the situation with Kursk submarine, I started looking at Mr. Berezovsky in a completely different way. For me, it was a turning point in our relationship. I think that he took a completely dishonorable position.