Chris Martin

Anything where we’re the butt of the joke, no one tells us about it.

I’m competitive with anyone who writes a good song – I don’t care if it’s a band or solo artist or whoever.

Well, once we finish something, I can’t really listen to it because all I hear are problems.

You can sometimes get your own feelings across more strongly if you pretend that you’re singing it from someone else’s angle. But it’s always from me. It’s just a new way of framing it.

You know, it’s possible for two humans to be in a relationship without there needing to be some public reason for that relationship.

If a few companies were less greedy, the people at the bottom woud have a lot more.

Workers – men and women – of all countries, place yourselves under the banner of the Fourth International. It is the banner of your approaching victory!

If you change anything about the way you approach selling, the thing that would make the biggest difference would be your attitude, your attitude toward your customer, your service, the benefits of your products, your employer, and yourself.

America is not a land of money but of wealth-not a land of rich people, but of successful workers.

See what a 25-cent raise will do to us, said Mr. Ford. So they figured the daily and monthly cost of a 25-cent increase. Put on another quarter and see what that will cost, he said. And so they went on, 25 cents a step. Finally the wage of $2.34 stood at $4.75–more than 100 percent increase. One of the associates–a good financial head–remarked rather sarcastically that if they were going to be fools, why not be first-class fools and make it $5. All right, said Mr. Ford, let’s make it $5.

One client didn’t want to go out so had us build him a nightclub in his house.

I never get the accountants in before I start up a business. It’s done on gut feeling, especially if I can see that they are taking the mickey out of the consumer.

There are good examples of companies – Coca-Cola is one – that invested before there was a huge market in countries, and I think that ended up playing out to their benefit for decades to come.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

Entrepreneurs are always taking feedback, especially from their customers, bankers, workers, and sales force. Without straightforward feedback, entrepreneurs cannot make sound decisions.

There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization, and then there are people who are very analytic or focused on strategy. Those two types don’t usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.

No one loses anything by raising wages as soon as he is able. It has always paid us. Low wages are the most costly any employer can pay. It is like using low-grade material–the waste makes it very expensive in the end. There is no economy in cheap labor or cheap material. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to reduce wages. I think we were the last big company to come to it. Now I am mighty glad that wages are climbing again.

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

Building a mission and building a business go hand in hand. The primary thing that excites me is the mission. But we have always had a healthy understanding that we need to do both.

Selling is our No. 1 job. Never get away from selling a lot of merchandise personally. The more you sell the more you learn.

No company can afford not to move forward. It may be at the top of the heap today but at the bottom of the heap tomorrow, if it doesn’t.