James Cash Penney

I do not believe in excuses. I believe in hard work as the prime solvent of life’s problems.

No serious-minded man should have time for the mediocre in any phase of his living.

I never trust an executive who tends to pass the buck. Nor would I want to deal with him as a customer or a supplier.

Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.

The thought in my mind was that I must be a good merchant. If I were a good merchant, the rest would probably take care of itself.

A store’s best advertisement is the service its goods render, for upon such service rest the future, the good-will, of an organization.

I have a great, great company. I employ thousands of people. And I’m very proud of the job I did.

My mother was an entrepreneur… She found being on relief humiliating. She built this business from scratch… In 1951 my mother opened this store…

I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.

The Model T blazed the way for the motor industry and started the movement for good roads everywhere. It is still the pioneer car in many parts of the world which are just beginning to be motorized.

[‘Why don’t you manage me’ – Laura Nyro] Eventually I thought do I really believe that she could be one of the biggest stars in the world? Should I give up my career at this point in my life, where I’m doing so well, and put all my marbles in Laura’s [Nyro] basket? And I woke up one morning and I thought if you really believe it – go for it.

The other people I don’t take too seriously are the critics-except when they stand in the way of my projects. In my opinion, they mostly write to impress each other, and they’re just as swayed by fashions as anyone else. One week it’s spare glass towers they are praising to the skies. The next week, they’ve rediscovered old, and they’re celebrating detail and ornamentation.

Employers only handle the money – it is the customer who pays the wages.

It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy.

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.

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.

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.

A real entrepreneur is somebody who has no safety net underneath them.

Luck is always the last refuge of laziness and incompetence.

I did not feel ‘evil’ when I wrote advertisements for Puerto Rico. They helped attract industry and tourists to a country which had been living on the edge of starvation for 400 years.

Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence.