James Cash Penney

Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.

Determine to do some thinking for yourself. Don’t live entirely upon the thoughts of others. Don’t be an automaton.

No business can succeed in any great degree without being properly organized.

The five separate fingers are five independent units. Close them and the fist multiplies strength. This is organization.

We get real results only in proportion to the real values we give.

Salesmanship is limitless. Our very living is selling. We are all salespeople.

I always look at it that I work with my employees as opposed to them working for me.

Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.

It was impossible to operate in the aluminium business without krysha – very real physical protection.

Salesmanship, too, is an art; the perfection of its technique requires study and practice.

My mother taught me to love my work. I learned everything about business from her.

We were all young and we were all inventing our careers. I was very close to Jackson, just as I’d been very close to Laura Nyro. With each person I had a unique relationship.

I never insisted that I was a good student.

If the boss stands in the way of men getting what they earn, he is not fit to be boss.

We do not hire a man’s history, we hire the man.

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.

Luck is always the last refuge of laziness and incompetence.

I believe that any stock that is sold should have real value as automobile or bushel of potatoes, and stock market should be run as a vegetable market.

No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn’t actually fall down.

The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

[On Calvin Klein asking him ‘Why don’t you call it Geffen Records?’] People in the record business just don’t do that. They come up with names likes Asylum, Capricorn, or Island. [Calvin Klein said if you put your own name on the door ‘You’ll get laid more.’]