James Cash Penney

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

Do not primarily train men to work. Train them to serve willingly and intelligently.

The greatest teacher I know is the job itself.

Too many would-be executives are slaves of routine.

Luck is always the last refuge of laziness and incompetence.

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.

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

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.

Good copy can’t be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You’ve got to believe in the product.

A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.

Profits made out of the distress of the people are always much smaller than profits made out of the most lavish service of the people at the lowest prices that competent management can make possible.

For a long time now, I have believed that industry and agriculture are natural partners and that they should begin to recognize and practice their partnership. Each of them is suffering from ailments which the other can cure. Agriculture needs a wider andsteadier market; industrial workers need more steadier jobs. Can each be made to supply what the other needs? I think so. The link between is Chemistry. In the vicinity of Dearborn we are farming twenty thousand acres for everything from sunflowers to soy beans. We pass the crops through our laboratory to learn how they may be used in the manufacture of motor cars and, thus provide an industrial market for the farmers’ products.

I get my design inspiration from Christian Dior and Chanel.

Asking me to come work here is the dumbest idea you ever had. It has been a waste of a year.

I suspect that many corporations have begun to understand that they have an important role to play in the lives of their communities, and that allocating funds to support local groups helps them discharge that function and also burnish their image.

What you say in advertising is more important than how you say it.

I used to be able to read memo’s upside down… It was like going to the college of the entertainment business.

Work mixed with management becomes not only easier but more profitable. The time is past when anyone can boast about ‘hard work’ without having a corresponding result to show for it.

No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land. With one foot in the land, human society is firmly balanced against most economic uncertainties. With a job to supply him with cash, and a plot of land to guarantee him support, the individual is doubly secure. Stocks may fail, but seedtime and harvest do not fail.

I really don’t retain information – by the time I arrive wherever I’m going, I already forget what it is that I wanted to say.

You have an idea of the way you think it is, and it’s not that way at all, it’s something else.