Top 80 CEOs Quotes

Where visionaries can be good at persuasion, CEOs are good at wielding authority. Visionaries transcend organizations, resources, and current realities, while CEOs master them.

Money often determines not only who gets elected, but what gets done. Which voices do lawmakers listen to, the banks or home owners, coal companies, or asthma sufferers, the CEOs or the unemployed?

Everything ultimately becomes the CEO’s problem, no matter where it starts. I can see why some CEOs crack under the pressure.

Twenty years ago, you might have been pessimistic and said there’s no hope. But these days, some of our very biggest companies are acting remarkably cleanly. And in some cases, although not all cases, the CEOs are the driving forces behind that.

No doubt, corporate CEOs who lie to their shareholders and politicians who lie to their public know and believe intellectually that lying is immoral. Why then do they lie? They lie to others because they first lie to themselves.

When I dine with CEOs at Michael’s in New York or Spago in L.A., we score the best tables. On my own, I wind up seated near the kitchen doors.

I grew up watching my mom and dad selling rooms in our motels. We had CEOs coming to our house so that my dad could persuade them to have their executives stay in Hyatt hotels.

I went off to a school with the children of CEOs and diplomats. To be able to be at home with that group of people and at home with the desperately poor has been good for me in preparation for my coming to Washington.

We’re very much focused on full shareholder-value return. We have to get our stock moving. But I won’t do something in the short run that I don’t feel is right for the long run. That, I’ve watched many CEOs do.

Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus Christ and that the born-again are not just little old ladies in black but also CEOs and provosts of universities and candidates for office.

I think very few people still understand the distinction between CEOs on Wall Street and the hedge-fund billionaires operating separately.

There are woefully few women CEOs in the world, but there can be lots of them in films.

I don’t understand why people whose entire lives or their corporate success depends on communication, and yet they are led on occasion by CEOs who cannot talk their way out of a paper bag and don’t care to.

You know, technology CEOs like to think of themselves as rock ‘n roll stars.

For far too long, Congress has been focused on the CEOs, the millionaires, the billionaires.

I work with CEOs and their executive teams… and very few of these people are really indifferent about their employees or their customers.

Once America’s CEOs get back to the business of growing their companies rather than growing their share prices, shareholder value will take care of itself, and all Americans will share in the higher wages and other benefits of a renewed era of economic growth.

CEOs of top companies could probably use a dose of not-asking-for-raise behavior and less self-entitlement, rather than us trying to change girls in order to fit into the common mold of what we think a CEO looks like.

Visionary CEOs are not ‘just’ great at assuring world-class execution of a tested and successful business model: they are also world-class innovators.

Most of the tech CEOs I know used to think that moving to the Midwest or the South was beneath us, a good tactic for the Boeings of the world who don’t need the kind of rare skills we depend on, who have to grub for profits when we reach for growth. But if Amazon can’t afford to keep growing in Seattle, who can?

Now, metaphorically, I sit at any table that I want. I can sit with the jocks, I can sit with the gang members, I can sit with the politicians, I can sit with the CEOs. My brand can fit anywhere.

I know CEOs, and they get sick when they have to lay people off, especially around Christmas.

CEOs can stay too long.

The Fed has got to become a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs.

‘Commercial’ is not the word that has to be said only by CEOs. It has to be something that is maybe the essence of design, because design has some sort of art in it and creation, but it’s also some object that you have to use. There is also this pragmatic end to it.

While Matt Bevin helps insiders, wealthy CEOs and special interests, I’m running to be a governor who works for Kentucky families who are still struggling to get ahead.

I started doing motivational tours. I’ve seen all kinds of people, from the CEOs to the lowest executive, opening up to their fears. We don’t introspect as much as we should.

Visionary CEOs are product- and business-model-centric and extremely customer focused.

I met with several public company CEOs to learn about their experiences of going public and listened to as many earnings calls as I possibly could.

I am far more a fan of aggressive entrepreneurs than I am of major CEOs. You look at major CEOs, and they are almost to a person quite timid. They don’t act to defend the free market principles that are vital to growth.

Society is still adapting to women being CEOs and professionals rather than homemakers. Because of this, the unfortunate outcome is that we feel we have to be successful at both – in the office and in the home. Striking that balance is different for everyone.

When I talk to CEOs, they’re not educated about social media.

I don’t feel I’m at liberty to speak about the actions of any one CEO. That’s not fair; given CEOs have duties to their shareholders.

Too many companies are just being big for the sheer sake of it. Too many CEOs thinking bigger is better.

I know a lot of CEOs who are looking for three- to four-year varsity athletes – not necessarily because these people are going to be doing pushups or spiking volleyballs in the workplace, but because they’re looking for that continuity, that person who was gritty about something.

By the time of the ’90s boom, CEOs had become superheroes, accorded celebrity treatment and followed with a kind of slavish scrutiny that Alfred P. Sloan could never have imagined.

If being open and honest with my customers is naive then it’s fine with me. CEOs who hide behind that all-seeing, all-knowing veneer are playing a game anyway, it’s not real. I am quite happy to be seen for who I am.

The thing that’s confusing for investors is that founders don’t know how to be CEO. I didn’t know how to do the job when I was a CEO. Founder CEOs don’t know how to be CEOs, but it doesn’t mean they can’t learn. The question is… can the founder learn that job and can they tolerate all mistakes they will make doing it?

We have doctors and lawyers and CEOs as fans.

CEOs must go beyond working with policy-makers on new regulatory frameworks. They must also commit to the principle that success cannot be measured by profitability and growth alone.

Everything becomes connected, and cyber security becomes the top issue for CEOs. An average company has 40-60 security vendors, and they have a violation every three months with viruses.

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what’s popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what’s lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful.

Good parents are always on time. So are good CEOs.

Working with people from all walks of life, from full-time moms to CEOs at large companies, I’ve distilled many universal truths about success. There’s a secret I’ve learned that works quite well at helping you to achieve what you want: Decide what you want.

As CEOs or board members, women are still underrepresented, and that gap is actually growing.

I’m not like most artists or most CEOs – I’m a CEO first, then an artist.

Indian-Americans are physicians, engineers, CEOs, professors, teachers, entrepreneurs. They are a vital part of the United States’ economic and social fabric. Because of this long history, the bonds among our people and our cultures will remain strong.

Over time, many CEOs realize that being able to quickly and effectively confront conflict in their company is a leadership opportunity because people’s respect often rises and falls on whether their leader deals with conflict head on or avoids dealing with it.

We must do better for our people by implementing a robust jobs agenda that prioritizes workers – not out-of-state corporations and CEOs.

The best board members aren’t elected by default. CEOs that set themselves up with their choice of board member – which means getting more than one term sheet and doing extensive reference checking – are better off.

If you want to think of a company as a system, design the system to benefit all. So how can you raise wages, increase training, and reduce carbon, and provide low-prices? We believe that it’s possible to deliver, and I find a lot of other likeminded CEOs, as it relates to thinking that way.

In California, we’ve had a series of millionaires and billionaires and CEOs and movie stars. We need to take a hard look at how we define legitimate and credible candidates.