Anita Roddick quotes:

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share
  • Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

  • If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.

  • The Body Shop Foundation is run by our staff and supports social activism and environmental activism. We don't tend to support big agencies.

  • I believe in businesses where you engage in creative thinking, and where you form some of your deepest relationships. If it isn't about the production of the human spirit, we are in big trouble.

  • Since the governments are in the pockets of businesses, who's going to control this most powerful institution? Business is more powerful than politics, and it's more powerful than religion. So it's going to have to be the vigilante consumer.

  • If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.

  • Years ago nobody was elected on the economic ticket. It was either the education platform, or it was health or it was other issues. It is only recently that economic values have superceded every other human value.

  • I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently... This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.

  • But if you can create an honorable livelihood, where you take your skills and use them and you earn a living from it, it gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to balance your life the way you want.

  • If I had learned more about business ahead of time, I would have been shaped into believing that it was only about finances and quality management.

  • The end result of kindness is that it draws people to you.

  • Consumers have not been told effectively enough that they have huge power and that purchasing and shopping involve a moral choice.

  • Women want to be free to choose from the same range of options that men take for granted. In our quest for equal pay, equal access to education and opportunities, we have made great strides. But until women can move freely and think freely in their homes, on the streets, in the workplace without the fear of violence, there can be no real freedom.

  • Look at the Quakers - they were excellent business people that never lied, never stole; they cared for their employees and the community which gave them the wealth. They never took more money out than they put back in.

  • Speed, agility and responsiveness are the keys to future success.

  • Being good is good business

  • The money that we make from the company goes into The Body Shop Foundation, which isn't one of those awful tax shelters like some in America. It just functions to take the money and give it away.

  • I traveled enormously during the 1960's, when you measured everything by where you traveled and what you did as travelers.

  • Over the past decade... while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual,' I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.

  • I didn't go to business school, didn't care about financial stuff and the stock market.

  • But the minute we went public on the stock market, which is how our wealth was created, it was no longer how many people you employed, it was how much you were worth and how much your company was worth.

  • For me, campaigning and good business is also about putting forward solutions, not just opposing destructive practices or human rights abuses.

  • All through history, there have always been movements where business was not just about the accumulation of proceeds but also for the public good.

  • Maybe this is what the future will look like: fresh, clean water will be so rare it will be guarded by armies. Water as the next oil - the next resource worth going to war over.

  • Communication is the key for any global business.

  • Internationalism means that we can see into the dark corners of the world, and hold those companies to account when they are devastating forests or employing children as bonded labour. Globalization is the complete opposite, its rules pit country against country and workers against workers in the blinkered pursuit of international competitiveness.

  • Be courageous. It's one of the only places left uncrowded.

  • Business is not financial science, it's about trading.. buying and selling. It's about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it.

  • Economic globalization creates wealth, but only for the elite who benefit from the surge of consolidations, mergers, global scale technology, and financial activity.

  • The market controls everything, but the market has no heart.

  • It is true that there is a fine line between entrepreneurship and insanity. Crazy people see and feel things that others don't. But you have to believe that everything is possible. If you believe it, those around you will believe it too.

  • Entrepreneurs are all a little crazy. There is a fine line between an entrepreneur and a crazy person. Crazy people see and feel things that others don't. An entrepreneur's dream is often a kind of madness, and it is almost as isolating. What differentiates the entrepreneur from the crazy person is that the former gets other people to believe in his vision.

  • I think it's just fear of death. I can't bear to go to sleep. There's very little, you know, between an entrepreneur and a crazy person.

  • I want to define success by redefining it. For me it isn't that solely mythical definition - glamour, allure, power of wealth, and the privilege from care. Any definition of success should be personal because it's so transitory. It's about shaping my own destiny.

  • A Sense Of Outrage Is Essential For The Entrepreneurial Spirit. I Think Discontentment Drives You To Want To Do Something About It. And My Outrage Came Very Early On.

  • When you run an entrepreneurial business, you have hurry sickness - you don't look back, you advance and consolidate. But it is such fun

  • A vision is something you see and others don't. Some people would say that's a pocket definition of lunacy. But it also defines entrepreneurial spirit.

  • Women are storytellers, they are communicators. They'll go and sit around a table and talk about their first date, their first smoke, their first lipstick, whatever it is. Those rituals of life, marriages and death aren't part of the language of men.

  • There are no rules or formulas for success. You just have to live it and do it. knowing this gives us enormous freedom to experiment toward what we want. Believe me, it's a crazy, complicated journey. It's trial and error. It's opportunism. It's quite literally, "Let's try lots of this stuff and see how it works."

  • Free trade holds much of the blame for continued international conflict. Markets are said to possess wisdom that is somehow superior to man. Those of us in business who travel in the developing world see the results of such western wisdom and have a rumbling disquiet about much of what our economic institutions have bought into.

  • business itself is now the most powerful force for change in the world today, richer and faster by far than most governments. And what is it doing with this power? It is using free trade, the most powerful weapon at its disposal, to tighten its grip on the globe.

  • The key to handling problems and conflict within an organization is to keep the channels of communication wide open.

  • I don't want to be defined by being the founder of the Body Shop, and I don't want to be defined as a woman suffering from Hepatitis C. There's more to my life than that.

  • It's about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it. Now 30 years on The Body Shop is a multi local business with over 2.045 stores serving over 77 million customers in 51 different markets in 25 different languages and across 12 time zones. And I haven't a clue how we got here!

  • Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear-view mirror.

  • It's frustrating sometimes to see the mismatch in resources between the pointless and the urgent, isn't it. Like the gap between the vast resources poured into military technological research to make war more sophisticated, and the trickle that goes into developing techniques that might prevent war instead.

  • We should be evolving into a new age of business with a worldview that maintains one simple proposition-that all of nature: humans, animals, earth, are interconnected and interdependent.

  • What we are trying to do is to create a new business paradigm, simply showing that business can have a human face and a social conscience.

  • If you've got a partner that's supportive and you're doing something you enjoy it doesn't ever become a job or a burden. Its about community, new friendships, support mechanism.

  • If you don't believe one person can make a difference, you have never been in bed with a mosquito.

  • Get informed. Get outraged. Get inspired. Get active.

  • Over the past decades...while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual', I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.

  • The aging process is fascinating because it doesn't disturb me, because this is what it is supposed to be like. But I'll tell you what does - it's the lack of strength - you can't hold up suitcases and do it yourself. Loss of physical strength.

  • If civilization is going to survive, business and policy-makers must move on, to find within themselves more developed emotions than fear or greed.

  • If there is excitement in their lives, it is contained in the figures on the profit and loss sheet. What an indictment.

  • I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses and made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently . . . This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.

  • You can't change t he wor ld f rom t he rear view mir ror.

  • If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.

  • A great advantage I had when I started The Body Shop was that I had never been to business school.

  • I have always found that my view of success has been iconoclastic: success to me is not about money or status or fame, its about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world.

  • The predominant idea behind globalization, in its most virulent form, is an unpleasant kind of social Darwinism - that the world is for winners not losers, that only the successful count, that money is considerably more important than votes.

  • Whatever you do, be different - that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can't think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you're different, you will stand out.

  • Whatever you do, be different. If you're different, you will stand out.

  • There are 3 billion women in the world who don't look like supermodels and only 8 that do.

  • If I can't do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?

  • We entrepreneurs are loners, vagabonds, troublemakers. Success is simply a matter of finding and surrounding ourselves with those open-minded and clever souls who can take our insanity and put it to good use.

  • I can't bear to be around people who are bland or bored or uninterested (or to employ them).

  • The most exciting thing happening in business is the rise of vigilante consumers.

  • Don't underestimate the power of the vigilante consumer.

  • Let me tell you how the French seduce you. They are the most bloody seductive people on Earth. They are charming, they are well-mannered and they praise and flatter you.

  • The growth of The Body Shop is testimony to the fact that you don't need to waste money on costly advertising campaigns to be successful. Instead, we've always relied on word of mouth and stories.

  • If you can shape your business life or your working life, you can just look at it as another extension - you just fulfill all your values as a human being in the work place. If you are an activist, you bring the activism of your life into your business, or if you love creative art, you can bring that in.

  • At The Body Shop we had always been measured by how many jobs we had created, and I got a major award from the Queen on that.

  • The movement for the environment really only started in the mid 1970's.

  • When you run an entrepreneurial business, you have hurry sickness - you don't look back, you advance and consolidate. But it is such fun.

  • There is no scientific answer for success. You can't define it. You've simply got to live it and do it.

  • To succeed you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality.

  • You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the followers and you have to live the message. What I have learned is that people become motivated when you guide them to the source of their own power and when you make heroes out of employees who personify what you want to see in the organization.

  • If you really didn't ever want to get wrinkles, then you should have stopped smiling years ago!

  • I want to work for a company that contributes to and is part of the community. I want something not just to invest in. I want something to believe in.

  • The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed

  • My passionate belief is that business can be fun, it can be conducted with love and a powerful force for good.

  • We communicate with passion and passion persuades.

  • People I work with are open to leadership that has a vision, but this vision has to be communicated clearly and persuasively, and always, always with passion.

  • Be daring. Be first. Be different.

  • Be special. Be anything but mediocre.

  • You educate people, especially young people, by stirring their passions, so you take every opportunity to grab the imagination of your employees, you get them to feel they are doing something important, that they are not a lone voice, that they are the most powerful and potent people on the planet.

  • the function of wealth is not to accumulate it but to give it away as productively and responsibly as you can.

  • You have to look at leadership through the eyes of the followers and you have to live the message.

  • I think that business practices would improve immeasurably if they were guided by "feminine" pinciples, qualities like love, care, and intuition.

  • We were most creative when our back was against the wall.

  • One of the key problems of the business world is that greed has become culturally acceptable.

  • I have no interest in being the biggest, the most profitable or the largest retailer. I just want The Body Shop to be the best, most breathlessly exciting company - and one that changes the way business is carried out.

  • Travel is like a university without walls.

  • Entrepreneurs are visionaries - they see things other people don't see.

  • Ninety-nine per cent of what we say is about values. I firmly believe that ethical capitalism is the best way of changing society for the better.

  • First, you have to have fun. Second, you have to put love where your labour is. Third, you have to go in the opposite direction to everyone else.

  • If I had to choose my driving force, it would be passion.

  • Three components make an entrepreneur: the person, the idea and the resources to make it happen.

  • The beauty and the fashion industry want to control you. And the way that they do it through your body. So once they control your body they control your purse and the products you buy. Its a fantastic strategy and it's working.

  • The big question is: how do you institutionalize success and still keep that edge of craziness and wildeness?

  • I'm an activist and I come from a very socialist background. For me, my thinking was formed by great thought leaders. And wealth preserving wasn't part of my thinking.

  • I think the leadership of a company should encourage the next generation not just to follow, but to overtake. The duty of leadership is to put forward ideas, symbols, metaphors of the way it should be done, so that the next generation can work out new and better ways of doing the job. The complaint Gordon and I have is that we are not being overtaken by our staff. We would like to be able to say, "We can't keep up with you guys", but, it is not happening.

  • The word love is never mentioned in big business.

  • I am aware that success is more than a good idea. It is timing too.

  • I hope to leave my children a sense of empathy and pity and a will to right social wrongs

  • Every time you buy something consider it a vote of confidence in the company that produced it.

  • You've got to be hungry - for ideas, to make things happen and to see your vision made into reality

  • Successful entrepreneurs may hate hierarchies and structures and try to destroy them. They may garner the disapproval of MBAs for their creativity and wildness. But they have antennae in their heads. When they walk down the street anywhere in the world, they have their antennae out, evaluating how what they see can relate back to what they are doing. It might be packaging, a word, a poem, or even something in a completely different business.

  • Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking

  • When you take the high moral road it is difficult for anyone to object without sounding like a complete fool.

  • Quite apart from anything else, my experience is trying to change things for the better makes you feel better, healthier. Humans are communicative animals: when you do good in a community, the benefits eventually get back to you.

  • To me the desire to create and to have control over your own life, irrespective of the politics of the time or social structures, has always been a part of the human spirit. What I did not fully realize was that work could open the doors to my heart.

  • If I had to name a driving force in my life, I would name PASSION every time

  • The freedom that comes with globalization is freedom for the rich and powerful nations to further exploit and further marginalize those at the bottom of the social ladder.

  • I believe that conventional marketing techniques are increasingly ineffective. Customers are hyped out. They have been overmarketed. They are becoming more cynical about the whole advertising and marketing process.

  • Never feel too small or powerless to make a difference.

  • Never be seduced into believing it isn't the role of business to tackle the big issues, because it absolutely is.

  • There are a lot of dark sides to success, but the light side of it is the ability to be opportunistic, and to be able to do things.

  • We are essentially outsiders and that is the best definition of an entrepreneur I have ever come across.

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share