Business Leaders - Quote and Unquote

N.R.Narayana Murthy, Chairman, Infosys Technologies Ltd "I'm a capitalist in mind, a socialist at heart."

K V Kamath, CEO of ICICI “To build a successful business, you have to be able to pick entrepreneurs very early and get them embedded into the business. They need to go out into the ecosystem, demonstrate their abilities, nurture the business and build it up.”

Azim Premji, Chairman and Managing Director, Wipro Corporation "We give people major responsibilities even if they are only 60 per cent ready. Our experience is that people are pretty elastic when you give them responsibility, and they just grow rapidly with the job."

Lakshmi Mittal, Chairman & CEO of Mittal Steel Company “Everyone experiences tough times, it is a measure of your determination and dedication how you deal with them and how you can come through them.”

J. J. Irani, Director of Tata Sons, “To be a leader you need two attributes: the environment and training. Equally important is recognition of the fact that this is an opportunity and one has to grab it.”

Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director of Titan, "Unless you show extraordinary performance in your journey to being a good leader and prove your managerial capability, organisations don't throw you up into leadership positions."

Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Corporation “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.”

George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC “Well, you know, I was a human being before I became a businessman.”

Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.” “A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.” “Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently.”

Larry Page, Co-founder and President of products at Google “You don't need to have a 100-person company to develop that idea.”

Thomas Edison, Inventor “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Accordingly a genius is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.”

Richard Branson, Founder of the Virgin group “I wanted to be an editor or a journalist, I wasn't really interested in being an entrepreneur, but I soon found I had to become an entrepreneur in order to keep my magazine going.”

Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald's Corporation “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.” “It's easy to have principles when you're rich. The important thing is to have principles when you're poor.”

Peter Drucker, writer, management consultant and university professor “Some of the best business and nonprofit CEOs I've worked with over a sixty-five- year consulting career were not stereotypical leaders. They were all over the map in terms of their personalities, attitudes, values, strengths, and weaknesses.” “Executives owe it to the organisation and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.”

Li Ka Shing, Chairman of Cheung Kong Holdings “The future may be made up of many factors but where it truly lies is in the hearts and minds of men. Your dedication should not be confined for your own gain, but unleashes your passion for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and humanity of mankind.”