If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
Paul NewmanRead
I wasn't running toward the theater but running away from the sporting goods store. Of course now that I'm selling spaghetti sauce (with Newman's Own), I begin to understand the romance of business.. the allure of being the biggest fish in the pond and the juice you get from beating out your competitors.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the transition from a conventional career path to finding passion in entrepreneurship.
Paul Newman reflects on his unexpected journey from the sporting goods industry to selling spaghetti sauce, illustrating how business can be both a romantic venture and a competitor-driven landscape. He acknowledges the excitement and thrill that comes from competition in the business world, likening it to being the 'biggest fish in the pond' while recognizing the allure that drives entrepreneurs.
In practice
This quote could be used in a business seminar to inspire entrepreneurs.
If you're playing a poker game and you look around the table and and can't tell who the sucker is, it's you.
Twenty-five years ago I couldn`t walk down the street without being recognized. Now I can put a cap on, walk anywhere and no one pays me any attention. They don`t ask me about my movies and they don`t ask me about my salad dressing because they don`t know who I am. Am I happy about this? You bet.
A dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned.
I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can't give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking.
Dreams without movement are delusions, escapes, kid’s play. You have to put your feet into your dreams if they’re ever going to be reality. The dreamers we know and love today are the ones who worked the hardest
I respect generosity in people, and I respect it in companies too, I don't look at it as philanthropy; I see it as an investment in the community.
CEOs are paid for doing a terrible job. If the system wasn't so messed up, guys like me wouldn't make this kind of money.
If a brand genuinely wants to make a social contribution, it should start with who they are, not what they do. For only when a brand has defined itself and its core values can it identify causes or social responsibility initiatives that are in alignment with its authentic brand story.
You can't live if you don't eat, but you don't live to eat. And neither does business exist primarily to make a profit. It exists to fulfill its purpose, whatever that might be.
Hierarchy is an organization with its face toward the CEO and its ass toward the customer.
The extravagance of any corporate office is directly proportional to management's reluctance to reward the shareholders.
To grasp organizational life as it is, read novels (!) .... It is my fervent belief that we will never design rational processes that "overcome" such irregularities-don't bother telling that to a consultant. Hence, we should embrace the real, nonrational, nonlinear world with vigor and glee-and develop enterprise and career strategies accordingly.
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