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Anita Roddick
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“I run my company according to feminine principles, principles of caring, making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy or all those dreadfully boring business-school management ideas; having a sense of work as being part of your life, not separate from it; putting your labor where your love is; being responsible to the world in how you use your profits; recognizing the bottom line should stay at the bottom.”
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“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.”
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“If I had to nominate a driving force in my life, I'd plump for passion every time. ”
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“It is immoral to trade on fear. It is immoral constantly to make women feel dissatisfied with their bodies. It is immoral to deceive a customer by making miracle claims for a product. It is immoral to use a photograph of a glowing sixteen-year-old to sell a cream aimed at preventing wrinkles in a forty-year-old.”
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“I think all business practices would improve immeasurably if they were guided by 'feminine' principles — qualities like love and care and intuition.”
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“A great advantage I had when I started The Body Shop was that I had never been to business school.”
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“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.”
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“There are only two ways of making money: the hard way and the very hard way!”
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“When you take the high moral road it is difficult for anyone to object without sounding like a complete fool.”
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“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.”
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“I think it is completely immoral for a shop to trade in the middle of a community, to take money and make profits from that community and then ignore the existence of that community, its needs and problems.”
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“... 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.”
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“I can't bear to be around people who are bland or bored or uninterested (or to employ them).”
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“Tap the energy of the anarchist ...”
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“... a social conscience is not incompatible with profit.”
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“I think the leadership of a company should encourage the next generation not just to follow, but to overtake.”
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“Traditionally, the role of the individual was to conform to the organization. In the future the organization will have to conform to the needs of the individual.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“Creativity comes by breaking the rules, by saying you're in love with the anarchist.”
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“Why should how I act in my workplace be any different from how I interact with my family at home? It's making sure the company runs on feminine principles where the major ethic is care.”
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“I don't think I'm a risk-taker. I don't think any entrepreneur is. I think that's one of those myths of commerce. The new entrepreneur is more values-led: you do what looks risky to other people because that's what your convictions tell you to do. Other companies would say I'm taking risks, but that's my path — it doesn't feel like risk to me.”
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“I don't want our success to be measured only by financial yardsticks, or by our distribution or number of shops. What I want to be celebrated for — and it's going to be tough in a business environment — is how good we are to our employees and how we benefit our community. It's a different bottom line.”
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“If I had to choose my driving force, it would be passion.”
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“One of the key problems of the business world is that greed has become culturally acceptable.”
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“With fewer and fewer corporations controlling more and more of the world's trade, there is an ever greater need to know more about the practices of these large faceless organizations.”
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“The business of business should not just be about money, it should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed.”
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“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.”
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“Irritation is a great source of energy and creativity.”
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“We are essentially outsiders and that is the best definition of an entrepreneur I have ever come across.”
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“Entrepreneurs are outsiders by nature — outsiders with a work ethic.”
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“... if companies are in business solely to make money, no consumer can fully trust what they do or say.”
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“... 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.”
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“If you really didn't ever want to get wrinkles, then you should have stopped smiling years ago!”
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“We can't have self-government without the self-confidence that is at the root of it.”
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“The next time you go shopping, demand more change.”
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“... the function of wealth is not to accumulate it but to give it away as productively and responsibly as you can.”
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“Globalization ... is the most important change in the history of mankind, and often just the latest name for the conspiracy of the rich against the poor.”
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“... the leaders of globalization ... have tied themselves to a single measurement by which they judge success and failure ... They only measure money and the bottom line.”
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“If you pretend that business is beyond morality, that's the kind of morality you get.”
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“If civilization is going to survive, business and policy-makers must move on, to find within themselves more developed emotions than fear or greed.”
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“... the most powerful bodies in the world, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, are also the least democratic and inclusive.”
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“By definition, design, and practice, capitalism is a system that concentrates economic power in the hands of the few to the exclusion of the many.”
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“... we can wake up one morning and find that the technology of this virtual, inter-connected world wasn't the liberating force we thought, but binds us ever more tightly under the control of the money men.”
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“Economic globalization creates wealth, but only for the elite who benefit from the surge of consolidations, mergers, global scale technology, and financial activity.”
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“So much for the rising tide that lifts all boats. It lifts only yachts.”
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“Corporate crime kills far more people and costs taxpayers far more money than street crime.”
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“If trade undermines life, narrows it or impoverishes it, then it can destroy the world. If it enhances life, then it can better the world.”
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“My mother's bottom line was truth to her values. It meant bringing your heart and your humanity to work.”
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“... 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.”
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“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.”
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“Don't underestimate the power of the vigilante consumer.”
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“... 'progress' ... can't possibly mean the same thing for each person on the face of the planet, and yet we insist on imposing a generic version of the concept in the most unsuitable circumstances — which suggest that our faith in 'progress' is at best misplaced, at worst blind.”
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“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.”
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“Mess with nature and it will mess right back ...”
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“Never feel too small or powerless to make a difference.”
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“The trouble with the new world we have watched being created over the past decade is that it sees no further than money. People have always been obsessed with money, of course — greed is as old as history. But when the institutions that govern all our lives forget there was ever anything else, then it gets dangerous.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”
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“Our people are my first line of customers.”
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“If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.”
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“The word love is never mentioned in big business.”
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“How can you ennoble the spirit when you are selling something as inconsequential as a face cream?”
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“When your back is against the wall financially, creative juices flow.”
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“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.”
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“Work is more fun than fun.”
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“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.”
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“Being Good is Good Business.”
Anita Roddick, English entrepreneur, philanthropist, activist
(1942)