Business quotes

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As quoted in The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell (2003) by Oren Harari, p. 164.
2000s

Earliest citation found in Google Books is from 1993 https://books.google.com/books?id=bdTko5oHTd4C&pg=PA25&dq=%22give+up+the+good+to+go+for+the+great%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiH2e_QivXLAhUps4MKHdf0A9wQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22give%20up%20the%20good%20to%20go%20for%20the%20great%22&f=false, where it is attributed to country-music singer Kenny Rogers. Not found attributed to Rockefeller until 2006 https://books.google.com/books?id=F7OGT9WTiPQC&pg=PA24&dq=%22give+up+the+good%22+%22go+for+the+great%22+rockefeller&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw_rb9ivXLAhXrmoMKHbgHBqkQ6wEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=%22give%20up%20the%20good%22%20%22go%20for%20the%20great%22%20rockefeller&f=false.
Disputed
Variant: Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

Source: Braveheart

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), p. 92
Context: Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called 'art' or whatever it's called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippies era people put down the idea of business – they'd say 'Money is bad', and 'Working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Variant: Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.

Source: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

As quoted in News Journal [Mansfield, Ohio] (3 August 1965)
Attributed from posthumous publications

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter II, p. 19.
Source: The Wealth of Nations, Books 1-3
Context: But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens.

Business @ The Speed of Thought (1999) http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speedofthought/default.asp
1990s

The alchemist, p. 141.
Variant: There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)

Variant: There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 37

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)

Variant: There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wage possible.

Source: Success! (1977), p. 36

No known citation to Thoreau's works. First found, uncredited, in the 1940s in the variant "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to look for it", p. 711, Locomotive Engineers Journal, Volume 76, 1942. Google Books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=N6GZAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Success+usually+comes+to+those+who+are+too+busy%22&dq=%22Success+usually+comes+to+those+who+are+too+busy%22&lr=&as_drrb_is=b&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=1900&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=1980&as_brr=0
Misattributed

Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.
Misattributed

The Daily Telegraph, 21 August 1990 http://www2.gsu.edu/~dscthw/8350/bayes/perfinfo.pdf

Quoted by Theodore Dreiser in A Photographic Talk with Edison http://books.google.com/books?id=ZrIYCWaZCjwC&q=%22I+never+did+anything+worth+doing+by+accident%22+%22nor+did+any+of+my+inventions+come+indirectly+through+accident+except+the+phonograph+No+when+I+have+fully+decided+that+a+result+is+worth+getting+I+go+about+it+and+make+trial+after+trial+until+it+comes%22&pg=PA118#v=onepage, Success magazine (February 1898).
1800s

Managing, Chapter Three (Experience and Cash), p. 39.

Widely attributed to Milton Friedman, and sometimes cited as being in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) this is also attributed to Alfred P. Sloan, sometimes with citation of a statement of 1964, but sometimes with attestations to his use of it as a motto as early as 1923.
Disputed

Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago

Quoted in "The Military Quotation Book" (2002) by James Charlton, p. 83
Disputed

Source: Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait (2008), Chapter 13 (p. 156)

As quoted in Wisdom for Our Time (1961) by James Nelson

As quoted in Funny Ladies : The Best Humor from America's Funniest Women (2001) by Bill Adler, p. 4

Source: How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004), Ch. 3 : Imagination Unlimited, p. 63; Unsourced variant: All your dreams can come true if you have the courage to pursue them.

Widely attributed to Friedman, and sometimes cited as being in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) this is also attributed to Alfred P. Sloan, sometimes with citation of a statement of 1964, but sometimes with attestations to his use of it as a motto as early as 1923.
Disputed

What I've Learned

Source: How to Be Like Walt : Capturing the Magic Every Day of Your Life (2004), Ch. 14 : The Real Walt Disney, p. 361

As quoted in Edison & Ford Quote Book (2003) edited by Edison & Ford Winter Estates.
Date unknown

As quoted in Stack the Logs! : Building a Success Framework to Reach Your Dreams (2003) by Frank F. Lunn, p. 45

This is presented as a statement of 1877, as quoted in From Telegraph to Light Bulb with Thomas Edison (2007) by Deborah Headstrom-Page, p. 22.
1800s

Attributed

Taken from a quote of Grace Hopper. [Tropp, Henry S., Fall 1984, Grace Hopper: The Youthful Teacher of Us All, Abacus, 2, 1, p. 18, 0724-6722]
Invoked by Palin at her introduction by Senator John McCain as his choice for the Republican Vice Presidential nomination on .
2014

"How to Capture Life's Greatest Values" in Reader's Digest, Vol. 56 (January 1950), p. 18 http://books.google.com/books?id=HlQQAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Live+daringly+boldly+fearlessly+Taste+the+relish+to+be+found+in+competition+in+having+to+put+forth+the+best+within+you%22&pg=PA18#v=onepage

As quoted in: [J. L.] Elkhorne. Edison — The Fabulous Drone, in 73 Vol. XLVI, No. 3 (March 1967) http://www.arimi.it/wp-content/73/03_March_1967.pdf, p. 52
Disputed

This quote is commonly attributed to Churchill, but appears in the "Red Herrings: False Attributions" appendix of Churchill by Himself : The Definitive Collection of Quotations (2008) by Richard Langworth, without citation as to where it originates.
In American Character, a 1905 address by Brander Matthews, a similar quotation is attributed to L. P. Jacks ( link http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015059451156?urlappend=%3Bseq=238).
""Our civilization is a perilous adventure for an uncertain prize... Human society is not a constructed thing but a human organization... We are adopting a false method of reform when we begin by operations that weaken society, either morally or materially, by lower its vitality, by plunging it into gloom and despair about itself, by inducing the atmosphere of the sick-room, and then when its courage and resources are at a low ebb, expecting it to perform some mighty feat of self-reformation... Social despair or bitterness does not get us anywhere... Low spirits are an intellectual luxury. An optimist is one who sees an opportunity in every difficulty. A pessimist is one who sees a difficulty in every opportunity... The conquest of great difficulties is the glory of human nature." L. P. Jacks, quoted in American character, by Brander Matthews, 1906
Misattributed
Variant: A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

As quoted in An Enemy Called Average (1990) by John L. Mason, p. 55.
Date unknown

Michael Korda, in Success! (1977), p. 284
Misattributed

As quoted in Artifacts : An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley (2001) by Christine Finn. p. 90.
Date unknown

From "Self-Portrait" (1972)
Truman Capote: Conversations (1987)

The Wall Street Journal (December 29, 2011).
Attributed

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

Misattributed
Variant: We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.
Source: Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926), reprinted in Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6], Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VII: Ethics and the Nature of Happiness: "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; 'these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions'; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: 'the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy'" (p. 76). The quoted phrases within the quotation are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, 4; Book I, 7. The misattribution is from taking Durant's summation of Aristotle's ideas as being the words of Aristotle himself.

The Last Lecture (2008)
Variant: The questions are always more important than the answers."

Source: Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't

John Keating character

John Shedd, p. 81
They Both Die at the End (2017)