James Cash Penney

No company can afford not to move forward. It may be at the top of the heap today but at the bottom of the heap tomorrow, if it doesn’t.

My definition of an executive’s job is brief and to the point. It is simply this: Getting things done through other people.

There has never been a time when a career in the Penney Company was not a challenge that brought out the best in a man.

Change is vital, improvement the logical form of change.

Salesmanship is limitless. Our very living is selling. We are all salespeople.

I believe in trusting men, not only once but twice – in giving a failure another chance.

I have a theory that the best advertisements come from personal experience. Some of the good ones I have done have really come out of the real experience of my life, and somehow this has come over as true and valid and persuasive.

There should be rivalry between men and between business.

Nobody’s ever called me Sir Richard. Occasionally in America, I hear people saying Sir Richard and think there’s some Shakespearean play taking place. But nowhere else anyway.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

I believe in trusting men, not only once but twice – in giving a failure another chance.

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.

I suspect that many corporations have begun to understand that they have an important role to play in the lives of their communities, and that allocating funds to support local groups helps them discharge that function and also burnish their image.

Our modern industrialism, changed to motives of public service, will provide means to remove every injustice that gives soil for prejudice.

The best reason to start an organization is to make meaning; to create a product or service to make the world a better place.

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.

If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn’t have a job if he was any smarter.

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.

Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your own family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine. Do as you would be done by. If you tell lies about a product, you will be found out — either by the Government, which will prosecute you, or by the consumer, who will punish you by not buying your product a second time. Good products can be sold by honest advertising. If you don’t think the product is good, you have no business to be advertising it.

The thought in my mind was that I must be a good merchant. If I were a good merchant, the rest would probably take care of itself.