Anita Roddick Quotes

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.

I think that business practices would improve immeasurably if they were guided by "feminine" pinciples, qualities like love, care, and intuition.

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.

If I can't do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing?

Over the past decades...while many businesses have pursued what I call 'business as usual', I have been part of a different, smaller business movement, one that tried to put idealism back on the agenda.

Advertising beauty products is easy. All you have to do is revile your customers by creating a disease called getting older, and then provide a remedy which does not work.

I think the leadership of a company should encourage the next generation not just to follow, but to overtake. The duty of leadership is to put forward ideas, symbols, metaphors of the way it should be done, so that the next generation can work out new and better ways of doing the job. The complaint Gordon and I have is that we are not being overtaken by our staff. We would like to be able to say, "We can't keep up with you guys", but, it is not happening.

I'm an activist and I come from a very socialist background. For me, my thinking was formed by great thought leaders. And wealth preserving wasn't part of my thinking.

The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed

The most exciting thing happening in business is the rise of vigilante consumers.

We can't have self-government without the self-confidence that is at the root of it.

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.

Be special. Be anything but mediocre.

You persuade people with passion, so you've got to have a product or service you feel emotionally charged about. Then you can tell stories about it that will inspire others.

I started The Body Shop in 1976 simply to create a livelihood for myself and my two daughters, while my husband, Gordon, was trekking across the Americas. I had no training or experience and my only business acumen was Gordon's advice to take sales of £300 a week. Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.

Be courageous. It's one of the only places left uncrowded.

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.

Being good is good business

I traveled enormously during the 1960's, when you measured everything by where you traveled and what you did as travelers.