Dame Anita Lucia Roddick, DBE (23 October 1942 – 10 September 2007) was a British businesswoman, human rights activist and environmental campaigner, best known as the founder of The Body Shop, a cosmetics company producing and retailing natural beauty products that shaped ethical consumerism. The company was one of the first to prohibit the use of ingredients tested on animals and one of the first to promote fair trade with third world countries.
Roddick was involved in activism and campaigning for environmental and social issues, including involvement with Greenpeace and The Big Issue. In 1990, Roddick founded Children on the Edge, a charitable organisation which helps disadvantaged children in eastern Europe and Asia. She believed that business should offer a form of moral leadership, being a more powerful force in society than religion or government.
Here are a few things Ms. Roddick said that we find inspirational:
1. “Whatever you do, be different—that was the advice my mother gave me, and I can’t think of better advice for an entrepreneur. If you’re different, you will stand out.”
2. “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.”
3. “If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.”
4. “There’s no scientific answer for success. You can’t define it. You’ve simply got to live and do it.”
5. “Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.”
6. “I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently… This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.”
7. “Potential entrepreneurs are outsiders. They are people who imagine things as they might be, not as they are, and have the drive to change the world around them. those are skills that business schools do not teach.”
8. “I wake up every morning thinking… this is my last day. and I jam everything into it. There’s no time for mediocrity. This is no damned dress rehearsal.”
9. “It is a critical job of any entrepreneur to maximize creativity, and to build the kind of atmosphere around you that encourages people to have ideas. That means open structures, so that accepted thinking can be challenged.”
10. “It is true that there is a fine line between entrepreneurship and insanity. Crazy people see and feel things that others don’t. But you have to believe that everything is possible. If you believe it, those around you will believe it too.”
11. “I believe in businesses where you engage in creative thinking, and where you form some of your deepest relationships. If it isn’t about the production of the human spirit, we are in big trouble.“
12. “If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.”
Biography via: Wikipedia.
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