Stuart Rose Quotes

I don't believe in retirement.

I actually think the whole concept of retirement is a bit stupid, so yes, I do want to do something else. There is this strange thing that just because chronologically on a Friday night you have reached a certain age ... with all that experience, how can it be that on a Monday morning, you are useless?

Most employees want to be involved in a successful business and most employees are happy for people running successful businesses to be paid a reasonable wage and a market rate for it, provided they understand the reason. What they hate most of all is pay for failure.

I think that business leaders today have to be more rounded than they used to be, they have to be completely multi-functional and fast-moving.

There is a responsibility on all companies to look at the quantum of pay and the relationship between the top and the bottom.

We believe responsible business can be profitable business

I'd go mad if I didn't have things to make me laugh.

I was the chief executive once, I've been there. My recommendation to anybody is don't go backwards.

We face a dilemma because although everybody is better off than they've ever been at any time in our history, we've also got the biggest gap between the rich and the poor that we've ever had, and we've potentially got a planet which is going to go bust any day.

I believe in a uniform for work, but why, because we're men, do we have to be ghettoised into grey suits?

My four criteria: I don't want to work with people I don't like; I don't want to work in a business I either don't like or don't understand; I don't want to work for nothing unless I choose to, and I do a fair amount of that already; and I want to have some fun.

I am the largest market shareholder of clothing in the U.K. and I am not a destination shop for food. If the clothing market is affected - and it has been - and I hold my market share mathematically, then fine, I am doing no worse than the market is doing, which is exactly the case, but I'm losing revenue.

There's no abhorrence about wearing M&S. We just haven't been delighting the girls.

Was I the best husband? No. And I regret it.

We live in a world where there are a hell of a lot of new inputs that need to be factored in to your business. It used to be just about your employees and your customers. Now there are all the issues about global warming, about sustainability, about ethics and now about gender and the distribution of wealth.

I have always been an advocate and was, in my last job at M&S, a supporter of the Al Gore dictum that a sustainable business can be a profitable business. We were the first sizeable company in the U.K. to prove that was the case.

Listen, it's not nice to have your mum kill herself, that is difficult. But at the end of the day, it happened a long time ago. My mother was, I hope, not the reason that I have been successful. It's not as simplistic as 'My mum killed herself; I've got to prove myself.' I was very lucky that my parents took an interest in me.

We've got a bit of growth a bit earlier than expected.