Dame Anita Roddick, founder of ‘The Body Shop’, was an influential entrepreneur, environmental advocate and human rights activist.
Born in 1942 in Littlehampton, England to Italian immigrant parents, her early life was spent working in their café.
Roddick established the first Body Shop with the innovative idea of refillable skincare containers.
With rapid growth, the brand had 700 outlets by 1991 and 1980 stores by 2004, serving 77 million customers globally.
Despite being acquired by L’Oreal in 2006, a company known for animal testing, Roddick remained committed to ethical business.
A passionate philanthropist, she founded ‘Children on the Edge’ to assist vulnerable children and penned ‘Take it Personally’, advocating for equality and justice in developing nations.
Her estimated £51 million fortune was pledged to charity. Recognized with numerous awards, she was knighted in 1988.
Sadly, after a hepatitis C diagnosis, Roddick passed away in 2007, bequeathing her estate to charity.
Here are some of the greatest quotes by Anita Roddick to inspire you.
Best Anita Roddick Quotes
We’d rather close down than test our products on animals. ~ Anita Roddick.
There is a fine line between the delinquent mind of an entrepreneur and that of a crazy person. ~ Anita Roddick.
If you have a company with itsy-bitsy vision, you have an itsy-bitsy company. ~ Anita Roddick.
It still seems to me cruel and totally unacceptable to sacrifice animals for human vanity. ~ Anita Roddick.
A great advantage I had when I started Body Shop was that I had never been to business school. ~ Anita Roddick.
Running a company on market research is like driving while looking in the rear view mirror. ~ Anita Roddick.
If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito. ~ Anita Roddick.
The business of business should not be about money. It should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed. ~ Anita Roddick.
My passionate belief is that business can be fun, it can be conducted with love and a powerful force for good. ~ Anita Roddick.
Your values in work should be the same as those at home. ~ Anita Roddick.
Speed, agility and responsiveness are the keys to future success. ~ Anita Roddick.
To succeed, you have to believe in something with such a passion that it becomes a reality. ~ Anita Roddick.
You have to believe that everything is possible. If you believe it, those around you will believe it too. ~ Anita Roddick.
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. ~ Anita Roddick.
The entrepreneur’s dream is almost a kind of madness, and it is almost as isolating. ~ Anita Roddick.
The difference between a crazy person and the successful entrepreneur is that the latter can convince others to share the vision. ~ Anita Roddick.
Top Anita Roddick Quotes
I’ll never hire anybody from Harvard Business School. ~ Anita Roddick.
If I had learned more about business ahead of time, I would have been shaped into believing that it was only about finances and quality management. ~ Anita Roddick.
Ideas have wings. ~ Anita Roddick.
Don’t underestimate the power of the vigilante consumer. ~ Anita Roddick.
Communication is the key for any global business. ~ Anita Roddick.
The market controls everything, but the market has no heart. ~ Anita Roddick.
Be courageous. It’s one of the only places left uncrowded. ~ Anita Roddick.
There are only two ways to raising money: the hard way and the very hard way. ~ Anita Roddick.
Famous Anita Roddick Quotes
If I can’t do something for the public good, what the hell am I doing? ~ Anita Roddick.
We must put pack into society what we have taken out. ~ Anita Roddick.
We entrepreneurs are loners, vagabonds, troublemakers. Success is simply a matter of finding and surrounding ourselves with those open-minded and clever souls who can take our insanity and put it to good use. ~ Anita Roddick.
If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just. ~ Anita Roddick.
Three components make an entrepreneur: the person, the idea and the resources to make it happen. ~ Anita Roddick.
It’s about creating a product or service so good that people will pay for it. ~ Anita Roddick.
Corporate crime kills far more people and costs taxpayers far more money than street crime. ~ Anita Roddick.
We believe that business is absolutely part of life. ~ Anita Roddick.
It’s about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world. ~ Anita Roddick.
Look up and out, not down and in. Never give up! ~ Anita Roddick.
Lead by example but don’t preach. ~ Anita Roddick.
Have big ideas and make them happen. ~ Anita Roddick.
I want to make things happen, to spread human values wide in business if I possibly can. ~ Anita Roddick.
The movement for the environment really only started in the mid 1970’s. ~ Anita Roddick.
No entrepreneur is motivated by money. It is the idea; seeing how far you can go. ~ Anita Roddick.
The end result of kindness is that it draws people to you. ~ Anita Roddick.
Popular Anita Roddick Quotes
I am aware that success is more than a good idea. It is timing too. ~ Anita Roddick.
Measure your success according to fun and creativity. ~ Anita Roddick.
Never feel too small or powerless to make a difference. ~ Anita Roddick.
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. ~ Anita Roddick.
Get informed. Get outraged. Get inspired. Get active. ~ Anita Roddick.
Making intuitive decisions, not getting hung up on hierarchy or all those dreadfully boring business school management ideas. ~ Anita Roddick.
There’s no time for mediocrity. This is no damned dress rehearsal. ~ Anita Roddick.
There is no scientific answer for success. You can’t define it. You’ve simply go to live it and do it. ~ Anita Roddick.
We communicate with passion and passion persuades. ~ Anita Roddick.
Being good is good business. ~ Anita Roddick.
If we don’t love our staff, our neighbors, the environment, we’ll all be doomed. ~ Anita Roddick.
You’ve got to be hungry – for ideas, to make things happen and to see your vision made into reality. ~ Anita Roddick.
Retailing is one of the oldest professions. There has never been a historic respect for it. Yet it can be one of the most exciting because it is often dealing right at the community level. ~ Anita Roddick.
It was never, never something that was just clothes to wear. If I’m not going to do this in life, why am I going to do it for my business? To me, you’ve got to live every part of it. ~ Anita Roddick.
Travel is like a university without walls. ~ Anita Roddick.
Inspiring Anita Roddick Quotes
We, as business leaders, can and must change our views and our values. Less than a century ago… depressions and world wars changed us; global poverty and environmental destruction must change us now. ~ Anita Roddick.
This notion that to be in business you’ve got to go to a business school: it’s crap. ~ Anita Roddick.
Business schools only shape you to be a very efficient person working in a very traditional system – but the most exciting things are what’s being done untraditionally. ~ Anita Roddick.
I don’t want to be defined by being the founder of the Body Shop, and I don’t want to be defined as a woman suffering from Hepatitis C. There’s more to my life than that. ~ Anita Roddick.
Entrepreneurs are visionaries – they see things other people don’t see. ~ Anita Roddick.
You’ve got to do it! There’s no ‘How will you? How can you?’ You just do it! ~ Anita Roddick.
With courage, passion, and imagination, everything is possible! ~ Anita Roddick.
