Gut Ding will Weile haben — a good thing wants time.
Eile mit Weile — hurry with leisure, a German rendering of festina lente.
Übers Knie brechen — to break something over the knee. The German phrase for forcing a hasty resolution, and it names what happens to the thing.
Erst mal eine Nacht drüber schlafen — sleep a night over it first. Said in German meetings, and acted on.
Nike, 1988. Three words, an imperative, and no object — it does not say what to do. The sentence assumes the deliberation has gone on too long and supplies the only missing ingredient.
The sentence is quoted constantly in American management and commonly attributed to Peter Drucker, though the attribution is disputed. Whatever its origin, the assumption inside it is that a thing without a number attached to it will drift.
Wer schreibt, der bleibt — who writes, remains. A German saying about the authority of the written record, used in meetings about who is taking the minutes.
Papier ist geduldig — paper is patient, the counter-saying, warning that writing something down does not make it true.
Das steht so im Prozess — that is how it stands in the process. Offered in German discussion as a reason, and usually accepted as one.
Stephen Covey made it one of the seven habits in 1989 and the phrase became ordinary American business speech. The claim inside it is that a negotiation is a joint problem, and the vocabulary carried the claim into general use.
What costs nothing is worth nothing. Said in German about free advice, free offers and heavy discounts. It reverses the usual direction of suspicion. The doubt attaches not to the expensive thing but to the cheap one.
Honesty lasts longest. A German proverb, and the argument in it is about duration rather than virtue. It does not say honesty is right. It says honesty is what survives — which is the same argument the culture makes about agreements, prices and partnerships.
The jug goes to the well until it breaks. A German proverb about repeated advantage-taking. The jug does not break because of any single trip. It breaks because the trips continued past the point where they should have stopped, and nobody was counting.
Der Weg ist das Ziel — the path is the goal. A German commonplace, and in a working context it is meant literally rather than as consolation.
Es kommt darauf an, wie man’s macht — it depends on how one does it. Said about outcomes that look identical.
Pfusch — botched work. A German noun for work done by the wrong method, applicable even when the result holds.
People buy from people they like. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Nobody buys a product, they buy a feeling. Three sayings in circulation across American sales training, and all three make the same claim: the transaction runs through the person.