A biography for Philip Greenhasn’t been written yet.
“I could spend my life having meetings, a meeting to have another meeting, a hundred meetings to have another thousand meetings. It's not what I'm about. I don't want to have to get in a queue; that's not how I like to live.”
“I think I've got a good feel. A feel for... being able to walk with different people. Or for being able to look at people and think, 'Yeah, I might know what they want to wear.'”
“I have a very clear conscience.”
“It's not my style to blame anybody else.”
“I used to leave my house at 6:30 in the morning, and I would visit 10 shops every Saturday, starting at the furthest shop I'd decided to go to that day, ending up in Oxford Street 12 hours later.”
“I'm in the retail business, not the circus business.”
“When I am driving my car down the street, I try not to go down the potholes.”
“I don't regret anything I haven't done.”
“I wasn't a good school pupil. I was interested in business.”
“You're going to find England, unfortunately, is a place where you get a lot of jealous, envious, you know, negative people. That's how it is.”
“I think everybody, from every end of the market place, from young through to old, wants to be fashionable. Everybody. Women want to feel like they're wearing the right merchandise, regardless of age. They want to be trendy.”
“You are forced to have the best data capture, the best information, when you have goods in hundreds of factories around the world, and the question is: 'Where is everything?' And how do you bring it all together?”
“If I say I'm going to do something, I do it.”
“I am brave, but I take a view. It is an educated view. I am careful. I am not reckless.”
“I hope and believe all the people that worked very closely with me at BHS for all those years, and some for the whole journey, will know it was never my intention for the business to have the ending it did.”
“When I've had a talk with someone, I like them to leave unconfused. No need for contention.”
“It's all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and friends and family.”
“I think I pick more winners than losers.”
“On what possible basis would I want to stop someone from buying BHS if I had tried to save it?”
“There is no reason why government should not be as efficient as any good business.”