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Who really said it

For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life

Written by Jim Collins b. 1958 · American business researcher & author
Verified In copyright

Collins wrote this sentence in Good to Great (2001), chapter 3, “First Who… Then What.” We confirmed the wording word for word against a scan of the 2001 HarperCollins printing, where it opens a two-sentence thought that ends “no matter where the bus goes.”

Last verified 1 Nov 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life” Jim Collins, Good to Great (2001), chapter 3, “First Who… Then What”

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Jim Collins (text © 2001); published by HarperBusiness, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Jim Collins — American business researcher, author & speaker. Theme: "For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source: Good to Great, chapter 3

Work
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
Published
2001, HarperBusiness (HarperCollins), New York
Location
Chapter 3, “First Who… Then What”: section “First Who, Great Companies, and a Great Life” (p. 62 in the scanned 2001 printing)

Adherence to the idea of “first who” might be the closest link between a great company and a great life. For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect—people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us—then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with. Verbatim from the book

The popular quote is the first sentence of this passage, copied word for word. The “bus” is the book’s running image for a company’s team: get the right people on the bus before deciding where to drive it.

Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001), Internet Archive catalog record

How we verified this

  • The sentence appears in Collins’s Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001), chapter 3, in the passage that closes his discussion of “first who” (Internet Archive catalog record ↗).
  • Wikiquote lists the line under Good to Great, 2001, citing its quotation in Lisa Marshall’s Speak the Truth and Point to Hope (2004), p. 32 (Wikiquote: Jim Collins ↗).
  • Thom Rainer’s 2012 roundup of Collins quotations reproduces the full three-sentence passage (Church Answers, archived ↗).
  • Collins makes the same point in his own words on his website: if our time is not spent with people we love and respect, it hardly matters where the bus is going (“First Who” Is Not Just a Business Concept ↗).
In copyright

The line comes from Good to Great, first published in 2001. The copyright page reads “Copyright © 2001 by Jim Collins,” so the text is still under copyright in the US. Quoting a short passage with credit is the normal way to use it.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Context

Why it mattered

Good to Great argued that the companies that moved from good results to great ones first chose the right people (“who”) and only then chose a direction (“what”). Collins closes chapter 3 by turning that business finding into advice about life: who you spend your days with matters more than where you are headed.

Collins has kept making this point outside the book. On his website he says “First Who, Then What” applies to life as well as business, and he describes changing his rock climbing: he stopped picking the climb first and started picking the people he would climb with (jimcollins.com ↗).

No matter where the bus goes.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Happiness Friendship Love Success

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Jim Collinsen.wikiquote.org

Lists this line under Good to Great (2001), with a secondary citation
Good to Great (2001), catalog recordarchive.org

Internet Archive record for the 2001 HarperBusiness first edition
“First Who” Is Not Just a Business Conceptjimcollins.com

Collins’s own essay applying “first who” to life and climbing
James C. Collinsen.wikipedia.org

Biography: born 1958, Stanford GSB faculty from 1988
Good to Greaten.wikipedia.org

The book: published October 16, 2001 by HarperCollins

The author

About the author

Jim Collins

b. 1958 · American business researcher, author & speaker

James C. “Jim” Collins was born in Aurora, Colorado, in 1958. He studied at Stanford and began his research and teaching career on the faculty of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 1988. He is best known for research-based management books, above all Good to Great (2001), which brought phrases like “Level 5 leadership” and “getting the right people on the bus” into everyday business talk.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t. New York: HarperBusiness, 2001. Chapter 3, “First Who… Then What,” p. 62 (as scanned).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life’?” Last verified 1 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/for-no-matter-what-we-achieve-if-we-dont-spend-the-vast/

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