"The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows"
About this Quote
Onassis isn’t selling hustle; he’s selling asymmetry. “The secret of business” frames commerce like a magic trick, and the trick is information: not working harder, not even being smarter in some abstract sense, but possessing an edge that can’t be easily copied. The line flatters the insider and needles the outsider. If you’re losing, it implies, you’re not unlucky or undercapitalized - you’re uninformed.
The phrasing is bluntly transactional. “Know something” is deliberately vague, which is part of its power: it can mean market timing, a shipping route, a political relationship, a regulatory loophole, a buyer’s desperation. Onassis built an empire in mid-century global shipping and oil - industries where margins swing on access, connections, and geopolitics as much as on logistics. In that world, the “secret” isn’t a spreadsheet; it’s proximity to decision-makers and an instinct for where power is shifting.
Subtext: competition is less a fair race than a contest over who gets the earlier memo. It’s a philosophy that normalizes opacity - the idea that advantage is inherently private, even when the consequences are public (prices, labor conditions, national energy security). The quote also doubles as self-mythmaking. Onassis, the archetypal tycoon, recasts his success as a form of special knowledge, not brute leverage or favorable circumstances. It’s a clean narrative for a messy reality: capitalism as intelligence work, where the most valuable asset isn’t money, but the uneven distribution of what’s true.
The phrasing is bluntly transactional. “Know something” is deliberately vague, which is part of its power: it can mean market timing, a shipping route, a political relationship, a regulatory loophole, a buyer’s desperation. Onassis built an empire in mid-century global shipping and oil - industries where margins swing on access, connections, and geopolitics as much as on logistics. In that world, the “secret” isn’t a spreadsheet; it’s proximity to decision-makers and an instinct for where power is shifting.
Subtext: competition is less a fair race than a contest over who gets the earlier memo. It’s a philosophy that normalizes opacity - the idea that advantage is inherently private, even when the consequences are public (prices, labor conditions, national energy security). The quote also doubles as self-mythmaking. Onassis, the archetypal tycoon, recasts his success as a form of special knowledge, not brute leverage or favorable circumstances. It’s a clean narrative for a messy reality: capitalism as intelligence work, where the most valuable asset isn’t money, but the uneven distribution of what’s true.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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