Quotes about business
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“Russell Markert, Lela Rogers, Ed Sedgwick- these were but a few of the experienced theater people who generously gave me a boost. I have a theory about the assists we get in life. Only rarely can we repay those people who helped us, but we can pass that help along to others. That's why, in 1958, I reactivated Lela's theater workshop with two dozen talented kids trying to get started in show business.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Page 79
Love, Lucy (1996)

Life, People, Help

“There is no business like show business, Irving Berlin once proclaimed, and thirty years ago he may have been right, but not anymore. Nowadays almost every business is like show business, including politics, which has become more like show business than show business is.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"The Face Game" (p.215)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

“When the physicist poses the question, "What does it mean to do physics?" or "What is research in physics?" — his question is a preliminary question. Clearly, when you ask a question like that, and try to answer it, you are not "doing physics." Or rather you are no longer doing physics. But when you ask yourself, "What does it mean to do philosophy?" then you actually are "doing philosophy" — this is not at all a "preliminary" question but a truly philosophical one: you are right at the heart of the business.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), The Philosophical Act, p. 63

Question, Heart

“Since I have been in England I have been asked several times why I am studying business management. I will try to tell you. Free to choose between different paths of study, I have chosen this for a number of reasons. First of all, it is among businessmen (not all, but a few) that I find the greatest vitality of thinking to-day, and I like to do my thinking where it is most alive. I said last winter to a Professor of Philosophy: 'Do you realize that you philosophers have got to look to your laurels, that businessmen are doing some very valuable thinking and may get ahead of you?' And he acknowledged this, which I think was a very significant concession. Moreover, I find the thinking of businessmen to-day in line with the deepest and best thinking we have ever had. The last word in science—in biology—is the principle of unifying. The most profound philosophers have always given us unifying as the fundamental principle of life. And now business men are finding it is the way to run a successful business. Here the ideal and the practical have joined hands. That is why I am working at business management, because, while I care for the ideal, it is only because I want to help bring it into our everyday affairs.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xix-xx

Life, Men, Way, Thinking

“Another thing Tom and I enjoy doing is visiting our small circle of friends, so spending an afternoon in Malibu with David and Yolanda is always a nice little escape. It’s always good to bounce creative ideas off of someone as incredibly talented as David. Even after all of his success in the business, he’s still willing to listen with a fresh set of ears and gives great feedback.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne's blog for Bravo http://www.bravotv.com/the-real-housewives-of-beverly-hills/season-6/blogs/erika-girardi/erika-girardi-its-quite-obvious (2015)

Idea, Success

“The gospel does not abolish industry, but changes its nature and chief design; it dignifies toil, mitigates the evils connected therewith, and creates new motives to diligence. The triumph achieved on Calvary never was designed to supersede the duty of close application to enterprising duty. Its first command compels us to some honorable and useful pursuit. Its language is," Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands as we commanded you."”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

" If any man will not work, neither let him eat."
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 347.

Motivation, Nature, Study, Evil

“You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Dylan could have sung protest songs forever and probably made a lot of money, but he didn’t. He had to move on, and when he did, by going electric in 1965, he alienated a lot of people. His 1966 Europe tour was his greatest…. The Beatles were the same way. They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That’s what I’ve always tried to do — keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you are not busy being born, you’re busy dying.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

As quoted in Steve Jobs (2011) by Walter Isaacson, p. 570
2010s

Money, People, Art, Way

“A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir; what is the purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence — what shall be the result of legal argument.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

August 15, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

Men, Lie, Justice, Falseness

““You look older, son.”
“Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe.””

Alastair Reynolds book Revelation Space

Source: Revelation Space (2000), Chapter 16 (p. 332).

Universe

“If America busies itself not with elective wars, but with commerce, the shift in power and prestige will be away from politicians who prosecute wars, and back to The People who produce prosperity.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Donald, Don’t Let Fox News Roger America… Again,” https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/ilana-mercer/finally-a-just-war/LewRockwell.com, September 25, 2015. 2010s, 2015

War, People

“But they all do sort of the same thing, and that is rearrange what you thought was real, and they remind you of the beauty of pretty simple things. You forget, because you're so busy going from A to Z, that there's 24 letters in between…
You turn on… tune in… and you drop out…”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Grace Slick, and Leary are both quoted in the Infected Mushroom song "Drop out" on the EP Deeply Disturbed (2003), but only the final portion actually quotes Leary.
Misattributed

Beauty, Forgetting

“The only generally agreed upon definition of mathematics is "Mathematics is what mathematicians do." […]
In the face of this difficulty [of defining "computer science"] many people, including myself at times, feel that we should ignore the discussion and get on with doing it. But as George Forsythe points out so well in a recent article*, it does matter what people in Washington D. C. think computer science is. According to him, they tend to feel that it is a part of applied mathematics and therefore turn to the mathematicians for advice in the granting of funds. And it is not greatly different elsewhere; in both industry and the universities you can often still see traces of where computing first started, whether in electrical engineering, physics, mathematics, or even business. Evidently the picture which people have of a subject can significantly affect its subsequent development. Therefore, although we cannot hope to settle the question definitively, we need frequently to examine and to air our views on what our subject is and should become.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Hamming cites Forsythe, G.E., "What to do until the computer scientist comes", Am. Math. Monthly 75 (5), May 1968, p. 454-461.
One Man's View of Computer Science (1969)

People, Hope, Feeling, Mathematics

“The day of fortune is like a harvest day,
We must be busy when the corn is ripe”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Actually from Goethe's Torquato Tasso, Act IV, scene iv, line 63. In the original German:
Ein Tag der Gunst ist wie ein Tag der Ernte:
Man muss geschäftig sein, sobald sie reift.
Misattributed

“Service is the currency that keeps our economy moving. I serve you in one business, you serve me in another. When either of us improves, the economy gets a little better. When both of us improve, people are sure to take notice. When everyone improves, the whole world grows stronger and closer together.”

Ron Kaufman (1956) American author and consultant

Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile (2005)

People, World

“Serious business people would never get elected in Ireland. You don't get elected in this country if you run around and tell people the truth. You've got to run round and lie to them about 'it will be all right on the night' and then they'll vote for you.”

Michael O'Leary (businessman) (1961) businessman, CEO of Ryanair

Newsnight Interview (February 24, 2011)

People, Truth, Lie, Night

“I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and… I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Grip interview (1997)

Marriage, Children, World, Girl

“The first is that he must be well-ordered from without in all virtues and unhindered within, just as empty of all outward works as though he were not working. For if he is busy within by any work of virtue, then he is assailed by images. As long as that is going on in him, he cannot contemplate.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

“From toil he wins his spirits light,
From busy day the peaceful night;
Rich, from the very want of wealth,
In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

Source: Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=oopv (1754), Line 93

Health, Peace, Light, Night

“While the law [of competition] may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of the few, and the law of competition between these, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future progress of the race.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Source: Wealth, 1889, p. 655

Law, Future

“One of the big things about being a man, she'd noted, was that being good, doing the work, wasn't enough. It had to be generally acknowledged that here you were, damn well seeing to business.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 6

“This is a business that’s heavily promulgated by people who have a politically liberal bent. I don’t begrudge them that. I’m a libertarian; frankly, I think my liberalness goes far beyond theirs in a lot of ways. But yeah, we think differently, and maybe that’s cut me out of some things. I don’t care. People know I get along great with all kinds of directors, all kinds of actors. And I tell you, you hire me, I will show up, 24/7, and I will give you 100%. I will help you fix whatever problems come up. You hire me, I’m your boy. It’s just, it’s all about the work. And when that’s done, I am done.”

Kurt Russell (1951) American actor

Kurt Russell on 'Deepwater Horizon,' Hollywood and more http://www.nj.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/09/kurt_russell_on_deepwater_horizon_hollywood_and_mo.html (September 23, 2016)

People, Way, Boy, Problem

“I think it's a big danger for the industry. I don't think it's a healthy way to run the business long-term. We felt it had run its course. We felt it was good for clearance time. I think GM was just feeling the pressure.”

Steve Lyons (1960) American baseball player

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

May 25, 1932
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)

Love, Pleasure, World, Art

“I go down to Blooms for kosher food. I can go anywhere. People don’t notice you if you go about your business. It’s only if you make a big scene.”

Craig David (1981) English singer

Jewish Chronicle interview 1 February 2008 http://website.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=57854&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=loftus&srchtxt=0&srchhead=1&srchauthor=0&srchsandp=0&scsrch=0

People, Food

“I think [Britney Spears] is a perfect example of an artificial construct -- someone with a decent voice and a very marketable image, that producers and business people turned into a pop star. Unfortunately, I think it took a toll on her, mentally, and I feel bad for the trouble that success has brought onto her. However, her music is pretty disposable, and she doesn't have the intelligence and cultural impact of someone like, say, Madonna.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

People, Music, Feeling, Star

“Regional Banks that are constrained to lend within a particular area are a necessary part of the institutional ecology in that they resist the centralising power of capital, allow a more stable access to credit for regional and smaller businesses and encourage relationships and reciprocity to constrain the demand for higher rates of return that have decimated the mutual bank sector in Britain. They also offer an alternative to usurious lending, one of the great growth areas in our economy. Any serious reflection on ‘employment policies’ must confront the centralisation of capital and the state and seek to constrain both through the endowment of decentralised regional and sectoral institutions that constrain centralisation and preserve and renew traditions of virtue within the economy through resisting the commodification of human beings, nature and knowledge demanded by the maximum return on investment. It allows initiative and enterprise to be oriented towards the future.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The Politics of Employment, 23 May 2013 http://togetherforthecommongood.co.uk/viewpoints/opinion-pieces/articles/maurice-glasman.html

Nature, Knowledge, Future, Parting

“Sir,' said Mr Johnson, 'a lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.”

James Boswell (1740–1795) Scottish lawyer, diarist and author

15 August 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)

Justice

“I think my business is about people making you feel self-conscious. All eyeballs are on you when you're a model, when you're on the runway or in front of the camera, you're always looked up and down and back up, so that comes with the territory. But at the end of the day I feel like my parents gave me a good solid foundation. I know who I am and there are things I wouldn't do. I wouldn't starve myself, I also never wanted to chop my hair off when people said I should do this and I should do that. And I always knew who I was and said they're going to book me like this or not book me. I don't want to be a role model because I'm just a person too, so I can have mistakes and some people don't like what I do. People always push this role model thing on you. I just want to be a good role model for my children.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Interview with Huffington Post, 19 March 2010 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/19/heidi-klum-talks-marital_n_506662.html

Children, People, Books, Feeling

“No one, in the year 1770, was better fitted than Samuel Adams, either by talent and temperament or the circumstances of his position, to push the continent into a rebellion. Unlike most of his patriot friends, he had neither private business nor private profession to fall back upon when public affairs grew tame, his only business being, as one might say, the public business, his only profession the definition and defense of popular rights. …the serious business of a man who during ten years had abandoned all private pursuits and had embraced poverty to become a tribune of the people.”

Carl L. Becker (1873–1945) American historian

The Eve of the Revolution (1918)

People

“He's got in, behind. Donovan, Donovan goes alone and scores! Oh, what a goal! Landon Donovan, tremendous strike for the United States! It looked impossible, but Donovan did it! And the USA are back in business!”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

2010s, 2010, 2010 FIFA World Cup Context: Now, then. Landon Donovan for the United States. Twisting, turning. Can he find the right ball? Cesar hit it away; it's played back in by Bocanegra. Oh, and nearly Altidore getting under of it. A really good clearance by Jokić; just when it looked as if Jozy Altidore might be in. They really have to put Slovenia under pressure. If they can get one goal, I think, John. You just wonder, whether then Slovenia might start to look a little bit shaky and start to wonder. He's got in, behind. Donovan, Donovan goes alone and scores! Oh, what a goal! Landon Donovan, tremendous strike for the United States! It looked impossible, but Donovan did it! And the USA are back in business! Slovenia v. United States http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=9UV-E8YqjlI (18 June 2010).

“BlackBerry isn't getting out of the hardware business. It stands alone as the only smartphone company exclusively focused on business, security and traditional communication. Until someone else steps up to meet this need, there continues to be a market for its hardware …”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

BlackBerry Misinformation and the Smartphone Security Crisis http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/blackberry-misinformation-and-the-smartphone-security-crisis.html in IT Business Edge (8 July 2016)

Communication

“As far as my work concerned, I am busy with a few small paintings, one is ordered and the other I have to 'adventure'. More and more I feel that I am short of so many studies, if I had the money, I didn't make any painting next year, I would only study [sketches]; but well, you have to make the best of a bad job, it will be hard enough to enable myself a living.”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) Wat mijn werk betreft zit ik aan enige kleine schilderijtjes, een is mij besteld en die andere moet ik avonturen. Ik voel hoe langer hoe langs hoe meer dat ik zooveel studie te kort kom, als ik geld had schilderde ik in het eerste jaar geen schilderij en studeer ik [schetsen], maar enfin je moet eens door een zure appel heenbijten, het zal mij moeite genoeg kosten om te kunnen leven.
Quote of Mauve, in a letter to Willem Maris, from Oosterbeek, 1864; as cited in Anton Mauve 1838 - 1888, exhibition catalog of Teylers Museum, Haarlem / Laren, Singer, ed. De Bodt en Plomp, 2009, p. 133
1860's

Money, Feeling, Study, Painting

“I purchased a Chevrolet Impala. I shopped around and had 5 different auto dealers competing for my business. Because all 5 offered the same product, they were forced to compete for my business… Funny thing, they still made a fair profit — not an outrageous one.”

Steve Kagen (1949) American politician

Comparing price competition in the automobile market to having a prescription filled at a pharmacy
[13 July 2007, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/13/852/86199, "I Have Been Living the Movie 'Sicko' For the Last 30 Years", Daily Kos, 2007-07-21]
Healthcare

“Not everyone knows when to be silent and when to go. It not infrequently happens that even diplomatic persons of good worldly breeding fail to observe that their presence is arousing a feeling akin to hatred in their exhausted or busy host, and that this feeling is being concealed with an effort and disguised with a lie.”

Anton Chekhov book The Letter

The Letter (1887)

Lie, Feeling, Effort, Personality

“We're very proud of our business relationship, it's been very special for 20 years. Who can say that? It makes me shake my head sometimes driving to the rink, because I'm still excited to see Tessa at the arena for warmup. Who enjoys going in to work every day? That's ridiculous.”

Tessa Virtue (1989) Canadian ice dancer

Scott Moir, quoted in "Tessa Virtue & Scott Moir's Quotes About Each Other Will Make You Wish They Were Dating" https://www.elitedaily.com/p/tessa-virtue-scott-moirs-quotes-about-each-other-will-make-you-wish-they-were-dating-8287527 (February 2018) Partnership with Scott Moir, Scott Moir about Virtue

“The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure and pleasure my business.”

Aaron Burr (1756–1836) American Vice President and politician

Letter to Pichon, reported in Marshall Brown, Wit and Humor of Bench and Bar (1899), p. 67.

Life, Pleasure

“Today in a land where all women inherit civic responsibility, where professions and business are open to all comers without distinction of sex, leadership through direct influence is woman’s unchallenged heritage.”

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Speech delivered in 1922 to the American Association of College Women, in [Western Journal of Education, https://books.google.com/books?id=3XovAQAAMAAJ, 3 July 2018, 1922, Harr Wagner Publishing Company, 8]

Women, Sex

“A businessman who reads Business Week is lost to fame. One who reads Proust is marked for greatness.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Affluent Society

Source: The Affluent Society (1958), Chapter 13, Section V, p. 155

Reading

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

World, Water, Personality

“Congress imposed a warrant requirement in 1978 which JFK didn’t use when he went after the Klan. He put the Klan out of business, but he didn’t do it with -- by going through the courts. He did it by burglarizing Klan offices. I think we need to use hardcore tactics against a hardcore threat.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

Interview with Mark Riebling (2002)

Thinking

“Remember what’s bigger, to me, about the cloud isn’t so much the technology. It’s just as much about the business model. It’s just about what the customer needs to do to enable their business.”

Mark Hurd (1957–2019) American businessman, philanthropist and CEO of Oracle

Diginomica: "Oracle CEO Mark Hurd on the looming transformation of enterprise IT" https://diginomica.com/2018/01/11/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-on-the-looming-transformation-of-enterprise-it/ (11 January 2018)

“I have, in every respect, since I had my appointment, strove to accommodate the business of the department to the plan of jour Excellency's operations. And I can say, with great truth, that ever since I had the honor to serve under you, I have been more attentive to the public interest, and more engaged in the support of your Excellency's character, than ever I was to my own ease, interest, or reputation.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (July 1778)

Truth, Support

“‘ Is the war coming to Eldacre, my lord?’ asked Ramus, as he settled into the chair.
'I fear it is. A more stupid and wasteful business there never was. Fields will not be planted, food will run low, tax revenues will dry up — save from the makers of swords and munitions.”

David Gemmell book Stormrider

Source: Rigante series, Stormrider, Ch. 15

War, Stupidity, Fear, Food

“We will get true and lasting change as soon as we make helping people a way of life instead of a business.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 60

Life, People, Way, Change

“We must stop burning up the house to keep the family warm. We have all the technology needed to tap vast cosmic energies of the sun but greedy big business and money drunk government won't allow it because they haven't found a way to place a meter on the sun.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Money, Family, Way, Sun

“If the people at large be not already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they never will be…. Ages ago a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island. In the course of considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born, and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-keepers and actuaries, were born, and died. Still official routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies." In the reign of George III an inquiry was made by some revolutionary spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get these sticks abolished. In 1834 it was found that there was a considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose, what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits of wood? I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting, memoranduming, and despatch-boxing on this mighty subject. The sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who live in that neighbourhood. However, they never had been useful, and official routine required that they never should be, and so the order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially burnt. It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the House of Lords. The stove, overgorged with these preposterous sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the cost thereof, the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet; and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night…. The great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established as the sun, moon, and stars.”

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) English writer and social critic and a Journalist

"Administrative Reform" (June 27, 1855) Theatre Royal, Drury Lane Speeches Literary and Social by Charles Dickens https://books.google.com/books?id=bT5WAAAAcAAJ (1870) pp. 133-134

Wisdom, People, Books, Age

“The innovation is hazardous, impossible for most producers. But if someone establishes a business having regard to this source of supply, and everything goes well, then he can produce a unit of product more cheaply, while at first the existing prices substantially continue to exist. He then makes a profit. Again he has contributed nothing but will and action, has done nothing but recombine existing factors. Again he is an entrepreneur, his profit entrepreneurial profit. And again the latter, and also the entrepreneurial function as such, perish in the vortex of the competition which streams after them. The case of the choice of new trade routes belongs here.”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter The Theory of Economic Development

The Theory of Economic Development (1934), Ch. 4 : Entrepreneurial Profit

“My business is not prognosis, but diagnosis. I am not engaged in therapeutics, but in pathology.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“Hmm…hmm. A stag hunt. To what elaborate lengths the equestrian classes go in order to draw out the simple business of butchering venison.”

Avram Davidson book The Phoenix and the Mirror

Source: The Phoenix and the Mirror (1969), Chapter 6

Drawing

“I was truly sorry for Mr. Bryan. But I consoled myself by thinking of the years through which he had busied himself tormenting intelligent professors with impudent questions about their faith, and seeking to arouse the ignoramuses and bigots to drive them out of their positions.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 267

Faith, Intelligence, Question, Thinking

“Now, that brings me to the Liberal Party. I gather that during the last few days there have been some ill-natured jokes about their new symbol, a bird of some kind, adopted by the Liberal Democrats at Blackpool. Politics is a serious business, and one should not lower the tone unduly. So I will say only this of the Liberal Democrat symbol and of the party it symbolises. This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot. And now for something completely different.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108217. Partially quoting from Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus#Dead_Parrot_Sketch. Third term as Prime Minister

Nature, Bird

“Busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wallpaper.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

"The Ethics of Pig"
The Gentle Grafter (1908)

Past

“There's been a tremendous amount of growth. An actress is not expected to continue to play her ingenue roles, you know, I've written myself roles to grow into gracefully, but there is no growing into gracefully in the pop world. Basically the reason I'm so unruly in this business is because I never wanted to be a human jukebox.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story (2003)

World

“An organization's mission statement (1) should contain its reasons for existence and its most general aspirations, its ideals. (2) It should identify in very general terms the way(s) by which the organization will pursue its ideals, that is, the business it wants to be in. (3) It should formulate the ways by which it will attempt to serve each of its stakeholder groups. (4) It should meet the preceding requirements in a way that is exciting and challenging to all its stakeholders. Finally, (5) it should establish the uniqueness of the organization.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1990s, Re-Creating the Corporation (1999), p. 83.

Way

“We want L. A. to be the leading destination for people starting new businesses, and there are no better guides for our efforts than successful entrepreneurs themselves.”

Eric Garcetti (1971) American politician

quoted by Rick Orlov of the Los Angeles Daily News https://www.dailynews.com/2014/05/02/city-of-los-angeles-now-has-entrepreneurs-in-residence/ (May 2, 2014) 2014

People, Effort, Success

“A shop-keeper in good business is quite as well off as a pedlar that travels the country with his wares on his back. Commercial jealousy is, after all, nothing but prejudice: it is a wild fruit, that will drop of itself when it has arrived at maturity.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter IX, p. 101

Jealousy, Travel, Country

“MP3 and peer-to-peer file sharing technology single-handedly disrupted the age-old music business. iTunes and YouTube have displaced record stores and MTV. If we take the cue from Netflix which has successfully produced original content, it will not be long before Apple and Google will sign new artists and rival the record labels.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Digital Da Vinci: Computers in Music, 2014

Age, Music

“Imagine you go away
On a business trip one day
And when you come back home
Your children have grown
And you never made your wife moan”

Regina Spektor (1980) American singer-songwriter and pianist

Ghost Of Corporate Future
Soviet Kitsch (2004)

Children, Home, Imagination

“Dispatch is the soul of business.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

5 February 1750
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Soul

“Engineers, scientists, and statisticians have, until recently, been the groups chiefly interested in activity called quality control. These technologists have been primarily concerned with the technical methods which have become associated with the subject. They have applied these methods to a number of industrial quality problems.
Excellent results in improving quality and in reducing costs are now being reported from these applications. These reports have generated growing interest by industrial managers in the potentialities of quality control as a business method.
What, management is asking, is meant by the term "quality control"? Is there anything really new about it? What are the quality-control activities? What is the proper organization for quality control? How much does the program cost, and what benefits can result from it? Is quality control good only for mass production? May it be useful in a job shop as well? How do statistical methods fit into the quality-control pattern? What does quality control mean to the foreman, to the design engineer, to the salesman? How is quality control introduced to a company?”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. vii; Preface: lead paragraph

Problem

“As the city continues to grow, the costs of congestion – to our health, to our environment, and to our economy – are only going to get worse. The question is not whether we want to pay but how do we want to pay. With an increased asthma rate? With more greenhouse gases? Wasted time? Lost business? And higher prices? Or, do we charge a modest fee to encourage more people to take mass transit?”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/environment_sustainability/mayor_michael_bloomberg_delivers_planyc_a_greener_greater_new_york
Environment

People, Health, Question, Time

“I can treat all with decency and civility, and converse with them, when it is necessary, on points of business. But I am never happy in their company.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

As quoted in Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (1984), by William A. DeGregorio, pp. 19–20

Happiness

“By The middle of The 1920s General Motors had accomplished some things, but apart from survival and reorganization, they were more in the realm of the mind than of reality. We knew, as I have related, the strategy with which we proposed to approach the car business, how we proposed to manage the enterprise financially, and the relationships we wanted to establish among persons in different roles. But by the end of 1924 little of this was reﬂected in Our activities in the automobile market. That our volume of business had increased after the slump of 1921 — and especially in 1923 — could be attributed less to our own wits than to the improvement in the general economy and the rising demand for automobiles. While internally we had made much progress, externally we had marked time. But the time had come to act.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 149

Cars, Reality, Time, Personality

“To win and retain the trust of the people requires an administration willing to focus on showing competence and direction in the day to day business of government.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Principles and Priorities : Programme for Government (September 5, 2007)

People

“In the lifetime that has passed since Calvin Coolidge gave his speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in which he famously proclaimed that “the chief business of the American people is business,” the dominion of the ants has grown enormously. Look about: The business of business is everywhere and inescapable; the song of the buyers and the sellers never stops.”

Mark Slouka (1958) author

Quitting the paint factory: On the virtues of idleness

People

“I know we live in troubled times, my friends, I know things which once stood up suddenly don't stand up anymore. I know that innocent people shopping or buying gas are often shot down, shot down for no reason. And it makes a nation nervous. Now, personally, I like the nation to be nervous. And in these nervous times, sometimes people come up to me, and they say, "Perhaps, Jack, you should tone down your rhetoric a bit. Perhaps, the stuff you say in between songs might be construed as, well, not very patriotic. Well, actually, Jack, you might get yourself in some big trouble." And I say to myself, "Oh! Trouble is my business, friend." In these uncertain times, it's not a good idea to give up on your values, and change your mind about the things you hold dear. It's not. I want to talk about someone who fell pretty damn hard, and this song is called "I Shot President Reagan, and I'm Gonna Do It Again and Again and Again and Again!"”

Jack Terricloth (1970)

Introducing "Secret Service Freedom Fighting U.S.A."
Live

People, Idea, Change, Time

“At home, as well as abroad, there is paralyzing uncertainty among business men as to whether the Reserve Board will allow that expansion of bank credit without which such prosperity as we have had in recent years simply cannot last. In short, the Board has created a state of mind which breeds business depression.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Foster and Catchings, in: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 144, (1929), p. 102; cited in: William J. Barber. From New Era to New Deal. 1988, p. 77.

Men, Home

“I'm reading a very quaint American book, The Power of Positive Thinking, written, I'd suppose, by a sectarian minister, presumably of Methodist dye. (Norman Vincent Peale).. He's full of stories of prayers heard - and extols the power of prayer.."Before leaving for an important business conference I brace myself with texts like 'If God be for us, who can be against us?'… Then I stalk into the conference room, sure of my victory, and carry off the most marvellous deal.." This, in essence is the burden of the whole book. That's what people call Christian optimism. But it's wasted on us - we've been spoilt for this sort of thing… But isn't it rather self suggestion than authentic religious impulse? It doesn't seem to have dawned on him that suffering, disappointment, defeat or loss might also have some point too, or that God's designs could sometimes be hidden…”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

God, People, Books, Disappointment

“One runs a business ultimately to do well so you can do good for everyone.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 102.

“Life is like this. When I started business 48 years ago as a contractor, I was only looking to survive, cari makan”

Sukanto Tanoto (1949) Indonesian businessman

looking for food Globe Asia Interview, Sep, 2015. http://www.inside-rge.com/Sukanto-Tanoto-Resource-King-GlobeAsia 2015

Life, Food

“It bothers a lot of people, but like you said, it's nobody's business, it came from the Judeo-Christian ethos, especially Saint Paul the bastard, but he was complaining about youngsters who were not really that way, they did it for money, everybody suspects us or knows but nobody says anything about it.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Stein's comment about homosexuality and homophobia, from a conversation with Samuel Steward recounted in Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas (1977)

Money, People, Way

“Do you know what worship is? Everything belongs to the Lord, so what is there to offer to Him? But the Master used to tell us: 'Once a rich man went to visit his orchard. He saw the gardeners busy with their work. The caretaker approached him and presented him with a ripe papaya, saying: "Sir, I picked this ripe fruit for you yesterday. Please accept it." Now the owner knows that the garden, the trees, the fruit all belong to him; but won't he appreciate the love and thoughtfulness of the caretaker? Worship is like this.'”

Swami Adbhutananda Disciple

Source: God Lived with Them, p.436

Love, Tree

“This intelligence-testing business reminds me of the way they used to weigh hogs in Texas. They would get a long plank, put it over a cross-bar, and somehow tie the hog on one end of the plank. They'd search all around till they found a stone that would balance the weight of the hog and they'd put that on the other end of the plank. Then they'd guess the weight of the stone.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Quoted by Dorothy Canfield Fisher in Vermont Tradition http://books.google.com/books?id=K7wMAAAAYAAJ&q=%22This+intelligence-testing+business+reminds+me+of+the+way+they+used+to+weigh+hogs+in+Texas+They+would+get+a+long+plank+put+it+over+a+cross-bar+and+somehow+tie+the+hog+on+one+end+of+the+plank+They'd+search+all+around+till+they+found+a+stone+that+would+balance+the+weight+of+the+hog+and+they'd+put+that+on+the+other+end+of+the+plank+Then+they'd+guess+the+weight+of+the+stone%22&pg=PA380#v=onepage (1953) Misc. Quotes

Way, Search, Intelligence

“In business—every business—the bottom line is understanding the process. If you don't understand the process, you'll never reap the rewards of the process.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump: How to Get Rich (2004), p. 86
2000s

Understanding

“In my opinion the Government can do more to remedy the economic ills of the people by a system of rigid economy in public expenditure than can be accomplished through any other action. The costs of our national and local governments combined now stand at a sum close to $100 for each inhabitant of the land. A little less than one-third of this is represented by national expenditure, and a little more than two-thirds by local expenditure. It is an ominous fact that only the National Government is reducing its debt. Others are increasing theirs at about $1,000,000,000 each year. The depression that overtook business, the disaster experienced in agriculture, the lack of employment and the terrific shrinkage in all values which our country experienced in a most acute form in 1920, resulted in no small measure from the prohibitive taxes which were then levied on all productive effort. The establishment of a system of drastic economy in public expenditure, which has enabled us to pay off about one-fifth of the national debt since 1919, and almost cut in two the national tax burden since 1921, has been one of the main causes in reestablishing a prosperity which has come to include within its benefits almost every one of our inhabitants. Economy reaches everywhere. It carries a blessing to everybody.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

People, Effort, Country

“In fact, when we own portions of outstanding businesses with outstanding managements, our favorite holding period is forever.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

1988 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1988.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

“[on being LGBT in show business] People in the business are equally as terrified now -- but I really find it a personal thing. And maybe I’m at the end of that era. I wouldn’t even want to stereotype today’s generation. But the majority of the casting departments are gay, and a lot of the executives are. I think it’s a matter of your abilities and how you carry yourself -- I don’t behave any differently toward you right now than when I am with David [Burtka, his boyfriend] in our apartment, watching "American Idol." OK, "So You Think You Can Dance." [Laughs] I can see why an agent wouldn’t want to sign on a real overtly effeminate male actor -- not because I have an aversion to them but because agents might know it limits their job opportunities.”

Neil Patrick Harris (1973) American actor and host

Out Magazine; September 2008.

People, Thinking, Dance, Personality

“Just as there are inputs which are supplied by the owner of a business, and whose value therefore is a "virtual," not an actual, expense, so there can be outputs which are consumed by the owner of a business, and whose value therefore forms.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 380

“We have been living in an ideological bubble — one of market fundamentalism.From the trauma of the Great Depression to 1973, there was a broad consensus across the democratic world that markets were absolutely essential to generate wealth, but they will also cause all sorts of problems if they are left unregulated. Economists like JM Keynes and JK Galbraith taught us that if you abolish markets, you get starvation; but if you abolish all the democratic checks and balances on markets, you get a system that eats itself. Unregulated businesses will cause unsustainable levels of pollution and inequality, and ultimately start pursuing unhinged business models that cause the whole system to collapse.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

"Has Market Fundamentalism Had Its Day?" http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=1269, The Independent (2008-03-20).

World, Problem, Wealth

“Affected dispatch is one of the most dangerous things to business that can be. It is like that, which the physicians call predigestion, or hasty digestion; which is sure to fill the body full of crudities, and secret seeds of diseases. Therefore measure not dispatch, by the times of sitting, but by the advancement of the business.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Dispatch
Essays (1625)

Secret, Disease, Time

“Immigration is not a simple issue. There are at least three major parts of it: there’s border security, legal immigration, and the status of the 11 million, 15 million, 30 million … pick a number – it’s the status of the folks who are here illegally. People say, ‘oh, comprehensive reform is a bad idea.’ Ok? But, unless you deal with all three of those you haven’t dealt with immigration. There are jobs that American citizens will not do. There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn’t help the farmer pick his peaches this summer. We have businesses that rely on migrant – legal – migrant workers, and a lot of them are in this state”

Mick Mulvaney (1967) Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Mick Mulvaney's Summer Of Apostasy http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/06/08/mick-mulvaneys-summer-of-apostasy/ (June 2014)

People, Idea, Help, Summer

“Neoconservatives are still in the business of creating their own parallel reality and forcing ordinary Americans, Europeans and Middle-Easterners to inhabit the ruins.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Donald, Don’t Let Fox News Roger America… Again,” https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/ilana-mercer/finally-a-just-war/ LewRockwell.com, September 25, 2015. 2010s, 2015

Reality

“We're in the business of designing buildings for businessmen who put up buildings for other businessmen.”

Richard Roth, Jr. American architect

Source: As quoted in Meredith L. Clausen, "The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream" http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=E6qRuyzOogIC&pg=PA275&lpg=PA275&dq=%22Unfortunately,+buildings+are+not+like+drawings.+You+can%27t+just+erase+them.%22&source=bl&ots=wkwiw7U92A&sig=4fGIk_ufWMT3wv_c6l6k8uaYMv0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HYlHVNHNJ4Lb7Aa86oHwCA&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Unfortunately%2C%20buildings%20are%20not%20like%20drawings.%20You%20can%27t%20just%20erase%20them.%22&f=false, p.185

“The world of their [the bourgeois’] predecessors was a backward, pre-technological world, a world with the good conscience of inequality and toil, in which labor was still a fated misfortune; but a world in which man and nature were not yet organized as things and instrumentalities. With its code of forms and manners. with the style and vocabulary of its literature and philosophy. this past culture expressed the rhythm and content of a universe in which valleys and forests, villages and inns, nobles and villains, salons and courts were a part of the experienced reality. In the verse and prose of this pre-technological culture is the rhythm of those who wander or ride in carriages. who have the time and the pleasure to think, contemplate, feel and narrate. It is an outdated and surpassed culture, and only dreams and childlike regressions can recapture it. But this culture is, in some of its decisive elements. also a post-technological one. Its most advanced images and positions seem to survive their absorption into administered comforts and stimuli; they continue to haunt the consciousness with the possibility of their rebirth in the consummation of technical progress. They are the expression of that free and conscious alienation from the established forms of life with which literature and the arts opposed these forms even where they adorned them. In contrast to the Marxian concept, which denotes man's relation to himself and to his work in capitalist society, the artistic alienation is the conscious transcendence of the alienated existence—a “higher level” or mediated alienation. The conflict with the world of progress, the negation of the order of business, the anti-bourgeois elements in bourgeois literature and art are neither due to the aesthetic lowliness of this order nor to romantic reaction—nostalgic consecration of a disappearing stage of civilization. “Romantic” is a term of condescending defamation which is easily applied to disparaging avant-garde positions, just as the term “decadent” far more often denounces the genuinely progressive traits of a dying culture than the real factors of decay. The traditional images of artistic alienation are indeed romantic in as much as they are in aesthetic incompatibility with the developing society. This incompatibility is the token of their truth. What they recall and preserve in memory pertains to the future: images of a gratification that would dissolve the society which suppresses it”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 59-60

Life, Fate, Pleasure, Truth

“Stop allowing your day-to-day life to be clouded by busy nothingness.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 116

Life

“In his (Barack Obama's) distorted understanding of economics, when anyone, but especially the rich get a tax break or pay less in taxes, someone else has to pay the difference or the supposed shortfall adds to the debt. His assumption, typical of most Democrats and Republicans, is the government is “owed” a portion of the fruits of our labor. It never occurs to him that perhaps the government has no business taking money from people who earn it in the first place. He never thinks that the solution is to stop government spending and stop robbing Peter to pay Paul.He and other members of the ruling elite can only see the economy as a pie, with only so much to go around. If one person gets “more,” someone has to do with “less.” It never occurs to them that the free market is like a bakery that can produce many pies, and bigger pies, and different kinds of pies so that everyone has their fill.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The State of the Union is Still a State of War http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7189"

Money, People, Understanding, Thinking

“Truthfully, the job security in this business is uncertain, the hours are long, long and lonely, the audience is increasingly small, fickle and dissatisfied, like 3 of the 7 Dwarves. Respect is nonexistent, success fleeting; you'd be better off in a boy band, where at least you'd get laid before they made you obsolete.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2004
https://web.archive.org/web/20040803001942/http://www.popimage.com/content/grant20044.html Popimage interview
On comics

Boy, Success

“The business model of Wall Street is fraud. In my view, there is no better example than the recently-exposed illegal behavior at Wells Fargo.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

2010s, 2016

Behavior, Fraud

“"You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you'll ever even move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessation from all hankerings.' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line — in one damn incarnation or another, if you like — you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to — be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? You can at least try to, if you want to — there's nothing wrong in trying." There was a slight pause. "You'd better get busy, though, buddy. The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I'm talking about. You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world."”

Jerome David Salinger book Franny and Zooey

Franny and Zooey (1961), Zooey (1957)

Life, God, Truth, World

“One would have thought that the notion of an impersonal critic was as patently absurd as that of an impersonal person: yet playwrights still cherish it as a sort of holy ideal. Admittedly, we all make mystiques: but this one is particularly wishful. The man who asks for an anonymous, impersonal criticism is trying to elevate criticism to the status of a science; whereas it is, I am afraid, only an art. The critic's business is to write readable English: the playwright's to write speakable English. Beyond that it is every man for himself.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

"George Jean Nathan" (1953), p. 61
Profiles (1990)

Art, Science, Personality

“It is a bright idea that when you get a National Government in office, a mixed and assorted Government, it is to be assumed that the opposition must suddenly cease to function, and that it must discharge the duties of the Opposition and carry the burden of the baby of the Government as well. This Bill is the Government's business, and it is for us to attack it and to tear it to pieces if we like, and we are going to do what we think proper in this respect.”

Herbert Morrison (1888–1965) British Labour politician

Parliamentary speech on the National Economy Bill, 28 September 1931. Hansard http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1931/sep/28/schedule-services-in-respect-of-which#S5CV0257P0_19310928_HOC_409, HC 5ser vol 257 col 145.

Idea, Thinking, Tear, Baby

“Administration is both social engineering and applied psychology. It is apparatus and mechanics, incentives and human nature. Let no one think it is merely the former. Nowhere is the need for psychology greater than in the organization, direction, and inspiration of men working in large groups. Outstanding administrative results are produced by spirit, morale, atmosphere; these, in turn, are the product of psychological mainsprings and invigorating incentives. As Benjamin Lippincott has recognized, both governmental and business administration resolve fundamentally into the role played by effective incentives.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: "The Study of Administration." 1937, p. 30

Men, Nature, Thinking

“When I had my own company on Traffic and Coonskin, all metaphors were able to get to the screen clearly. In Cool World, with the producer and Paramount watching me carefully to make sure I was in good taste, I instinctively poured stuff into the picture that I wanted to talk about. But when you force stuff, it's not really very clear. But, I have a great love for Max Fleischer, especially some of his Black & White Betty Boops with their strange Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong black folk tale jazz hipness that part of Cool World was a homage in style to those films and that style of cartooning. The Grim Reaper is right out of a Max Fleischer cartoon or old Terrytoons, which is why I hired and love Milton Knight the artist. He understands totally the Uncle Remus fable like qualities behind Fleischer and Terrytoons. Milton Knight is probably the purest artist of that style in the business. He has a hard time because studios think he is old fashioned…but that's the point.”

Ralph Bakshi (1938) Animator, filmmaker

[c. 17 September 2004, http://www.wild-things.com/bray/documents/ralphb.doc, Questions for Ralph Bakshi, DOC, Ralph Bakshi Forum, 2007-11-27]

Love, World, Fashion, Understanding

“It has been said that the modern world is divided between the hot and hasty pursuit of affairs in the hours of labor, and the no less eager chase of pleasure in the hours of leisure. But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876)

Pleasure, World, Fashion

“The last speaker alluded to this movement as being that of a few disappointed women. From the first years to which my memory stretches, I have been a disappointed woman… I was disappointed when I came to seek a profession worthy an immortal being—every employment was closed to me, except those of the teacher, the seamstress, and the housekeeper. In education, in marriage, in religion, in everything, disappointment is the lot of woman. It shall be the business of my life to deepen this disappointment in every woman's heart until she bows down to it no longer.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

Remark made at a National Woman's Rights Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio. (1855) as quoted in Feminism: The Essential Historical Writings (1972) by Miriam Schnier

Life, Women, Marriage, Education

“You are going to approve one of the biggest tax cuts in history. You are going to approve one of the biggest tax increases in history. You are going to drive business out. Your regulations are a disaster, and you're going to increase regulations all over the place. And by the way, my tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan. I'm very proud of it. It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs. But regulations, you are going to regulate these businesses out of existence. … The things that business as in people like the most is the fact that I'm cutting regulation. You have regulations on top of regulations, and new companies cannot form and old companies are going out of business. And you want to increase the regulations and make them even worse. I'm going to cut regulations. I'm going to cut taxes big league, and you're going to raise taxes big league, end of story.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

People, Way, History

“I mean, there's always somebody in somebody's administration who jumps out early, sells a book, and goes after the guy who hired him, … I don't know if that's good. It may be good business; it's not good politics.”

Bob Dole (1923) American politician

Source: Cabinet members defend Bush from O'Neill http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/11/oneill.bush/, CNN (January 12, 2004).

Books, Guy

“How various his employments whom the world
Calls idle, and who justly in return
Esteems that busy world an idler too!”

William Cowper The Task

Source: The Task (1785), Book III, The Garden, Line 352.

World

“Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Letter to Charlotte Brontë in March 1837, reported in Gaskell The life of Charlotte Brontë, Vol. I (1857), p. 139, and in Mumby Letters of Literary Men, Vol. II (1906), p. 185.

Life, Literature

“Even old New York was once New Amsterdam.
Why they changed it I can't say;
People just liked it better that way.
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks!”

Jimmy Kennedy (1902–1984) Irish songwriter

Song Istanbul Not Constantinople
Song lyrics

People, Way, Change, Time

Quotes about business page 14

Quotes about business
page 14