Quotes about business
page 2

“Music is everybody's business. It's only the publishers who think people own it”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“I've always said that idleness dulls the spirit. We have to keep the brain busy, or at least the hands if we don't have a brain.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… But I am too busy thinking about myself.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

As quoted in The Observer (30 April 1950)

Thinking, Time

“Anytime you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you're both engaged in the same business - you know they're doing something that you aren't.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Success

“There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“I’m a witch. It’s what we do. When it’s nobody else’s business, it’s my business.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

“Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

People, Affliction

“Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

God, People, Thinking, Time

“… disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business….”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Soul

“Just keep your conscious mind busy with expectation of the best.”

Joseph Murphy The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

“I never hurt nobody but myself and that's nobody's business but my own.”

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) American jazz singer and songwriter

Hurt

“Be so busy Improving your self that you have no time to criticize others.”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

Time

“Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Passion

“My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Cecil Graham, Act III
Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

Death, People

“The people who make art their business are mostly imposters.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

People, Art

“for business reasons, I must preserve the outward signs of sanity.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. IV, l. 354.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Pleasure, World, Solitude, Parting

“What do you think about me is not my business the important thing is what I think about myself…”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Source: Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom

Thinking

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“There is nothing so annoying as having two people talking when you're busy interrupting.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

People

“The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Passion, Leadership, Business

“The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

People

“Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.”

Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist

“You can’t tax business. Business doesn’t pay taxes. It collects taxes.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Pain, Tree, Learning

“I'm not going to sacrifice love, real love, for any *%@$n' war or any friend, or any business, because in the end you're alone at night.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Love, War, Night

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

“In such business
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant
More learned than the ears.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Learning

“I have a business appointment that I am anxious… to miss.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”

Jane Austen book Emma

Source: Emma (1815)

Money, Friendship

“When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Source: Christian Science (1907), Ch. 4

Faith, Confidence, Boy, Thinking

“Just a second,
It's my favorite song they're gonna play.
And I cannot text you with
A drink in my hand, eh.
You shoulda made some plans with me,
You knew that I was free.
And now you won't stop calling me;
I'm kinda busy.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Telephone, written by Lady Gaga, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, LaShawn Daniels, Lazonate Franklin, and Beyoncé
Song lyrics, The Fame Monster (2009)

Drink

“A racist country like Australia says: ‘The white farmers are being killed in South Africa.’ We are not killing them. … If they want to go, they must go. They must leave the keys to their tractors because we want to work the land, they must leave the keys to their houses because we want to stay in those houses. They must leave everything they did not come here with in South Africa and go to Australia. … White farmers are the architect of their own misfortune. … Don’t make noise, because you will irritate us. Go to Australia. It is only racists who went to Australia when Mandela got out of prison. It is only racists who went to Australia when 1994 came. It is the racists again who are going back to Australia. … They are rich here because they are exploiting black people. There is no black person to be exploited in Australia, they are going to be poor. … They will come back here with their tail between their legs. We will hire them because we will be the owners of their farms when they come back to South Africa. As to what we are going to do with the land, it’s our business, it’s none of your business.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

On 21 March 2018 at a Human Rights Day rally in Mpumalanga Stadium, South African politician says Australia is a ‘racist country’, farmers should ‘leave the keys’ when they go http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/world-economy/south-african-politician-says-australia-is-a-racist-country-farmers-should-leave-the-keys-when-they-go/news-story/e98607c4fa66d30d9b2731aa30e2a956, Frank Chung, news.com.au (22 March 2018)

People, Housing, Personality, Country

“Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

The Civil War in France : "The Third Address" (May 1871) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

People, Search, Communication, Universe

“Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

Love, Hate, Family, Change

“An additional reason for caution in dealing with corporations is to be found in the international commercial conditions of to-day. The same business conditions which have produced the great aggregations of corporate and individual wealth have made them very potent factors in international Commercial competition. Business concerns which have the largest means at their disposal and are managed by the ablest men are naturally those which take the lead in the strife for commercial supremacy among the nations of the world. America has only just begun to assume that commanding position in the international business world which we believe will more and more be hers. It is of the utmost importance that this position be not jeoparded, especially at a time when the overflowing abundance of our own natural resources and the skill, business energy, and mechanical aptitude of our people make foreign markets essential. Under such conditions it would be most unwise to cramp or to fetter the youthful strength of our Nation. Moreover, it cannot too often be pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule in our national life —the rule which underlies all others—is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Life, Men, People, Youth

“It is not a reproach but a compliment to learning, to say, that great scholars are less fit for business; since the truth is, business is so much a lower thing than learning, that a man used to the last cannot easily bring his stomach down to the first.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

Truth, Learning

“Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; it should be the main pursuit of every true believer.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Soul-Winner (1895)

Soul

“I think that New York is not the cultural center of America, but the business and administrative center of American culture.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

BBC radio interview, The Listener (London, 1969-05-22)
General sources

Thinking

“I do not like the idea of happiness — it is too momentary — I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

In notes to Anita Pollitzer, Abiquiu, New Mexico, (after February, 1968); as quoted in The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O’Keeffe & Anita Pollitzer, ed. Clive Giboire, Touchstone Books, Simon & Schuster Inc., New York, 1990, p. 324
1960s

Happiness, Idea

“Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work as long as politics don’t get in the way. We can’t slow down businesses or put our economy at risk with government shutdowns or fiscal showdowns. We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got to fix a broken system.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, State of the Union Address (January 2015)

Health, Family, Way, Past

“I wasn't driven to acting by any inner compulsion. I was running away from the sporting goods business.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in John Skow, "Verdict on a Superstar," Time (1982-12-06)

Sport

“The working examples of important new systems seem to have come either from entrepreneurial efforts (Visicalc is a good example) or from large companies, like Bell Labs and most especially Xerox, that were much involved with computers and could afford research into them, but did not regard them as their primary business.”

Dennis M. Ritchie (1941–2011) American computer scientist

Reflections on Software Research (1984)

Effort

“Business is the salt of life.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

This is a proverb which can be found in Robert Codrington's "Youth's Behaviour, Second Part" (1672) and in Thomas Fuller's "Gnomologia" (1732)
Misattributed

Life

“As for the explanation that fascism is a last desperate attempt of capitalism to delay the socialist revolution, it simply is not true. It is not true that ‘big business’ promoted fascism. On the contrary, both in Italy and in Germany the proportion of fascist sympathizers and backers was smallest in the industrial and financial classes. It is equally untrue that ‘big business’ profits from fascism; of all the classes it probably suffers most from totalitarian economics and Wehrwirtschaft.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 7

Suffering

“There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

New England Weather, speech to the New England Society (December 22, 1876)

People, Spring, Weather, Season

“That which Heraclitus avoided, however, is still the same at that which we shun today: the noise and democratic chatter of the Ephesians, their politics, their latest news of the “Empire,” … their market business of “today”—for we philosophers need to be spared one thing above all: everything to do with “today.” We reverence what is still, cold, noble, distant, past, and in general everything in the face of which the soul does not have to defend itself and wrap itself up.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality

Essay 3, Aphorism 8, W. Kaufmann, trans., in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (1992), p. 546
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)

Soul, Distant, Past

“Music is not a very stable business. You know it comes and it goes, and so does money. But your education stays with you for the rest of your life and when you have that education and you have nothing fall back on you can go and get a job anywhere.”

Selena (1971–1995) Mexican-American singer, songwriter, actress, and fashion designer

Selena at School https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRhbKhD4gPI

Life, Money, Education, Music

“The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from either.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

"Platform Insincerity" in The Outlook, Vol. 101, No. 13 (27 July 1912), p. 660
1910s

“You've got to know who you are before you step into this business, because if you're trying to find it, you'll probably wind up being somebody else, that you probably don't even like.”

Whitney Houston (1963–2012) American singer, actress, model, and record producer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPItgCnamNg

“[W]ithout bolder action, our children won't have time to debate the existence of climate change. They'll be busy dealing with its effects: more environmental disasters, more economic disruptions, waves of climate refugees seeking sanctuary.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)

Children, Change, Time

“The corporate manager who achieves success by honest efficiency in giving the best service to the public should be favored because we all beneﬁt by his efficiency. […] he should be helped by the Government because his success is good for the National welfare. But a man who, grasps and holds business power by breaking the industrial efficiency of others, who wins success by methods which are against‘ the public interest and degrading to the public morals, should not be permitted to ‘ exercise such power. Instead of punishing him by a long and doubtful process of the law after the wrong has been com- mitted, there should be such effective Government regulation as to check the evil tendencies at the moment that they start do develop.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Law, Exercises, Evil, Success

“No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read. For instance, if you are walking in the mountains, and you don't read the sign that says "Beware of Cliff" because you were busy reading a joke book instead, you may suddenly find yourself walking on air rather than on a sturdy bed of rocks. If you are baking a pie for your friends, and you read an article entitled "How to Build a Chair" instead of a cookbook, your pie will probably end up tasting like wood and nails instead of like crust and fruity filling. And if you insist on reading this book instead of something more cheerful, you will most certainly find yourself moaning in despair instead of wriggling with delight, so if you have any sense at all you will put this book down and pick up another one. I know of a book, for instance, called The Littlest Elf, which tells the story of a teensy-weensy little man who scurries around fairyland having all sorts of adorable adventures, and you can see at once that you should probably read The Littlest Elf and wriggle over the lovely things that happened to this imaginary creature in a made-up place, instead of reading this book and moaning over the terrible things that have happened to the three Baudelaire orphans.”

Daniel Handler book The Vile Village

Lemony Snicket
The Vile Village (2001)

Love, People, Books, Mountain

“As a matter of policy, if nothing else, why should the Tammany leaders go into such dirty business, when there is so much honest graft lyin’ around when they are in power? p. 6”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 1, Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft

“In the face of the recent institutional breakdown of trust in business, managers are losing legitimacy. To regain public trust, management needs to become a true profession in much the way medicine and law have…”

Rakesh Khurana (1967) American business academic

Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. "It's time to make management a true profession." Harvard business review 86.10 (2008). p. 70. Introduction

Law, Way

“The struggle between the people and the hatred amongst them is being nurtured by very specific interested parties. It is a small, rootless, international clique that is turning the people against each other, that does not want them to have peace. It is the people who are at home both nowhere and everywhere, who do not have anywhere a soil on which they have grown up, but who live in Berlin today, in Brussels tomorrow, Paris the day after that, and then again in Prague or Vienna or London, and who feel at home everywhere. [Man in audience shouts 'Jews!'] They are the only ones who can be addressed as international elements, because they conduct their business everywhere, but the people cannot follow them. The people are bounded to their soil, bounded to its fatherland, bounded to the possibilities of life that the state, the nation, offers.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

A speech at the Siemens Dynamo Works in Berlin (10 November 1933) http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/hitler_audio.shtml 1930s

Life, People, Peace, Feeling

“More broadly, I think that the -- if you look at some of the most successful countries in the world, they’re actually pretty small countries -- like Singapore, for example -- that on paper look like they have no assets, and yet, if you go to Singapore, it has one of the highest standards of living in the world. What is it that Singapore did that might be replicable? Well, one of the most important things they did was they made an enormous investment in their people. And if you’ve got a highly skilled, highly educated workforce, if you’ve set up rules of law and governance that are transparent and non-corrupt, then you can attract actually a lot of service industries to supplement the tourist industry, because people would want to locate in your country. You could envision people wanting to operate and have offices there where you’ve got a trained workforce. And these days, so many businesses are operating over the Internet that if you’ve got a really skilled workforce that provides value added, you will attract companies and you’ll attract businesses.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Town Hall meeting with Young Leaders of the Americas (April 2015)

People, World, Education, Law

“Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Attributed to Marx (possibly in jest) in W. C. Privy's Original Bathroom Companion (2003).
Misattributed

Fish

“Told 'em I finished school, and I started my own business
They say, 'Oh you graduated?'
No, I decided I was finished”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

"School Spirit"
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

School

“We are joined today by inspiring entrepreneurs from more than 120 countries and many from across Africa. And all of you embody a spirit that we need to take on some of the biggest challenges that we face in the world -- the spirit of entrepreneurship, the idea that there are no limits to the human imagination; that ingenuity can overcome what is and create what needs to be. And everywhere I go, across the United States and around the world, I hear from people, but especially young people, who are ready to start something of their own -- to lift up people’s lives and shape their own destinies. And that’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and new businesses, new ways to deliver basic services, new ways of seeing the world -- it’s the spark of prosperity. It helps citizens stand up for their rights and push back against corruption. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don’t see a future for themselves. Entrepreneurship means ownership and self-determination, as opposed to simply being dependent on somebody else for your livelihood and your future. Entrepreneurship brings down barriers between communities and cultures and builds bridges that help us take on common challenges together. Because one thing that entrepreneurs understand is, is that you don't have to look a certain way, or be of a certain faith, or have a certain last name in order to have a good idea.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at United Nations Compound in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-global-entrepreneurship-summit 2015

People, World, Faith, Way

“I did not come to power to divide Somali but to unite them, and I will never deviate from this path. I shall respect a Somali individual as long as he deserves respect, but if he turns away from the correct path, then that is not my business.”

Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia

Mogadiscio Domestic Service in Somali http://www.biyokulule.com/1978_coup.htm, 0448 GMT (1 May 1978).

“I think I would be more suited to the couture side of the business!”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

When his interview with Lucien Long failed to get him an employment in an office job.
Source: Marie France Pochna, "Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New", p. 57

Thinking

“The establishment, elaboration and clarifying of our program we leave to science, which in our present society is the business of only a few. But the practical application of our program, and the tactics of the party are the business of all; here all work together.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Science

“I will not spend the money for myself. I will rather spend it in special business on a no-profit-no-loss policy. We will also establish an eye hospital where even beggars will be given treatment at the cost of Taka 10-20.”

Muhammad Yunus (1940) Bangladeshi banker, economist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

The Daily Star (14 October 2006)

Money, Loss

“I don't know if I'm making myself clear, but if I were to accept this business of conceptual art I would have no reason to exist.”

Jannis Kounellis (1936–2017) Greek painter, sculptor and professor of arts

Quoted in Kristine Stiles & Peter Howard Selz: Theories and documents of contemporary art (1996) P.671

Art

“It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Part I
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Jean-Christophe à Paris: The Market-Place (1908)

Sun

“That's what the democratic parties personify: business groups! Nothing more. 'Weltanschauung? What kind of reactionary expression is that? Honor, loyalty, creed, convictions? Man, you are living in yesterday!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

So sind die Parteien der Demokratie: Geschäftsgruppen! Weiter nichts. Weltanschauung? Was ist das für ein reaktionärer Begriff? Ehre, Treue, Glauben, Überzeugung? Mann, sie sind von Gestern!
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Loyalty

“There is a point of complexity beyond which a business is no longer manageable.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 681

“In the late Middle Ages there were, no doubt, many persons in monasteries and convents who had no business there and should have been out in the world earning an honest living, but today it may very well be that there are many persons trying to earn a living in the world and driven by failure into mental homes whose true home would be the cloister.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"The Protestant Mystics", p. 73
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

Age, World, Home, Failure

“The average American citizen should have presented to him in a simple and easily comprehended form the truth about the business affairs that affect his daily life as consumer, employee, employer, as investor, as voter. […] There are concrete instances of unfair competition that can be reached under the Federal criminal legislation, and they should be attacked and destroyed in the courts. But the laws should be such that normally, and save in extraordinary, circumstances, there should be no need of recourse to the courts. What is needed is administrative supervision and control. This should be so exercised that the highways of commerce and opportunity should be open to all; and not nominally open, but really open, a consistent effort being made to deprive every man of any advantage that is not due to his own superiority and efficiency, controlled by moral purpose. […] Not only as a matter of justice and honesty, but as a matter of prime popular interest, we should see that this control is so exercised as to favor a proper return to the upright business manager and honest investor.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Life, Truth, Justice, Law

“Normally its narrow streets were crowded with stalls, and people from all over the Carpet. They'd all be trying to cheat one another in that open-and-above-board way known as 'doing business.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

People, Way, Cheating

“Part of me felt like something momentous was about to happen. The other part of me expected to wake up at any moment, to come out of this fever dream or stress episode or whatever it was and wake up with my face in a puddle of drool on the Smart Aid break room table and think, Well, that was strange, and then return to the boring old business of being me. But I didn't wake up.”

Ransom Riggs book Miss Peregrine's Home of Peculiar Children

Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 6, Page 139

Dreams, Thinking, Parting

“Hairdressers are professional gossips; when only the hands are busy, the tongue is seldom still.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

“The question always is, will it pay to bring an extra exchange transaction under the organizing authority? At the margin, the costs of organizing within the firm will be equal either to the costs of organizing in another firm or to the costs involved in leaving the transaction to be “organised” by the price mechanism. Business men will be constantly experimenting, controlling more or less, and in this way equilibrium will be maintained. This gives the position of equilibrium for static analysis.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

Source: 1930s-1950s, "The Nature of the Firm" (1937), p. 404

Men, Way, Question

“A final aspect of all open access orders is Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction, one of the most powerful descriptions of a competitive, open access economy. When Schumpeter wrote Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in the early 1940s, the economic theory of perfect competition among atomistic firms (i. e., firms too small to have market power) had come under sustained attack as unrealistic. Large and powerful economic organizations dominated the new economy, and their behavior did not match the textbooks. Despite this dominance, the economy produced historically unprecedented, sustained economic development. Schumpeter asked, How could large businesses that were supposed to choke off competition and growth nonetheless generate such spectacular productivity increases in a world that seemed ever more competitive?”

Douglass C. North (1920–2015) American Economist

Source: Violence and Social Orders (2009), Ch. 4 : Open Access Orders

World, Behavior, Democracy, Perfection

“Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong … And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

Gorgias

Law

“Indian thought has greatly attracted me since in my youth I first became acquainted with it through reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. From the very beginning I was convinced that all thought is really concerned with the great problem of how man can attain to spiritual union with infinite Being. My attention was drawn to Indian thought because it is busied with this problem and because by its nature it is mysticism. What I liked about it also was that Indian ethics are concerned with the behaviour of man to all living beings and not merely with his attitude to his fellow-man and to human society.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Preface, p. vi
Indian Thought And Its Development (1936)

Youth, Nature, Problem, Reading

“I am sorry to say that at the moment I am so busy as to be convinced that life has no meaning whatever… I do not see that we can judge what would be the result of the discovery of truth, since none has hitherto been discovered.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Letter to Will Durant, 20 June, 1931
1930s

Life, Truth

“According to the dictionary, to administer is to govern, or to manage a public or private business. It means, therefore, to seek to make the best possible use of the resources available in achieving the goal of the enterprise. Administration includes, therefore, all the operations of the enterprise. But as a result of the usual way of organizing things to facilitate the running of the business, a certain number of activities constitute the special departments; the technical department, the commercial department, the financial department, etc., and the scope of the administrative department is found to be reduced accordingly.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: L’exposé des principes généraux d’administration, 1908, p. 911

Way

“Love yields to business. If you seek a way out of love, be busy; you'll be safe then.”
Qui finem quaeris amoris, Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.

Ovid book Remedia amoris

Source: Remedia Amoris (The Cure for Love), Lines 143–144

Love, Way

“"We shall say to ourselves," says one, "'After all, why do we make war?' We don't know at all why, but we can say who we make it for. We shall be forced to see that if every nation every day brings the fresh bodies of fifteen hundred young men to the God of War to be lacerated, it's for the pleasure of a few ringleaders that we could easily count; that if whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and shops — and we shall see, as soon as we open our eyes, that the divisions between mankind are not what we thought, and those one did believe in are not divisions."”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Men, God, War, People

“Although I am new in the business, my team is not. I would say that, person for person, there has never been a better rocket company in existence, in history. I don’t think there has ever been a group this talented in one place, in one company, developing a rocket – ever.
If you have millions of dollars it changes your lifestyle, and anyone who says differently is talking ########. I don’t need to work, from a standard of living point of view, but I do, you know. I work every day and on weekends and I haven’t taken a vacation for years.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

History, Thinking, Change, Personality

“One trouble is that when Government gets into a business it tends to make it uneconomic for anyone else.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 27, 1963, page 47.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“My business is to paint what I see, not what I know is there.”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Turner, quoted in: Donald B. MacCulloch (1927) The Wondrous Isle of Staffa, p. 160
Alternative quote:
My job is to paint what I see, not what I know
As quoted in: George Seferis (1999) A Poet's Journal: Days of 1945-1951. p. 105
undated quotes

Painting

“I eat as much as I ever did, I drink more than I should, and my sex life is none of your goddamned business.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Playboy interview, May 1971

Life, Sex, Drink

“And so you have to be practical in asking yourself how can you achieve the goals of equality and inclusion, but also recognize that the market system produces a lot of wealth and goods and services. And it also gives individuals freedom because they have initiative. And so you don't have to be rigid in saying it’s either this or that, you can say -- depending on the problem you're trying to solve, depending on the social issues that you're trying to address what works. And I think that what you’ll find is that the most successful societies, the most successful economies are ones that are rooted in a market-based system, but also recognize that a market does not work by itself. It has to have a social and moral and ethical and community basis, and there has to be inclusion. Otherwise it’s not stable. And it’s up to you -- whether you're in business or in academia or the nonprofit sector, whatever you're doing -- to create new forms that are adapted to the new conditions that we live in today.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative Town Hall (March 2016)

Communication, Problem, Thinking, Freedom

“The first thing [in credit] is character … before money or anything else. Money cannot buy it.… A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom. I think that is the fundamental basis of business.”

J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) American financier, banker, philanthropist and art collector

Testimony to the Pujo Committee (1912)
Untermyer: Is not commercial credit based primarily upon money or property?
Morgan: No, sir; the first thing is character.
Testimony to the Pujo Committee (1912)

Money, Thinking

“Know your worth! People always act like they're doing more for you than you're doing for them. Ask yourself this question, "Why would they do that?" Obviously, you bring something to the table for them to even do business with you”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Source: Thank You and You're Welcome (2009), p.3-4

People, Question

“In business as well, if you are to be successful you must always win. An enterprise will grow in accordance with the amount of effort you plow into it.”

Matsushita Konosuke (1894–1989) Japanese businessman

Source: Quest for prosperity: the life of a Japanese industrialist. 1988, p. 58

Effort, Success

“Equal interchange of goods and service between buyer and seller is the keynote of tomorrow’s business world when the vision of the modern business man awakens him to the wisdom of writing that policy into his code of ethics.”

Walter Russell (1871–1963) American philosopher

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe

Wisdom, World

“That a deep-rooted feeling of discontent pervades the masses, none can deny; that there is a just cause for it, must be admitted. The old cry, “These agitators are stirring up a feeling of dissatisfaction among working men and they should be suppressed,” will not avail now. Every thinking person knows that the agitator did not throw two millions of men out of employment. The man that reads such paragraphs as this will not lay the blame of it at the door of the agitator:
“Mrs. Sarah Jane Geary, an Englishwoman, residing in this city, committed suicide a few days since. Her husband is a miner, and, owing to the frequent suspensions of business in the mines during the past winter, his meager earnings were insufficient to support the family. The fact preyed on Mrs. Geary’s mind, and she resolved to end her life, that her children might receive her share of the food, otherwise they would go hungry.””

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

"The Army of the Discontented," http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=nora;cc=nora;g=moagrp;xc=1;q1=The%20Army%20of%20the%20Discontented;rgn=full%20text;cite1=Powderly;cite1restrict=author;view=image;seq=0381;idno=nora0140-4;node=nora0140-4%3A8 North American Review, vol. 140, whole no. 341 (April 1885), p. 371.

Life, Men, Children, Family

“I endorse all that you say of the superior intelligence of the felidae. Never have I been able to associate the docile servility and satellitism of the canidae with mental power. Zoölogists seem to consider the cerebration of cats and dogs about 50-50—but my respect always goes to the cool, sure, impersonal, delicately poised feline who minds his business and never slobbers—the aristocratic, epicurean philosopher who knows what he wants and tells interlopers to go to hell. There is no credit in having a dog attached to one—for a dog can be conditioned to become anybody's slave and property. But a cat is nobody's slave. You do not own a cat. If one lives in your home, it is because he regards your way of life favourably, and accepts you as a friend, as one gentleman accepts another. He takes no kicks or insolence from anyone. If you are not worthy to associate with him, he will depart to seek an environment more suited to a gentleman's taste. Therefore he who retains the respect and companionship of a feline has proven himself to be essentially a superior citizen. For a human being, membership in the Kappa Alpha Tau forms a badge of distinction. Many are the eminent names on that member ship list—Mahomet himself, Richelieu, Poe, Baudelaire... one could catalogue them endlessly. Certainly, I ask no greater honour than to be accounted a citizen of Ulthar beyond the River Skai!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to E. Hoffmann Price (29 July 1936), published in Selected Letters Vol. V, p. 290
Non-Fiction, Letters, to E. Hoffmann Price

Life, Dogs, Way, Home

“Certainly we are not going to say these things about the negro people publicly; we have no distinction between black or white, or demon or demigod, but at the same time, so long as one is demon or demigod, we have to behave in the proper way. Just like Caitanya Mahaprabhu; He had no distinction between a tiger and a man. He was so powerful that He could convert even a tiger to dance. But so far as we are concerned, we should not imitate and go to some tiger and try to make him dance! But still, tiger is equally eligible like a man. So, you can understand that these talks are not for the public, as they have not got the ability to understand. Basically we have not got hatred for anyone, but when one is demoniac or atheistic, we should try to avoid their company. A preacher’s business is to love God, to make friendship with devotees, to enlighten the innocent, and to avoid the demons. This principle we shall follow. But in higher devotional life, there is no such distinction.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Letter to Satsvarupa, San Francisco, 9 April, 1968 PrabhupadaBooks.com http://prabhupadabooks.com/letters/san_francisco/april/09/1968/satsvarupa?d=1 Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: Racism and Homophobia

Love, Life, God, Friendship

“Remember, every business firm, like even a mom and pop grocery store, is a market imperfection. A firm is defined in economic theory as a market imperfection introduced to deal with transaction costs. And the sort of theory is that the imperfections, the firms, are kinda like little islands in a free market sea. But the problem with that is that the sea doesn't remotely resemble a free market, and the islands are bigger than the sea; so that raises some questions about the picture. But these market imperfections, like a firm, or a transnational corporation, or a strategic alliance among them, this is a form of administering interchanges. And there's a real question about whether we want to accept that. Why, for example, should the international socioeconomic system, or for that matter our own society, be in the hands of unaccountable private tyrannies? That's a decision, it's not a law of nature.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "U.S. Foreign Policy in a Globalized World" at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, March 13, 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20021220030406/http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/ed270/multimedia.html. Quotes 2000s, 2000

Law, Moms, Question, Nature

“Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Youth and Age
Essays (1625)

Men

“Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonising preoccupation with self.”

Iris Murdoch book The Nice and the Good

The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 22.

Happiness

“In the early days, I was writing scripts for virtually all the books, and it was very hard to keep all the artists busy; poor little frail me, doing story after story. So I'd be writing a story for Kirby, and Steve Ditko would walk in and say, 'Hey, I need some work now.' And I'd say, 'I can't give it to you now, Steve, I'm finishing Kirby's.' But we couldn't afford to keep Steve waiting, because time is money, so I'd have to say, 'Look Steve, I can't write a script for you now, but here's the plot for the next Spider-Man. Go home and draw anything you want, as long as it's something like this, and I'll put the copy in later.' So I was able to finish Jack's story. Steve in the meantime was drawing another story….. Okay, it started out as a lazy's man's device…but we realized this was absolutely the best way to do a comic….. Don't have the writer say, 'Panel one will be a long shot of Spider-Man walking down the street.”

Stan Lee (1922–2018) American comic book writer

The artist may see it differently; maybe he feels it should be a shot of Spider-Man swinging on his web, or climbing upside-down on the ceiling or something. On the early days of work at Marvel Comics. Interview (1975) http://www.ditko.comics.org/ditko/why/whyquote.html

Money, Books, Way, Feeling

“What are mortals for?—Their business is to know. Know? And what is to know?—It is assuredly: not to be what one is.—And so here are humans raving and thinking, introducing into nature the principle of unlimited error, and myriads of marvels!”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Eryximachus, p. 52
L'Âme et la danse (1921)

Error, Nature, Thinking

“Persons of rank do not talk about such trifles as the common people do; but the common people do not busy themselves about such frivolous things as do persons of rank.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), pp. 181-182.

People, Personality

Quotes about business page 2

Quotes about business
page 2