Quotes about business
page 26

Nico Perrone photo
Grace Slick photo

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

Grace Slick (1939) American musician, writer and painter

Interview on the History Channel documentary Getting High - The History of LSD, 2001; sampled on Drop Out by Infected Mushroom

Ann Coulter photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo

“What has taken place is a shift of business from one manufacturer to another, and the announcements in the press as well as the general publicity of those manufacturers who have succeeded in increasing their business give, I think, the impression that this is true of the whole industry. If we could assume, for the sake of argument, that we will reach the point at which twenty-five million cars and trucks will be registered in the United States an assumption that from what we have accomplished so far is certainly perfectly reasonable then I think we could safely say that the replacement demand, plus the export demand which will increase for many years yet, plus the normal growth, would amount to something like four to four and one half million vehicles a year and would require the manufacture of a number of cars equal to or greater than has yet been produced in any year in the history of the industry…
I am sure that I do not need to elaborate what the automotive industry consists of, its influence on the prosperity of the United States, the influence that it has had in many other industries which contribute to its production necessities. General Motors is an important part of this great industry of ours and as my contribution to your visit with us I would like to tell you in a brief way something about General Motors; how we are thinking, what we are doing, and our ambitions for the future.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 332-3: Speech by President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., 1927 (II)

Margaret Sanger photo

“What do you mean "gangsters?"”

Abraham Polonsky (1910–1999) American politician

It's business.
Force of Evil (1948).

“Most retired business people "know how to work but they don't know how to play; they are completely devoid of the spirit of relaxation and recreation. Such forced idleness is ruinous to the morale of many of the more capable men of affairs."”

Burrill Bernard Crohn (1884–1983) American gastroenterologist

Speaking at the second annual graduate fortnight of the New York Academy of Medicine, 15 October 1929. [Lays Nervous Ills to Use of Tobacco: Dr. B.B. Crohn Says Excessive Smoking Is More Serious Problem Than Drinking: Warns Against Cigarette: Medical Fortnight Speaker Lists Excitable States, Hyperacidity and Ulcers as Effects, The New York Times, 16 October 1929, http://search.proquest.com.dclibrary.idm.oclc.org/docview/104691648/87889E05D1964D8EPQ/1?accountid=46320]

Philip Kotler photo
Richard Fuller (minister) photo

“Your salvation is His business; make His service your business and delight.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 126.

Akio Morita photo

“While the United States has been busy creating lawyers, we have been busier creating engineers.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

'
Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 173.

Robert Mitchum photo
Charles Edward Merriam photo

“It is my considered opinion that the so called Kashmir problem, we have been facing, since 1947 has never been viewed in a historical perspective. That is why it has defied solution so far, and its end is not in sight in the near future. Politicians at the helm of affairs during this nearly half a century have been living from hand to mouth and are waiting for Pakistan to face them with a fait accompli. Once againg they are out to hand over Kashmir and its people to be butchers who have devastated this fair land and destroyed its rich eulture. … It is therefore high time that we renounce this ritual and have a look at the problem in a historical perspective. I should like to warn that histories of Kashmir written by Kashmiri Hindus in modern times are worse than useless for this purpose. I have read almost all of them, only to be left wondering at the piteous state to which the Hindu mind in Kashmir has been reduced. I am not taking these histories into account except for bits and pieces which fall into the broad pattern. … What distinguishes the Hindu rulers of Kashmir from Hindu rulers elsewhere is that they continued to recruit in their army Turks from Central Asia without realizing that the Turks had become Islamicized and as such were no longer mere wage earners. One of Kashmir's Hindu rulers Harsha (1089-1101 CE) was persuaded by his Muslim favourites to plunder temple properties and melt down icons made of precious metal. Apologists of Islam have been highlighting this isolated incident in order to cover up the iconoclastic record of Islam not only in Kashmir but also in the rest of Bharatvarsha. At the same time they conceal the fact that Kashmir passed under the heel of Islam not as a result of the labours of its missionaries but due to a coup staged by an Islamicised army. … Small wonder that balance of farces in Kashmir should have continued to tilt in favour of Islamic imperialism till the last Hindu has been hounded out of his ancestral homeland. Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence. Small wonder that the Marxist-Muslim combine of scribes who dominate the media blame Jagmohan for arranging an overnight and enmasse exodus of the Hindus from the valley. (They cannot forgive Jagmohan for bringing back Kashmir to India at a time when the combine was hoping that Pakistan would face India with an accomplished fact.) Small wonder that what Arun Shourie has aptly described as the "Formula Factory"”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

the Nayars, the Puris, the Kotharis, the Dhars, the Haksars, the Tarkundes - should be busy devising ways for handing over the Kashmir Hindus to their age-old oppressors.
Kashmir: The Problem is Muslim Extremism by Sita Ram Goel https://web.archive.org/web/20080220033606/http://www.kashmir-information.com/Miscellaneous/Goel1.html

Edward R. Murrow photo

“We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks — that's show business.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

As quoted by Bill Moyers CBS TV (10 September 1986)

Irene Dunne photo

“This is an amazing business, creative and mechanical at the same time.”

Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress

If You Want Success (Screenland Interview) (1961)

Anthony Burgess photo
Henry Taylor photo
Francis Bacon photo
Joanna Baillie photo

“Sweet sleep be with us, one and all!
And if upon its stillness fall
The visions of a busy brain,
We'll have our pleasure o'er again,
To warm the heart, to charm the sight,
Gay dreams to all! good night, good night.”

Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) Scottish poet and dramatist

The Phantom, song (1836); reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 201.

Richard Arkwright photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Edward Bernays photo
Roger Ebert photo

“Many readers have informed me that it is a tragic and dreary business to go into death without faith. I don’t feel that way. “Faith” is neutral. All depends on what is believed in.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 55 : Go Gently

“Marriage was the best business deal I ever made. After that, Jesus of Nazareth and The Muppets.”

Lew Grade (1906–1998) Imperial Russian/Ukrainian-born British media proprietor, impresario, talent agent and former professional …

Raymond Snoddy Grade's CRR battle plan defies logic" http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/opinion/643554/Raymond-Snoddy-media-Grades-CRR-battle-plan-defies-logic/?HAYILC=RELATED, Campaign, 14 March 2007

Steve Ballmer photo

“You can have an Apple in the phone business, or a RIM, and they can do very well, but when 1.3 billion phones a year are all smart, the software that's gonna be most popular in those phones is gonna be software that's sold by somebody who doesn't make their own phones.”

Steve Ballmer (1956) American businessman who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft

TechCrunch Interview With Steve Ballmer http://youtube.com/watch?v=1OpRQMRa270 in YouTube (24 September 2009)
2000s

William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme photo
Keshia Chante photo

“Ego & Hype have no place in business.”

Keshia Chante (1988) Canadian actor and musician

Elle Magazine Canada (2008)

Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Newton N. Minow photo

“Donald Ball and Wendell H. McCulloch, Jr., International Business: Introduction and Essentials, 5th ed. (Homewood, IL: Richard Irwin, 1993), p. 368.”

Newton N. Minow (1926) United States attorney and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

Quote from a speech to the Association of American Law Schools

Menachem Mendel Schneerson photo
Jack Steinberger photo

“The problem of transmitting scientific knowledge is a very difficult business.”

Jack Steinberger (1921) Swiss physicist

Interview with the 1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Jack Steinberger, at the 58th Meeting of Nobel Laureates in Lindau, Germany, July 2008.

George Mason photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Edward Heath photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne photo
Dick Cheney photo
Robert Boyle photo
Julius Malema photo

“Zuma is standing between us and our enemy. Move out of the way. Zuma must pave the way because they [whites] are the one who stole our land. … White people are going to return our land the same way Zuma will return our money. White people must never think we have abandoned the land question. We will never abandon it. We are the land, our identity is our land. We are nothing without our land. … What we do with it is none of your business. Solomon Mahlangu died for this land.”

Julius Malema (1981) South African political activist

On 16 April 2016, addressing a large gathering at the University of Pretoria’s Mamelodi Campus, where the EFF had a memorial lecture on the life of Solomon Mahlangu, ‘White people must stop being cry-babies’: Malema http://businesstech.co.za/news/general/120579/white-people-must-stop-being-cry-babies-malema/ (16 April 2016)

Pat Condell photo

“Swedish politicians are not right about much, but you get the impression they think they're setting the example to the rest of us. And they are right about that. Their recent bizarre decision to recognize 'Palestine' – a country that doesn't exist – is somewhat poignant: as the way things are going Sweden itself won't exist much longer. Seems like every piece of news that comes out of that country is more disturbing than the last. But, then, they have been committing cultural suicide so enthusiastically for so long there is now almost a sense that a tipping point is being reached and that, for the rest of us, it's really just a matter of watching the grim process unfold as we thank our lucky stars we don't live there… In Sweden today, democracy is a threat that must be neutralised, just as free speech is a threat that must be criminalised. Like the old Soviet Union, they can't afford to allow either because they're attempting to create an artificial society from a blueprint that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. And they've given it an almost theological significance so that a dogma has been established, and this has led, inevitably, to heresy becoming a problem. So now anyone in Sweden who expresses the wrong opinion about Muslim immigration is liable to be arrested, that's if the police are not too busy running away from violent Muslims.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden — Ship of fools" (13 October 2014) https://youtube.com/watch/?v=RZsvdg1dkJ4
2014

Alfred P. Sloan photo
Anton Mauve photo

“Our plans were to go to Amsterdam and Laren tomorrow and then spend another day with you... I am very busy again with 7 paintings at the same time, I still have a lot to do before I can go to Laren, going to live there. Now, this week I can say it more confidently, - when we find a suitable location... We are on a leap of eating out therefore this scribbling..”

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:) Onze plannen waren, morgen naar Amsterdam en Laren te gaan en daarna nog een dagje bij U door te brengen.. .Ik ben weer verschrikkelijk aan de gang met 7 schilderijen te gelijk, ik heb nog heel wat te doen, voor ik naar Laren kan gaan wonen. Nu van de week kan ik het zekerder zeggen, - als wij een geschikte gelegenheid gevonden hebben.. .Wij staan op sprong van uit eten te gaan daarom dit gekrabbel..
In a letter to Willem Witsen, from The Hague, May? 1885]; original copy from website DBNL https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/wits009brie01_01/wits009brie01_01_0026.php; location of resource: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag: no. KB75 C51
1880's

Harry Turtledove photo
Zenas Ferry Moody photo
Willie Nelson photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“Finding a good deal, the right business, the right people, the right investors, or whatever is just like dating. You must go to the market and talk to a lot of people, make a lot of offers, counteroffers, negotiate, reject and accept.”

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

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Judi Dench photo

“I think you’ve got to have your feet planted firmly on the ground, especially in this business, and you must not believe things that are said or written about you, because everything gets out of proportion one way or the other.”

Judi Dench (1934) English film, stage and television actress

Judi Dench – Grand Dame of Cinema http://www.comingsoon.net/extras/news/12246-judi-dench-grand-dame-of-cinema (December 6, 2005)

Carl Friedrich Gauss photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Anybody can reduce taxes, but it is not so easy to stand in the gap and resist the passage of increasing appropriation bills which would make tax reduction impossible. It will be very easy to measure the strength of the attachment to reduced taxation by the power with which increased appropriations are resisted. If at the close of the present session the Congress has kept within the budget which I propose to present, it will then be possible to have a moderate amount of tax reduction and all the tax reform that the Congress may wish for during the next fiscal year. The country is now feeling the direct stimulus which came from the passage of the last revenue bill, and under the assurance of a reasonable system of taxation there is every prospect of an era of prosperity of unprecedented proportions. But it would be idle to expect any such results unless business can continue free from excess profits taxation and be accorded a system of surtaxes at rates which have for their object not the punishment of success or the discouragement of business, but the production of the greatest amount of revenue from large incomes. I am convinced that the larger incomes of the country would actually yield more revenue to the Government if the basis of taxation were scientifically revised downward. Moreover the effect of the present method of this taxation is to increase the cost of interest. on productive enterprise and to increase the burden of rent. It is altogether likely that such reduction would so encourage and stimulate investment that it would firmly establish our country in the economic leadership of the world.”

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)

Jonathan Edwards photo
Charles Dickens photo

“The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself.”

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 39

Paul Klee photo

“Since not even sufficient time for my main business remains to me. Production is taking a larger magnitude at a faster tempo, and can no longer wholly keep up with these children. They [very probably: his new art] issue forth.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Paul Klee to his son Felix Paul Klee, 29.12.1939; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1931 -1940

Clay Shirky photo
Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo
Anna Schwartz photo
Chris Cornell photo
William McKinley photo

“If I wasn't as busy as I am… I would be a completely disabled guy.”

John Bonica (1917–1994) Anesthesiologist; pioneer in pain management

as quoted by Latif Nasser, "The amazing story of the man who gave us modern pain relief" (2015) TED Talks

Shunryu Suzuki photo
Elton John photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“There is Reason to think the most celebrated Philosophers would have been Bunglers at Business; but the Reason is because they despised it.”

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

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

George Washington Plunkitt photo

“The most successful saloonkeepers don’t drink themselves and they understand that my temperance is a business proposition, just like their own. p. 77”

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

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 19, The Successful Politician Does Not Drink

Nicholas Sparks photo
Eric Garcetti photo

“Los Angeles has one of the best home recycling programs. Now, we are going to expand that to businesses and apartments where we can recycle 70 percent of our trash instead of putting it in landfills…Nothing upsets me more than to hear people say they want to recycle but are unable to.”

Eric Garcetti (1971) American politician

quoted by Rick Orlov of the Los Angeles Daily News https://www.dailynews.com/2014/04/15/eric-garcetti-signs-waste-franchise-plan-to-expand-recycling/ (April 15, 2014)
2014

John Kenneth Galbraith photo
Nguyen Khanh photo
Jay Samit photo

“Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p.109

Pauline Kael photo
Babe Ruth photo
George William Curtis photo

“The part assigned to this country in the 'Good Fight of Man' is the total overthrow of the spirit of caste. Luther fought it in the form of ecclesiastical despotism; our fathers fought it as political tyranny; we have hitherto encountered it entrenched in a system of personal slavery. But in all these forms it is the same old spirit of the denial of equal rights. Martin Luther, the monk, had exactly the same right to his religious faith that Giovanni de' Medici, the pope, had to his. Galileo had the same right to hold and teach his scientific theories that the Church doctors had to teach theirs. Patrick Henry, a British subject, had the same right to refuse to be taxed without representation that Lord North, another British subject, had. Robert Small, one of the American people, had exactly the same right to vote upon the same qualifications with other citizens that the President has or the Chief Justice of the United States. The Inquisition in Italy, aristocratic privilege in England, chattel slavery or unfair political exclusion in the United States, are only fruits ripened upon the tree of caste. Our swords have cut off some of the fruit, but the tree and its roots remain, and now that our swords are turned into plough-shares and our Dahlgrens and Parrotts into axes and hoes, our business is to take care that the tree and all its roots are thoroughly cut down and dug up, and burned utterly away in the great blaze of equal rights.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Gregory Benford photo
Stephen King photo

“He was waiting to choke you on a marble, to smother you with a dry-cleaning bag, to sizzle you into eternity with a fast and lethal boogie of electricity- Available At Your Nearest Switch plate Or Vacant Light Socket Right Now. There was death in a quarter bag of peanuts, an aspirated piece of steak, the next pack of cigarettes. He was around all the time, he monitored all the checkpoints between the mortal and the eternal. Dirty needles, poison beetles, downed live wires, forest fires. Whirling roller skates that shot nerdy little kids into busy intersections. When you got into the bathtub to take a shower, Oz got right in there too- Shower With A Friend. When you got on an airplane, Oz took your boarding pass. He was in the water you drank, the food you ate. Who's out there? you howled in the dark when you were all frightened and all alone, and it was his answer that came back: Don't be afraid, it's just me. Hi, howaya? You got cancer of the bowel, what a bummer, so solly, Cholly! Septicemia! Leukemia! Atherosclerosis! Coronary thrombosis! Encephalitis! Osteomyelitis! Hey-ho, let's go! Junkie in a doorway with a knife. Phone call in the middle of the night. Blood cooking in battery acid on some exit ramp in North Carolina. Big handfuls of pills, munch em up. That peculiar cast of the fingernails following asphyxiation- in its final grim struggle to survive the brain takes all oxygen that is left, even that in those living cells under the nails. Hi, folks, my name's Oz the Gweat and Tewwible, but you can call me Oz if you want- hell, we're old friends by now. Just stopped by to whop you with a little congestive heart failure or a cranial blood clot or something; can't stay, got to see a woman about a breech birth, then I've got a little smoke-inhalation job to do in Omaha.”

Pet Sematary (1983)

John Bowring photo

“Chance and change are busy ever;
Man decays, and ages move;
But His mercy waneth never;
God is wisdom, God is love.”

John Bowring (1792–1872) 4th Governor of Hong Kong

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 272.

Margrethe II of Denmark photo

“We were so busy that we didn't have time to think about how terrible it was or - in fact it felt strangely natural.”

Margrethe II of Denmark (1940) Queen of Denmark

On assuming the throne, interview with Bo Lidegaard, 'Politiken' Partially available online http://politiken.dk/indland/ECE1495013/dronningen-opgaven-som-regent-har-man-for-livet/ (01 January 2012).
Becoming Queen

“All businesses operate below their true potential. That is unavoidable, given the fallibility of human beings.”

Robert Heller (1932–2012) British magician

Source: The Decision makers (1989), Ch. 10. The Competitors

“Honey? Traffic's kinda busy and you're naked. Honey!?”

Radio From Hell (April 14, 2006)

Richard Dawkins photo
Aaliyah photo

“I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I’m just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

In Vibe magazine cover story, "What Lies Beneath" (Published in 2001) http://www.vibe.com/article/aaliyahs-2001-vibe-cover-story-what-lies-beneath

Warren Farrell photo

“I would suggest that just as women who make it in the world of business need male business mentors, perhaps men who make it in the world of emotions will need female emotional mentors.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 317.

Alex Salmond photo

“It is unfinished business.”

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

Alex Salmond: The coup against Corbyn was planned to stop him calling for Blair’s head after Chilcot http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/homenews/14594947.The_coup_against_Corbyn_was_planned_to_stop_him_calling_for_Blair___s_head_after_Chilcot/ (4 July 2016)

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo

“A Man is to go about his own Business as if he had not a Friend in the World to help him in it.”

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

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

Mark Latham photo
Marvin Bower photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“Pregnancy is "a wonderful thing for the woman, it's a wonderful thing for the husband, it's certainly an inconvenience for a business."”

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

About pregnancy (2004)
2000s

Benjamin Graham photo
Isaac Rosenberg photo
Anna Sui photo
Richard Stallman photo

“It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign. … Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

"Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman", in The Guardian (29 September 2008) http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/sep/29/cloud.computing.richard.stallman
2000s

“This week’s episode discussing Tom’s car accident is hard to watch. We both live such busy lives working that sometimes it takes accidents like this to remind us of what’s most important in life—each other. I’m thankful he's made a full recovery, and just in case you were wondering, he never stopped working.”

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-8/erika-girardi/erika-girardi-this-weeks-episode-is-hard (2018)

Kin Hubbard photo

“Some folks can look so busy doin' nothin' that they seem indispensable.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

As quoted in Saturday Review‎ (18 March 1944), p. 19
Variant: Some folks can look so busy doing nothing that they seem indispensable.