Quotes about business
page 7

“You've been busy using your breaking and entering skills," I said.
"I just enter. I don't usually break."
"You broke down Pitch's door."
"Lost my temper."

-Ranger and Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich book To the Nines

Source: To the Nines

“You come to me for advice, but you can't cope with anything you don't recognize. Hmmm. So we'll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh Well, business as usual, I suppose.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

Source: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“Your Dark-Huntress, Danger, called for Acheron and since he’s busy, I was sent to check things out and report back to him on what’s happening. So here I am. Joy, oh joy of my life. (Alexion)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Sins of the Night

Life, Joy

“I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

“But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Books, Cars, Time

“My feelings for Raphael are mine, and mine alone. I loved him, and that is all anyone needs to know. The rest is no business of any man's.”

John Connolly The Book of Lost Things

Source: The Book of Lost Things

Love, Feeling

“Up in my business Always burning Oracles Romans gonna hate”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Hate

“It’s never something huge that changes the everything, but instead the tiniest of details, irrevocably tweaking the balance of the universe while you’re busy focusing on the big picture.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

Universe, Change

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

“I'm not so sure about this wind and howling darkness business," Jace went on, "smells more like landfill to me. You sure you're not from Staten Island?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer (1961)

People

“Police business is a hell of a problem. It’s a good deal like politics. It asks for the highest type of men, and there’s nothing in it to attract the highest type of men. So we have to work with what we get…”

Raymond Chandler book The Lady in the Lake

Source: The Lady in the Lake

Men, Hell, Problem

“Don’t you study about other folks’s business till you take care of your own.”

Harper Lee book Go Set a Watchman

Source: Go Set a Watchman

Study

“What is this Chocho business?' Will muttered to himself. But his friends overheard the comment.
'It's a term of great respect,' they chorused, and he glared at them.
'Oh, shut up,' he said.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: The Emperor of Nihon-Ja

“Hello George. Hey Martha (Percy) Did you bring us a rat? (George) George, stop it! He's busy! (Martha) Too busy for rats? That's just sad. (George)”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Sadness

“You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"
"For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains the cocaine bottle.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Sign of the Four

Source: The Sign of Four

“The curious mind embraces science; the gifted and sensitive, the arts; the practical, business; the leftover becomes an economist”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Art, Science

“Shake your business up and pour it. I don't have all day.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

“I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.”

Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) American translator

Source: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society

Life, God

“Your problem is you are too busy holding on to your unworthiness.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Problem, Deep

“Generally speaking, I think it is fair to say that I am a friend to the creatures of the earth when I am not busy eating them or wearing them.”

John Hodgman book The Areas of My Expertise

Source: The Areas of My Expertise (2005), p. 46

Thinking

“Business has only two functions — marketing and innovation.”

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

Business

“I have important business to get to. I plan to sulk all afternoon, followed, perhaps, by an evening of Byronic brooding and a nighttime of dissipation.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

People, World, Thinking

“Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: I. Asimov

Life

“A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Business

“When I'm out of politics I'm going to run a business, it'll be called 'rent-a-spine.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Quoted from an interview for the television programme "The Thatcher Years - Part 2" on BBC1 The Thatcher Years 2 of 4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEYPKLyug5c (13 october 1993) <br class="br">Post-Prime Ministerial

“Shane: "Bro," he said, in an injured tone, "I had to go out with a flamethrower, and you weren't there to see it."
Michael: "Pics or it didn't happen."
Shane: "Dude, little busy for pics. You know, throwing flame."
- Black Dawn”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Black Dawn

“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Pain

“Success in any field, but especially in business is about working with people, not against them.”

Keith Ferrazzi (1966) American businessman and writer

Source: Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

People, Success

“I am always busy, which is perhaps the chief reason why I am always well.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

For women

“We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy.”

Joshua Ferris Then We Came to the End

Source: Then We Came to the End

Love, Way, Search, Reality

“He says I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Source: Teacher Man

World, Thinking, Sun

“Stop being so fruitlessly busy and. Use your. Reach out into the unknown and dream of how you can enlarge your experience and improve your mind and your soul and your world.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

World, Dreams, Soul

“What others think about you is none of your business.”

Jack Canfield (1944) American writer

Source: The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be

Thinking

“The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer.”

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

Variant: There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer.
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 37

Business

“Good, old-fashioned ways keep hearts sweet, heads sane, hands busy.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Way, Fashion, Heart

“after you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Nature

“If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Way

“My pet, the world can forgive practically anything except people who mind their own business" - Rhett Butler”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

People, World, Forgiveness

“I have a head for business and a body for sin. Unfortunately, the sin appears to be gluttony.”

Jenny Colgan (1972) British writer

Source: Meet Me at the Cupcake Café

Appearance

“Zeus did not answer. He was probably too busy recording my humiliation to share on Snapchat.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“Upon him I will visit famine and a fire.
Till all around him desolation rings
And all the demons in the outer dark
Look on amazed and recognize
That vengeance is the business of a man.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 43, “The Flickering Way” (p. 323)

“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Life

“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“I don't know any more about the future than you do. I hope that it will be full of work, because I have come to know by experience that work is the nearest thing to happiness that I can find… I want a busy life, a just mind and a timely death.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

Life, Death, Happiness, Hope

“Think often on God, by day, by night, in your business and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone.”

Brother Lawrence (1614–1691) French Christian monk

God, Thinking, Night

“The essential question is not, "How busy are you?' but 'What are you busy at?' 'Are you doing what fulfills you?”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Question

“Basil Stag Hare tut-tutted severely as he remarked to Ambrose Spike, 'Tch, tch. Dreadful table manners. Just look at those three wallahs, kicking up a hullaballoo like that! Eating's a serious business.”

Brian Jacques Redwall

Source: Redwall

“There was that special smell made up of paper, ink, and dust; the busy hush; the endless luxury of thousands of unread books. Best of all was the eager itch of anticipation as you went out the door with your arms loaded down with books.”

Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1927–2014) American writer of children's fiction

Source: The Velvet Room

Books

“Emerson, I am trying to live, as you said we must, the examined life. But there are days I wish there was less in my head to examine, not to speak of the busy heart.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Red Bird

Life, Heart

“People surprise you, Frank, with just how fuckin stupid they are. I mean, do you actually realize how much adult conversation is spent on this fuckin business? Facts treated like they were opinions just for the simple purpose of talking about it longer? Some people might think that's interesting, bub, but I'll tell you. It's romanticizing a goddamn rock by calling it a mountain range to me. People waste a helluva lot of time they could be putting to useful purposes. This is a game. See it and forget about it.”

Richard Ford The Sportswriter

Source: The Sportswriter (1986), p. 104

People, Stupidity, Mountain, Game

“I am a woman and my business is to hold things together.

My business is to tear them apart.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Tear

“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 11

Bee, Time

“this was business.”

Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl

Source: Artemis Fowl

“Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3

Life, Money, Parting

“Dean: If there is a greater power, why is it he can't get you a new sweater?
Jamie: Because, he's too busy looking for your brain.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

“Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Economics, Peace and Laughter (1971), p. 50

Change

“There is something fundamentally wrong with treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation.”

Herman E. Daly (1938) American economist

Source: Steady-State Economics, 1977, p. 248

“It is good to be busy. Being busy takes our mind off being in love at the wrong time, in the wrong place and with the wrong guy.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Source: Girl Stays in the Picture

Love, Guy, Time

“If you're not busy living, you're dying.”

Vince Flynn (1966–2013) American writer of fiction

Source: American Assassin

“One more instance I will give of his interest and his knowledge. We were passing under a fir tree when we heard a small song in the tree above us. We stopped and I said that was the song of a golden-crested wren. He listened very attentively while the bird repeated its little song, as its habit is. Then he said, "I think that is exactly the same song as that of a bird that we have in America"; and that was the only English song that he recognized as being the same as any bird song in America. Some time afterwards I met a bird expert in the Natural History Museum in London and told him this incident, and he confirmed what Colonel Roosevelt had said, that the song of this bird would be about the only song that the two countries had in common. I think that a very remarkable instance of minute and accurate knowledge on the part of Colonel Roosevelt. It was the business of the bird expert in London to know about birds. Colonel Roosevelt's knowledge was a mere incident acquired, not as part of the work of his life, but entirely outside it.”

Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) British Liberal statesman

Recreation (1919)

Life, History, Nature, Knowledge

“It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.”

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

"What Is English Literature?" (1935)

“I grew up in a family where no one was in the entertainment business. So stand-up and acting were seen as something unrealistic. I always thought it was just people in L. A. and New York that became actors or comedians.”

Jim Gaffigan (1966) comedian, actor, author

Ed Will (April 28, 2006) "Your face sure is familiar. ...", The Denver Post, p. FF-09.

People, Family

“THERE is widespread agreement among economists that abuse of credit constitutes one of the chief unwholesome elements in business booms and is mainly responsible for the ensuing crash and depression.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part III, Chapter XIII, The Reservoir Plan and Credit Control, p. 153
Storage and Stability (1937)

“If a segment of one's force is located where it is not sufficiently busy with the enemy, or if the troops are on the march - that is, idle - while the enemy is fighting, then these forces are being managed uneconomically. In this sense they are being wasted, which is even worse than using them inappropriately.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

On War (1832), Book 3

Sense, Fight

“First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was another surprise. And we knew even less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this dirty kind of business. It's very dangerous.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

As quoted in The Certain Trumpet: Maxwell Taylor and the American Experience in Vietnam (1991) by Douglas Kinnard, p. 198

War, Country

“Decentralization may bring flexibility and fast response to changing business needs, as well as other benefits, but decentralization also makes systems integration difficult, presents a barrier to standardization, and acts as a disincentive toward achieving economies of scale. As a result, there is a need to balance the decentralization of IT management to business units with some centralized planning for technology, data, and human resources”

Gerardine DeSanctis (1954–2005) American organizational theorist

Gerardine DeSanctis, Brad M. Jackson, in: Coordination of information technology management: team-based structures and computer-based communication systems http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1189653, Journal of Management Information Systems - Special issue: Information technology and organization design Volume 10 Issue 4, March 1994, pp 85-110.

Change

“We were clear that we had to be internationally competitive and were passionate about building competencies that were the best in the world even when the tariffs were very high. It was an obsession with me to beat the Taiwanese and the Koreans who dominated the polyester business in the '70s.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on how Reliance was built

World, Passion

“I'd had a long talk with Bob Silverberg, who was very influential on my early career. He'd, out of the kindness of his heart, at a convention told me that he thought I'd made several mistakes in the way I was disposing of my stories. And I said, "I don't understand what you mean, but I'll be glad to buy you a few drinks, if you'll tell me about it". So we adjourned to the bar and sat there a couple of hours. He was drinking Bloody Marys back then; I was drinking Black Russians. And he told me all sorts of things which carried me over the next several years; it was a lot of information for a couple of drinks. He told me that the first thing I should do if I wanted to write full-time was to get a really good agent. He said that after a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end.
Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Phlogiston interview (1995)

Money, Way, Feeling, Drink

“We have been exceedingly busy ever since you went away. In the first place we have had to rejoice two or three times everyday at your having such very delightful weather for the whole of your journey…”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter (1800-11-25) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Time, Weather

“Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits.”

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer

Complete Works, vol. 26, Reflections and Remarks on Human Life, section 4.

World

“The marriage of David Brooks and the Democratic Leadership Council makes perfect sense. It's repugnant and the kind of thing one should shield young children from knowing about, but it makes perfect sense. Both prefer a policy of being "cautious soldiers," "incrementalists" who shun upheavals and vote the status quo, although they subscribe to this policy for different reasons. Brooks worships the status quo because he has no penis and wants to spend the rest of his life buying periwinkle bath towels without troubling interruptions of conscience. The DLC, a nonprofit created in the mid-1980s to help big business have a say in the Democratic Party platform, supports the status quo because they are paid agents of the commercial interests that define it. Moreover, Brooks and the DLC have this in common: While they both frown on the open flag-waving and ostentatious religiosity of the talk-radio right-wing as being gauche and in bad form, they're only truly offended by people of their own background who happen to be idealistic. Hence the recurring backlash by both against the various angry electoral challenges to the establishment of the Democratic Party.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006) http://web.archive.org/web/20060808224928/http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/39862/

Life, Marriage, Children, People

“Don't blame me, Pongo,' said Lord Ickenham, 'if Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you. God bless my soul, though, you can't compare the lorgnettes of to-day with the ones I used to know as a boy. I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, and a policeman came up and said the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle. My aunt made no verbal reply. She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, and eventually drifted into the grocery business. And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Uncle Fred in the Springtime

Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939)

God, Dogs, Soul, Boy

“Bureaucracy is the business of controlling other humans, making them do what you want them to do. That may be acceptable if what you are asking them to do is reasonable, rational and for the common good, but more likely what bureaucrats ask is treasonable, nonsensical and counterproductive to the public good. This is because the primary business of a bureaucrat, left unchecked, is creating more bureaucracy to further his or her own prestige and power. The result is that rules are in place serving no function but to keep bureaucrats in work and to expand their bureaucratic fiefdom. Before you know it you can't even hold a village fete without filling out more than fifteen different forms from various arms of the government.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Pages 92-93.
The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British Democracy, 1st Edition

“Leaders and managers do not have to risk lives, profit, or mission failure because they failed to plan for a crisis. Do not allow yourself to be put on the defense by changing circumstances. No one enjoys wasting time, but don't be reluctant to call a meeting just to discuss something that might happen. Remember the oil filter theory. Rather than disobey your instincts and proceed with the status quo or embark on a risky course, invest some planning time in your business. Control your risks. Identify important decision points. Forecast potential crisis. Apply the six hour model. A little time spent discussing your business is never wasted.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 74

Failure, Decision, Change, Time

“So long as commerce specializes in business methods which take no account of human nature and social motives, so long may we expect strikes and sabotage to be the ordinary accompaniment of industry. Sabotage is essentially a protest of the human spirit against dull mechanism. And the emphasis which democracy places upon political methods tends to transform mere sporadic acts of sabotage into an organized conspiracy against society.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: Democracy and freedom. 1919, p. 56

Democracy, Motivation, Nature

“The management theory jungle is still with us… Perhaps the most effective way [out of the jungle] would be for leading managers to take a more active role in narrowing the widening gap… between professional practice and our college and university business”

Harold Koontz (1909–1984)

schools
Source: "The Management Theory Jungle Revisited," 1980, p. 186 ; as cited in Daniel A. Wren & Arthur G. Bedeian (2009). The evolution of management thought. p. 419-420

School, Way, Universe

“Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They jest can't buzz any slower.”

Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) cartoonist

As quoted in Reading I've Liked : A Personal Selection Drawn from Two Decades of Reading (1941) by Clifton Fadiman, p. 827.
Variants:
A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in The Modern Handbook of Humor (1967) by Ralph Louis Woods, p. 17
The bee isn't really that busy — it just can't buzz any slower.
As quoted in Peter's People (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 29.

Thinking, Bee

“Neither our houses and businesses nor our daughters and sisters are safe in places such as Hyderabad, Bhopal and Meerut. Development is important, but what will be its use when Hindus won’t be there at homes, and like Hindus in Kashmir, they are thrown out of their motherland.”

Pravin Togadia (1957) Indian oncologist, activist

Arguing the need for a Hindu nation, as quoted in " Development without Hindu Rashtra is of no use: Togadia http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/development-without-hindu-rashtra-is-of-no-use-togadia/article6824582.ece", The Hindu (27 January 2015)

Home, Sister, Housing, Daughters

“Better to say nothing and be thought a fool,” said Amarelle, “than to interfere in the business of wizards and remove all doubt.”

Scott Lynch (1978) American writer

In George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois (eds.) Rogues (p. 245)
Short fiction, A Year and a Day in Old Theradane (2014)

Fools, Funny

“Sorry, I’m not at home. I have gone out to my world Fancy, and I cannot be reached. Call back in a week, unless your business is urgent, in which case call back in a month.”

Jack Vance (1916–2013) American mystery and speculative fiction writer

Section 6 (p. 184)
Short fiction, Rumfuddle (1973)

World, Home

“I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

Life, Thinking

““So, his Slavonic Majesty hires thieves to spy for him. Spying is such a foul business that I am surprised that even a good Angevin thief would stoop to it.” He turned to Lord Peter with a sudden realization. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
”That’s all right, Your Highness,” Lord Peter said. “It’s a common reaction. Their spies are dirty, filthy scum, not fit to wipe your boots on, while our spies are noble gentlemen doing dangerous work for the love of King and Country. Would that it were so, Your Highness, but I’m afraid that sometimes the desired image is at fault—in both directions.””

Michael Kurland book Ten Little Wizards

Source: Ten Little Wizards (1988), Chapter 4 (p. 33)

Love, Country

“But business cycles as a subject for study have enjoyed a revival for at least a decade now, stimulated in part by the severity of the 1974-75 and 1981-82 recessions and in part by the intellectual ferment surrounding the development of the "equilibrium business cycle model" and the attention paid to the seminal work of Robert E. Lucas, Jr., contained in his book Studies in Business Cycle Theory (1981). Indeed, there is no longer any need to lament the passing of economics courses explicitly carrying the title "Business Cycles," since the topic of business cycle behavior and analysis has so infiltrated courses carrying the title "Macroeconomics" that the two subjects have become almost interchangeable. 2 In this light it is fitting that the major research program of the NBER in this area is called "Economic Fluctuations" rather than "Macroeconomics."”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The American Business Cycle, 1986, p. 2

Books, Behavior, Study, Light

“Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 17

Money

“The private ownership of great art, its seclusion from the general view of men and women, let alone from that of interested amateurs and scholars, is a curious business. The literal disappearance of a Turner or a Van Gogh into some Middle Eastern or Latin-American bank vault to be kept as investment and collateral, the sardonic decision of a Greek shipping tycoon to put an incomparable El Greco on his yacht, where it hangs at persistent risk — these are phenomena that verge on vandalism.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"The Cleric of Treason".
George Steiner: A Reader (1984)

Women, Men, Art, Decision

“I have looked attentively at chickens raised in this [battery] fashion, and to me they seem to be unhappy and in poor health. Their combs are dull and lifeless except for glaring and unnatural patches of color that appear occasionally … The battery chickens I have observed seem to lose their minds about the time they would normally be weaned by their mothers and off in the weeds chasing grasshoppers on their own account. Yes, literally, actually, the battery becomes a gallinaceous madhouse. The eyes of these chickens through the bars gleam like those of maniacs. Let your hand get within reach and it receives a dozen vicious peeks—not the love peck or the tentative peek of idle curiosity bestowed by the normal chicken, but a peck that means business, a peck for flesh and blood, for which in their madness they are thirsting.”

Roy Bedichek (1878–1959) American writer and naturalist

Adventures with a Texas Naturalist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Orig. pub. 1947), pp. 101 https://books.google.it/books?id=4WuzlD0hkSgC&pg=PA101-102.

Love, Health, Color, Fashion

“Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?" Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, DC. And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his payroll. But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy — items of that type, for example. But there are other expenses that are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is. It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no. The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)

Money, People, Family, Home

“The forebears of the Punjas, Motibhais, Vinod Patels and other large businesses took several generations to reach their present elevated state and a great deal of self-denial and self-exploitation was involved along the way. There is no short cut to success - for Fijians and others alike.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

Way, Success

“Neoclassical economic theory forms the central discourse and behavioral model of contemporary management education. Drawing on research and insights from game theory and behavioral economics we have argued that many of the core assumptions underlying this model are flawed. While we cannot say that the widespread reliance on the Homo economicus model has caused the highly level of observed managerial malfeasance, it may well have, and it surely does not act as a healthy influence on managerial morality. Students have learned this flawed model and in their capacity as corporate managers, doubtless act daily in conformance with it. This, in turn, may have contributed to the weakening of socially functional values and norms like honesty, integrity, self-restraint, reciprocity and fairness, to the detriment of the health of the enterprise. Simultaneously, this perspective has legitimized, or at least not delegitimized, such behaviors as material greed and optimizing with guile. We noted that this model has become highly institutionalized in business education. Fortunately, we believe that the potential for moving away from this flawed model is significant and thus can end this chapter on a more optimistic note for the future of business education.”

Rakesh Khurana (1967) American business academic

Herbert Gintis and Rakesh Khurana. " What Happened When Homo Economicus Entered Business School https://evonomics.com/what-happens-when-you-introduce-homo-economicus-into-business/," in: evonomics.com, July 14, 2016.

Health, Education, Behavior, Game

“Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist’s business is lying.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Introduction (p. xii)
Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

Lying

“My father, William C. Boulding, was a working plumber in business for himself. At the back of the house was the yard, a corrugated iron shed full of pipes, wrenches, and blow torches, and other mysterious and rather frightening apparatus. He had two faithful employees, Billy Fox, who was moody and regarded as a little queer, and Billy Sankey, who was short and cheerful. They and my father always smelled strongly of some kind of grease. My father was a gentle man. I never I never heard his voice raised in anger. He had had a very hard childhood. His father died soon after he was born; his mother married again, a man known in the family legends as "Pa Hardacre," about whom endless stories were told. He was a bigamist. He drove my father out of the house at the age of twelve to earn his own living on the streets of Liverpool. He constantly mistreated my half-aunts, Ethel and Rosie. He died before I was born, but my mother's accounts of him sounded like something out of Dickens.”

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

Source: 1980s, Illustrating Economics: Beasts, Ballads and Aphorisms, 1980, p. 5

Age, Family, Faith, Childhood

“The President cannot make clouds to rain and cannot make the corn to grow, he cannot make business good; although when these things occur, political parties do claim some credit for the good things that have happened in this way.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (Columbia University Press, 1916)

Way

“I didn’t know at that time Emily Dickinson’s great definition, her 'Publication is not the business of poets’; being a poet is all, being known as a poet is nothing.”

John Fowles book Daniel Martin

Daniel Martin (1977)

Time

“Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success we forget the easiness of free beauty lying sad right around the corner, only an instant removed, unnoticed and squandered.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Serious Business http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/serious-business/ <br class="br">From the poems written in English

Sadness, Beauty, Lying, Success

“I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad.
The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Interview in 1979, quoted in The Online Copywriter's Handbook (2002) by Robert W. Bly, p. 19

World, Fear, Way, Imagination

“It is so difficult to mix with artists! You must choose business men to talk to, because artists only talk of money.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Bengt de Törne Sibelius: A Close-Up (London: Faber and Faber, 1937), p. 94.
Usually quoted as "Musicians talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art."

Men, Money

Quotes about business page 7

Quotes about business
page 7