Quotes about business (3422 quotes, page 8)

“Certain changes have been going on in business practice which are destined, I believe, to alter our thinking fundamentally. I think this is a contribution which business is going to make to the world, and not only to the business world, but eventually to government and international relations. Men may be making useful products, but beyond this, by helping to solve the problems of human relations, they are perhaps destined to lead the world in the solution of those great problems of coordination and control upon which our future progress must depend.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxviii

Men , World , Problem , Thinking

“We're more comfortable in that kind of business. It means we miss a lot of very big winners. But we wouldn't know how to pick them out anyway. It also means we have very few big losers - and that's quite helpful over time. We're perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff.”

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

1999 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, as quoted in "Why Won't Buffett Invest in Tech Stocks?" at Motley Fool (6 March 2000) http://www.fool.com/boringport/2000/boringport000306.htm

Time , Help

“I am an optimist about consciousness: I think that we will eventually have a theory of it, and in this book I look for one. But consciousness is not just business as usual; if we are to make progress, the first thing we must do is face up to the things that make the problem so difficult. Then we can move forward toward a theory, without blinkers and with a good idea of the task at hand.”

David Chalmers book The Conscious Mind

The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (1996)

Books , Idea , Problem , Thinking

“Corporations are going, we are told, to destroy the country. But what would this country be but for corporations? Who have developed it? Corporations. Who transact the most marvelous business the world has ever seen? Corporations.”

Jay Gould (1836–1892) American businessman

Interview with the New York Herald
Jay Gould : A Character Sketch (1893)

World , Country

“Business? Why, it's very simple: business is other people's money.”

Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) French writer and dramatist, son of the homonym writer and dramatist

Les affaires, c'est bien simple, c'est l'argent des autres.
La Question d'argent (1857), Act II, sc. vii; translation from Frederick Brown Theater and Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1980) p. 5.

Money , People

“The concepts 'system', 'apparatus', 'environment', immediately imply an artificial division of the world, and an intention to neglect, or take only schematic account of, the interaction across the split. The notions of 'microscopic' and 'macroscopic' defy precise definition. So also do the notions of 'reversible' and 'irreversible'. Einstein said that it is theory which decides what is 'observable'. I think he was right - 'observation' is a complicated and theory-laden business. Then that notion should not appear in the formulation of fundamental theory. Information? Whose information? Information about what? On this list of bad words from good books, the worst of all is 'measurement.”

John S. Bell (1928–1990) Northern Irish physicist

It must have a section to itself.
Against 'measurement' (1990)

Books , World , Thinking , Appearance

“When the strike started in 1965, most of our friends forsook us for a while. They ran — or were just too busy to help. But the California Migrant Ministry held a meeting with its staff and decided that the strike was a matter of life or death for farm workers everywhere, and that even if it meant the end of the Migrant Ministry they would turn over their resources to the strikers. The political pressure on the Protestant Churches was tremendous and the Migrant Ministry lost a lot of money. But they stuck it out, and they began to point the way to the rest of the Church. In fact, when 30 of the strikers were arrested for shouting Huelga [Strike], 11 ministers went to jail with them.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Mexican-American and the Church (1968)

Life , Death , Money , Way

“The embarrassing truth — the brontosaurus in the broom closet that nobody wants to talk about — is that the Republican Party was never the party of freedom. That Goldwater business in the 1960s was a fluke, immediately snuffed out by "older, wiser heads" in the GOP like those of Nelson Rockefeller, Weeping Willy Scranton, Henry Cabot Lodge, and George Romney. The Republican Party was created in the 1850s by northeastern mercantilists just like them, to crush the hopes of poor southerners for individual liberty and independence, and keep them bound in serfdom, paying 80 percent of all taxes collected in America.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Brontosaurus in the Broom Closet" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle541-20091018-05.html 18 October 2009.

Truth , Hope , Freedom

““I gather you were all too busy killing each other.”
“That’s a fairly reductive summary of our history, but I don’t suppose it’s too far from the truth.””

Alastair Reynolds book Chasm City

Source: Chasm City (2001), Chapter 21 (p. 359).

Truth , History

“But now, as throughout history, financial capacity and political perspicacity are inversely correlated. Long run salvation by men of business has never been highly regarded if it means disturbance of orderly life and convenience in the present. So inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future. Here, at least equally with communism, lies the threat to capitalism. It is what causes men who know that things are going quite wrong to say that things are fundamentally sound.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter X, Cause and Consequence, p. 199

Life , Men , History , Communication

“You cannot run a business, or anything else, on a theory.”

Harold Geneen (1910–1997) American businessman

Managing, Chapter One (Theory G on Management), p. 13.

“And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific reverse shock: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers around the racks invent, refine, discuss.People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind — it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, but the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Source: Discourse on Colonialism (1955), p. 36

People , Truth , Hope , Waiting

“By capitalist, I mean the investor who puts his money into a concern and draws profits there from without participating in the organisation or management of the business. Were all these to disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be changed.”

Keir Hardie (1856–1915) Scottish socialist and labour leader

Source: From Serfdom to Socialism (1907), p. 11

Money , Change , Drawing , Night

“To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Dubya's Double Dip?" http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/02/opinion/dubya-s-double-dip.html, The New York Times, 2 August 2002
:It should be noted that Krugman was being sarcastic http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/when-someone-says-paul-krugman-called-for-greenspan-to-create-a-housing-bubble-back-in-2002-they-are-trying-to-say-that-they-are-either-a-fool-or-a-liar; two weeks later, he wrote an article http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/16/opinion/mind-the-gap.html warning about the dangers of a housing bubble.
The New York Times Columns

Thinking , Fight , Housing

“For the sake of this fifth message of peace to Ireland, this farrago of superlative nonsense, the vexatious and costly machinery of a general election is to be put in motion, all business other than what may be connected with political agitation is to be impeded and suspended; trade and commercial enterprise, now suffering sadly from protracted bad times, and which political stability can alone re-invigorate, are to be further harassed and handicapped; all useful and desired reforms are to be indefinitely postponed; the British Constitution is to be torn up; the Liberal party shivered into fragments. And why? For this reason and no other. To gratify the ambition of an old man in a hurry.”

Lord Randolph Churchill (1849–1895) British politician

Address to the electors of South Paddington, quoted in The Times (21 June 1886), p. 6. The "old man in a hurry" was Liberal Party leader William Ewart Gladstone

Peace , Suffering , Time

“We need to have policies that stimulate the economy, and the economy is stimulated when business feels confident that we can put people back to work.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

Sharron Angle Asked Tough Policy Questions
KLAS-TV
2010-10-29
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/13412483/sharron-angle-asked-tough-policy-questions
2010-10-29
Leanne
Sharron Angle Rebuffs Press: I’ll Answer Questions When I’m the Senator
Blue Wave News
2010-10-30
http://bluewavenews.com/blog/2010/10/30/sharron-angle-rebuffs-press-ill-answer-questions-when-im-the-senator/
2010-10-30
to CBS reporter Nathan Baca, at McCarran International Airport

People , Feeling , Confidence

“I thank your Excellency for your generous and obliging offer. Most certain, my inclination leads me to a resignation. My reputation I value more than any advantages of gain; and I consider it in great danger. I wrote your Excellency lengthy upon this subject yesterday, and therefore shall say but little upon it to-day. I intend to write to Congress to day, upon the subject of my apprehensions and determination; and, if they do not give me those kinds of assurances, which are necessary to guard my reputation from malice and detraction. I shall insist upon leaving the business. The politics of Congress are really alarming, and the state of the finances astonishing; where they will end, time only can unfold.”

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

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

Time

“Basilicas should be constructed on a site adjoining the forum and in the warmest possible quarter, so that in winter business men may gather in them without being troubled by the weather.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V, Chapter I, Sec. 4

Men , Winter , Weather

“This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil

History , Communication , Change , Fight

“The daily expenditures by consumers for new consumers' goods, upon which business stability largely depends, are determined in part by the total volume of money in circulation, in part by other factors including the frequency with which that money is returned to consumers. The flow of money, therefore, from use in consumption to another use in consumption should not be overlooked in studies of the causes and conditions of business fluctuations. It is the purpose of this paper to describe certain aspects of this circuit flow of money, to raise the question whether it does not deserve more attention that it has yet received in our analyses of business cycles, and to suggest pertinent lines of investigation. Unfortunately, the statistics upon which the most important conclusions concerning this subject must be based are not at hand and are not likely to be for a long time to come. The following discussion will have served its purpose if it stimulates further inquiry in profitable directions and helps to hasten the day when the necessary statistics are available.”

William Trufant Foster (1879–1950) American economist

Source: The circuit flow of money, 1922, p. 460; Early descriptions of the circular flow of income

Money , Question , Study , Time

“That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

On the U.S. Congress, in his Autobiography (6 January 1821)
1820s

“Now you think about this, too: you’re not charming, dashing, or debonair. You’re funny looking, as a matter of fact. You’re too busy to spare much time for me, and even if you did take me out night-clubbing somewhere, you’d be so out of place that I couldn’t enjoy it. But you do one thing: you let me feel that my rules are as worthwhile to me as yours are to you. When you ask me to do something, I know you won’t be hurt if I refuse. And if I do it, you don’t feel that you’ve scored a point in some kind of complex game. You don’t try to use me, cozen me, or change me. I take up as much room in the world, the way you see it, as you do. Do you have any idea of how rare a thing that is?”

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 6 (pp. 127-128)

World , Way , Feeling , Game

“If someone were to discover, for instance, that under hitherto unobserved circumstances stones were able to speak, it would take only a few pages to describe and explain so earth-shattering a phenomenon. On the other hand, one can always write yet another book about positive thinking, and this is far from being of only academic interest, since it involves a method that makes it impossible ever to arrive at a clear resolution of life's most important questions. Human activities might be graded by the quantity of words required: the more words, the worse their character. All the knowledge that has led our species from wearing animal skins to people flying, complete with proofs, would fill a handful of reference books, but a bookcase the size of the earth would not suffice to hold all the rest, quite apart from the vast discussions that are conducted not with the pen but with the sword and chains. The thought suggests itself that we carry on our human business in a most irrational manner when we do not use those methods by which the exact sciences have forged ahead in such exemplary fashion.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

The Man Without Qualities (1930–1942)

Life , People , Books , Fashion

“I have always gone about this business on the basis that one cannot have a partnership unless there is equity among partners. Equity, of course, is historically a British concept, but I think that it is one that we bring to the [European] Community.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Prime Minister's Questions (3 December 1979) https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1979/dec/03/european-council-dublin-meeting
First term as Prime Minister

Communication , Thinking , Partnership

“People with happy childhoods never overdo; they don't strive or exert themselves. They're moderate, pleasant, well liked, and good citizens. Society needs them. But the tremendous drive and dedication necessary to succeed in any field- not only show business- often seems to be rooted in a disturbed childhood. I wasn't an unloved or an unwanted child, but I was moved around a lot, and then death and cruel circumstances brought many painful separations.”

Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman

Page 21
Love, Lucy (1996)

Death , Pain , People , Childhood

“No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and Eternity: he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth: this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been open to Truth; — "living in a vain show." Such a man not only utters and produces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood. The rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

Life , Death , Truth , Soul

“If you defend a behavior by arguing that people are programmed directly for it, then how do you continue to defend it if your speculation is wrong, for the behavior then becomes unnatural and worthy of condemnation. Better to stick resolutely to a philosophical position on human liberty: what free adults do with each other in their own private lives is their business alone. It need not be vindicated — and must not be condemned—by genetic speculation.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

"So Cleverly Kind an Animal", p. 267
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

People , Behavior

“A study of business education in the United States was recently conducted by Professors Robert A. Gordon of the University of California (Berkeley) and John E. Howell of Stanford University. Their book, Higher Education for Business, has been published by Columbia University Press. Among their major recommendations are:
1 - An increase in the general-education content of undergraduate business education to more than 50 per cent…
2 - Elimination of "fields of concentration" in undergraduate business schools and "drastic streamlining of the number of required courses."”

Robert Aaron Gordon (1908–1978) American economist

"Business itself is enough specialized," Professors Gordon and Howell wrote...
Robert A. Gordon and James E. Howell. "Higher education for business." The Journal of Business Education 35.3 (1959): 115-117.

Books , Education , School , Study

“This is the archetypal suburban-conservative nightmare — anonymous hordes of leftist boat-rockers viciously assaulting the champion of the decent people, who is just a really nice guy given to tending his lawn and minding his own business. Being "nice" is a central part of the Brooks yuppie's guilt-proofing self-image rationale; so long as you're the kind of guy who lets people merge on highways, stands politely in line at Starbucks, doesn't put garish Christmas decorations on his lawn and pays his taxes, you're not really doing anything wrong. It gets a little tiring after a while, hearing people who vote for wars tell you how nice they are.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006)

War , People , Guy , Christmas

“Colander: What’s your view of the New Keynesian approach?
Tobin: I’m not sure what that means. If it means people like Greg Mankiw, I don’t regard them as Keynesians. I don’t think they have involuntary unemployment or absence of market clearing. It is a misnomer to call Mankiw any form of Keynesian.
Colander: How about real-business-cycle theorists?
Tobin: Well, that’s just the enemy.”

David Colander (1947) American economist

David Colander, "Conversations with James Tobin and Robert J. Shiller on the “Yale Tradition” in Macroeconomics", Macroeconomic Dynamics (1999), later published in Inside the economist’s mind: conversations with eminent economists (2007) edited by Paul A. Samuelson and William A. Barnett.
1990s

People , Thinking

“Why, Sir, when I have anything to invent, I never trouble my head about it, as other men do; but presently turn over this Book, and there I have, at one view, all that Perseus, Montaigne, Seneca's Tragedies, Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch's lives, and the rest, have ever thought upon this subject: and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own, the business is done.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Bayes, Act I, sc. i
The Rehearsal (1671)

Men , Books

“Ministers who deal with billions of dollars cannot be paid low salaries without risking a system malfunction. Low salaries will not attract able men who are or can be successful in their professions or business. Low salaries will draw in the hypocrites who sweet talk their way into power in the name of public services, but once in charge will show their true colour, and ruin the country. This has happened in many countries.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

SM Lee Kuan Yew, Speech to the National Trade Union Congress at the Singapore Conference Hall, 19 July 1996 https://fcpp.org/pdf/SPEECH%20BY%20MR%20LEE%20KUAN%20YEW%202004.pdf
1990s

Men , Way , Success , Drawing

“According to the way it is generally used today, the term 'ethics' relates above all to the domain of human rights, 'the rights of man'- or, by derivation, the rights of living beings. We are supposed to assume the existence of a universally recognizable human subject possessing 'rights' that are in some sense natural: the right to live, to avoid abusive, to enjoy 'fundamental' liberties (of opinion, of expression, of democratic choice in the election of governments, etc.) These rights are help to be self-evident, and the result of a wide consensus. 'Ethics' is a matter of busying ourselves with these rights, of making sure that they are respected.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Source: Ethics, Chapter One, "Does Man Exist?"

Way , Nature , Sense , Universe

“Core values = The organization’s essential and enduring tenets – a small set of general guiding principles, not to be confused with specific cultural or operating practices, and not to be compromised for financial gain or short-term expediency.
Purpose = The organization’s fundamental reasons for existence beyond simply making money – a perpetual guiding star on the horizon, not to be confused with specific goals or business strategies”

James C. Collins book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Source: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, 1994, p. 73

Money , Star

“Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies:
Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more
In every branch becomes the sale of money.”

John Davidson (1857–1909) Scottish poet

Smith (Glasgow: Wilson, 1888) p. 26

Money , World

“Concessions made for the purpose of settling the business for which the action is brought, cannot be given in evidence; but facts admitted I have always received.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Turner v. Railton (1796), 2 Esp. 475.

“Blaine sometimes wished he lived in a culture where everything wasn’t everybody’s business.”

Jamil Nasir (1955) American writer

Source: Tower of Dreams (1999), Chapter 6 (p. 71)

“I have always been a great believer in today. Most people live either in the past or in the future, so that they really never live at all. So many people are busy worrying about the future of art or society, they have no time to preserve what is. Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries, Sarah Greenough, Washington: National Gallery of Art. 2000, pp. 26–53; as quoted on Wikipedia

People , Art , Time , Past

“War breeds war. That is all it can do. War does nothing but devour valuable resources and destroy precious lives for the sole purpose of perpetuating itself. As Randolph Bourne wrote, “War is the health of the State.” War is a mechanism used by the ruling elites of the State to coerce and control the people, so it becomes essential that whenever one war is complete, another is instigated elsewhere so that the mechanism keeps running.
On the other hand, peace breeds prosperity. If War is indeed the “health of the State,” then Peace can be nothing less than the “health of the People.” Being at peace means valuable natural resources can be preserved and used at home where we need them most. Being at peace means young fathers and mothers can live and enjoy free trade, not only among themselves but with the world, instead of dying capriciously and unnecessarily, for political gain or to line the pockets of those who profit from their sacrifice.
History teaches us that the key elements to prosperity are freedom and peace. You don’t go to war with people you like, or with people you know, or with people with whom you are trading and doing business. Even after our fledgling republic was nearly torn asunder in civil war which literally pitted brother against brother and nearly destroyed the South, our reunited nation and all its people advanced and prospered after peace was restored.”

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

" Why Peace? Why Not? http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7277," Liberty For All (11 February 2012, retrieved 25 February 2012).
Republished http://original.antiwar.com/lee-wrights/2012/02/15/why-peace-why-not/ by Antiwar.com (16 February 2012).
2012

War , People , Health , World

“St. Augustine confesses that he himself had been formerly in a similar mistake. 'I was once,' says he, 'a Pelagian in my principles; I thought that faith towards God was not the gift of God, but that we procured it by our own powers, and that then, through the use of it, we obtain the gifts of God; I never supposed that the preventing grace of God was the proper cause of our faith, till my mind was struck in a particular manner by the apostle's argument and testimony: What hast thou that thou hast not received, and if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?”

Thomas Bradwardine (1300–1349) Theologian; Archbishop of Canterbury

In this whole business I follow the steps of Augustine.
De causa Dei contra Pelagium

God , Faith

“The pygmies are one of the most cultured peoples on the face of the earth. They live a wonderful life, a life of purity. Not only are they busy and productive, they're happy and healthy as well. If we puny Americans had to live under their conditions, we'd perish in a day. Modern man has much to learn from the people he calls 'savages'. Before we are down to the last blade of grass it would be wise to study the life of the Pygmies. The secret of our own survival rests with them, the people who know how to make the most out of very little and find complete happiness with the bare essentials.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Life , People , Secret , Study

“"Devilling", properly so called, by which is designated in England the system whereby a young barrister assists a busy counsel by digesting and annotating his papers, looking up authorities, drafting opinions, and sometimes holding his brief for him in Court, is not know and indeed is not permitted in Scotland.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 26

“The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.”

Henry James book What Maisie Knew

What Maisie Knew.
Prefaces (1907-1909)

Color , Reality , Effort

“I am a ham. I've no business being rock 'n' roll. I've said it over and over again that I'm a classical composer, dishevelling my personality by dabbling in rock 'n' roll.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

Personality

“His business is here, it is here that he is despised and vilified, it is here that he must carry out his undertaking”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

Source: Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952) (67)

“I'm a very lucky guy. I had so many people help me over the years that I never had many problems. If I had a problem, I could sit down with someone and they would explain the problem to me, and the problem become like a baseball game. You're at home plate now, how do you get to first? How do you get to second? How do you get to third? When you get back to home, your problem is solved. That's the way I view the business world, I view it as a baseball game. Once you start thinking the way you've been taught to think over so many years, you have no problems.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Academy of Achievement Interview (1996)

People , World , Way , Guy

“Paul Merton (on the subject of people wearing bow-ties): People wear bow-ties because it's show-business, isn't it? I mean there's Bernard Manning there. I mean, obviously he is in show-business, and Neil Hamilton desperately would like to be in show-business. But that's the idea isn't it?”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

A Brief History of Timewasting, Room 101

People , Idea

“What of this God whom we command, to bless our coloured flag and land, so busy drawing lines in sand that we don’t think and understand.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"What Has Become"
For Whom The Troubadour Sings (2010)

God , Understanding , Thinking , Drawing

“I would just like to challenge the idea that it is necessary to have a lot of women, or a particular number, on a board. Business is very, very competitive and you should take the performance of women in another competitive area, which is sport where [men] have no strength advantage. Chess, bridge, poker - women come absolutely nowhere. I think that just has to be borne in mind.”

Stuart Wheeler (1935) British businessman and politician

As quoted in The Independent, Thursday 15 August 2013 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ukip-faces-renewed-accusations-of-sexism-as-stuart-wheeler-claims-women-are-not-as-competitive-as-men-8763570.html
See Victoria Coren for a reply.

Women , Men , Idea , Thinking

“As I hear, you are the possessors of one of my favorite paintings 'The children on the beach' and I can tell you that few pictures by me, have so much figures, busy in the subject. Therefore I mean that this picture is an unicum and I hope you will give it a good light and place in your gallery.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

Israels in his letter to Amercian art-sellers Moulton & Ricketts, 27 June 1910; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 188
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Children , Hope , Light , Painting

“There is a lot of money to be made in the business of secrets, of course.”

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

http://www.jwz.org/doc/iwtbf.html
JWZ
IWTBF.

Money , Secret

“My business strategy is either to be geographically focused with lots of businesses or you can be a global player in selected businesses. Since I chose the route of being global, that is where I am going. You have to be competitive. It’s a matter of choice.”

Sukanto Tanoto (1949) Indonesian businessman

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

“Sweet stream that winds through yonder glade,
Apt emblem of a virtuous maid
Silent and chaste she steals along,
Far from the world's gay busy throng:
With gentle yet prevailing force,
Intent upon her destined course;
Graceful and useful all she does,
Blessing and blest where'er she goes;
Pure-bosom'd as that watery glass,
And Heaven reflected in her face.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

"To a Young Lady" (1782).

World

“Character and training disposed him not to interfere in other mens’s business. His job was to find out what they did, and his inclination was to let them go on doing it. He preferred to be enlightened, rather than to enlighten; to seek facts rather than the Truth. But even the most unmissionary soul, unless he pretend he has no emotions, is sometimes faced with a choice between commission and omission. “What are they doing?” abruptly becomes, “What are we doing?””

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

and then, “What must I do?”
Section 5
Hainish Cycle, The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

Men , Truth , Soul , Training

“So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination... And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do no bring forth in the agitation.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Attributed

Imagination , Madness

“A superintendent of a road fifty miles in length can give its business his professional attention and may be constantly on the line engaged in the direction of its details; each person is personally known to him, and all questions in relation to its business are at once presented and acted upon; and any system however imperfect may under such circumstances prove comparatively successful.
In the government of a five hundred miles in length a very different state exists. Any system which might be applicable to the business and extent of a short road would be found entirely inadequate to the wants of a long one. and I am fully convinced that in the want of system perfect in its details, properly adapted and vigilantly enforced, lies the true secret of their [the large roads’] failure; and that this disparity of cost per mile in operating long and short roads, is not produced by a difference in length, but is in proportion to the perfection of the system adopted.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 34: Third paragraph. Cited in: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1962). Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise. p. 21-22

Secret , Failure , Question , Success

“A tension went out of the air. Their business here was over then, and they all knew it; the magic moment had arrived when it was understood that nothing more would be established, discovered, or decided today. But the meeting, having once begun, must drag on for several long more hours before it could be ended. The engines of protocol had enormous inertial mass; once set in motion they took forever to grind to a stop.”

Michael Swanwick book Stations of the Tide

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 8, “Conversations in the Puzzle Palace” (p. 141)

“In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model. … In five years, I see BlackBerry to be the absolute leader in mobile computing.”

Thorsten Heins (1957) German Canadian businessman

BlackBerry CEO Questions Future of Tablets http://bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-30/blackberry-ceo-questions-future-of-tablets.html in Bloomberg Technology (30 April 2013).

Thinking

“[The Samyukta Sadachar Samiti] was brought into being in response to a call and and as an answer to a challenge. There is a keen sense of awareness and deep anxiety about the damage that corruption in administration and business is doing to the social, economic and political fabric of the nation.”

Gulzarilal Nanda (1898–1998) Prime Minister of India

In, P.112.
The committee proposed by him was to prevent corruption.
Gulzarilal Nanda: A Life in the Service of the People

Sense

“Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires. If his private business allows him a moment’s relaxation, he will plunge at once into the whirlpool of politics. Then, if at the end of a year crammed with work he has a little spare leisure, his restless curiosity goes with him traveling up and down the vast territories of the United States. Thus he will travel five hundred miles in a few days as a distraction from his happiness. Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Death , Men , People , Age

“I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat, as in Boris Godunov. It's as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying, "Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing," and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, "Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing."”

Dmitri Shostakovich book Testimony

Page 183.
Testimony (1979)

Thinking

“Wouldn't it be wonderful to paint a nude here? [along the river near Aix ] There are innumerable motifs here on the banks of the river; the same spot viewed from a different angle offers a subject of the utmost interest. It is so varied that I think I could keep busy for months without changing my place, simply turning now tot the right and now to the left.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote in a conversation with Vollard, along the river near Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1880s - 1890s

Thinking , Change , Painting

“The truth is nobody finances tiny movies anymore. I mean there are so many movies I like that I hope will get their money together. It's a different world than it was when I first started making independent movies. Something is really wrong right now. I was a part of it and things are so different now. You can't make a movie for three million dollars with a kind of known actor. It's impossible. I think in general it has to do with the financial state of the country. It's tough for everybody in every business, but the independent movies have really suffered I think…they would never have made Secretary. They never would have financed Secretary with an unknown actress and James Spader. There's just no way.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977) American actress

2008-07-11, Comics2Film

Money , Truth , World , Hope

“It’s simply to say that managers and investors alike must understand that accounting numbers is the beginning, not the end, of business valuation.”

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

1982 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1982.html
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Understanding

“After 1930, political theorists had begun to realize that every democracy—being a government of public opinion—is largely in the hands of those who make public opinion—that is to say, the newspaper-owners. In every country the big business men, the great financiers, were being compelled to purchase the influential newspapers and had little by little succeeded in doing so. They had been very clever in respecting the the external forms of democracy. The people continued to elect their deputies, who continued to to go through the forms of choosing ministers and presidents; but the ministers, presidents, and deputies could hold on to their positions only so long as they did what the Masters of Public Opinion told them to do; and, being well aware of this fact, they were duly submissive.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

The Next Chapter: The War Against the Moon (1928)

Men , People , Democracy , Country

“Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed.”

Michael Hammer (1948–2008) American academic

Source: Reengineering the Corporation, 1993, p. 32

Speed

“Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"The Tasks of the Revolution" (9 October 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/09.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1972, pp. 59 - 68.
1910s

Peace , Chance , Help

“How can anyone be interested in war? — that glorious pursuit of annihilation with its ceremonious bellowings and trumpetings over the mangling of human bones and muscles and organs and eyes, its inconceivable agonies which could have been prevented by a few well-chosen, reasonable words. How, why, did this unnecessary business begin? Why does anyone want to read about it — this redundant human madness which men accept as inevitable?”

Margaret Caroline Anderson (1886–1973) American magazine editor

The Strange Necessity (1969), part 1.

Men , War , Reading , Madness

“Douglas Brown: Dr Banda, what is the purpose of your visit?
Hastings Banda: Well, I've been asked by the Secretary of State to come here.
Brown: Have you come here to ask the Secretary of State a firm date for Nyasaland's independence?
Banda: I won't tell you that.
Brown: When do you hope to get independence?
Banda: I won't tell you that.
Brown: Dr Banda, when you get independence, are you as determined as ever to break away from the Central African Federation?
Banda: Need you ask me that question at this stage?
Brown: Well, this stage is as good as any other stage. Why do you ask me why I shouldn't ask you this question at this stage?
Banda: Haven't I said that enough for everybody to be convinced that I mean just that?
Brown: Dr Banda, if you break with the Central African Federation, how will you make out economically? After all, your country isn't really a rich country.
Banda: Don't ask me that, leave that to me.
Brown: In which way is your mind working?
Banda: Which way? I won't tell you that.
Brown: Where do you hope to get economic aid from?
Banda: I won't tell you that.
Brown: Are you going to tell me anything?
Banda: Nothing.
Brown: Are you going to tell me why you've been to Portugal?
Banda: That's my business.
Brown: In fact you're going to tell me nothing at all.
Banda: Nothing at all.
Brown: So it's a singularly fruitless interview?
Banda: Well, it's up to you.
Brown: Thank you very much.”

Hastings Banda (1898–1997) First president of Malawi

BBC Training "Interviews from hell" http://www.bbctraining.com/modules/2604/hell2.html. BBC INFAX http://open.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/programme/SX+28015_9
BBC Interview, 21 June 1962

Hope , Way , Question , Country

“Contemporary art -- the field we are usually working in because there's money -- is mostly concerned with systems or systematic concepts. In the context of their work, artists adapt models of individual art-specific or economic or political systems like in a laboratory, to reveal the true nature of these systems by deconstructing them. So would it be fair to say that by their chameleon-like adaptation they are attempting to generate a similar system? Well… the corporate change in the art market has aged somewhat in the meantime and looks almost as old as the 'New Economy'. Now even the last snotty brat has realized that all the hogwash about the creative industries, sponsoring, fund-raising, the whole load of bullshit about the beautiful new art enterprises, was not much more than the awful veneer on the stupid, crass fanfare of neo-liberal liberation teleology. What is the truth behind the shifting spheres of activity between computer graphics, web design and the rest of all those frequency-orientated nerd pursuits? A lonely business with other lonely people at their terminals. And in the meantime the other part of the corporate identity has incidentally wasted whole countries like Argentina or Iceland. That's the real truth of the matter.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

Interview on Furtherfield http://www.furtherfield.org/interviews/interview-johannes-grenzfurthner-monochrom-part-1

Money , People , Truth , Age

“Herbert Casson was a highly prolific writer on management, with a career as a management guru spanning some four decades. A skilled writer who was also a successful entrepreneur, he used his own experiences and acute observations of the world around him to develop a philosophy of management based on the concept of ‘efficiency’. He published more than seventy books, which by the time of his death had sold more than half a million copies around the world. Something of a maverick, he was never really accepted by the business academic community in either Britain or America. His books were popular and populist, highly entertaining and full of penetrating insight.”

Morgen Witzel (1960) Canadian historian, business theorist

Source: Fifty key figures in management, 2004, p. 42

Death , Books , World , Communication

“Fox Business bigwigs are said to be perturbed by a very special guest on the fledgling biz channel the other night - Pricasso, the world's greatest penile artist. That's right, he paints portraits with his private parts.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Oh, Baby, Was X-Tina Ragin', New York Daily News, 24 February 2008, Jo Piazza, 18, Daily News L.P.]
About

World , Parting , Painting , Night

“When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.” Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

"The Ethics of Elfland" https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.vii.html in Delphi Works of G. K. Chesterton

Men , Age , World , Faith

“I do not think there can be the smallest doubt that to sit judicially on Sunday on any business would be indecent and improper, and ought never to be done if it can be helped.”

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn (1813–1896) British judge

Winsor v. The Queen (1866), L. R. 1 Q. B. D. 317.

Thinking , Help

“.. I am not going to New York, I am leaving Paris. That's quite different. Long before the war [World War 1. ] I already had a distaste for the 'artistic life' I was involved in. – It's quite the opposite of what I'm looking for. – And so I tried, through the Library, to escape from artists somewhat. Then, with the war, my incompatibility with this milieu grew. I wanted to go away at all costs. Where to? My only option was New York where I knew you [ Walter Pach, artist and friend of Duchamp] and where I hope to be able to escape leading the artistic life, if needs be through a job which will keep me very busy. I ask you to keep all this from my brothers [all his brothers were artists as well] because I know my leaving will be very painful for them.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

the same goes for my father and sisters.
Quote in Duchamp's letter to Walter Pach, Paris 27 April 1915; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 157
1915 - 1925

Life , Pain , War , World

“In the long run, though, the greatest IT risk facing most companies is more prosaic than a catastrophe. It is, simply, overspending. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3520.html, Harvard Business Review, June 9, 2003.

“A controller that cannot control itself is worse than no controller at all: If you cannot manage yourself, you have no business managing others.”

Gerald M. Weinberg (1933–2018) American computer scientist

Source: Quality Software Management: Volume 2, First-order measurement, 1993, p. 9

“[T]hree of [Newt Gingrich's] "Five Principles of American Civilization" deal with business, technology, and organization — all characteristics of work. There is no mention of liberty or equality or, for that matter, of democracy.”

John Ralston Saul book The Unconscious Civilization

The Unconscious Civilization (1995)

Democracy

“This book offers an analytic description of the complicated processes by which seasons of business prosperity, crisis, depression, and revival come about in the modern world. The materials used consist chiefly of market reports and statistics concerning the business cycles which have run their course since 1890 in the United States, England, Germany and France.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

Preface
Business Cycles, 1913

Books , World , Season

“The business of art is no longer the communication of thoughts or feelings which are to be conceptually ordered, but a direct participation in an experience. The whole tendency of modern communication…is towards participation in a process, rather than apprehension of concepts.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 73
1950s

Art , Feeling , Communication

“We tried to create an open environment. In today's language, we created SOPs and SOCs (standard operating procedures, standard operating conditions) so that everybody was on the same page. We wanted an organisation where everybody contributes but the business is not dependent on a few individuals”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on how Reliance was built

Dependency

“If this is nothing more than a stipulation about how we ought to use the term ‘ideological’, then perhaps it will do no harm. But if it is a proposal about how historians ought to set about the business of explaining beliefs, then it seems to me fatal for just the reasons I have sought to give. It refuses to recognise that one of the reasons why someone may hold a certain belief is that there is good evidence in favour of it, that it fits well with their other beliefs, and so on – in a word, that it is rational for them to hold it. If we refuse to speak in these terms, we deprive ourselves of an indispensable means of identifying the most appropriate lines of enquiry to follow in any given case.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Visions of Politics (2002), "Interpretation, rationality and truth"

“At a situation conference early in February the maps showed the catastrophic picture of innumerable breakthroughs and encirclements. I drew Doenitz aside: "Something must be done, you know." Doenitz replied with unwonted curtness: "I am here only to represent the navy. The rest is none of my business. The Fuehrer must know what he is doing."”

Albert Speer (1905–1981) German architect, Minister of Armaments and War Production for Nazi Germany

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 427

“There is a process of slow modification and development mainly in directions which I view with misgiving. "Tory democracy," the favourite idea on that side, is no more like the Conservative party in which I was bred, than it is like Liberalism. In fact less. It is demagogism … applied in the worst way, to put down the pacific, law-respecting, economic elements which ennobled the old Conservatism, living upon the fomentation of angry passions, and still in secret as obstinately attached as ever to the evil principle of class interests. The Liberalism of to-day is better … yet far from being good. Its pet idea is what they called construction, — that is to say, taking into the hands of the State the business of the individual man. Both the one and the other have much to estrange me, and have had for many, many years.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Lord Acton (11 February 1885), quoted in The Life of William Ewart Gladstone Volume III (1903) by John Morley, p. 172
1880s

Secret , Law , Way , Democracy

“To me, there are multifarious forces at work in government departments which are different from those in private business; the responsibility to and necessary interference of Congress, the responsibility to the President, to defined over-all controls, have little parallel in private business. The power politics of government departments are radically different from the power politics of private companies. The existence of pipe lines into Congress strengthens the bureaucracy against the chief executive of the particular subdivision of government. It may strengthen it against the President of the United States or Congress itself. Dimock himself points out how easily government bureaucracies develop organized opposition to policies involving change. This opposition may in substance, though not in form, sabotage all change which appears to threaten the security of the bureaucracy. Power politics, of course, exists in large private companies; but the urge to expand functions and simultaneously to defend what exists seems to me radically less in the case of well-run, large, private industry than in the case of big departments of the government. The quantitative difference becomes a qualitative change.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

"Governmental and Business Executives", 1946

Appearance , Change

“The Conservative Party in the House of Commons has played ball with Paisley for 18 months, during which he has sat among them on the government benches but voted against them…For was he not the secret weapon of those who wanted to send Ulster the way of white Rhodesia? … That is why the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Humphrey Atkins, and the Northern Ireland Office spent the first year-and-a-half of this Parliament building up Ian Paisley and whispering to him and to everybody else that he was going to be the big white chief under a new set-up which they planned to introduce. They recognized in him a man with no dedication to the Union, a man who would abuse the Parliament of the Union to its face and declared that he owed it no allegiance…He is afraid for his own skin, and afraid of the fringe men of violence on whose backs he would fain ride, provided he can distance himself from them when serious trouble looms. The old adage holds good; all bullies are cowards, and most cowards are bullies. That is the last trait which completed the portrait of the man who the enemies of the Union are hoping against hope will put them in business again.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech in Belfast (8 May 1981), reported in The Times (9 May 1981), p. 2

Men , Secret , Hope , Way

“There are times when a company’s know-how, product range, and labor relations are in harmony with the world around it. The business situations are familiar, the company is well organized, and employees are trained and prepared. During those times, managers do not need to develop and implement new ideas. Their job is to allocate resources to promote growth and development, channeling capital and people to the parts of the organization best positioned to benefit from the current state of affairs. Those parts of the organization then become larger, better established, and more powerful.
But just when the company has organized itself, outside circumstances may change. New technologies come on the scene, markets shift, interest rates fluctuate, consumers’ tastes change, and the company must enter a new phase of life. In order to stay in sync with the outside world, it must be able to alter its marketing strategy, its product range, its organizational form, and where and how it does its manufacturing. And once a company has adapted to a new environment, it is no longer the organization it used to be; it has evolved. That is the essence of learning.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Cited in: Richard C. Huseman, Jon P. Goodman (1998), Leading with Knowledge: The Nature of Competition in the 21st Century. SAGE Publications, p. 72.
The Living Company, 1997

Life , People , World , Idea

“Having fun is a dismal business after you pass fifty.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p20.

“I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions. More often than not Democratic Law works to the advantage of the few even though the many have voted; this, of course, is because the few have told them how to vote. I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age. If I want to kill myself I feel that should be my business. If I go out and hold up gas stations at night to pay for my supply it is because the law inflates a very cheap thing into an escalated war against my nerves and my soul.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

"This Floundering Old Bastard is the Best Damn Poet in Town", interview by John Thomas, in LA Free Press (1967)
Interviews

Men , War , Age , Law

“All such shenanigans bring up the cost of doing business in this country.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

Country

“He who intends to enjoy life should not be busy about many things, and in what he does should not undertake what exceeds his natural capacity. On the contrary, he should have himself so in hand that even when fortune comes his way, and is apparently ready to lead him on to higher things, he should put her aside and not o'erreach his powers. For a being of moderate size is safer than one that bulks too big.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Fragments

Life , Way , Nature

“The wayfaring man, Christ Jesus, has helped many and many a tired traveler home with burdens quite as heavy as yours. Often and often He goes up and down this thoroughfare of life in search of just such overladen pilgrims; and His voice is sounding forth above all the babble of the busy tongues and the clatter of the busy wheels, saying, — "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."”

Washington Gladden (1836–1918) American pastor

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 98.

Life , Travel , Home , Search

“The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

As quoted in The Image : A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1963) by Daniel Joseph Boorstein
As quoted in ...

“Though business conditions may change, corporations and securities may change, and financial institutions and regulations may change, human nature remains the same. Thus the important and difficult part of sound investment, which hinges upon the investor's own temperament and attitude, is not much affected by the passing years.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Introduction, p. xxiv
The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949)

Nature , Change , Parting

“Yet on some level we do know the truth. We know that meat production is a messy business, but we choose not to know just how messy it is. We know that meat comes from an animal, but we choose not to connect the dots. And often, we eat animals and choose not to know we're even making a choice. Violent ideologies are structured so that it is not only possible, but inevitable, that we are aware of an unpleasant truth on one level while being oblivious to it on another. Common to all violent ideologies is this phenomenon of knowing without knowing.”

Melanie Joy book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows

And it is the essence of carnism.
Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), p. 71

Truth , Animals

“Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"The State of the Union," The Nation (13 September 2004)
2000s

Learning

“Twenty-eight years ago, I created my first game on an Apple II in my bedroom closet at a time when the interactive entertainment industry was taking its first baby steps. Today the games business has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry and we are just at the tip of the iceberg. I'm thrilled to have been a part of this successful journey and I'm extremely honored by the Academy's Hall of Fame induction.”

Richard Garriott (1961) video game developer, astronaut and entrepreneur

Press Statement for the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame http://uk.ign.com/articles/2005/11/09/richard-garriott-joins-gaming-hall-of-fame, 9 November, 2005.

Game , Time , Success , Parting

“I think it is a rule that men in business should not be taught other things. Any one will be almost sure to make money who has no other idea in his head. A college education, or intense study of abstract truth, will not enable a man to drive a bargain … The best politicians are not those who are deeply grounded in mathematical or in ethical science. Rules stand in the way of expediency. Many a man has been hindered from pushing his fortune in the world by an early cultivation of his moral sense.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Disadvantages of Intellectual Superiority"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Men , Money , Truth , World

“Some owners are competent, effective business people who care about the game. Many others do not share these attributes.”

Andrew Zimbalist (1947) American economist

Source: Baseball And Billions - Updated edition - (1992), Chapter 8, The Future, p. 186.

People , Game

“Every individual, from the common mechanic, that works in wood or clay, to the prime minister that regulates with the dash of his pen the agriculture, the breeding of cattle, the mining, or the commerce of a nation, will perform his business the better, the better he understands the nature of things, and the more his understanding is enlightened.”

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

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book III, On Consumption, Chapter VI, Section II, p. 432

Understanding , Nature

Quotes about business page 8

Quotes about business
page 8