Quotes about commercial

A collection of quotes on the topic of commercial, people, use, other.

Quotes about commercial

Vangelis photo

“For every album I’ve ever made, I’ve written many times more music than has actually been released, and the way I choose which music appears is almost totally random, but one thing I have never done is to make music for the sake of commercialism”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1984
Context: On albums and commercialism: "For every album I’ve ever made, I’ve written many times more music than has actually been released, and the way I choose which music appears is almost totally random, but one thing I have never done is to make music for the sake of commercialism... I don’t think it’s possible to guarantee commercial success for an album anyway, because nobody really knows what is commercial and what isn’t. Even if I went out of my way to make an album that was more accessible to the public, that would not guarantee its commercial success".

Henri Fayol photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo
Shahrukh Khan photo

“Films are an art form which are sold after packaging in this commercial world.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Komal Nahta

Michelle Phillips photo
Ludwig von Mises photo
Shahrukh Khan photo
Marcel Duchamp photo

“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from 'Time Magazine', 10 March 1952; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
1951 - 1968

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“We are passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself to bring mutterings of discontent.”

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

1900s, Address at Providence (1901)
Context: We are passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself to bring mutterings of discontent. At a time when most men prosper somewhat some men always prosper greatly; and it is as true now as when the tower of Siloam fell upon all alike, that good fortune does not come solely to the just, nor bad fortune solely to the unjust. When the weather is good for crops it is also good for weeds.

Benjamin Creme photo
Ivo Andrič photo

“The people were divided into the persecuted and those who persecuted them. That wild beast, which lives in man and does not dare to show itself until the barriers of law and custom have been removed, was now set free. The signal was given, the barriers were down. As has so often happened in the history of man, permission was tacitly granted for acts of violence and plunder, even for murder, if they were carried out in the name of higher interests, according to established rules, and against a limited number of men of a particular type and belief. A man who saw clearly and with open eyes and was then living could see how this miracle took place and how the whole of a society could, in a single day, be transformed. In a few minutes the business quarter, based on centuries of tradition, was wiped out. It is true that there had always been concealed enmities and jealousies and religious intolerance, coarseness and cruelty, but there had also been courage and fellowship and a feeling for measure and order, which restrained all these instincts within the limits of the supportable and, in the end, calmed them down and submitted them to the general interest of life in common. Men who had been leaders in the commercial quarter for forty years vanished overnight as if they had all died suddenly, together with the habits, customs and institutions which they represented.”

Source: The Bridge on the Drina (1945), Ch. 22

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Lauren Bacall photo
Stephen King photo
George Washington photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo

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

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

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Guy Debord photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Henri Fayol photo
Henri Fayol photo
Conan O'Brien photo

“Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me.”

Conan O'Brien (1963) American television show host and comedian

First Tweet on Twitter, February 24, 2010 Twitter http://twitter.com/conanobrien
The Tonight Show

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.”

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

1910s, The New Nationalism (1910)
Variant: The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being.

Nikola Tesla photo
Peter Ustinov photo

“The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) by Geoff Tibballs

Jürgen Habermas photo
Gabriel Iglesias photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“We know today that nothing will restore the pre-machine condition of reasonably universal employment save an artificial allocation of working hours involving the use of more men than formerly to perform a given task.... The primary function of society, in spite of all the sophistries spurred of selfishness, is to give men better conditions than they could get without it; and the basic need today is jobs for all—not for "property" for a few of the luck and the acquisitive.... In view of the urgent need for change, there is something almost obscene in the chatter of the selfish about various psychological evils allegedly inherent in a New Deal promising decent economic security and humane leisure for all instead of for a few.... What is worth answering is the kindred outcry about "regimentation", "collective slavery", "violation of Anglo-Saxon freedom", "destruction of the right of the individual to make his own way" and so on; with liberal references to Stalin, Hitler, Mustapha Kemal, and other extremist dictators who have sought to control men's personal, intellectual, and artistic lives, and traditional habits and folkways, as well as their economic fortunes. Naturally the Anglo-Saxon balks at any programme calculated to limit his freedom as a man and a thinker or to disturb his inherited perspectives and daily customs—and need we say that no plan ever proposed in an Anglo-Saxon country would conceivably seek to limit such freedom or disturb such perspectives and customs? Here we have a deliberate smoke-screen—conscious and malicious confusion of terms. A decent planned society would indeed vary to some extent the existing regulations (for there are such) governing commercial and economic life. Yet who save a self-confessed Philistine or Marxist (the plutocrat can cite "Das Kapital" for his purpose!) would claim that the details and conditions of our merely economic activities form more than a trivial fraction of our whole lives and personalities? That which is essential and distinctive about a man is not the routine of material struggle he follows in his office; but the civilised way he lives, outside his office, the life whose maintenance is the object of his struggle. So long as his office work gains him a decently abundant and undisputedly free life, it matters little what that work is—what the ownership of the enterprise, and what and how distributed its profits, if profits there be. We have seen that no system proposes to deny skill and diligence an adequate remuneration. What more may skill and diligence legitimately ask? Nor is any lessening in the pride of achievement contemplated. Man will thrill just as much at the overcoming of vast obstacles, and the construction of great works, whether his deeds be performed for service or for profit. As it is, the greatest human achievements have never been for profit. Would Keats or Newton or Lucretius or Einstein or Santayana flourish less under a rationally planned society? Any intimation that a man's life is wholly his industrial life, and that a planned economic order means a suppression of his personality, is really both a piece of crass ignorance and an insult to human nature. Incidentally, it is curious that no one has yet pointed to the drastically regulated economic life of the early Mass. Bay colony as something "American!"”

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

Unpublished (and probably unsent) letter to the Providence Journal (13 April 1934), quoted in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy, edited by J. T. Joshi, pp. 115-116
Non-Fiction, Letters

Shahrukh Khan photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Samuel Smiles photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Sharon Needles photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo

“…reciprocity is barter. I always understood that barter was the last effort of civilization that it was exactly that state of human exchange that separated civilization from savagery; and if reciprocity is only barter, I fear that would hardly help us out of our difficulty. My noble friend read some extracts from the speeches of those who had the misfortune to be in Parliament at that time, and he honoured me by reading an extract from the speech I then made in the other House of Parliament. That was a speech in favour of reciprocity, and indicated the means by which reciprocity could be obtained. That is to say…by the negotiation of a treaty of commerce, by reciprocal exchange and the lowering of duties, the products of the two negotiating countries would find a freer access and consumption in the two countries than they formerly possessed. But when he taunts me with his quotation of some musty phrases of mine 40 years ago, I must remind him that we had elements then on which treaties of reciprocity could be negotiated. At that time, although the great changes of Sir Robert Peel had taken place, there were 168 articles in the tariff which were materials by which you could have negotiated, if that was a wise and desirable policy, commercial treaties of reciprocity. What is the number you now have in the tariff? Twenty-two. Those who talk of negotiating treaties of reciprocity…have they the materials for negotiating treaties of reciprocity? You have lost the opportunity. I do not want to enter into the argument at the present moment; but England cannot pursue that policy.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech in the House of Lords (29 April 1879), reported in The Times (30 April 1879), p. 8.
1870s

Mikhail Baryshnikov photo
Henri Barbusse photo
Alejandro Jodorowsky photo

“That is the marvel of true art, that no one has yet found a way to commercialize it.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Clandestine Culture photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Barack Obama photo
Wendell Berry photo
Karl Marx photo

“As for the commercial business, I can no longer make head or tail of it. At one moment crisis seems imminent and the City prostrated, the next everything is set fair. I know that none of this will have any impact on the catastrophe.”

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

Letter to Friedrich Engels (4 February 1852), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 39. Letters 1852–55 (2010), p. 32

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo

“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Helen Fielding photo
John Muir photo

“These temple destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and, instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 15: Hetch Hetchy Valley <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 716 -->
1910s
Context: These temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism, seem to have a perfect contempt for Nature, and instead of lifting their eyes to the God of the mountains, lift them to the Almighty Dollar. Dam Hetch Hetchy! As well dam for water-tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

Rick Riordan photo
Alfred Hitchcock photo

“The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Rick Riordan photo
William Peter Blatty photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Gillian Flynn photo
David Mamet photo
Matt Taibbi photo
Naomi Klein photo

“Free speech is meaningless if the commercial cacophony has risen to the point where no one can hear you.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Twelve, "Culture Jamming"

“The first commercial licensing of where CP/M was used to monitor programs in the Octopus network. Little attention was paid to CP/M for about a year. In my spare time, I worked to improve overall facilities… By this time, CP/M had been adapted for four different controllers….
In 1976”

Gary Kildall (1942–1994) Computer scientist and entrepreneur

Gary Kildall (1980) " The History of CP/M, The Evolution of an Industry: One Person's Viewpoint http://www.retrotechnology.com/dri/CPM_history_kildall.txt." Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia Vol. 5 (1) (41). p. 6-7

Lord Randolph Churchill photo
Zakir Hussain (musician) photo

“I think that commercialization in the long run will not affect the integrity of the music. In every venture, musical or otherwise, you will always have good and bad. The same applies here.”

Zakir Hussain (musician) (1951) Indian tabla player, musical producer, film actor and composer

In "The ring from Lata was like a blessing from Saraswati".
Quote

Fredric Jameson photo
Lucy Aharish photo

“One of the topics [on the show last week] was the murder of women in the Arab sector, what is referred to, unfortunately, […] as 'honor killing' and has nothing to do with [anything worthy of] honor. The guest in the studio was a woman who had 20 years of experience working for the sake of those same women who die for no good reason, a woman whose everyday job was a holy work for the sake of thousands of Arab women who need a voice that will shout out and cry out their cries. After she had accused the government and the police and everyone of incompetence, I asked her, in a somewhat aggressive manner, as it were, '[…] Where are we in all of this? Where are we Arab women to teach and discipline our sons that a man has no right over a woman? […]' During the commercial break, she got up and told me that I had to learn how to talk to Arabs because the tone that I adopted and the things that I said were said to gain approval from Jews. So I've come to tell you today that I haven't come for approval from you; that I haven't come for approval from anyone; and this is the message that I want you to digest very, very well. In my life I have been accused of many things: that I am the fifth column; that an Arab will always stay an Arab, no matter how liberal he may look; that I bring shame on my family for being in a relationship with a person outside my religion. I've received threats after asking Palestinian residents live on the show why they don't go out against Hamas men, who use them and bring them to their slaughter; I've been attacked on Yom ha-Shoah and Yom ha-Zikaron that the managers at Arutz 2 dared to put an Arab on a show such as that as the host on a day such as that; I've been told that I make Arab women stray off the path of proper behavior; and that I've forgotten where I come from being an 'Ashkenazified', 'Judaized' Arab. So they blamed and they talked—as if that, in itself, made them right.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Source: Lucy Aharish's campus speech http://www.onlife.co.il/%D7%A2%D7%91%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%99%D7%92%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%95%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A8/85312/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A9-%D7%9C%D7%90-%D7%91%D7%90%D7%AA%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%9E%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%90-%D7%97%D7%9F-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%90%D7%A3-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%93 at "מנהיגות היום את המחר". Onlife. 9 November 2014. Retrieved 27 January 2015. Video available.

John Bright photo
George Friedman photo

“[A]ny seagoing vessel—commercial or military, from the Persian Gulf to the South China Sea to the Caribbean—could be monitored by the United States Navy, who could choose to watch it, stop it, or sink it.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 44

Neal Stephenson photo
Erving Goffman photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“…jumped-up commercials pretending, too late, to be the ruling class..”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo

“I believe honestly and deeply that the treatment of whales is an example of the evil intelligence of humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world. We have seen greed of the most impossible kind descending on the Arctic and the Antarctic to destroy the most intelligent and beautiful creatures that the planet can produce…We are in the process of destroying much of the planet through destruction of the ozone layer, leading to the greenhouse effect, and the destruction of life. The whale is an example of how such destruction happens. As the ozone layer is destroyed the plankton in the Southern ocean will die and the whales will lose much of their food. Last year we opposed the Antarctic Minerals Bill because we feared that it would lead to pollution of the Southern ocean and damage the whales' food supply. The Government must oppose any extension of whaling of any type, scientific or otherwise, and I hope and trust that they will do so. But we must go further. Countries which engage in the barbarity of so-called scientific whaling, which in reality is crude commercialism of the nastiest kind, deserve retribution from us all and we must bring every possible sanction to bear against them. If we do not take care of our planet and our environment, and of animals such as the whale, mankind will suffer and our planet will die because we have not cared for the natural environment that we all share.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/mar/02/whaling in the House of Commons (2 March 1990).
1990s

Mike Rosen photo
Charles Lyell photo
J. Proctor Knott photo
Olly Blackburn photo

“I’ve directed a fair amount of stuff in the past, such as music videos, commercials and short films and I believe that the best way to learn in this industry – I mean, you can go to film school and that’s good – but ultimately, the only way you’re ever going to learn is through raw experience.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[IndieLondon, Donkey Punch - Olly Blackburn interview, http://www.indielondon.co.uk/Film-Review/donkey-punch-olly-blackburn-interview, www.indielondon.co.uk, 23 February 2012, 2008]

Virginia Christine photo
Lois Duncan photo

“I understand the craft of writing, because it’s who and what I am. The commercial world of publishing, both in the past and today, is an ongoing mystery to me. Fads are constantly changing.”

Lois Duncan (1934–2016) American young-adult and children's writer

On writing and publishing, interview with Megan Abbott (2011)
2003–2016

Jack Valenti photo
Norman Angell photo
Evelyn Waugh photo

“There is a great deal to be said for the Arts. For one thing they offer the only career in which commercial failure is not necessarily discreditable.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

"The Way to Fame" HTTP://BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM/books?&id=FWxbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22there+is+a+great+deal+to+be+said+for+the+arts+for+one+thing+they+offer+the+only+career+in+which+commercial+failure+is+not+necessarily+discreditable%22&pg=PA9#v=onepage

Pierre-Auguste Renoir photo

“If I was accused of neglecting my art, or sacrificing my ideas for the sake of stupid ambition, then I would understand the critics; but as that isn't the case, there is nothing to be said. I sent a picture to the Salon for purely commercial reasons. Anyway, it is like some medicines – even if it does no good, it does no harm.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

other impressionist artists then refused to send in their work to the Salon
Source: 1880's, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 128 : in a letter to art-dealer Durand-Ruel, March 1881

Philippe Starck photo

“I try to rediscover why that object exists at all, and why one should take the trouble to reconsider It. I don't consider the technical or commercial parameters so much as the desire for a dream that humans have attempted to project onto an object.”

Philippe Starck (1949) French architect and industrial designer

Starck (1996) in: Graphis: International Journal for Graphic and Applied Art (1996) Vol 7; Vol 52. p. 7

“…Western Civilization began to expand in 976. …The economic expansion was achieved chiefly by specialization and exchange… commercialization.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Adam Ferguson photo
Jeremy Rifkin photo
Leonard Mlodinow photo
Joseph Gordon-Levitt photo

“I didn’t really like doing commercials. You had to behave like you were on angel dust or something.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

The New York Times, March 25, 2007.

Edward Carpenter photo

“Law represents from age to age the code of the dominant or ruling class, slowly accumulated, no doubt, and slowly modified, but always added to and always administered by the ruling class. Today the code of the dominant class may perhaps best be denoted by the word Respectability—and if we ask why this code has to a great extent overwhelmed the codes of the other classes and got the law on its side (so far that in the main it characterises those classes who do not conform to it as the criminal classes), the answer can only be: Because it is the code of the classes who are in power. Respectability is the code of those who have the wealth and the command, and as these have also the fluent pens and tongues, it is the standard of modern literature and the press. It is not necessarily a better standard than others, but it is the one that happens to be in the ascendant; it is the code of the classes that chiefly represent modern society; it is the code of the Bourgeoisie. It is different from the Feudal code of the past, of the knightly classes, and of Chivalry; it is different from the Democratic code of the future—of brotherhood and of equality; it is the code of the Commercial age and its distinctive watchword is—property.
The Respectability of today is the respectability of property. There is nothing so respectable as being well-off.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Roy Lichtenstein photo

“Nobody wanted this commercialization of life.”

Source: The Worldly Philosophers (1953), Chapter II, The Economic Revolution, p. 21

Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Tommy Franks photo
Alain Badiou photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Frank Stella photo
Brian K. Vaughan photo

“It's TV shows like BUFFY and ANGEL that usually have an incredible cliffhanger every commercial break that amaze me.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Ain't It Cool News interview

Norman Angell photo
Adam Smith photo

“The education of the common people requires, perhaps, in a civilized and commercial society, the attention of the public more than that of people of some rank and fortune.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter I, Part III, p. 845.

Lillian Gish photo

“Thalberg wanted commercial hits. I wanted art.”

Lillian Gish (1893–1993) American actress

http://marilynmonroeflims.blogspot.com/2012/07/lillian-gish-greta-garbo-class-acts.html (On her work with MGM)