Quotes about customer
page 2

“The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, led them into it in the first place, and continues to do so today.”

Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist

As quoted in The Guardian (1995), and in "Biting back at Microsoft" (5 June 2001) http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2001/jun/05/guardianletters3

Idea, Appearance

“The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Lie, World, Error, Suffering

“Why had such a promising world been crucified on the tree of obligation, thorned by duties, hanged by hypocrisy, smothered by customs?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: The Bridge Across Forever: A True Love Story

World, Tree

“You're a pretty cool customer, huh?" says Agent Hunt.

"I hide my inner pain under my stoic visage."

Agent Hunt looks like he would like to put his fist through my stoic visage.”

Holly Black book Red Glove

Source: Red Glove

Pain

“Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be; custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 101

Way, Powerful

“Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Behavior, Hell

“Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 16: The Coming of Winter

“Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few of us who hunt because they're as hungry as we are for fresh meat as anyone. In fact, they're among our best customers.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers.”

Seth Godin (1960) American entrepreneur, author and public speaker

“Selling eternal life is an unbeatable business, with no customers ever asking for their money back after the goods are not delivered.”

Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014) American philosopher

Life, Money, Business

“The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.”

John Stuart Mill book On Liberty

Source: On Liberty

Feeling, Exercises

“We are so customed to disguise ourselves to others that, in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

“Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday (1983), Ch. XXI, p. 214

Sex

“History. Language. Passion. Custom. All these things determine what men say, think, and do. These are the hidden puppet-strings from which all men hang.”

R. Scott Bakker book The Darkness That Comes Before

Source: The Darkness That Comes Before

Men, History, Thinking, Passion

“Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Tattoo

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Source: The Metamorphosis

Home

“Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“I’m the god of funerals. I know every death custom in the world—how to die properly, how to prepare the body and soul for the afterlife. I live for death.”
“You must be fun at parties,” I said.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Death, God, World, Soul

“They said I was a valued customer, now they send me hate mail.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Hate

“Loafe with me on the grass—loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want—not custom or lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

Music, Grass

“… the waiters carried themselves with a quiet joy, as if their entire mission in life was to make their customers feel comfortable and well tended.”

Julia Child My Life in France

Source: My Life in France

Life, Feeling, Joy

“Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.”

Margaret Atwood book The Year of the Flood

Source: The Year of the Flood

Feeling, Princess, Selfishness

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Business @ The Speed of Thought (1999) http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speedofthought/default.asp <br class="br">1990s

Learning, Business

“Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Killing For Sport, Preface (1914)
1910s

People, Fashion

“That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation.”

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

Law

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

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

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

Business, Business

“Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

The Callahan Chronicals (1996) [originally published as Callahan and Company (1988)] "Backword", p. xii
Context: In a culture where pessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raise hopes, like hothouse flowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick of Time was backward enough to think that the world can look just that essential tad better when seen through a flask, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.) Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.
Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or his love again.

Pain, Joy

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act II; sometimes paraphrased as: The customs of your tribe are not laws of nature.
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)
Variant: Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
Context: THEODOTUS: Caesar: you are a stranger here, and not conversant with our laws. The kings and queens of Egypt may not marry except with their own royal blood. Ptolemy and Cleopatra are born king and consort just as they are born brother and sister.
BRITANNUS (shocked): Caesar: this is not proper.
THEODOTUS (outraged): How!
CAESAR (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

Law, Forgiveness, Nature

“.., by universal custom, your enemy is never more polite than when he is planning or has planned your destruction.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

Universe

“Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, please refer to rule #1.
-Duncan Howe”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“I readily admit that the law which requires presumption or custom to be carried back for a period of nearly 700 years, is a bad and mischievous law, and one which is discreditable to us as a civilised and enlightened people, but such is the law; and while it so continues, I consider myself, in administering it, as bound to administer it as I find it; nor do I feel myself warranted in undermining or frittering it away by subtle fictions or artificial presumptions inconsistent with truth and fact.”

Sir Alexander Cockburn, 12th Baronet (1802–1880) Lord Chief Justice

Bryant v. Foot (1867), 15 W. R. 425; S. C. L. R. 2 Q. B. Ca. 179.

People, Truth, Law, Feeling

“The House of Lords, in rejecting the Budget which provides for the national expenditure of the year, are refusing, for the first time since the great Rebellion, aids and supplies to the Crown, and by that fact and by their intrusion upon finance they commit an act of violence against the British Constitution. There is no precedent of any kind for the rejection of a Budget Bill by the House of Lords in all the long annals of the British Parliament, or, before that, in the still more venerable annals of the English Parliament. The custom of centuries forbids their intrusion upon finance.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The People's Rights [1909] (London: Jonathan Cape, 1970), p. 25
Early career years (1898–1929)

Time, Housing

“Turmoil and revolution in their best guises serve to tear down ancient and meaningless customs, in favor of practical social reform.”

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: What Entropy Means to Me (1972), Chapter 10 “The Final Struggle” (p. 160).

Tear

““This is the first award I received…In fact, I consider this priceless. This was presented to me by Sri. Godavarma Bhattan Thampuran of Kodungallur (Cranganore) Palace years ago. I was only 22 then. Those were days when Kodungallur used to witness the best assembly of scholars in Sanskrit and the sasthras. Present on that day were several highly learned men and women. The stage was in front of Sringapuram temple. I presented Bhagavad Dooth Prabhantham Koothu. My interpretation of one of the slokas was a little more elaborate than and different from the custom-worn treatment. The audience liked it. In appreciation, Bhattan Thampuran removed this ring from his finger and put it on mine. The spontaneous gesture in recognition of my art naturally is the most precious to me ”
-Guru Māni Mādhava Chākyār, about his prized possession- the golden ring from the great scholar H. H Bhattan Thampuran”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Awards
Source: K. A. Chandrahasan, In pursuit of excellence (Performing Arts), "The Hindu", Sunday March 26, 1989

Women, Men, Art, Nature

“A few years ago I had to answer some searching questions to a Customs official about a book which I had with me, printed in Latin, and which the official suspected to be Russian; it was a jestbook, as a matter of fact, and I was so foolish as to say so, forgetting that a Latin joke is as strange to the modern imagination as a unicorn or an amphisbaena.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books, Imagination, Search, Question

“If there’s one piece of wisdom that this simple pilgrim would like to impart upon you: have the courage to start with the customer. My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers. This leadership change gives you some breathing room to break bad habits and deliver sustainable customer happiness — don’t waste the opportunity!”

Andrew Mason (1981) businessman

Groupon CEO: “I Was Fired Today.” http://allthingsd.com/20130228/groupon-dumps-andrew-mason-as-ceo (February 28, 2013)

Wisdom, Happiness, Courage, Change

“It is an ancient custom, as ancient as the Roman Empire, to idolize those whom we honor, to make them larger than life, to give their marvelous accomplishments a magical and mystical origin. By exalting the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. into a legendary tale that is annually told, we fail to recognize his humanity -- his personal and public struggles -- that are similar to yours and mine. By idolizing those whom we honor, we fail to realize that we could go and do likewise.”

Charles V. Willie (1927) American sociologist

The Ethical Foundations of Dr. King's Political Action http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-mlkspeech.html Speech on Martin Luther King day (2002)

Life, Personality

“Quality means meeting customers' (agreed) requirements, formal and informal, at lowest cost, first time every time.”

Robert L. Flood (1959) British organizational scientist

Robert L. Flood (1993) Beyond TQM. p. 42.

Time

“3710. Old Custom, without Truth, is but an old Errour.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Variant: Custom without Reason, is but an ancient Error.
Context: 1226. Custom without Reason, is but an ancient Error.

Truth

“A number of people including William Wilberforce, sought to refute these arguments by painting in black colors the horrible customs of the Hindus such as sati, infanticide, throwing the children into the Ganga, religious suicides, and above all idolatry. Vivid descriptions were given of the massacre of the innocent resulting from the car procession of Lord Jagannath at Puri, and the Baptists put down the number of annual victims at not less than 120,000. When challenged they had to admit that they did not actually count the dead bodies but arrived at the figure by an ingenious calculation.”

R. C. Majumdar (1888–1980) Indian historian

R. C. Majumdar, The History and Culture of Indian People. Vol. X, 2nd ed., Bombay, 1981, p. 152-153.

Children, People, Cars, Color

“In the phrase "quality control" the word quality does not have the popular meaning of "best" in any absolute sense. It means "best for certain customer conditions." These conditions are (a) the actual use and (b) the selling price of the product. Product quality cannot be thought of apart from product cost.”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Source: Quality Control: Principles, Practice, and Administration. 1951, p. 1

Sense

“Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard in all England.”

Bret Harte (1836–1902) American author and poet

Adventures of John Longbowe, Yeoman.

“The stakeholder concept was originally defined as "those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist." The list of stakeholders originally included shareowners, employees, customers, suppliers, lenders and society. Stemming from the work of Igor Ansoff and Robert Stewart (in the planning department at Lockheed) and, later Marion Doscher and Stewart at SRI, the original approach served an important information function in the SRI corporate planning.”

Igor Ansoff (1918–2001) American mathematician

R. Edward Freeman (2010) Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. p. 32

Support

“I view my own body as a petting zoo. I am the main attraction… And the only customer.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)

“Plymouth, Gwenda thought, as she moved forward obediently in the queu for Passports and Customs, was probably not the best of England.”

Agatha Christie book Sleeping Murder

Sleeping Murder (1976)

“When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.”

Charles Miner (1780–1865) American politician

"Who ’ll turn Grindstones" from Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe, Doylestown, Pa., (1815); first published in the Wilkesbarre Gleaner (1811).

Thinking

“Man's urge for change and his need for stability have always balanced and checked each other, and our current vocabulary, which distinguishes between two factions, the progressives and the conservatives, indicates a state of affairs in which this balance has been thrown out of order. No civilization — the man-made artifact to house successive generations — would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

"Civil Disobedience".
Crises of the Republic (1969)

Life, World, Change, Success

“Your product is a starting point. A loyal customer is the goal.”

Ron Kaufman (1956) American author and consultant

Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile (2005)

“Why has it [the Church] never done what it was sent to do? Others …will say it has done so. Has it not lifted woman to equality and companionship with man, secured the sanctity and stability of marriage, changed parental despotism to parental service, and eliminated unnatural vice, the abandonment of children, blood revenge, and the robbery of the shipwrecked from the customs of Christian nations? Has it not abolished slavery, mitigated war, covered all lands with a network of charities to uplift the poor and the fallen, fostered the institutions of education, aided the progress of civil liberty and social justice, and diffused a softening tenderness throughout human life? It has done all that, and vastly more.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 147

Life, Marriage, War, Children

“Winners understand why customers buy.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 124.

Understanding

“In the year 1660 being importuned by some friends of his, I undertook so to teach Mr. Daniel Whalley of Northampton, who had been Deaf and Dumb from a Child. I began the work in 1661, and in little more than a year's time, I had taught him to pronounce distinctly any words, so as I directed him… and in good measure to understand a Language and express his own mind in writing; And he had in that time read over to me distinctly (the whole or greatest part of) the English Bible; and did pretty well understand (at least) the Historical part of it. In the year 1662 I did the like for Mr. Alexander Popham… I have since that time (upon the same account) taught divers Persons (and some of them very considerable) to speak plain and distinctly, who did before hesitate and stutter very much; and others, to pronounce such words or letters, as before they thought impossible for them to do: by teaching them how to rectify such mistakes in the formation, as by some natural impediment, or acquired Custome, they had been subject to.”

John Wallis (1616–1703) English mathematician

p, 125
Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)

Understanding, Nature, Time, Reading

“Naturally, it is in the interest of the trader to be on good terms with the one from whom he buys cheap as well as with the other to whom he sells dear. A nation therefore acts very imprudently if it fosters feelings of animosity in its suppliers and customers. The more friendly, the more advantageous. Such is the humanity of trade. And this hypocritical way of misusing morality for immoral purposes is the pride of the free-trade system.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Natürlich ist es im Interesse des Handelnden, mit dem einen, von welchem er wohlfeil kauft, wie mit dem andern, an welchen er teuer verkauft, sich in gutem Vernehmen zu halten. Es ist also sehr unklug von einer Nation gehandelt, wenn sie bei ihren Versorgern und Kunden eine feindselige Stimmung nährt. Je freundschaftlicher, desto vorteilhafter. Dies ist die Humanität des Handels, und diese gleisnerische Art, die Sittlichkeit zu unsittlichen Zwecken zu mißbrauchen, ist der Stolz des Systems der Handelsfreiheit.
Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844)

Way, Feeling, Nature

“In definitional terms, a process is simply a structured, measured set of activities designed to produce a specific output for a particular customer or market. It implies a strong emphasis on how work is done within an organization, in contrast to a product focus’s emphasis on what. A process is thus a specific ordering of work activities across time and space, with a beginning and an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs: a structure for action.”

Thomas H. Davenport (1954) American academic

Process Innovation: Reengineering Work through Information Technology, 1993

Strong, Time

“He has no manners—he just has customs.”

Addison Mizner (1872–1933) American architect

From his sketchbook

“We agree to recognise Lithuanian independence on condition that the desire of the Lithuanians for a military convention and a customs, monetary and postal union with Germany, communicated to us some time ago by a Lithuanian delegation, still remains. For to be candid, the idea of full independence for these peripheral countries seems to me to be purely theoretical and impracticable…The whole development of world politics shows that we have not only great and powerful individual countries like Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, but associations of States fighting against each other…I do not believe in Wilson's universal League of Nations, I think that after the peace it will burst like a soap bubble. Great and powerful complexes of nations with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, armies of millions of men and exports amounting to thousands of millions, will be confronting each other. In the circumstances such small fractional nationalities will not be able to exist in complete independence, without seeking to lean on one side or the other. Just as there is no independent Belgium in the sense that it gravitates towards one side or the other, so it is not possible to conceive of a completely independent Lithuania, Balticum or Poland without that provisio.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

Men, World, Peace, Communication

“Against all these assertions Grotius published to the world a demonstration that no such rights could exist. His whole argument was mainly a development of two postulates. The first of these was that the right of nations to communicate with one another had been universally recognized; that it was based on a fundamental law of humanity; that the liberty of the sea being necessary to enable nations to communicate with one another, it could not be taken away by any power whatever. The second was that every attempt to make an ocean highway a monopoly of any single nation is forbidden by the immensity of the sea, its lack of stability, its want of fixed limits. This argument in places seemed thin. The book [Mare Liberum], after the custom of the time, was filled with an array—far more than sufficient—of learned citations; but its most significant feature—that which went to make it the herald of a new epoch—was that it took its stand upon the inalienable rights of mankind,—that it mainly deduced these rights neither from revelation nor from national enactments, but from natural law as ascertained by human reason.”

Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) American politician

Source: Seven Great Statesmen in the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (1915), p. 61

Books, World, Law, Communication

“Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Cannibalism
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Feeling, Country

“What is to be the nature of the domestic legislation of the future? (Hear, hear.) I cannot help thinking that it will be more directed to what are called social subjects than has hitherto been the case.—How to promote the greater happiness of the masses of the people (hear, hear), how to increase their enjoyment of life (cheers), that is the problem of the future; and just as there are politicians who would occupy all the world and leave nothing for the ambition of anybody else, so we have their counterpart at home in the men who, having already annexed everything that is worth having, expect everybody else to be content with the crumbs that fall from their table. If you will go back to the origin of things you will find that when our social arrangements first began to shape themselves every man was born into the world with natural rights, with a right to a share in the great inheritance of the community, with a right to a part of the land of his birth. (Cheers.) But all these rights have passed away. The common rights of ownership have disappeared. Some of them have been sold; some of them have been given away by people who had no right to dispose of them; some of them have been lost through apathy and ignorance; some have been stolen by fraud (cheers); and some have been acquired by violence. Private ownership has taken the place of these communal rights, and this system has become so interwoven with our habits and usages, it has been so sanctioned by law and protected by custom, that it might be very difficult and perhaps impossible to reverse it. But then, I ask, what ransom will property pay for the security which it enjoys? What substitute will it find for the natural rights which have ceased to be recognized?”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech to the Birmingham Artisans' Association at Birmingham Town Hall (5 January 1885), quoted in ‘Mr. Chamberlain At Birmingham.’, The Times (6 January 1885), p. 7.
1880s

Life, Men, Happiness, People

“[These entrepreneurs] were writing their stories in a subgenre of contemporary fiction, the business plan, and populating them with characters endowed with deeply implausible personalities, an oversight which would eventually be punished not by a scathing review, … but by a lack of custom.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 287.

Business, Personality

“When a customer asks what no one else has ever asked, pay close attention.”

Ron Kaufman (1956) American author and consultant

Lift Me UP! Service With A Smile (2005)

“Sport carries on without deviation the mechanical tradition of furnishing relief and distraction to the worker after he has finished his work proper so that he is at no time independent of one technique or another. In sport the citizen of the technical society finds the same spirit, criteria, morality, actions and objectives—in short, all the technical laws and customs—which he encounters in office or factory.”

Jacques Ellul book The Technological Society

Source: The Technological Society (1954), p. 384

Law, Sport, Time

“Only the scenario writers are exempt. These are tied between the tails of two spirited Caucasian ponies, which are then driven off in opposite directions. This custom is called "a conference."”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

"Strictly from Hunger", The Most of S. J. Perelman (1992) pp. 47-48

“He learned this much selling cars: offer the customer something he doesn't want, to make what he half-wants look better.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Cars, Learning

“My troubles started there. It blighted my personality permanently. I have spent all my emotional life searching for my grandfather and in my formative years no one was there to take his place.
It is the custom up there in Fraserburgh that when there is a death in a household they draw the blinds and curtains. When my grandfather died it seemed that these blinds had been drawn across my life… Relatives would pretend that he had gone to a 'better place'. 'Why', I thought, 'should he go to a better place and not take me with him?”

Dennis Nilsen (1945–2018) British serial killer

'So death was a nice thing,' I thought. 'Then why does it make me miserable?'
As quoted by Brian Masters (2011), Killing for Company, Random House, p. 46, ISBN 1446428737

Life, Death, Search, Drawing

“Wearing silver boots and a hat, armbands and a smile, he whipped out his paintbrush, so to speak, and in 20 minutes painted pictures of his customers with a flourish - while a fascinated crowd gathered, some gaping in disbelief.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Barbara Cole, Putting fun back into sex, Daily News, South Africa, 8 February 2008, 5, Independent Online]
About

Smile, Painting

“…the importance of recovering the customs and the institutions of the past thus inaugurating the archaeological approach to art”

Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906) Indian painter

Varma spoke on the occasion of the exhibition of his painting of the Sabine Woman who were supposed to have inspired him .[Mitter, Partha, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850-1922: Occidental Orientations, http://books.google.com/books?id=9mRTtkri8E0C&pg=PA406, 1994, Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-44354-8, 411]

Art, Past

“They [the previous chiefs of old] looked after the island, the fish, the turtles. They watched and did things that were good for the people…I have been to Hawaii, to Saipan, to Guam, to Tahiti, to Los Angeles. Don't they see that soon, very soon, change will crash on this island like a wave? […] I am afraid of what's happening to my island. […] I think money will break this island. Now on Woleai, Lamotrek, Pulusuk, and Puluwat, too, people fish in their motorboats and ask for money when they divide the catch. This was never our custom. In our custom everybody eats, not just those with money.”

Mau Piailug (1932–2010) Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal and a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wa…

The Last Navigator (1987)

Money, People, Angels, Thinking

“Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest.”

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

Attributed

“I am always surprised that the information profession, so quick to sing the virtues of literature search for its customers, pays so little attention to its own history. I have been told: “our problems are different from those of the past”. It is not so the problems are often the same, only the technical means available for solution may be new. The thinking and experience of the past can often shed light on the present.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

B.C. Vickery (2008), "Emanuel Goldberg and his knowledge machine by Michael Buckland". Book review, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 40(2), p. 144.

History, Search, Literature, Problem

“Antony, however, according to his custom, returned alone to his own cell, increased his discipline, and sighed daily as he thought of the mansions in Heaven, having his desire fixed on them, and pondering over the shortness of man's life. And he used to eat and sleep, and go about all other bodily necessities with shame when he thought of the spiritual faculties of the soul. So often, when about to eat with any other hermits, recollecting the spiritual food, he begged to be excused, and departed far off from them, deeming it a matter for shame if he should be seen eating by others.”

Athanasius of Alexandria (295–373) Patriarch of Alexandria

§ 45
Life of Anthony of Egypt

Life, Food, Soul, Sleep

“I managed to become a member of a government cabinet, of the first Bolshevik cabinet in the years 1917/18. I am also the first woman ever to have been appointed ambassadress, a post which I occupied for three years and from which I resigned of my own free will. This may serve to prove that woman certainly can stand above the conventional conditions of the age. The World War, the stormy, revolutionary spirit now prevalent in the world in all areas has greatly contributed to blunting the edge of the unhealthy, overheated double standard of morality. We are already accustomed not to make overly taxing demands, for example, on actresses and women belonging to the free professions in matters relating to their married life. Diplomacy, however, is a caste which more than any other maintains its old customs, usages, traditions, and, above all, its strict ceremonial. The fact that a woman, a "free," a single woman was recognized in this position without opposition shows that the time has come when all human beings will be equally appraised according to their activity and their general human dignity.”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

Life, Women, War, Age

“He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess…the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leads to standstill or to anarchy.”

Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941) German World Chess Champion and grandmaster, contract bridge player, mathematician, and philosopher

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 338

Education, Dead

“The concept of the value network — the context within which a firm identifies and responds to customers' needs, solves problems, procures input, reacts to competitors, and strives for profit — is central to this synthesis.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Source: 1990s, The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), p. 31

Problem

“Behind her chair, from a wall covered in a very expensive velvet-flock paper, a portrait of her grandfather looked down. He had been an Episcopalian bishop, but the picture showed him in the costume of a New England gentleman keeping up the Old English custom of riding to hounds: red coat, brown boots, distinguished with a white dog-collar and black silk front.
Hugh referred to him as being dressed to kill.
The salad was replaced—though Hugh had sampled only a mouthful of his—by a dish of cold fish with mayonnaise. He didn’t even touch this course. He was suddenly afraid of it because it had come from the sea.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

February “DISGRACE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Dogs, Fish, Sea

“I have been saying this for some time, but customers are not interested in grand games with higher-quality graphics and sound and epic stories. Only people who do not know the videogame business would advocate the release of next-generation machines when people are not interested in cutting-edge technologies.”

Hiroshi Yamauchi (1927–2013) Japanese businessman

Prior to the announcement of the Nintendo Revolution "Top 10 Tuesday: Wildest Statements Made by Industry Veterans" ign.com http://www.ign.com/articles/2006/03/14/top-10-tuesday-wildest-statements-made-by-industry-veteransquote-

People, Game, Business, Time

“According to Mulla Ahmad, "the main object of levying of Jiziyah on them (the Hindus) is their humiliation… God established (the custom of realising) Jiziyah for their dishonour. The object is their humiliation and the (establishment of) prestige and dignity of the Muslims."6”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Source: Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999), Chapter 4

God

“I had also got used to the idea that here [in the UK] you can make quips all the time and in America that can be very dangerous. I wrote about it in one of the books. Once I was going through customs and immigration in Boston, and the guy said as I went past "Any fruit or vegetables?" and I said "OK, I'll have four pounds of potatoes if they are fresh" and it was like he was going to take me off and pin me to the floor.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

Books, Guy, Idea, Time

“In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it’s a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

In an interview on the BBC arts program 'Omnibus', (1990); as quoted in 'Antoni Tàpies a Painter With Textures, Dies at 88', by William Grimes, in 'The New York Times', 8 Febr, 2012, p. B17
1981 - 1990

World, Art, Thinking, Sense

“Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"Duty Before Security", The Smart Set, June 1919 http://books.google.com/books?id=ySscAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Women+have+a+hard+time+of+it+in+this+world+They+are+oppressed+by+man+made+laws+man+made+social+customs+masculine+egoism+the+delusion+of+masculine+superiority+Their+one+comfort+is+the+assurance+that+even+though+it+may+be+impossible+to+prevail+against+man+it+is+always+possible+to+enslave+and+torture+a+man%22&pg=RA1-PA49#v=onepage <br class="br">"The Incomparable Buzzsaw", Prejudices: Second Series, Ch. 10 http://books.google.com/books?id=hy47AAAAYAAJ&q=%22Women+have+a+hard+time+of+it+in+this+world+They+are+oppressed+by+man+made+laws+man+made+social+customs+masculine+egoism+the+delusion+of+masculine+superiority+Their+one+comfort+is+the+assurance+that+even+though+it+may+be+impossible+to+prevail+against+man+it+is+always+possible+to+enslave+and+torture+a+man%22&pg=PA237#v=onepage (1920) <br class="br">1910s

Women, World, Law, Time

“Out of respect for custom he treats me as if all women were equally worthless. He gives custom more respect than he gives me.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Women

“The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book I, Ch. 22. Of Custom
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Law, Nature

“3733. Once in Use, and ever after a Custom.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Letter to the Advocates of Woman’s Suffrage (1870).
1870s

Women, Change

“It was still the custom of the countryside to build with local materials produced as close to the selected site as possible, for transport was difficult, even the best of country roads being more fitted for horseback traffic rather than heavy loads.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

Source: Dashpers http://www.dashper.net.nz/dashpers.htm (unfinished, unpublished novel), Chapter Two - A House is built

Country

“The Christian.. cannot dismiss the philosophy and science of his society as though they were external to him; they are in him. … He cannot rid himself of political beliefs and economic customs by rejecting the more or less external institutions; these customs and beliefs have taken up residence in his mind.”

H. Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) American theologian

Source: Christ and Culture (1951), p. 69

Science

“Product and service quality can be defined as the total composite product and service characteristics of marketing, engineering, manufacturing, and maintenance through which the product and service in use will meet the expectations of the customer.”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Variant: Product quality can then be defined as: The composite product characteristics of engineering and manufacturing that determine the degree to which the product, in use, will meet the expectations of the customer.
Source: Total Quality Control, 1983, p. 7

“The Englishman falls on the ideas and customs of other nations like a lump of granite in the water: and there he stays, a weighty encumbrance, with his Bible, his sports and his prejudices, his etiquette and selfishness – completely unaccommodating to those among whom he lives. That is why he remains, in the countries where he has lived for centuries, a foreigner.”

José Maria Eça de Queiroz book Cartas de Inglaterra

O inglês cai sobre as ideias e as maneiras dos outros como uma massa de granito na água: e ali fica pesando, com a sua Bíblia, os seus clubes, os seus sports, os seus prejuízos, a sua etiqueta, o seu egoísmo – fazendo na circulação da vida alheia um incomodativo tropeço. É por isso que nos países onde vive há séculos é ele ainda o estrangeiro.
"Os Ingleses no Egipto"; "The English in Egypt" p. 160.
Cartas de Inglaterra (1879–82)

Idea, Sport, Water, Selfishness

“The future lies with those companies who see the poor as their customers.”

C.K. Prahalad (1941–2010) Indian academic

C.K. Prahlad, cited in: Bibek Debroy, ‎Amir Ullah Khan (2004), Integrating the Rural Poor Into Markets. p. 17

Future

“The ‘good 10 percent’ of American products comes out of big-idea organizations that don’t believe in talking to the customer. They’re run by passionate maniacs who make everybody's life miserable until they get what they want.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

Quoted by Tom Peters, in Design Mindfullness, September 8, 2013 http://www.tompeters.com/docs/Design.pdf,

Life, Idea, Passion

“I knew im, she knew im, e knew im, we all knew im.’ After this paradigm, which impressed his hearers, he paused. ‘E was a customer ere. Not perhaps one of the best customers. Not like Roger Alliwell ere oo drinks whisky to the tune of near one bottle a day, which is good for the ouse and, as far as we can see, does imself no arm. But e was a customer, loyal to the ouse, regular in attendance, and that’s all we ask of any man or woman for that matter. Well, now e’s gone. We’re sorry e’s gone. You’re sorry e’s gone. I’m sorry e’s gone. And we can’t say much more than that. Now the question is: is e gone to a better place? I don’t know the answer to that, nor do you, nor does she. Perhaps e knows,’ said Ted, shrugging towards the vicar, ‘because it’s is job to know. But the rest of us don’t know. Right. But I say this. E done is best for all. Never a ard word come out of that man’s art. Right. Well loved e was and for all is faults we would love im still, if e was still alive. But e’s dead now and we wish im all the best in is new destination. And I can’t say no fairer than that.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Love, Art, Drink, Question

“Total quality control is an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance, and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organization so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels which allow full customer satisfaction.”

Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) American businessman

Cited in: D.H. Stamatis (1999) TQM Engineering Handbook, p. 12
Total Quality Control, 1983

Effort

“Agile development methodologies promise higher customer satisfaction, lower defect rates, faster development times and a solution to rapidly changing requirements. Plan-driven approaches promise predictability, stability, and high assurance. However, both approaches have shortcomings that, if left unaddressed, can lead to project failure. The challenge is to balance the two approaches to take advantage of their strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Barry Boehm and Richard Turner. " Observations on balancing discipline and agility http://people.cs.aau.dk/~jeremy/SOE2011/resources/Boehm.pdf." Agile Development Conference, 2003. ADC 2003. Proceedings of the. IEEE, 2003.

Failure, Change, Time

“There are a large number of religious establishments ["convents "] which they call khanqahs, and the nobles vie with one another in building them. Each of these is set apart for a separate school of darwishes, mostly Persians, who are men of good education and adepts in the mystical doctrines. Each has a superior and a doorkeeper and their affairs are admirably organized. They have many special customs one of which has to do with their food. The steward of the house comes in the morning to the darwishes, each of whom indicates what food he desires, and when they assemble for meals, each person is given his bread and soup in a separate dish, none sharing with another. They eat twice a day. They are each given winter clothes and summer clothes, and a monthly allowance of from twenty to thirty dirhams. Every Thursday night they receive sugar cakes, soap to wash their clothes, the price of a bath, and oil for their lamps. These men are celibate; the married men have separate convents.”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Men, Education, School, Food

“To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 23
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Error

“It may be suspected that the custom of employing a divine man or animal as a public scapegoat is much more widely diffused than appears from the examples cited.”

James Frazer book The Golden Bough

Source: The Golden Bough (1890), Chapter 57, Public Scapegoats.

Appearance, Animals

“The Persian art is great, I feel compelled to tell you this my Mouguch [pet name for his wife], because it pleases me so much. I adore those sick and lovely Persian – civilization which reveals there ancient custom's to me, which is deeply impregnated with my own.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1942 - 1948, Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 356: in a letter to his wife Mougouch Gorky, late Summer 1947

Love, Art, Feeling

“The good taste we speak of, which is that of literature, is not limited to what we call the sciences, but extends itself imperceptibly to other arts, such as architecture, painting, sculpture, and music. 'Tis the same discerning faculty which introduces universally the same elegance, the same symmetry, and the same order in the disposition of the parts; which inclines us to a noble simplicity, to natural beauties, and a judicious choice of ornaments. On the other hand, the depravation of taste in arts has been always a mark and consequence of the depravation of taste in literature. … The good taste of literature reaches also to public customs, and the manner of living. An habit of consulting the best rules upon one subject, naturally leads to the doing it also upon others.”

Charles Rollin (1661–1741) French historian

The Method of Teaching and Studying the Belles Lettres, Vol. I, The Third Edition (1742), Part II, Ch. 2: 'General Reflections upon what is called good Taste', pp. 45–46

Beauty, Art, Music, Literature

“With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection. The more efficient causes of progress seem to consist of a good education during youth whilst the brain is impressible, and of a high standard of excellence, inculcated by the ablest and best men, embodied in the laws, customs and traditions of the nation, and enforced by public opinion. It should, however, be borne in mind, that the enforcement of public opinion depends on our appreciation of the approbation and disapprobation of others; and this appreciation is founded on our sympathy, which it can hardly be doubted was originally developed through natural selection as one of the most important elements of the social instincts.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter V: "On the Development of the Intellectual and Moral Faculties during Primeval and Civilised Times" (second edition, 1874) page 143 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=166&itemID=F944&viewtype=image <br class="br">The Descent of Man (1871)

Men, Youth, Education, Law

“The old Romans had a custom which survived even into my lifetime. They would add to the opening words of a letter: "If you are well, it is well; I also am well." Persons like ourselves would do well to say. "If you are studying philosophy, it is well." For this is just what "being well" means. Without philosophy the mind is sickly.”
Mos antiquis fuit, usque ad meam servatus aetatem, primis epistulae verbis adicere 'si vales bene est, ego valeo'. Recte nos dicimus 'si philosopharis, bene est'. Valere enim hoc demum est. Sine hoc aeger est animus.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Mos antiquis fuit, usque ad meam servatus aetatem, primis epistulae verbis adicere 'si vales bene est, ego valeo'. Recte nos dicimus 'si philosopharis, bene est'.
Valere enim hoc demum est. Sine hoc aeger est animus.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XV

Study, Personality

“Adolf Hitler was the third son and the fourth of six children of Alois Hitler (born Schicklgruber) (1837–1903), a minor customs official, and Klara Pölzl (1860-1907), his second cousin, and third wife. Alois was born illegitimate and for the first thirty-nine years of his life bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber. The name Hitler appears in the maternal and paternal line. Both Hitler's grandmother on his mother's side and his grandfather on his father's side were named Hitler, or rather variants of it, for the family name was variously written as Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler. Because Adolf's mother was his father's second cousin, an episcopal dispensation had to be obtained for the marriage.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960)

Life, Marriage, Children, Family

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