Quotes about enterprise
page 4

“It does not matter whether the worker wants responsibility or not, …The enterprise must demand it of him.”

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

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 304

“It is not necessary to conclude that the managerial groups have assumed complete domination over the concerns in which they are found, although this may be the fact in various instances, but only to reckon with the undoubted truth that the managerial factor in public and private enterprise has taken on a far more significant role than before.
This new role which has puzzled and alarmed the "owners" in industry and the policy-makers in government is not, however, primarily a power role, but a specialization of the evolving and complex character which we now confront in our civilization.
We may, of course, always raise the question-not in point of fact always raised-of what the relation of these managers is to the t! nds of the state or the ends of other groups and to the special techniques of the particular group and to its special social composition. In the complex power pattern of organization how are these managerial element-related to the organization of the consent of the governed, so vital a force in the life of every form of human association? In the struggle for advantage and mastery these larger factors may, indeed, pass unnoticed, but from the point of view of the student of politics and government, they are of supreme importance in judging the trends and possibilities of managerial evolution in modem society.”

Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) American political scientist

Source: Systematic Politics, 1943, p. 163-4 ; as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 15-16

Life, Truth, Question

“When software applications became larger and larger, people such as Shaw and Garlan coined the term software architecture. This notion of architecture deals with the key design principles underlying software artefacts. In the 1980s and 1990s, people became aware that the development of information technology (IT) should be done in conjunction with the development of the context in which it was used. This led to the identification of the so-called business/IT alignment problem. Solving the business/IT alignment problem requires enterprises to align human, organizational, informational, and technological aspects of systems. Quite early on, the term architecture was also introduced as a means to further alignment, and thus analyzes and solves business? IT alignment problems, Recently, the awareness emerged that alignment between business an IT is not enough, there are many more aspects in the enterprise in need of alignment. This has led to the use of the term architecture at the enterprise level: enterprise architecture.”

Erik Proper (1967) Dutch computer scientist

Martin Op 't Land, Erik Proper (2009) Enterprise Architecture: Creating Value by Informed Governance. p. 26-27

People, Business, Problem

“Taoist yogis sought to harness the Tao directly, drawing it first into their own heart-minds and then beaming it to others. Yogis who managed this feat would for the most part be unnoticed, but their life-giving enterprise did more for the community than the works of other benefactors.”

Huston Smith book The World's Religions

The World's Religions (1991)

Life, Communication, Heart, Parting

“Socialism is, in its essence, an attack not only upon British enterprise, but upon the right of the ordinary man or woman to breathe freely without having a harsh, clumsy, tyrannical hand clapped across their mouths and nostrils. A Free Parliament—look at that—a Free Parliament is odious to the Socialist doctrinaire.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Broadcast (4 June 1945) for the 1945 general election, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Never Despair': Winston S. Churchill, 1945–1965 (London: Heinemann, 1988), p. 33
The Second World War (1939–1945)

“We…have enfranchised the whole adult and labouring population of these islands, saints and sinners alike, and are attempting the immense double enterprise not only of making each citizen count as one and an end in himself, but also of asking him to share effectively and intelligently in the responsibilities of municipal citizenship and imperial government…Democracy is still an aspiration and not a fact…What we have achieved is a democratic framework of government, which is not the same thing as a democratic society. We have perfected the machinery of popular government, and one immediate danger is that it may be seized and exploited in undemocratic ways for democratic ends. In the name of the sovereign people deeds may be done as cruel as those done by any Greek tyrant or mediaeval despot. It is terribly easy for those in power to confuse justice with the interest of the strong; but oppression of the few by the many is just as ugly as its opposite.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 39-40.
1930

People, Justice, Way, Democracy

“The principal contradiction within capitalism from the outset was that between the capitalists and the workers. To keep their system going, the capitalists had constantly to step up the rate of exploitation of their workers. At the same time, European workers were gaining increasing mastery over the means of production in the factories and mines, and they were learning to work collectively in big enterprises and within their own trade union structures. If the bourgeoisie continued to deprive them of the major part of the fruits of their own labor and to oppress them socially and politically, then those two classes were set on a collision path. Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, Marx had predicted class collision would come in the form of revolution in which workers would emerge victorious. The capitalists were terribly afraid of that possibility, knowing full well that they themselves had seized power from the feudal landlord class by means of revolution.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 314.

Learning, Time, Victory, Parting

“An individual who has survived physical death can if he wishes recreate any portion of his own past as it was. He can recreate any portion of his own past in any way he wishes, changing his own actions within it if he so chooses, combining and reforming the entire composition. Such a procedure is usually a dead-end enterprise. The others involved are vivid hallucinations, and he may not realize this.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 396, Page 197
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 8

Death, Way, Change, Past

“St Xavier had come to the East representing both the Pope ‑ as a Legate ‑ and the King as an inspector of missions. As missionary work was a State enterprise charged to the Crown's revenues in Portugal, this identification of national, interests with religious activity should not be a matter of surprise.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

“Because of their age — long training in human relations — for that is what feminine intuition really is — women have a special contribution to make to any group enterprise, and I feel it is up to them to contribute the kinds of awareness that few men… have incorporated through their education.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1970s, Blackberry Winter, 1972, Ch. 14

Women, Men, Age, Education

“Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.”

Thomas Keneally book Schindler's Ark

Prologue.
Schindler's Ark (1982)

“Enterprise engineering is an integrated set of disciplines for building an enterprise, its processes, and systems.”

James Martin (author) (1933–2013) British information technology consultant and writer

Source: The great transition (1995), p. 58; As cited in: Jan Hoogervorst (2009, p. 9)

“As we speak, you see the turmoil in Greece, Spain, Italy, and other European nations because of the consequences of too many entitlements, too much bureaucracy, too much governmental interference with the free enterprise system. You can look at the state of California, which is on a pathway to destruction because they expanded government too much, thinking that there would always be someone to pay for it.”

Greg Abbott (1957) 48th Governor of Texas

Greg Abbott’s War https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/greg-abbotts-war/ (September 2012)

Thinking

“For myself I say deliberately, it is better to have a millstone tied round the neck and be thrown into the sea than to share the enterprises of those to whom the world has turned, and will turn, because they minister to its weaknesses and cover up the awful realities which it shudders to look at.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Aphorism #367, in Aphorisms and Reflections (1907) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/Book/Aphor.html edited by Henrietta A. Huxley, his widow 1890s

World, Reality, Sea

“Soon, the enterprise of the information age will find itself immobilized if it does not have the ability to tap the information resources within and without its boundaries.”

John F. Sowa (1940) artificial intelligence researcher

Zachman & Sowa (1992, p. 613), cited in: Nik Bessis, Fatos Xhafa (2011) Next Generation Data Technologies for Collective Computational Intelligence. p. 84

Age

“Having been connected with industry during my entire life, it seems eminently proper that I should turn back, in part, the proceeds of that activity with the hope of promoting a broader as well as a better understanding of the economic principles and national policies which have characterized American enterprise down through the years.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Alfred P. Sloan (1936); Cited in: " OBITUARY : Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Dead at 90; G.M. Leader and Philanthropist http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0523.html," the New York Times, February 18, 1966. This article comments: Toward the end of the year [1936] Mr. Sloan made a substantial foray into philanthropy by endowing the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation with $10-million.

Life, Hope, Understanding, Parting

“The fact that this enterprise is being begun in one of our new states not yet great in population, not largely developed in its resources, discloses that the old American spirit still goes where our people go, still dominates their lives, still inspires them to deeds of devotion and sacrifice. It is but another illustration of the determination of our people to use their material resources to minister to their spiritual life. This memorial will be another national shrine to which future generations will repair to declare their continuing allegiance to independence, to self-government, to freedom and to economic justice. It is an inspiring phase of American life that men are willing to devote their energies to the erection of a memorial of this nature. Money spent for such a purpose is certain of adequate returns in the nature of increased public welfare.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Address at the Black Hills (1927)

Life, Men, Money, People

“History, as well as life itself, is complicated; neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Page 349
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)

Life, History

“In its new aspect the corporation is a means whereby the wealth of innumerable individuals has been concentrated into huge aggregates and whereby control over this wealth has been surrendered to a unified direction. The power attendant upon such concentration has brought forth princes of industry, whose position in the community is yet to be defined. The surrender of control over their wealth by investors has effectively broken the old property relationships and has raise the problem of defining these relationship anew. The direction of industry by persons other than those who have ventured their wealth has raised the question of the motive force back of such direction and the effective distribution of the returns from business enterprise.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: The Modern Corporation and Private Property. 1932/1967, p. 2 (1967, p. 4)

Communication, Motivation, Question, Business

“The power of the United States depended heavily on its pale empire of ideas, attitudes and innovations. Its ideas alighted effortlessly on foreign ground, irrespective of who owned the ground. Much of its influence came from such innovations as the telephone, electricity, aircraft and the cheap car, nuclear weapons and spacecraft, computers and the Internet. Its influence came through jazz, cartoons, Hollywood, television and popular culture. Its influence came from an excitement about technology and economic change, and a belief in incentives and individual enterprise. It was also the most ardent missionary for the creed of democracy. While military and economic might was vital to the success of the United States, the power of its pale empire of ideas was probably even more pervasive.”

Geoffrey Blainey book A Short History of the World

A Short History of the World (2000)

Cars, Democracy, Idea, Change

“This year we must continue to improve the quality of American life. Let us fulfill and improve the great health and education programs of last year, extending special opportunities to those who risk their lives in our armed forces. I urge the House of Representatives to complete action on three programs already passed by the Senate—the Teacher Corps, rent assistance, and home rule for the District of Columbia. In some of our urban areas we must help rebuild entire sections and neighborhoods containing, in some cases, as many as 100,000 people. Working together, private enterprise and government must press forward with the task of providing homes and shops, parks and hospitals, and all the other necessary parts of a flourishing community where our people can come to live the good life. I will offer other proposals to stimulate and to reward planning for the growth of entire metropolitan areas. Of all the reckless devastations of our national heritage, none is really more shameful than the continued poisoning of our rivers and our air. We must undertake a cooperative effort to end pollution in several river basins, making additional funds available to help draw the plans and construct the plants that are necessary to make the waters of our entire river systems clean, and make them a source of pleasure and beauty for all of our people. To attack and to overcome growing crime and lawlessness, I think we must have a stepped-up program to help modernize and strengthen our local police forces. Our people have a right to feel secure in their homes and on their streets—and that right just must be secured. Nor can we fail to arrest the destruction of life and property on our highways.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life, People, Health, Pleasure

“The insights in the book come from a series of research projects exploring enterprise architecture in more than 200 companies where our focus was on IT government from 1995 to 2005.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Source: Enterprise architecture as strategy, 2006, p. ix

Books

“The sciences of today are business enterprises run on business principles. Research in large institutes is not guided by Truth and Reason but by the most rewarding fashion, and the great minds of today increasingly turn to where the money is - which means military matters.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 102.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

Money, Truth, Fashion, Business

“The rate of change in the business world is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up over the next few decades. Enterprises everywhere will be presented with even more terrible hazards and wonderful opportunities, driven by the globalization of the economy along with related technological and social trends”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Source: The Heart of Change, (2002), p. 130 (in 21013 edition)

World, Business, Change, Speed

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Contributions to Modern Economics (1978), Chapter 3, Obstacles to Full Employment, p. 27 (See also: General Motors)

Error

“Science for its part speaks against the special importance of any object of science, including human beings. … Science as opposed to religion recognizes nothing sacred either outside man or within him. But collectively, science is the assertion of man over non-man, surely an unembarrassed claim to importance and rule. Yet as individuals, scientists are anonymous factors in the scientific enterprise, each one substitutable for another. For all science cares, scientists could as well be numbered as named.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

Religion, Science, Parting

“If our commitment to remain an open society is one of the pillars of our nationhood, the other is our commitment to remain an open economy. An economy that guarantees the freedom of enterprise, respects individual creativity, and at the same time mobilizes public investment for social infrastructure and the development of human capabilities. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to suggest that these are the principles to which all countries will increasingly want to adhere. In relating to the world, we must never lose sight of this vital aspect of our Nationhood.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

As quoted in "Speech by Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh at India Today Conclave, New Delhi" http://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/2464/, Ministry of External Affairs (India) (25 February 2005) 2001-2005

World, Freedom, Time, Country

“The success of any great moral enterprise does not depend upon numbers.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Vol. III, p. 473 - I have read this page twice and cannot find this quote.
William Lloyd Garrison 1805-1879 (1885)

Success, Dependency

“No man can tell what the future may bring forth, and small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.”

Démosthenés (-384–-322 BC) ancient greek statesman and orator

Ad Leptinum 162, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations (Classical) (1897) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 511

Future

“One of these is an increasing awareness of the benefits to our economy, particularly in terms of investment and enterprise, both local and from overseas, of not having the inquisitorial type of tax system inevitably associated with a full income tax. Another is that even I, who have always believed in the vigour of our economy under our present tax regime, have been surprised by the growth of revenue generated at our present tax rates.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 29, 1967, page 248.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

“In my country at present, women have no participation in the higher levels of government and none whatsoever in the judiciary. Even within the democratic movement only 14 out of the 485 MPs elected in 1990 were women -- all from my own party, the National League for Democracy. These 14 women represent less than 3 percent of the total number of successful candidates. They, like their male colleagues, have not been permitted to take office since the outcome of those elections has been totally ignored. Yet the very high performance of women in our educational system and in the management of commercial enterprises proves their enormous potential to contribute to the betterment of society in general. Meanwhile our women have yet to achieve those fundamental rights of free expression, association and security of life denied also to their menfolk.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Life, Women, Education, Democracy

“Business System Planning (BSP) and Business Information Control Study (BICS) are two information system planning study methodologies that specifically employ enterprise analysis techniques in the course of their analysis. Underlying the BSP and BICS analysis are the data management problems that result from systems design approaches that optimize the management of technology at the expense of managing the data.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Business Systems Planning and Business Information Control Study: A comparison, 1982, p. 31

Optimism, Business, Problem, Study

“A framework as it applies to enterprises is simply a logical structure for classifying and organising the descriptive representations of an enterprise that are significant to the management of the enterprise as well as to the development of the enterprise's system [with the aim of] rationalising the carious concepts and specifications in order to provide for clarity of professional communication, to allow for improving and integrating development methodologies and tools, and to establish credibility and confidence in the investment of systems resources.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Zachman cited in: Egon Berghout and Dan Remenyi, Egon Berghout (2003) Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Information Technology Evaluation - 2003. p. 503
In this quote the "framework" refers to the Zachman Framework

Confidence, Communication

“It is a false doctrine that labor must assume all management. Those best suited for management must manage, whatever may lie their source. Every industry is searching eagerly for brains. My observation convinces me that most business firms pledged to welfare work are interested in their employed; they often remain open in order to protect those who serve them, even though it might be more profitable for them to close down. People need to stop to think, when the laborer clamors against the unorganized labor market, whether the menace is from the immigrant or from some other source. For no business enterprise wishes its help to leave that it may employ others; the turnover is one of the most expensive things industry has to face. The expense of breaking in new help is appalling.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

People, Lie, Search, Business

“It had been the winter of 1835-6 that the ship, Alert, in her voyage for hides on the remote and almost unknown coast of California, floated into the vast solitude of the bay of San Francisco. All around was the stillness of nature. One vessel, a Russian, lay at anchor there, but during our whole stay not a sail came or went. Our trade was with remote missions, which sent hides to us in launches manned by their Indians… Over a region far beyond our sight there was no other human habitations, expect that an enterprising Yankee, years in advance of his time, had put up, on the rising ground above the landing, a shanty of rough boards, where he carried on a very small retail trade between the hide ships and the Indians. On the evening of Saturday, the thirteenth of August, 1859 (I again sailed into) the entrance to San Francisco, (now) the great center of worldwide commerce.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Nature, Solitude, Winter, Time

“Management is the activity which plans, organizes, and controls the operations of the basic elements of men, materials, machines, methods, money, and markets, providing direction and coordination, and giving leadership to human efforts, so as to achieve the thought objectives of the enterprise.”

George R. Terry (1909–1979)

As cited in Wren & Bedeian (1972;411)
Principles of Management, 1960

Men, Money, Effort

“Private enterprise manages better all that to which it is equal. Anarchism declares that private enterprise, whether individual or cooperative, is equal to all the undertakings of society.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

Anarchism & American Traditions (1908)

“There are several world view assumptions present in enterprise engineering. The first assumption is that the enterprise can be viewed as a complex system. This is necessary because systems in organizations are systems of organized complexity. Complexity is the result of the multiplicity and intricacy of man’s interaction with other components of the system. Secondly, the enterprise is to be viewed as a system of processes. These processes are engineered both individually and holistically. The final assumption is the use of engineering rigor in transforming the enterprise. The enterprise engineering paradigm views the enterprise as a complex system of processes that can be engineered to accomplish specific organizational objectives. In the Enterprise Engineering paradigm, the enterprise is viewed as a complex system of processes that can be engineered to accomplish specific organizational objectives.”

Donald H. Liles (1947) American engineer

Source: Enterprise modeling within an enterprise engineering framework (1996), p. 993

World

“Actually, a kind of state socialism seemed to be gaining more and more ground, furthered by many of the [Nazi] party functionaries. They had already managed to have all plants owned by the state distributed among the various party districts and subordinated to their own district enterprises… Our very system of industrial direction in the interests of war production could easily become the framework for a state-socialist economic order. The result was that our organization, the more efficient it became, was itself providing the party leaders with the instruments for the doom of private enterprise.”

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

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 359

War

“Enterprise engineering is rooted in both the organizational sciences and the information system sciences. In our current understanding, three concepts are paramount to the theoretical and practical pursuit of enterprise engineering: enterprise ontology, enterprise architecture, and enterprise governance.”

Erik Proper (1967) Dutch computer scientist

Preface
Advances in Enterprise Engineering II (2009)

Understanding, Science

“In the new conditions created by the global economy, the information revolution and the growth of smart technologies, it is more necessary than ever for all companies to be guided by their rich spiritual inheritance, as spiritual enterprises.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 134.

“As I understand the various opinions today: One Justice holds that two-parent notification is unconstitutional (at least in present circumstances) without judicial bypass, but constitutional with bypass […]; four Justices would hold that two-parent notification is constitutional with or without bypass […]; four Justices would hold that two-parent notification is unconstitutional with or without bypass, though the four apply two different standards […]; six Justices hold that one-parent notification with bypass is constitutional, though for two different sets of reasons […]; and three Justices would hold that one-parent notification with bypass is unconstitutional […]. One will search in vain the document we are supposed to be construing for text that provides the basis for the argument over these distinctions and will find in our society’s tradition regarding abortion no hint that the distinctions are constitutionally relevant, much less any indication how a constitutional argument about them ought to be resolved. The random and unpredictable results of our consequently unchanneled individual views make it increasingly evident, Term after Term, that the tools for this job are not to be found in the lawyer’s – and hence not in the judges – workbox. I continue to dissent from this enterprise of devising an Abortion Code, and from the illusion that we have authority to do so.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On whether a state law may require notification of both parents before a minor can obtain an abortion; Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990, concurring in the judgment and dissenting in part), 497 U.S. 417 http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/497/417.html, No. 88-605 ; decided June 25, 1990 1990s

Justice, Search, Understanding, Parent

“On account of their savage nature, the Bedouins are people who plunder and cause damage. They plunder whatever they are able to lay their hands on without having to fight or to expose themselves to danger. They then retreat to their pastures in the desert. They do not attack or fight except in self-defence. Every stronghold or (locality) that seems difficult to attack, they by-pass in favour of some less difficult (enterprise). Tribes that are protected by inaccessible mountains are safe from their mischief and destructiveness. The Bedouins would not cross hills or undergo hardship and danger in order to get to them. Flat territory, on the other hand, falls victim to their looting and prey to their appetite whenever they (have the opportunity of) gaining power over it. Then they raid, plunder, and attack that territory repeatedly, because it is easily (accessible) to them. Eventually, its inhabitants succumb utterly to the Bedouins and then are pushed around by them in accordance with changes of control and shifts in leadership. Eventually, their civilization is wiped out. God has power over His creatures.”

Ibn Khaldun book Muqaddimah

Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal, p. 118, Princeton University Press, 1981.
Muqaddimah (1377)

God, People, Mountain, Nature

“A number of engineers became so-called disciples of Frederick W. Taylor, even though he had passed on to his reward in 1915. A considerable number of engineers took up the so-called scientific management of Frederick Taylor and further embroidered it and publicized themselves as efficiency engineers and management consultants. Henry L. Gantt had been Taylor's assistant at the Midvale Steel and the Bethlehem Steel Company. Gant, were among the many prominent advocates of Taylor's efficiency system with some variations.
Gant, Barth and others tried to start an organization, ' 'The New Machine." ' 'The New Machine" never got off the ground; all of them wrote articles and delivered papers in the engineering societies and management conferences. But their chief purpose was in creating a national image so they could sell their services to large-scale private enterprise as scientific managers and efficiency engineers who would be able to install the system that could extract more productivity from the American worker.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Source: History and Purpose of Technocracy, 1965, p. 7

“Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Fields of Force (1974)

“Information Engineering is the application of an interlocking set of formal techniques for the planning, analysis, design, and construction of information systems on the enterprise wide basis or across a major sector of the enterprise.”

James Martin (author) (1933–2013) British information technology consultant and writer

Source: Information Engineering (1989), p. 1; cited in Karl E. Kurbel (2008) The making of information systems [electronic resource]. p. 176

“Publicity is usually explained and justified as a competitive medium which ultimately benefits the public (the consumer) and the most efficient manufacturers - and thus the national economy. It is closely related to certain ideas about freedom: freedom of choice for the purchaser: freedom of enterprise for the manufacturer. The great hoardings and the publicity neons of the cities of capitalism are the immediate visible sign of "The Free World." For many in Eastern Europe such images in the West sum up what they in the East lack. Publicity, it is thought, offers a free choice.”

John Berger book Ways of Seeing

Source: Ways of Seeing (1972), p. 130

World, Idea, Freedom

“All forms of Zionism hold the perception that a certain extent of anti-Semitism benefits the Zionist enterprise. To put it more sharply, anti-Semitism is the generator and ally of Zionism. Masses of Jews leave their place of residence only when their economic situation and physical safety are undermined. Masses of Jews are shoved to this country rather than being attracted to it. The yearning for the land of Zion and Jerusalem is not strong enough to drive millions of Jews to the country they love and make them hold on to its clods.”

Yaron London (1940) Israeli journalist, actor and songwriter

Why Israel isn’t shocked by anti-Semites in White House (November 21, 2016)

Love, Strong, Country

“So at bottom Foucault's enterprise seems stuck on the horns of a huge epistemological dilemma: if it tells the truth, then all knowledge is suspect in its pretense of objectivity; but in that case, how can the theory itself vouch for its truth? It's like the famous paradox about the Cretean Liar--and Foucault seemed quite unable to get out of it”

José Guilherme Merquior book Foucault

which explains why he didn't even try to face it
Source: Foucault (1985), p. 147

Truth, Knowledge

“Innovation is usually not a gigantic step but a series of small jumps involving various enterprising people whose names are soon forgotten.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

People

“Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

No. 1
Letters On a Regicide Peace (1796)

Country

“The meaning that I have given to the word administration and which has been generally adopted, broadens considerably the field of administrative science. It embraces not only the public service but enterprises of every size and description, of every form and every purpose. All undertakings require planning, organization, command, co-ordination and control, and in order to function properly, all must observe the same general principles. We are no longer confronted with several administrative sciences but with one alone, which can be applied equally well to public and to private affairs and whose principal elements are today summarized in what we term the Administrative Theory.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: The administrative theory in the state, 1923, p. 116

Science

“If we have system in which government is in a position to give large favor - it's human nature to try to get this favor - whether those people are large enterprises, or whether they're small businesses like farmers, or whether they're representatives of any other special group. The only way to prevent that is to force them to engage in competition one with the other.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Milton Friedman - Big Business, Big Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_T0WF-uCWg

People, Way, Business, Nature

“My object in supporting this Motion is, that I may bring to bear upon the legislation of this House those virtues and that talent which have characterised the middle and industrious classes of this country. If you talk of your aristocracy and your traditions, and compel me to talk of the middle and industrious classes, I say it is to them that the glory of this country is owing. You have had your government of aristocracy and tradition; and the worst thing in this country has been its government for the last century and a half. All that has been done to elevate the country has been the work of the middle and industrious classes. Whether in literature, in arts, in science, in commerce, or in enterprise—all has been done by the middle and industrious classes; and it is because I wish to bring their virtue, intelligence, industry, and frugality, to bear upon the proceedings of this House, that I support the Motion of the hon. Member for Montrose.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/jul/06/national-representation-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (6 July 1848) in favour of a Reform Bill that would have extended the vote to middle class men. 1840s

Art, Intelligence, Literature, Support

“This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation.”

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

1810s, Letter to Edward Coles (1814)

“The market remained the generator of demand for goods and services, but modern business enterprise took over the functions of coordinating flows of goods and services through existing processes of production and distribution, and of allocating funds and personnel for future production and distribution. As modern business enterprise acquired functions hitherto carried out by the market, it became the most powerful institution in the American economy and its managers the most influential group of economic decision makers. The rise of modern business enterprise in the United States, therefore, brought with it managerial capitalism.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 1.

Business, Decision, Future

“[ Milton Friedman was] the dominant member of the so-called Chicago school of economics [during his tenure at Chicago]… The economics department increasingly reflected his approach and interests. These included deep commitment to the truth, appreciation of markets and free enterprise, frank and blunt discussion, and enormous zeal to convince the heathen. But most important was the commitment to economic analysis as a powerful instrument for interpreting economic and social life.”

Gary S. Becker (1930–2014) American economist

Gary Becker (1991). "Milton Friedman." In: Edward Shils, ed. Remembering the University of Chicago: Teachers, Scientists and Scholars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 140-6

Life, Truth, School

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Life, Men, Books, Family

“Deviance — in the sense I have been using it, of publicly labeled wrongdoing — is always the result of enterprise. Before any act can be viewed as deviant, and before any class of people can be labeled and treated as outsiders for committing the act, someone must have made the rule which defines the act as deviant. Rules are not made automatically. Even though a practice may be harmful in an objective sense to the group in which it occurs, the harm needs to be discovered and pointed out. People must be made to feel that something ought to be done about it. Someone must call the public's attention to these matters, supply the push necessary to get things done, and direct such energies as are aroused in the proper direction to get a rule created. Deviance is the product of enterprise in the largest sense; without the enterprise required to get rules made, the deviance which consists of breaking the rule could not exist.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), p. 162.

People, Feeling, Sense

“These men of the cloth sought reflected glory in glorifying the inhumanity of their sinful flock of hostage takers; but in their uncompassionate hearts, could not find the will to spare a moment to cast a comforting glance at the hapless and innocent hostages who languished but a few yards away in the parliamentary complex. They joined together to desecrate the national motto: Fear God and Honour the Chief; they violated the solemn promise. And their political outriders, far and wide, high and low, military and civilian, hastened to proclaim their support for the newly invented “cause” as defined by army officer Sitiveni Rabuka (1987) and failed businessman George Speight (2000), while occasionally proclaiming not to support the means, but had not the courage to condemn and resist their evil enterprise.”

Vijay R. Singh (1931–2006) Fijian politician

Speaking Out (2006)

Men, God, Fear, Courage

“Soon, the enterprise of the information age will find itself immobilized if it does not have the ability to tap the information resources within and without its boundaries.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Extending and Formalizing the Framework for Information Systems Architecture, 1992, p. 613, cited in: Nik Bessis, Fatos Xhafa (2011) Next Generation Data Technologies for Collective Computational Intelligence. p. 84

Age

“The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

From The Tyranny of Control, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 2 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=2

People, Business, Personality

“Before the Treatise, the interest- rate was determined by tastes and objective circumstances, by the persuasibility of income-earners to transfer consumption from the present to the future, and the desire of business men to transfer the means of free enterprise from the future to the present, thus altering the productive possibilities and enlarging the prospective income of the society including themselves.”

G. L. S. Shackle (1903–1992) British economist

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 162

Men, Business, Future

“American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued?”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Charles Perrow, Organizing America: Wealth, power, and the origins of corporate capitalism. Princeton University Press, 2002/2009. Book abstract.
1980s and later

“Civilisational triumph is thus not a zero-sum enterprise that favours one geo-cultural domain over another.”

Nayef Al-Rodhan (1959) philosopher, neuroscientist, geostrategist, and author

Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.213

“The initial thesis of my enterprise - on the basis of which this entanglement of periodizations is organized by extracting the sense of each - is this following: the science of being qua being has existed since the Greeks - such is the sense and status of mathematics. However, it is only today that we have the means to know this. It follows from this thesis that philosophy is not centered on on ontology - which exists as a separate and exact discipline- rather it circulates between this ontology (this, mathematics), the modern theories of he subject and its own history. The contemporary complex of the conditions of philosophy includes everything referred to in my first three statements: the history of 'Western'thought, post-Cantorian mathematics, psychoanalysis, contemporary art and politics. Philosophy does not coincide with any of these conditions; nor does it map out the totality to which they belong. What philosophy must do is purpose a conceptual framework in which the contemporary compossibilty of these conditions can be grasped. Philosophy can only do this - and this is what frees it from any foundational ambition, in which it would lose itself- by designating amongst its own conditions, as a singular discursive situation, ontology itself in the form of pure mathematics. This is precisely what delivers philosophy and ordains it to the care of truths.”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Introduction
Being and Event (1988)

Truth, Art, History, Mathematics

“Marx set out to resolve the contradictions and to correct the errors in classical political economy. In this he thought he had succeeded very well. Judging by the sound and the fury of the controversy surrounding his interpretations, he either succeeded too well or deluded himself to the success of his enterprise.”

David Harvey (1935) British anthropologist

Source: The Limits To Capital (2006 VERSO Edition), Chapter 2, Production and Distribution, p. 39

Error, Success

“Local economic independence cannot be preserved in the face of consolidations such as we have had during the past few years. The control of American business is steadily being transferred, I am sorry to have to say, from local communities to a few large cities in which central managers decide the policies and the fate of the far-flung enterprises they control. Millions of people depend helplessly on their judgment. Through monopolistic mergers the people are losing power to direct their own economic welfare. When they lose the power to direct their economic welfare, they also lose the means to direct their political future.”

Estes Kefauver (1903–1963) American politician

Senate Hearing, 1947, reported in Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (1998), p. 243.

Fate, People, Communication, Business

“I wanted to create an interesting scifi universe that didn’t violate the laws of physics, and that means that you’re limited to staying inside the solar system. I also wanted to get away from the ship-centric style of science fiction. Star Trek is ship-centric and it’s all about the Enterprise — there are many other examples. What if we decided to get away from the obsession with ships and instead thought about big machines and structures that might be used to create a civilization inside the solar system?”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

About Seveneves, "Here's How Space Megastructures Will Look, According to Neal Stephenson" in Gizmodo, interviewed by Annalee Newitz, May 20, 2015 (pre-Zero)

Law, Star, Universe, Science

“We know that this election is about the kind of America we will live in and the kind of America we will leave to future generations. When it comes to the character of America, President Obama and I have very different visions. Government is at the center of his vision. It dispenses the benefits, borrows what it cannot take, and consumes a greater and greater share of the economy. With Obamacare fully installed, government will come to control half the economy, and we will have effectively ceased to be a free enterprise society. This President is putting us on a path where our lives will be ruled by bureaucrats and boards, commissions and czars. He's asking us to accept that Washington knows best – and can provide all.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-04-24
http://electad.com/video/mitt-romney-victory-speech-after-winning-de-ct-pa-ny-pa-primaries-in-manchester-new-hampshire-april-24-2012/
Mitt Romney Victory Speech After Winning DE / CT / PA / NY / PA Primaries in Manchester, New Hampshire – April 24 2012
ElectAd
2012

Future

“My broad position remains firmly libertarian, sceptical of official cover-ups and uncompromisingly internationalist, believing sovereignty to be an almost total illusion in the modern world, although both expecting and welcoming the continuance of strong differences in national traditions and behaviour. I distrust the deification of the enterprise culture. I think there are more limitations to the wisdom of the market than were dreamt of in Mrs Thatcher's philosophy. I believe that levels of taxation on the prosperous, having been too high for many years (including my own period at the Treasury), are now too low for the provision of decent public services. And I think the privatisation of near monopolies is about as irrelevant as (and sometimes worse than) were the Labour Party's proposals for further nationalisation in the 1970s and early 1980s.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

A Life at the Centre (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 617
1990s

Wisdom, World, Thinking, Strong

“Thanks to its chokehold on the nation’s culture, liberalism is thus in power whether its politicians are elected or not; it rules over us even though Republicans have prevailed in six out of the nine presidential elections since 1968; even though Republicans presently control all three branches of government; even though the last of the big-name, forthright liberals of the old school (Humphrey, McGovern, Church, Bayhm, Culver, etc.) either died or went down to defeat in the seventies; and even though no Democratic presidential nominee has called himself a "liberal" since Walter Mondale. Liberalism is beyond politics, a tyrant that dominates our lives in countless ways great and small, and which is virtually incapable of being overthrown.Conservatism, on the other hand, is the doctrine of the oppressed majority. Conservatism does not defend some established order of things: It accuses; its rants; it points out hypocrisies and gleefully pounces on contradictions. While liberals use their control of the airwaves, newspapers, and schools to persecute average Americans — to ridicule the pious, flatter the shiftless, and indoctrinate the kids with all sorts of permissive nonsense — the Republicans are the party of the disrespected, the downtrodden, the forgotten. They are always the underdog, always in rebellion against a haughty establishment, always rising up from below.All claims of the right, in other words, advance from victimhood. This is another trick the backlash has picked up from the left. Even though republicans legislate in the interests of society’s most powerful, and even though conservative social critics typically enjoy cushy sinecures at places like the American Enterprise Institute and the Wall Street Journal, they rarely claim to speak on behalf of the wealthy of the winners in the social Darwinist struggle. Just like the leftists of the early twentieth century, they see themselves in revolt against a genteel tradition, rising up against a bankrupt establishment that will tolerate no backtalk.Conservatism, on the other hand, can never be powerful or successful, and backlashers revel in fantasies of their own marginality and persecution.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Ibid.(pp. 119-120).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

School, Way, Success

“In my opinion a system of operations, to be efficient and successful, should be such as to give to the principal and responsible head of the running department a complete daily history of details in all their minutiae. Without such supervision, the procurement of a satisfactory annual statement must be regarded as extremely problematical. The fact that dividends are earned without such control, does not disprove the position, as in many cases the extraordinarily remunerative nature of an enterprise may ensure satisfactory returns under the most loose and inefficient management.
It may be proper here to remark, that in consequence of that want of adaptation before alluded to, we cannot avail ourselves to any great extent of the plan of organization of shorter lines in framing one for this, nor have we any precedent or experience upon which we can fully rely in doing so. Under these circumstances, it will scarcely be expected that we can at once adopt any plan of operations which will not require amendment and a reasonable time to prove its worth. A few general principles, however, may be regarded as settled and necessary in its formation, amongst which are:”

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

Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856)

History, Nature, Time, Success

“One aspect of modern life which has gone far to stifle men is the rapid growth of tremendous corporations. Enormous spiritual sacrifices are made in the transformation of shopkeepers into employees… The disappearance of free enterprise has led to a submergence of the individual in the impersonal corporation in much the same manner as he has been submerged in the state in other lands.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech at annual dinner of Fordham University Alumni Association, New York City (February 9, 1939), reported in James Allen, Democracy and Finance (1940, reprinted 1969), p. 291. This was Douglas's last speech as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission before his appointment to the Supreme Court.
Other speeches and writings

Life, Men

“Free enterprise cannot be justified as being good for business. It can be justified only as being good for society.”

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

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Practice of Management (1954), p. 41

Business

“The Indian mind needs to be familarised with the principles of modern progress, a universal impulse for enquiry and enterprise awakened, and earnest thinking and effort promoted. A new type of Indian citizenship purposeful, progressive and self-respecting should be created, and self-reliant nationhood developed.”

Mokshagundam Visveshvaraya (1860–1962) Indian engineer, scholar, statesman and the Diwan of Mysore

In his preface to the book "Reconstructing India(1920)" quoted in The Most Celebrated Indian Engineer:Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, 22 November 2013, Official web site of Government of India: Vigyan Prasar http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/dream/feb2000/article1.htm,

Thinking, Effort, Universe

“To want a job that exercises a man’s capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the “sole prerogative” to determine the products.”

Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd

Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 37.

Exercises

“Federal law forms a new governance structure that opposes both free enterprise and representative government…A new national curriculum is used that embraces a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Michael J. Chapman and Senator Michele Bachmann, "How New U.S. Policy Embraces a State-Planned Economy" (2001)
2000s

Law, Loyalty

“Organization is the arrangement of personnel for facilitating the accomplishment of some agreed purpose through allocation of functions and responsibilities. It is the relating of efforts and capacities of individuals and groups engaged upon a common task in such a way as to secure the desired objective with the least friction and the most satisfaction to those for whom the task is done and those engaged in the enterprise.”

Leonard D. White (1891–1958) American historian

John M. Gaus, Leonard Dupee White, and Marshall E. Dimock. Frontiers of public administration. (1936).

Way, Effort

“Existence would be a quite impracticable enterprise if we stopped granting importance to what has none.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

“The fact was that American enterprise in the twenties had opened its hospitable arms to an exceptional number of promoters, grafters, swindlers, impostors, and frauds.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Chapter IX https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929, Cause and Consequence, Section V, p 178 The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Fraud

“Foreign relations. At no period in the past 12 years have our foreign relations been in such a satisfactory condition as they are at the present time. Our actions in the recent months have greatly strengthened the American policy of permanent peace with independence. The attitude which our Government took and maintained toward an adjustment of European reparations, by pointing out that it wits not a political but a business problem, has demonstrated its wisdom by its actual results. We desire to see Europe restored that it may resume its productivity in the increase of industry and its support in the advance of civilization. We look with great gratification at the hopeful prospect of recuperation in Europe through the Dawes plan. Such assistance as can be given through the action of the public authorities and of our private citizens, through friendly counsel and cooperation, and through economic and financial support, not for any warlike effort but for reproductive enterprise, not to provide means for unsound government financing but to establish sound business administration ' should be unhesitatingly provided.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Wisdom, Peace, Hope, Business

“A leader's intelligence must have simplicity and clarity; action is difficult when the mind is full of complex theories and schemes. An over-organized industry wastes just as much money as one without organization - the transmission uses up all the motor's power. (For this reason small enterprises directed by one man have the better of larger trusts because their costs are less and the quality of their product higher.) A leader must have a few very simple ideas, acquired from experience and confirmed by putting them into practice. This structure created by experience will contain much exact knowledge for use in connection with a given action.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Leadership

Money, Intelligence, Idea, Knowledge

“A just, peaceful, equitable and democratic world order must not be undermined by the activities of investors, speculators and transnational enterprises avid for immediate profit at the expense of social and economic progress.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20473&LangID=E#sthash.bn9VjkJJ.dpuf. 2016, Mainstream human rights into trade agreements and WTO practice – UN expert urges in new report

World, Peace

“We've shown the world that New York can never be defeated, because of its dynamic and diverse population and because it embodies the spirit of enterprise and the love of liberty. And because no matter who you are, if you believe in yourself and your dream, New York will always be the place for you.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46503-2004Aug30.html
New York City

Love, World, Dreams

“Both… the separation of labor from control and of the owner from control… have made possible the continuing development of the size of the individual enterprise, have reduced the area within which economic processes is organized through the interplay of prices and have increased the area within which production is organized… and the coordination of production on a planned basis.”

Gardiner C. Means (1896–1988) American economist

Gardiner C. Means (1933; 6) as cited in: Samuels and Medema (1990; 69)

“The substitution of industrialism for warfare is not… understood to imply a diminution of individual enterprise, but an alteration in its application.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

section 11, p. 420
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development

“Whoso taketh in hand to govern a multitude, either by way of liberty or principality, and cannot assure himself of those persons that are enemies to that enterprise, doth frame a state of short perseverance.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Source: The Cabinet Council (published 1658), Chapter 25

Way, Personality, Perseverance

“What the planning authority would have to know would not be the mere totals but the distinct, peculiar conditions prevailing in each enterprise which affect the information about values transmitted through market prices but would be completely lost in any statistical information about quantities that might reach the authority from time to time.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, "Two Pages of Fiction" (1982)

Time

“Business cycles are a type of fluctuation found in the aggregate activity of nations that organize their work mainly in business enterprises: a cycle consists of expansions occurring at about the same time in many economic activities, followed by similarly general recessions, contractions, and revivals which merge into the expansion phase of the next cycle; this sequence of changes is recurrent but not periodic; in duration business cycles vary from more than one year to ten or twelve years; they are not divisible into shorter cycles of similar character with amplitudes approximating their own.”

Arthur F. Burns (1904–1987) American economist and diplomat

Arthur F. Burns and George W. Mitchell (1946). Measuring business cycles. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. p. 3; Cited in: Robert J. Gordon, ed. The American Business Cycle: Continuity and Change, 1986. p. 2

Business, Change, Time

“Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.”

Thomas Kuhn book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), VI. Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries, p. 52

Knowledge, Science, Success

“I regard it as the foremost task of education to insure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self denial, and above all, compassion.”

Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) German educator

Kurt Hahn website http://www.kurthahn.org/quotes/quote2.html.

Education

“If the men were without passions, it would be forgivable to see Machiavel try to give some to them; he would be the new Prometheus bringing celestial fire to breathe life into robots. But no man is without passions. When they are moderated, they are the heart of the enterprise; but when the brake is stripped of them, they are its destruction.”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Ch. 6 : New States That The Prince Acquires By His Valor And His Own Weapons

Life, Men, Forgiveness, Passion

“The world around us can be construed as a huge "house" that we share with other humans, as well as with animals and plants. It is in this world that we exist, fulfilling our tasks, enjoying things, developing social relations, creating a family. In short, we live in this world. We thus have a deep human need to know and to trust it, to be emotionally involved in it. Many of us, however, experience an increasing feeling of alienation. Even though, with the expansion of society, virtually the entire surface of the planet has become a part of our house, often we do not feel "at home" in that house. With the rapid and spontaneous changes of the past decades, so many new wings and rooms have been constructed or rearranged that we have lost familiarity with our house. We often have the impression that what remains of the world is a collection of isolated fragments, without any structure and coherence. Our personal "everyday" world seems unable to harmonise itself with the global world of society, history and cosmos.
It is our conviction that the time has come to make a conscious effort towards the construction of global world views, in order to overcome this situation of fragmentation. There are many reasons why we believe in the benefit of such an enterprise, and in the following pages we shall attempt to make some of them clear.”

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Source: World views. From Fragmentation to Integration (1994), p. 1; About "The fragmentation of our world"

World, Family, Feeling, Home

“We need to create an enterprise culture, a society where successful entrepreneurs are respected and admired, not treated with suspicion and disdain. And in which we see less envy of other peoples' achievements and mistrust of commerce, and a greater readiness to get out there and join in the process.”

Norman Tebbit (1931) English politician

Speech to the Institute of Directors' Annual Conference (26 February, 1985).

People, Success, Envy

“The performance of Reliance shows an amazing trend when mapped against time. The inflection point was 1991. We grew exponentially, eventually becoming India’s biggest private enterprise, on the basis of freedom to compete against the best in the world.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Reimaging India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower

World, Freedom, Time

“Before capitalist relations could come to dominate industrial production, a set of related changes was required to guarantee the new order. The state had to be transformed from a tributary structure to a structure of support for capitalist enterprise.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Part Three, Capitalism, p. 265.
Europe and the People Without History, 1982

Support, Change

“He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair; nor to-morrow's, lest he become a visionary—not that which ends with the day, which is a worldly work; nor yet that only which remains to eternity, for by it he cannot shape his actions.
Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of to-day a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity. The foundations of his confidence are unchangeable, for he has been made a partaker of Infinity. He strenuously works out his daily enterprises because the present is given him for a possession.
Thus ought Man to be an impersonation of the divine process of nature, and to show forth the union of the infinite with the finite, not slighting his temporal existence, remembering that in it only is individual action possible; nor yet shutting out from his view that which is eternal, knowing that Time is a mystery which man cannot endure to contemplate until eternal Truth enlighten it.”

James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) Scottish physicist

Paper communicated to Frederic Farrar (1854) Æt. 23, as quoted in Lewis Campbell, William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence and Occasional Writings (1884) pp. 144-145, https://books.google.com/books?id=B7gEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA144 and in Richard Glazebrook, James Clerk Maxwell and Modern Physics (1896) pp. 39-40. https://books.google.com/books?id=hbcEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA39

Life, Truth, Confidence, Nature

“In an ideal socialist economy, the reward for invention would be completely separated from any charge to the users of information. In a free enterprise economy, inventive activity is supported by using the invention to create property rights; precisely to the extent that it is successful, there is an underutilization of the information.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Kenneth J. Arrow (1962). "Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention." In: The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity. Princeton University Press.; cited in: Thrainn Eggertsson, Economic behavior and institutions. 1990. p. 22
1950s-1960s

Support, Success

“He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Marriage and Single Life
Essays (1625)

Men, Children

Quotes about enterprise page 4

Quotes about enterprise
page 4