Quotes about profit
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“Writing a book for the Follies seems to be about as profitable an occupation as furnishing flannel petticoats for the showgirls. p. 151”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 3: 1920

Books

“Hamilton doubted the cohesive force of the Constitution to make a nation. He was so far right, for no constitution can make a nation. That is a growth, and the vigor and intensity of our national growth transcended our own suspicions. It was typified by our material progress. General Hamilton died in 1804. In 1812, during the last war with England, the largest gun used was a thirty-six pounder. In the war just ended it was a two-thousand pounder. The largest gun then weighed two thousand pounds. The largest shot now weighs two thousand pounds. Twenty years after Hamilton died the traveler toiled painfully from the Hudson to Niagara on canal-boats and in wagons, and thence on horseback to Kentucky. Now he whirls from the Hudson to the Mississippi upon thousands of miles of various railroads, the profits of which would pay the interest of the national debt. So by a myriad influences, as subtle as the forces of the air and earth about a growing tree, has our nationality grown and strengthened, striking its roots to the centre and defying the tempest. Could the musing statesman who feared that Virginia or New York or Carolina or Massachusetts might rend the Union have heard the voice of sixty years later, it would have said to him, 'The babe you held in your arms has grown to be a man, who walks and runs and leaps and works and defends himself. I am no more a vapor, I am condensed. I am no more a germ, I am a life. I am no more a confederation, I am a nation.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Life, War, Fear, Travel

“The ascent of man into heaven is not the key, but rather his ascent here into the spirit and the descent also of the Spirit into his normal humanity and the transformation of this earthly nature. For that and not some post mortem salvation is the real new birth for which humanity waits as the crowning movement of its long obscure and painful course…. Therefore the individuals who will most help the future of humanity in the new age will be those who will recognise a spiritual evolution as the destiny and therefore the great need of the human being…. They will especially not make the mistake of thinking that this change can be effected by machinery and outward institutions; they will know and never forget that it has to be lived out by each man inwardly or it can never be made a reality for the kind…. Failures must be originally numerous in everything great and difficult, but the time comes when the experience of past failures can be profitably used and the gate that so long resisted opens. In this as in all great human aspirations and endeavours, an a priori declaration of impossibility is a sign of ignorance and weakness, and the motto of the aspirant's endeavour must be the solvitur ambulando of the discoverer. For by the doing the difficulty will be solved. A true beginning has to be made; the rest is a work for Time in its sudden achievements or its long patient labour….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

July, 1918
India's Rebirth

Pain, Age, Birth, Failure

“We are our own slaves, not of the British. This should be engraved on our minds. The whites cannot remain if we do not want them. If the idea is to drive them out with firearms, let every Indian consider what precious little profit Europe has found in these.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Introduction to the publication of Tolstoy's A Letter to a Hindu, Indian opinion, 25 December, (1909)
1900s

Idea

“Outward, thanks to the knowledge of physical laws, man could subdue (or subjugate…) nature, but inwardly, he remained a slave to it. For, when all is said and done, at what is aiming all this display (or deployment) of activity, if not to realized outward profits, to provide material pleasure (or enjoyment). It is not the first time that men sell their birth right for a dish of lentils, and thus disown (or repudiate or deny) the best of thmeselves.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 36 - second thought of the book, - the translator.

Men, Pleasure, Law, Birth

“We are socialists because we believe we live now in a world that requires a great deal of thoughtful planning ahead of time. We are socialists because we live in a world that is peculiarly interdependent, and to a degree quite unknown in earlier times. […] We are socialists because we believe in this kind of world - in this anarchy of nations - we need to have a concept that the great purpose of life is to manage our extraordinary scientific and technological achievements and our resources for the common good. It’s not easy and it cannot be the byproduct of a game where everybody seeks the maximum profit for himself, either men or nations in that role.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

Life, Men, World, Game

“The prospect of outsized profits leads people to exaggerate their own capabilities. In their minds. They pretend to themselves that they are in control of events where perhaps they are not. And it is always one's stance upon uncertain ground that invites the attentions of one's enemies. Or discourages it.”

Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men (2005)

People

“The truth of the matter is that, even under individualism, only a small fraction of the population is impelled chiefly by the profit motive, and that vast multitudes of men and women are motivated by other incentives than by the desire for profit. …nevertheless, they are strategic individuals whose activities are essential to efficiency in industry.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

Women, Men, Truth, Motivation

“Stocks that are selected conservatively and pay high cash dividends [higher than bonds] are, in fact, my favorite investment alternative, especially where there is the prospect of currency profits….”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

“Of all the many and (thanks to a free press) the ever-multiplying blessings attendant upon the "glorious constitution" of literature, not the least precious and profitable to a modern cultivator of systems and syllables, in pamphlets, magazines, and folios, is the right of Quotation.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"Quotations".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Literature

“Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but fear I must.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Anna (1814-09-28) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

People, Fear, Business, Help

“Proving that profit is economically and morally justifiable, rather then the result of exploitation, has been a central preoccupation of neoclassical economists.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 1, Chapter 4, The Politics of Economics, p. 57
Economics For Everyone (2008)

“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 has been my endeavour to show in this work that a fall of wages would have no other effect than to raise profits.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XXXII, Malthus on Rent, p. 281

“Profit, Empire, Industry. What was a dead lake, a few poisoned rivers, a few slagged hillsides? Priorities, that was what it was about. Priorities and Progress.”

Ian McDonald book Desolation Road

Source: Desolation Road (1988), Chapter 56 (p. 276).

Dead

“Undoubtedly one of the most important provisions in the preparation for national defense is a proper and sound selective service act. Such a law ought to give authority for a very broad mobilization of all the resources of the country, both persons and materials. I can see some difficulties in the application of the principle, for it is the payment of a higher price that stimulates an increased production, but whenever it can be done without economic dislocation such limits ought to be established in time of war as would prevent so far as possible all kinds of profiteering. There is little defense which can be made of a system which puts some men in the ranks on very small pay and leaves others undisturbed to reap very large profits. Even the income tax, which recaptured for the benefit of the National Treasury alone about 75 per cent of such profits, while local governments took part of the remainder, is not a complete answer. The laying of taxes is, of course, in itself a conscription of whatever is necessary of the wealth of the country for national defense, but taxation does not meet the full requirements of the situation. In the advent of war, power should be lodged somewhere for the stabilization of prices as far as that might be possible in justice to the country and its defenders.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Men, War, Justice, Law

“Who profits by a sin has done the sin.”
Cui prodest scelus, is fecit.

Seneca the Younger Medea

Medea, lines 500-501; (Medea)
Alternate translation: He who profits by crime commits it. (translator unknown).
Tragedies

“Of all animals man only is endowed with reason, properly so called, so he only hath a will, and is capable of virtue and vice, rewards and punishments. Yet something bearing a resemblance to each of these, may also be found in brutes, especially such as are more perfect, and more capable of discipline. For there is in them a certain faculty that answers to reason, called by some an inferior degree of reason, whereby they not only consider in a manner what is pleasant and profitable, and search for the means of attaining them; but they likewise acknowledge a certain manner of living suitable to their nature prescribed to them by God, which has some affinity to virtue.”

Johannes Crellius (1590–1633) German theologian

Ethicae Christianae, Book II, Ch. 1; as quoted in Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697), London, 1737, Vol. 4, Ch. Rorarius, p. 905 https://books.google.it/books?id=JmtXAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA905.

God, Search, Nature, Animals

“The problem that confronts some of you younger ones – you’ve got to find an alternative to war. War is something men have hated but yet cherished. Out of wars have come profit of various sorts, power, glory. Sometimes out of them has become a defense of freedom. But you will not get that out of the kind of war we fight now with the weapons that our great scientists have given us. We have got to find a substitute for war, and the substitute isn’t surrender.”

Norman Thomas (1884–1968) American Presbyterian minister and socialist

Debate with Barry Goldwater, University of Arizona campus, Tucson, Arizona, November 1961

Men, Hate, War, Problem

“No sooner were the merits of Mr. Arkwright’s inventions fully understood, from the great increase of materials produced in a given time, and the superior quality of the goods manufactured; no sooner was it known, that his assiduity and great mechanical abilities were rewarded with success; than the very men, who had before treated him with contempt and derision, began to devise means to rob him of his inventions, and profit by his ingenuity. Every attempt that cunning could suggest for this purpose was made; by the seduction of his servants and workmen, (whom he had with great labour taught the business) a knowledge of his machinery and inventions was fully gained. From that time many persons began to pilfer something from him; and then by adding something else of their own, and by calling similar productions and machines by other names, they hoped to screen themselves from punishment. So many of these artful and designing individuals had at length infringed on his patent right, that he found it necessary to prosecute several: but it was not without great difficulty, and considerable expence, that he was able to make any proof against them; conscious that their conduct was unjustifiable, their proceedings were conducted with the utmost caution and secresy. Many of the persons employed by them were sworn to secresy, and their buildings and workshops were kept locked up, or otherwise secured. This necessary proceeding of Mr. Arkwright, occasioned, as in the case of poor Hargrave, an association against him, of the very persons whom he had served and obliged. Formidable, however, as it was, Mr. Arkwright persevered, trusting that he should obtain in the event, that satisfaction which he appeared to be justly entitled to.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

Source: The Case of Mr. Richard Arkwright and Co., 1781, p. 23-24

Men, Hope, Art, Business

“The meat industry doesn’t want you to think about all the animals they are torturing and killing. And they definitely don’t want you to think about all the diseases related to eating meat. Their only concern is making a profit. A long time ago I made a decision to quit eating meat and dairy products. Animals are not ours to torture and dominate. If I was to eat factory farm meat or dairy products I would be taking part in the torturing and killing of animals. There’s just no way! Animals are my friends, so why would I want to hurt them?”

Daniela Sea (1977) American filmmaker, actor, and musician

" Daniela Sea Vegan PSA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc5mEqa6ar0", video for PETA (3 February 2009).

Disease, Way, Thinking, Decision

“The fundamental objective of the science of administration is the accomplishment of the work in hand with the least expenditure of man-power and materials. Efficiency is thus axiom number one in the value scale of administration. This brings administration into apparent conflict with certain elements of the value scale of politics, whether we use that term in its scientific or in its popular sense. But both public administration and politics are branches of political science, so that we are in the end compelled to mitigate the pure concept of efficiency in the light of the value scale of politics and the social order. There are, for example, highly inefficient arrangements like citizen boards and small local governments which may be necessary in a democracy as educational devices. It has been argued also that the spoils system, which destroys efficiency in administration, is needed to maintain the political party, that the political party is needed to maintain the structure of government, and that without the structure of government, administration itself will disappear. While this chain of causation has been disproved under certain conditions, it none the less illustrates the point that the principles of politics may seriously affect efficiency. Similarly in private business it is often true that the necessity for immediate profits growing from the system of private ownership may seriously interfere with the achievement of efficiency in practice.”

Luther H. Gulick (1892–1993) American academic

Source: "Science, values and public administration," 1937, p. 192-193

Education, Democracy, Business, Sense

“The Mathematics which effectually exercises, not vainly deludes or vexatiously torments studious Minds with obscure Subtilties, perplexed Difficulties, or contentious Disquisitions; which overcomes without Opposition, triumphs without Pomp, compels without Force, and rules absolutely without Loss of Liberty; which does not privately overreach a weak Faith, but openly assaults an armed Reason, obtains a total Victory, and puts on inevitable Chains; whose Words are so many Oracles, and Works as many Miracles; which blabs out nothing rashly, nor designs anything from the Purpose, but plainly demonstrates and readily performs all Things within its Verge; which obtrudes no false Shadow of Science, but the very Science itself, the Mind firmly adheres to it, as soon as possessed of it, and can never after desert it of its own Accord, or be deprived of it by any Force of others: Lastly the Mathematics, which depend upon Principles clear to the Mind, and agreeable to Experience; which draws certain Conclusions, instructs by profitable Rules, unfolds pleasant Questions; and produces wonderful Effects; which is the fruitful Parent of, I had almost said all, Arts, the 47 unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human Affairs.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

"Ration before the University of Cambridge on being elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics," (1660), reported in: Mathematical Lectures, (1734), p. 28

Faith, Art, Exercises, Mathematics

“Almost half of the bankruptcies in the United States are connected to an illness in the family, whether people had health insurance or not. Middle-class Americans, who had the misfortune of either experiencing a medical emergency themselves or watching a family member suffer, were then forced to face the daunting task of pulling themselves out of debt. Bankruptcy law has allowed them to start over. It has given hope. Now this new law will put people on their own. Illness or emergency creates medical bills. We are telling the people that they themselves are to blame. At the same time, we are removing protections that would stay an eviction, that would keep a roof over the head of a working family. We allow the credit industry to trick consumers into using subprime cards, with exorbitant interest rate hikes and fees. Then we hand those same consumers over to an unforgiving prison of debt, to be put on a rack of insolvency and squeezed dry by the credit card industry. We are protecting the profits of the credit card industry instead of protecting the economic future of the American people. Americans are left on their own. That's what this Administration's "Ownership Society" is all about — you're on your own — and your ship is sinking.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (14 April, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=240761331899+3+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

People, Health, Family, Law

“…if peace is to be preserved we must see to it that the causes of war are removed. Freedom and democracy must be based not only on security but also on social justice. Hitlerism flourished on the breakdown of an outworn economic system. The world depression of 1930 was the opportunity of the gangsters. We must have planning for expansion and not restriction. Victory in war could only be achieved by putting the interest of the community before private profit and this was also the key to reconstruction after the war. Socialism had always been something far greater than an economic theory, far greater than the policy of a political party. It was a way of life. They sought to attain an organized society in which every human being would have the opportunity of living the good life—a society in which free men and women would cooperate together for the common good. The workers of the countries which had been under the yoke of tyranny would look to the Labour parties of the British Commonwealth for a lead and would not look in vain.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the conference of representatives of the British and Dominion Labour parties, Westminster, London (12 September 1944), quoted in The Times (13 September 1944), p. 8.
War Cabinet

Life, Women, Men, War

“In sum, all the key technological developments that led to the internet were built around government institutions, major universities and research centers. The Internet did not orginate in the business world. It was too daring a technology, too expensive a project, and too risky an initiative to be assumed by profit-oriented organizations.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: The Internet Galaxy - Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (2001), Chapter 1, Lessons from the History of the Internet, p. 22

World, Business, Universe

“Wall Street is where prophets tell us what will happen and profits tell us what did happen.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Greg Heberlein (September 28, 1986) "'Doctor' Lefevre Seeks Cure For Hospitalized Bull Market", The Seattle Times, p. C2.
Attributed

“My views may seem to ignore a moral imperative that businesses should follow virtuous principles, whether or not it is most profitable for them to do so. Instead I prefer to recognize that, throughout human history, […] government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found to be necessary for the enforcement of moral principles. Invocation of moral principles is a necessary first step for eliciting virtuous behavior, but that alone is not a sufficient step.”

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

Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "Big businesses and the environment: different conditions, different outcomes", section "Businesses and the public" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 484-485, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Behavior, History, Business

“But I make a profit of three and a quarter cents an egg by selling them for four and a quarter cents an egg to the people in Malta I buy them from for seven cents an egg. Of course, I don't make the profit. The syndicate makes the profit. And everybody has a share.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Catch-22 (1961)

People

“However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

Personality

“I had taken up the question of interdivisional relations with Mr. Durant [president of GM at the time] before I entered General Motors and my views on it were well enough known for me to be appointed chairman of a committee "to formulate rules and regulations pertaining to interdivisional business" on December 31, 1918. I completed the report by the following summer and presented it to the Executive Committee on December 6, 1919. I select here a few of its first principles which, though they are an accepted part of management doctrine today, were not so well known then. I think they are still worth attention.
I stated the basic argument as follows:
The profit resulting from any business considered abstractly, is no real measure of the merits of that particular business. An operation making $100,000.00 per year may be a very profitable business justifying expansion and the use of all the additional capital that it can profitably employ. On the other hand, a business making $10,000,000 a year may be a very unprofitable one, not only not justifying further expansion but even justifying liquidation unless more profitable returns can be obtained. It is not, therefore, a matter of the amount of profit but of the relation of that profit to the real worth of invested capital within the business. Unless that principle is fully recognized in any plan that may be adopted, illogical and unsound results and statistics are unavoidable …”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 49

Question, Business, Thinking, Time

“A good prescription is still more profitable than an absolution.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) French physician and philosopher

(c. 1734) in a successful argument to persuade his father that a medical education was preferred. As quoted by Friedrich Albert Lange, History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance Tr. Ernest Chester Thomas (1882) 2nd edition, Vol. 2, p. 55. https://books.google.com/books?id=X4pQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA55

“Nobody at Magnum decides for the other what he should do and everyone is free to tell someone else: “Well, what about this story? I don’t like it for this and that reason — because of this picture.” It is extremely fruitful to have somebody to talk to as an equal. This give and take is a most profitable thing because we keep learning from each other. I keep learning from the younger members just as I learned from Bob [Robert] Capa and Chim [David Seymour] how to make picture stories. Cornell Capa, for instance, has a very keen journalistic sense; and as for the other photographer, each makes his own contribution. Everybody in Magnum has full freedom; there’s no doctrine, there is no school, but there is something that unites all of us very strongly — I can’t define it; it may be a certain feeling of freedom and a respect for reality.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), pp. 34-35

School, Feeling, Reality, Sense

“Worst of all, it [speculation of notable figures] provides fodder for the special educators, special education attorneys, ABA therapists etc. to legitimize their profits and to encourage the false hope and tears for toasted snow that so many parents of these children have.”

Jonathan Mitchell (1955) American writer and activist

Undiagnosing Gates, Jefferson and Einstein

Children, Education, Hope, Parent

“When credit is expanding, the rising price level and high profits bring about a high rate of interest. When the expansion has reached, the limit permitted by the stock of gold, the rate of interest is put still higher in order to bring about a fall in the price level. When the fall in prices takes effect, a low rate of interest becomes appropriate, and when credit contraction has proceeded so far that a redundant supply of gold has accumulated, the rate of interest is depressed still lower in order to bring about a renewed rise in the price level. Thus a high rate of interest corresponds first with rising, then with falling, prices, and so synchronizes with high prices. A low rate of interest corresponds first with falling, and then with rising, prices, and so synchronizes with low prices.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Ralph George Hawtrey, quoted in Irving Fisher, The Theory of Interest (1930), Chapter 19. The Relation of Interest to Money and Prices

“Are vital U. S. interests more imperiled by what happens in Iraq where were have 50,000 troops, or Afghanistan where we have 100,000, or South Korea where we have 28,000 — or by what is happening on our border with Mexico? … What does it profit America if we save Anbar and lose Arizona?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2010s, Suicide of a Superpower (2011)

“As long as we dwell in the shadow, we cannot see the sun itself; but Now we see through a glass darkly, says St. Paul. Yet the shadow is so enlightened by the sunshine that we can perceive the distinctions between all the virtues and all the truth which is profitable to our mortal state. But if we would become one with the brightness of the Sun, we must follow love, and go out of ourselves into the Wayless, and then the Sun will draw us with our blinded eyes into Its own brightness, in which we shall possess unity with God.... In his outpouring, He wills to he wholly ours: and then He teaches us to live in the riches of the virtues. In His indrawing touch all our powers forsake us, and then we sit under His shadow, and His fruit is sweet to our taste, for the Fruit of God is the Son of God, Whom the Father brings forth in our spirit. This Fruit is so infinitely sweet to our taste that we can neither swallow It nor assimilate It, but It rather absorbs us into Itself and assimilates us with Itself.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

From Evelyn Underhill, http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/asm/index.htm Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

Love, God, Truth, Sun

“The loyal follower of Jesus will stand in opposition to war as a means of settling differences between nations. He will be unalterably opposed to the ruthless competition and merciless rivalry of our present autocratic and capitalistic system. He will condemn vigorously the enslaving of the poor by the rich, the oppression of the weak by the strong. He will seek to replace the present Kingdom of Competition and Profits by the ideal Kingdom of Cooperation and Service.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 72

War, Strong

“If we read History with any degree of thoughtfulness, we shall find that checks and balances of Profit and Loss have never been the grand agents with men, that they have never been roused into deep, thorough, all-pervading efforts by any computable prospect of Profit and Loss, for any visible, finite object; but always for some invisible and infinite one.”

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

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Men, History, Effort, Loss

“It is not true that on an exchange of commodities we give value for value. On the contrary, each of the two contracting parties in every case, gives a less for a greater value. … If we really exchanged equal values, neither party could make a profit. And yet, they both gain, or ought to gain. Why? The value of a thing consists solely in its relation to our wants. What is more to the one is less to the other, and vice versa. … It is not to be assumed that we offer for sale articles required for our own consumption. … We wish to part with a useless thing, in order to get one that we need; we want to give less for more. … It was natural to think that, in an exchange, value was given for value, whenever each of the articles exchanged was of equal value with the same quantity of gold. … But there is another point to be considered in our calculation. The question is, whether we both exchange something superfluous for something necessary.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

Le Commerce et le Gouvernement (1776), as quoted in Marx's Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 5.

Question, Nature, Thinking, Parting

“Marriage is encouraged in China, not by the profitableness of children, but by the liberty of destroying them.”

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

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter VIII, p. 87.

Marriage, Children

“A few profit – and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.”

Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940) United States Marine Corps General, 2 time Medal of Honor recipient and activist

War is a racket (1935)
War is a racket (1935)

War, Peace, Way

“And what (else} did we discover? We discovered that it was exceedingly profitable to get garbage from large parts of the town; that garbage was rich in grease and in sugar. And we took it to the reduction plant and we turned that grease into a very acceptable and delightful non-odorous product which you a little later bought in the form of soap.
Another thing, it seems to me, is a by-product of this catholic curiosity, that is the ability to loaf. You can't be an administrator, a good successful administrator, and not know how to loaf. Because if you are industrious all the time and tend to your job, there is always more work than you can possibly do in a day, and if you tend to that job all the time you will be going right on in a routine, you will become more ans more specialized, you will become more and more analytical, you will become more and more interested in what you are particularly charged with doing, and progressively less and less generalized in your outlook, less and less interested in what the other fellow is doing. And the only way you can compensate for that, of course, is to loaf, to loaf whole-heartedly whenever and wherever possible, and with whomever, because the only way that you can find out what are the questions in the minds of these people you have got to loaf with them to find out the truth about how they feel.
Now, of course, you can't loaf with all the individuals, but you have to loaf with a great many of them, and you have to know how to do it, and you know you won't like to do it unless you have a catholic curiosity, not only about things that I've been talking about, but about persons.”

Louis Brownlow (1879–1963) American mayor

Source: "What Is an Administrator?" 1936, p. 12; As cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 658

People, Truth, Way, Feeling

“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

“We have worked together for the last 20 years, first in America and now at INSEAD in France, with time also spent in Asia along the way. From the get-go, we shared an intellectual curiosity to understand what it takes to stand apart and create strong profitable growth. In search of an answer to this question, we looked back more than 100 years and across more than 30 industries. Contrary to common thought, we did not find any permanently excellent companies, nor permanently excellent industries in our research. What we did find, however, were smart strategic moves. And the strategic move that we found matters centrally is to create blue oceans. Blue oceans allow companies to stand apart and create strong profitable growth. This led to our book, Blue Ocean Strategy. Even before Blue Ocean Strategy was released, it broke Harvard Business School Press's historical record for most foreign licenses ever obtained.”

Renée Mauborgne American economist

W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne in: Alistair Craven " Guru Interview: W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne http://first.emeraldinsight.com/interviews/pdf/kim_mauborgne.pdf?PHPSESSID=1423baeb156c88436a5b11," Emerald Management First, p. 2. Accessed 08.2016.

Books, School, Way, Search

“I do not believe it would be a bad thing for the British working-class if Germany defeated us. It would be a disaster for the profit-makers and capitalists, but not necessarily for the working-class.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

Speech at Stockport (14 November 1936), The Manchester Guardian (15 November 1936), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 151.

“Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Life of Marcus Cato
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men, Fools

“Perhaps not only in his attitude towards truth, but in his attitude towards himself, Montaigne was a precursor. Perhaps here again he was ahead of his own time, ahead of our time also, since none of us would have the courage to imitate him. It may be that some future century will vindicate this unseemly performance; in the meanwhile it will be of interest to examine the reasons which he gives us for it. He says, in the first place, that he found this study of himself, this registering of his moods and imaginations, extremely amusing; it was an exploration of an unknown region, full of the queerest chimeras and monsters, a new art of discovery, in which he had become by practice “the cunningest man alive.” It was profitable also, for most people enjoy their pleasures without knowing it; they glide over them, and fix and feed their minds on the miseries of life. But to observe and record one’s pleasant experiences and imaginations, to associate one’s mind with them, not to let them dully and unfeelingly escape us, was to make them not only more delightful but more lasting. As life grows shorter we should endeavour, he says, to make it deeper and more full. But he found moral profit also in this self-study; for how, he asked, can we correct our vices if we do not know them, how cure the diseases of our soul if we never observe their symptoms? The man who has not learned to know himself is not the master, but the slave of life: he is the “explorer without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and when all is done, the fool of the play.””

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

“Montaigne,” p. 6
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Life, People, Pleasure, Truth

“Take while you can; brief is the moment of profit.”
Accipe quam primum; brevis est occasio lucri.

Martial book Epigrammata

VIII, 9.
Epigrams (c. 80 – 104 AD)

“It's universally wrong to steal from your neighbor, but once you get beyond the-one-to-one level and pit the individual against the multinational conglomerate, the federal bureaucracy, the modern plantation of agro-buinsess, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgement to decide exactly who is stealing from whom. One person's crime is another person's profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals an how much. I always wanted to put together an outlaw handbook that would help raise consciousness on these points while doing something about evening the score. There was also the challenge of testing the limits of free speech.”

Abbie Hoffman book Steal This Book

Introduction
Steal This Book (1971)

Universe, Help, Personality

“Money talk tends to be confusing. When people talk money, they usually think “wealth”, “costs”, “profit”, “income”, “gold”, “greed”, “time” (as in “time is money”), or something like that. In everyday discourse money symbolises capitalism, for better or worse: money as the life or evil force of the economy. As sings to us in the classical musical Cabaret: “Money makes the world go round… ”. The tune resonates when people exclaim “money” in response to the question what they are after in life, or when they say that everything people do ultimately revolves around money. All this talk is clear enough. The confusion enters when we observe the very same people who are so enthused about money, stubbornly suppress any reference to money when it comes to goods like the love for their partner, parents and children, friendship, science (truth!) and art (beauty!).”

Arjo Klamer (1953) Dutch columnist, economist and politician

Arjo Klamer, and Harry van Dalen. "The double-sidedness of money." Etnofoor 13.2 (2000): 89-103.

Love, Life, Money, Friendship

“War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Conscription - The Terrible Price of War, November 21, 2003 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr112103.htm 2000s, 2001-2005

War

“Given the profits he and Pharaoh must have made, one might call Joseph the first international arbitrageur.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

Source: The (Mis)Behavior of Markets (2004, 2008), Ch. 10, p. 201 (A reference to Genesis 41:48–49, 54–57.)

“We live in a time when complex ethical questions are easily subordinated to the demands of efficiency, profit maximization, and maintenance or furthering of political power.”

Randal Marlin (1938) Canadian academic

Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter One, Why Study Propaganda?, p. 39

Question, Time

“Negroes in the United States read the history of labor and find it mirrors their own experience. We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us. They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize, so that we may guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted. They are shocked that action organizations, sit-ins, civil disobedience and protests are becoming our everyday tools, just as strikes, demonstrations and union organization became yours to insure that bargaining power genuinely existed on both sides of the table.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to AFL–CIO (1961)

History, Understanding, Reading

“What the English call “comfortable” is something endless and inexhaustible. Every condition of comfort reveals in turn its discomfort, and these discoveries go on for ever. Hence the new want is not so much a want of those who have it directly, but is created by those who hope to make profit from it.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Elements of the Philosophy of Right

S. Dyde, trans. (1896), § 191
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)

Hope

“In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.”

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

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book III, On Consumption, Chapter I, note 2

Evil, Time

“After a death, you eat and drink and remember the good things and try to laugh again. Grief profits no one, least of all the departed, who are quit of it for ever.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Niccoló Tolentino in Ch. 1
Masterclass (1988)

Death, Drink

“There are at present 300,000 bourgeois in the Crimea. These are a source of future profiteering, espionage and every kind of aid to the capitalists. However, we are not afraid of them. We say that we shall take and distribute them, make them submit, and assimilate them.”

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

Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Vol. 31, pp. 438–59.
Collected Works

Future

“If displeased with any man, do all you can to prevent his seeing it, for otherwise he will become estranged. And occasions often arise when he might and would have served you had you not lost him by showing your dislike. Of this I have had experience to my own profit. For once and again I have felt ill-disposed towards some one who not being aware of my hostility has afterwards helped me when I needed help and proved my good friend.”

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian writer, historian and politician

Number 324.
Counsels and Reflections (1857)

Hostility, Help

“The organizational fields of the largest firms continued to be unstable. There were no accepted rules to define how firms could avoid destructive competition, so they attempted to control their markets through various aggressive trade tactics, continued mergers, cartels, getting the federal government to guarantee profitability.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 89

“The emancipation of the German workers will be accomplished by their participation in profits, participation in ownership, participation in achievement.”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

As quoted in Gregor Strasser and the Rise of Nazism, Peter D. Stachura, Routledge (2015), pp. 53-54

“The proprietor should always direct his attention to obtain from his land a gradual increase of produce, or to augment its value continually. The farmer only desires the greatest profit during the continuance of his lease, without caring for the value of the land afterwards. "Whilst the proprietor can content himself with a trifling produce during a few years, in order to attain greater and more durable profit subsequently, the tenant must, on the contrary, endeavour to obtain the greatest produce, even though its amount should be diminished during the latter years of his lease; because the proprietor who wishes to farm on the best system, finds at the same time both pleasure and profit in laying out on his property as much capital as he can spare, whilst the tenant, on the contrary, withdraws as much of his pecuniary resources as possible, to employ it in other ways, or to place it at interest. The improvement of the land constitutes the pleasure of the proprietor, while the mere occupying farmer only thinks of augmenting his income. Thus the longer the lease may be, the more do the interests of the landlord and tenant become identified; the shorter the term, the more conflicting are those interests. With a lease of 24 years, a tenant ought, at least during the first two-thirds of its duration, to follow out the views of the proprietor. But the time will come when he will act on different principles, and endeavour to extract from the land a return in proportion to his outlay at the commencement.
To this must be added, that a tenant cannot have the means of laying out so much on the land as the proprietor, even if he wished to do so. The latter must pay the rent, whilst a proprietor anxious to improve can economize something from the net produce to expend on his property. The first may be compared to a merchant who trades on borrowed money; the second to one who speculates with his own funds. The former must first provide for his rent, the latter need only think of extending his speculations.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Thaer, cited in: Joseph Rogers Farmers Magazine Volume The Seventh http://books.google.com/books?id=8OnG6xwQkesC&pg=PA263, 1843, p. 263: Speaking of lease and covenants

Money, Pleasure, Way, Thinking

“I have learned from experience that it is useful to begin by drawing one's picture clearly on a virgin canvas, first having noted the desired effect on a white or gray paper, and then to do the picture section by section, as immediately finished as one can, so that when it has all been covered there is very little to retouch. I have noticed that whatever is finished at one sitting is fresher, better drawn, and profits more from many lucky accidents, while when one retouches this initial harmonious glow is lost. I think that this method is particularly good for foliage, which needs a good deal of freedom.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote from Corot's 'Notebooks', ca. 1828, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, pp. 239 – 240
1820 - 1850

Thinking, Freedom, Learning, Drawing

“It is individuals who must be encouraged to undertake the unprecedented - and unprecedentedly profitable - effort to prevent the annihilation of the human race.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"How Many Americans Does It Take to Change a Dim Bulb?" Presented to the Second Annual Freedom Summit, Phoenix, Arizona, 12 & 13 October 2002 http://www.lneilsmith.org/freedomsummit2.html.

Effort

“I believe […] that we can still have a genre of scientific books suitable for and accessible alike to professionals and interested laypeople. The concepts of science, in all their richness and ambiguity, can be presented without any compromise, without any simplification counting as distortion, in language accessible to all intelligent people. […] I hope that this book can be read with profit both in seminars for graduate students and—if the movie stinks and you forgot your sleeping pills—on the businessman's special to Tokyo.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Wonderful Life

Preface, p. 16
Wonderful Life (1989)

People, Books, Hope, Intelligence

“Companies earn their profits by exploiting their environment. Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment. This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Remarks delivered at the World Economic Forum https://www.georgesoros.com/2018/01/25/remarks-delivered-at-the-world-economic-forum/ (25 January 2018)

People, Thinking

“The colonization of the Southern economy by capitalists from the North gave lynching its most vigorous impulse. If Black people, by means of terror and violence, could remain the most brutally exploited group within the swelling ranks of the working class, the capitalists could enjoy a double advantage. Extra profits would result from the superexploitation of Black labor, and white workers’ hostilities toward their employers would be defused. White workers who assented to lynching necessarily assumed a posture of racial solidarity with the white men who were really their oppressors. This was a critical moment in the popularization of racist ideology.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Women, Race and Class (1983)

Men, Hostility, People

“…if you are nothing but profit-conscious, you cannot see the opportunities ahead.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Made in Japan (1986)

“National-Socialism came to power in Germany in the same year as Roosevelt was elected President... Roosevelt comes from a rich family and belongs to the class whose path is smoothed in the Democracies. I am only the child of a small, poor family and had to fight my way by work and industry. When the Great War came, Roosevelt occupied a position where he got to know only its pleasant consequences, enjoyed by those who do business while others bleed... I shared the fate of millions, and Franklin Roosevelt only the fate of the so-called Upper Ten Thousand... he made profits out of the inflation, out of the misery of others, while I, together with many hundreds of thousands more, lay in hospital.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech Declaring War Against the United States http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hitler-s-speech-declaring-war-against-the-united-states (December 11, 1941) 1940s

Fate, War, Family, Way

“Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.”

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

Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“Figure 12-6 pulls together in a simplified way the main elements of income determination. Without saving and investment, there would be a circular flow of income between business and the public: above, business pays out wages, interest, rents, and profits to the public in return for the services of labor and property; and below, the public pays consumption dollars to business in return for goods and services.
Realistically, we must recognize that the public will wish to save some of its income, as shown at the spigot Z. Hence, businesses cannot expect their consumption sales to be as large as the total of wages, interest, rents, and profits.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

8th ed., 1970, p. 218
1940s, Economics (1948-)

Way, Business

“I once believed that if organizations had a better fit between their technology and their structure, they would be more efficient and thus more profitable.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Source: 1970s, "Three Types of Effectiveness Studies," 1977, p. 97

“[U]p until now 'progress' has affected existing social realities only secondarily, modifying them as little as possible, according to the strict dictates of capitalist profitability. The important thing is that human beings are profitable, not that their lives be changed. As far as is possible, capitalism respects the pre-existing shape and contours of people's lives. Only grudgingly, so to speak, does it bring about any change. Criticism of capitalism as a contradictory 'mode of production' which is dying as a result of its contradictions is strengthened by criticism of capitalism as the distributor of the wealth and 'progress' it has produced.
And so, constantly staring us in the face, mundane and therefore generally unnoticed - whereas in the future it will be seen as a characteristic and scandalous trait of our era, the era of the decadent bourgeoisie - is this fact: that life is lagging behind what is possible, that it is retarded. What incredible backwardness. This has up until now been constantly increasing; it parallels the growing disparity between the knowledge of the contemporary physicist and that of the 'average' man, or between that of the Marxist sociologist and that of the bourgeois politician.
Once pointed out, the contrast becomes staggeringly obvious, blinding; it is to be found everywhere, whichever way we turn, and never ceases to amaze.”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

From Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1 (1947/1991)

Life, People, Way, Knowledge

“To the Working Men of Rochdale: A deep sympathy with you in your present circumstances induces me to address you. Listen and reflect, even though you may not approve. Your are suffering—you have long suffered. Your wages have for many years declined, and your position has gradually and steadily become worse. Your sufferings have naturally produced discontent, and you have turned eagerly to almost any scheme which gave hope of relief. Many of you know full well that neither an act of Parliament nor the act of a multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade has long been bad, and that with a bad trade wages cannot rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages, you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employment. Trade must yield a profit, or it will not long be carried on…The aristocracy are powerful and determined; and, unhappily, the middle classes are not yet intelligent enough to see the safety of extending political power to the whole people. The working classes can never gain it of themselves. Physical force you wisely repudiate. It is immoral, and you have no arms, and little organisations…Your first step to entire freedom must be commercial freedom—freedom of industry. We must put an end to the partial famine which is destroying trade, and demand for your labor, your wages, your comforts, and your independence. The aristocracy regard the Anti-Corn Law League as their greatest enemy. That which is the greatest enemy of the remorseless aristocracy of Britain must almost of necessity be your firmest friend. Every man who tells you to support the Corn Law is your enemy—every man who hastens, by a single hour, the abolition of the Corn Law, shortens by so much the duration of your sufferings. Whilst the inhuman law exists, your wages must decline. When it is abolished, and not till then, they will rise.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Address (17 August 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp, 81-82.
1840s

Men, People, Law, Hope

“In a market-based labor contract, there is no exploitation. People come to agreement based on their own perceptions of mutual benefit. A person who believes it is better to work for $1 an hour rather than sit at home doing nothing is free to make that contract. In fact, a person who works for a negative wage—who pays for an internship, for example—is free to make that deal too.I propose to you, then, a definition of exploitation that comes from the writings of William H. Hutt: violence or threat of violence implied in the negotiation of anything affecting the life of a worker or employer. In that sense, the present system is exploitation. Workers are robbed of wages. Employers are robbed of profits. Poor people and young people especially are robbed of opportunity.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

As quoted in "How to Fix the Jobs Problem" http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/fix-jobs-problem140.html (29 January 2010). 2010s

Life, People, Home, Sense

“If, as many anthropologists still hold, the making and using of tools as one of the chief sources of primitive man's intellectual development, is it not time that we asked ourselves what will happen to man if he departs as completely as he now threatens to do from his primal polytechnic occupations? Since they can no longer be pursued at a profit, perhaps they will have to be restored as modes of sport and recreation, even more as helpful — increasingly essential — forms of personal service and mutual aid.”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Technical Liberation
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

Sport, Time, Help, Personality

“First, most producers are employees of firms, not owners. Viewed from the vantage point of classical [economic] theory, they have no reason to maximize the profits of firms, except to the extent that they can be controlled by owners. Moreover, profit-making firms, nonprofit organizations, and bureaucratic organizations all have exactly the same problem of inducing their employees to work toward organizational goals. There is no reason, a priori, why it should be easier (or harder) to produce this motivation in organizations aimed at maximizing profits than in organizations with different goals. If it is true in an organizational economy that organizations motivated by profits will be more efficient than other organizations, additional postulates will have to be introduced to account for it.”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

Simon (1991) "Organizations and Markets:" in: Journal of Economic Perspectives. 5 (2 Spring 1991): p. 28.
1980s and later

Motivation, Problem

“In those countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and, as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are more or less independent and free. They say: 'Here we have liberty.' By this they mean, above all, an uncontrolled economy, and by an uncontrolled economy, the freedom not only to acquire capital but to make absolutely free use of it. That means freedom from national control or control by the people both in the acquisition of capital and in its employment. This is really what they mean when they speak of liberty. These capitalists create their own press and then speak of the 'freedom of the press.' In reality, every one of the newspapers has a master, and in every case this master is the capitalist, the owner. This master, not the editor, is the one who directs the policy of the paper. If the editor tries to write other than what suits the master, he is ousted the next day. This press, which is the absolutely submissive and characterless slave of the owners, molds public opinion.
..
Yes, certainly, we jeopardize the liberty to profiteer at the expense of the community, and, if necessary, we even abolish it.
..
All my life I have been a 'have-not.' At home I was a 'have-not.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

I regard myself as belonging to them and have always fought exclusively for them. I defended them and, therefore, I stand before the world as their representative.
Speech to the Workers of Berlin (10 December 1940) (Wikisource)
1940s

Life, Men, People, Reality

“If in the guise of philosophers, they [declaim speeches] with a view to their own profit and reputation, and not to improve you, that indeed is shocking. For it is as if a physician when visiting patients should disregard their treatment and their restoration to health, and should bring them flowers and courtesans and perfume.”

Dio Chrysostom (40–120) Greek philosopher

Discourse 32, J. Cohoon and H. Crosby, trans. (1940), p. 181

Health, Flowers

“Mark Chmiel's Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership is a case study illustrating the politics of holocaust memory through examining the life of its prime architect, Elie Wiesel, who has made a successful and profitable personal career of the holocaust.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness"

Life, Study, Memory, Success

“If an action … involves little profit but much righteousness, do it.”

Xun Zi (-313–-238 BC) Ancient Chinese philosopher

Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
"Cultivating oneself"

“You could stand near him, listen to him speak, and feel as if you were in the presence of some wiser man, a true mullah. His uncles were the same. Rich, powerful men whose influence allowed them to profit from the war, not fight in it.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 38 (p. 277).

Men, War, Feeling, Fight

“I have on occasion remarked that I felt confident that I could persuade a millionaire on a Friday to subsidize a revolution for Saturday out of which he would make a huge profit on Sunday even though he was certain to be executed on Monday.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), P.150

Confidence

“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

“I don't believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here, rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

"Bernie Sanders Speech On Democratic Socialism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_8R6PgGcTw, (19 November 2015). 2010s, 2015

Family, Wealth

“Religion is all profit. They have no merchandise to buy, no commissions to pay, and no refunds to make for unsatisfactory service and results….
Their commodity is fear. They blackmail their parishioners with threats of hell and damnation. These poor deluded people give them their hard earned money to save them from a hell that does not exist, and from eternal torment that was invented by the perverted minds of priests to rob the living and in addition, they are exempt from taxation! Insult to injury!
Let me tell you that religion is the cruelest fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race. It is the last of the great scheme of thievery that man must legally prohibit so as to protect himself from the charlatans who prey upon the ignorance and fears of the people.
The penalty for this type of extortion should be as severe as it is of other forms of dishonesty.”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

Ingersoll the Magnificent (Memorial Dedication Address, August 11, 1954)

Money, People, Fear, Religion

“A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive, independent profit centres, and thus destroy the system.... The secret is cooperation between components toward the aim of the organization. We can not afford the destructive effect of competition.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Secret, World, Selfishness

“After the fascists have succeeded in crushing the vanguard elements and the threat they pose is removed, the ruling class goes on about the business of making profits as usual. The significance of the “new fascist arrangement" lies in the fact that this business-as-usual is accompanied by concessions to the degenerate segment of the working class, with the aim of creating a buffer zone between the ruling class and the still potentially revolutionary segments of the lower classes.”

George Jackson (activist) (1941–1971) activist, Marxist, author, member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family

Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 119

Business

“Just because Charlie and I can clearly see dramatic growth ahead for an industry does not mean we can judge what its profit margins and returns on capital will be as a host of competitors battle for supremacy. At Berkshire we will stick with businesses whose profit picture for decades to come seems reasonably predictable. Even then, we will make plenty of mistakes.”

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

1994 Chairman's Letter http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1994.html Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Business

“[Meat industry] truly is a disgusting industry, all the more so because it’s hidden. Have you ever seen animals being shipped to abattoirs? Do you even know where these abattoirs are? Have you ever seen an animal getting killed for the food you eat? It’s a dark, dark, dark trade that nobody really knows about, and a hugely profitable one at that. … If I don’t believe in killing animals, why on earth would I do it for the sake of fashion … I don’t think there’s any difference, because at the end of the day you’re killing an animal and stripping its skin off its body. It’s somebody’s baby – or it has a baby – it breathes, it lives, it has emotions, it has feelings … I find it fascinating that leather and fur are so often associated with the top luxury level of fashion. And yet leather, in this day and age, is probably cheaper than a piece of cotton. So there’s such a tiny price put on an animal’s life.”

Stella McCartney (1971) British fashion designer

" “I don’t understand what is going on on this planet, it’s all so fucked up.” Interview with Stella McCartney https://www.numero.com/en/fashion/stella-mccartney-leather-fur-vegan-kering-pinault-met-gala-anna-wintour", Numéro (28 June 2018).

Life, Age, Food, Feeling

“If a man didn't make mistakes he'd own the world in a month.
But if he didn't profit by his mistakes he wouldn't own a blessed thing.”

Edwin Lefèvre book Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

Source: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923), Chapter VIII, p. 89

World

“To gain profit is important, but you must invest to build up assets that you can cash in in the future.”

Akio Morita (1921–1999) Japanese businessman

Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 157.

Future

“Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

CD-ROM marking 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, quoted in * 2012-09-27
Corn
David
w:David Corn
New Romney Video: In 1985, He Said Bain Would "Harvest" Companies for Profits
Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/1985-romney-bain-harvest-firms-profits-video
2012-10-03
1985

Partnership

“But what this deed should be was kept secret from me.
And in this I saw that He willeth not that we dread to know the things that He sheweth: He sheweth them because He would have us know them; by which knowing He would have us love Him and have pleasure and endlessly enjoy in Him. For the great love that He hath to us He sheweth us all that is worshipful and profitable for the time.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 36

Love, Pleasure, Secret, Time

“Part of America's industrial problems is the aim of its corporate managers. Most American executives think they are in the business to make money, rather than products or service…The Japanese corporate credo, on the other hand, is that a company should become the world's most efficient provider of whatever product and service it offers. Once it becomes the world leader and continues to offer good products, profits follow.”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

Source: Out Of The Crisis (1982), p. 99

Money, World, Business, Problem

“But who is there to help when all the "helpers" fear their own personal history? Bogus traditional morality, destructive religious interpretations, and confusion in our methods of childrearing all make this experience harder and hinder our initiative. Without a doubt, the pharmaceutical industry also profits from our blindness and despondency.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Fear, History, Help, Personality

“Were this thoroughly understood, industrial art would be entirely revolutionized — industrial art, that barbarous term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Rodin : the man and his art, with leaves from his notebook, 1917, p. 125

Art

“I am especially worried about the impact that investor-state-arbitrations (ISDS) have already had and foreseeably will have on human rights, in particular the provision which allows investors to challenge domestic legislation and administrative decisions if these can potentially reduce their profits.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

U.N. expert says secret trade deals threaten human rights http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/23/trade-rights-idUSL5N0XK54G20150423?feedType=RSS&feedName=everything&virtualBrandChannel=11563. 2015

Decision

“the circle of politicians which surrounded him--flatterers, eventual profiteers, chaged ideas and convictions like changing a shirt, followed the expediency of the moment. p245”

Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) Brazilian writer

Idea, Change

Quotes about profit page 6

Quotes about profit
page 6