Quotes about profit
page 7

George Meredith photo

“There is nothing the body suffers that the soul may not profit by.”

George Meredith (1828–1909) British novelist and poet of the Victorian era

Source: Diana of the Crossways http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4470/4470.txt (1885), Ch. 18.

Geoffrey Moore photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
Adrian Slywotzky photo

“The new rules of competition require managers to start by asking what's important to their customers and where the company can make new money. Then, they need to reinvent their businesses to create the next profit zones.”

Adrian Slywotzky (1951) American economist

Attributed to Slywotzky and Morrison in: John A. Byrne (1998) " Go where the money is http://www.businessweek.com/1998/04/b3562033.htm" at businessweek.com. Jan. 15, 1998.

John Updike photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Naomi Klein photo
Richard A. Posner photo

“I wish in closing to emphasize how little corporate philanthrophy (the practical meaning of “creative capitalism,” a terrible expression that implies nonaltruistic capitalism is uncreative) is actually philanthropic, in the sense of being driven by altruism rather than by profit maximization.”

Richard A. Posner (1939) United States federal judge

" Against Creative Capitalism, Part Two https://web.archive.org/web/20080821055810/http://creativecapitalism.typepad.com:80/creative_capitalism/2008/08/against-creativ.html" (2008), published in Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders.

Eugene Rotberg photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“Less volatile stocks tend to have negative abnormal profits; more volatile stocks tend to have positive abnormal profits.”

Robert Haugen (1942–2013) American economist

Source: The Inefficient Stock Market - What Pays Off And Why (1999), Chapter 11, The Negative Payoff to Risk, p. 113

Xun Zi photo
Edward R. Murrow photo
Jonathan Edwards photo
James Branch Cabell photo
John Calvin photo
Al Gore photo
Edmund Burke photo
E.M. Forster photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Harold Demsetz photo
Yoshida Kenkō photo
Andrew S. Grove photo
David Ricardo photo

“The variation in the value of money, however great, makes no difference in the rate of profits;…”

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

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter I, On Value, p. 32

Bill Hicks photo
John Calvin photo
Thomas Young (scientist) photo
Henry Blodget photo
Julius Streicher photo

“That's why the peoples have to die -- so that the Jew can live. He drives the peoples to war to make a profit from the fratricide of the white race.
In the World War 11 million gentiles had to die. The Jew was the winner.”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Deswegen müssen die Völker sterben, damit der Jude leben kann. Er hetzt die Völker zum Krieg, um aus dem Brudermord der weißen Rasse Gewinn zu ziehen.
Im Weltkrieg mussten 11 Millionen Nichtjuden sterben. Der Jude aber war der Sieger.
05/20/1932, speech in the Hercules Hall in Nuremberg ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Eugène Delacroix photo
Michael Shea photo
Phyllis Schlafly photo

“Minors are an intended audience for the highly profitable sex industry. Impressionable teenagers are easily persuaded to have abortions, and homosexual clubs in high school are designed for the young.”

Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) American activist

[Schlafly, Phyllis, 2004, September, Activist Judges Rule for Special Interests, Phyllis Schlafly Report, 38, 2, http://www.eagleforum.org/psr/2004/sept04/psrsept04.html, 2007-03-30]

Michał Kalecki photo
Michele Simon photo
Ted Malloch photo

“Profitability is the consequence of doing business in the right way, to honor God.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 52.

Paul Klee photo
Adrian Slywotzky photo
Jean-Baptiste Say photo
John Gray photo

“The idea of evil as it appears in modern secular thought is an inheritance from Christianity. To be sure, rationalists have repudiated the idea; but it is not long before they find they cannot do without it. What has been understood as evil in the past, they insist, is error – a product of ignorance that human beings can overcome. Here they are repeating a Zoroastrian theme, which was absorbed into later versions of monotheism: the belief that ‘as the “lord of creation” man is at the forefront of the contest between the powers of Truth and Untruth.’ But how to account for the fact that humankind is deaf to the voice of reason? At this point rationalists invoke sinister interests – wicked priests, profiteers from superstition, malignant enemies of enlightenment, secular incarnations of the forces of evil. As so often is the case, secular thinking follows a pattern dictated by religion while suppressing religion’s most valuable insights. Modern rationalists reject the idea of evil while being obsessed by it. Seeing themselves as embattled warriors in a struggle against darkness, it has not occurred to them to ask why humankind is so fond of the dark. They are left with the same problem of evil that faces religion. The difference is that religious believers know they face an insoluble difficulty, while secular believers do not. Aware of the evil in themselves, traditional believers know it cannot be expelled from the world by human action. Lacking this saving insight, secular believers dream of creating a higher species. They have not noticed the fatal flaw in their schemes: any such species will be created by actually existing human beings.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: The Faith of Puppets (p. 18-9)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Bob Dylan photo

“And the National Bank at a profit sells road maps for the soul
To the old folks home and the college”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Tombstone Blues

Norman Tebbit photo
Philippe de Commines photo

“He who has the profits of war has the honour.”

Qui a le profit de la guerre, il en a l'honneur.
Bk. IV, ch. 4.
Mémoires

Vladimir Lenin photo
Alfred de Zayas photo

“Bearing in mind that “the market” is not an invention of capitalism but that it has existed for thousands of years in many different societies, social justice logically requires that the profits resulting from the operation of markets and infrastructures created by society be equitably shared within societies and in a larger context within the human family.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred Maurice de Zayas http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A.67.277_en.pdf.
2012

“When Donald Rumsfeld, a practical imperialist if ever there was one, took over the Pentagon, he commissioned a study of how ancient empires maintained their hegemony. Might he more profitably study how they lost all they had gained?”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

Robert A. Heinlein photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Stanley Knowles photo
Thomas Hobbes photo

“In the state of nature, Profit is the measure of Right.”
...in statu naturae Mensuram juris esse Utilitatem.

De Cive (1642)

Ward Churchill photo
Adrian Slywotzky photo
Julian of Norwich photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“These words are being written in reply to the verbal message sent by you. I have been asked (by you) to tell (you) about suppression of the rebellion of Jats in the environs of Delhi.
The fact is that this recluse (meaning himself) has witnessed in the occult world the downfall of the Jats in the same way as that of the Marhatahs. I have also seen it in a dream that Muslims have taken possession of the forts and the country of the Jats, and that Muslims have become masters of those forts and that country as in the past. Most probably, the Ruhelas will occupy those Jat forts. This has been determined and decided in the most secret world. This recluse has not the shadow of a doubt about that. But the way that victory will be achieved is not yet clear. What is needed is prayers from those special servants of Allah who have been chosen for this purpose.
…But keep one thing in your mind, namely, that the Hindus who are apparently in your’s and your government’s employ, are inclined towards the enemies in their hearts. They do not want that the enemies be exterminated. They will try a thousand tricks in this matter, and endeavour in every way to show to your honour that the path of peace is more profitable.
Make up your mind not to listen to this group (the Hindu employees). If you disregard their advice, you will reach the height of fulfilment. This recluse knows of this (fulfilment) as if he is seeing it with his own eyes.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Najibuddaulah Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, pp. 106-07.
From his letters

Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
George Soros photo
Steve Blank photo

“A startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable, repeatable, profitable business model.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

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

Richard Nixon photo
Charles Stross photo
Terence V. Powderly photo
Marcus Terentius Varro photo
James K. Morrow photo

“The new homeland bulged with the sort of free-for-the-grabbing bounty that invites greed, envy, exploitation, profiteering, and politics.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 1 (p. 12)

Stanley Knowles photo

“Plan-less profit-seeking as practiced by the West cannot match the planned export policies of the East.”

Stanley Knowles (1908–1997) Canadian politician

Source: The New Party - (1961), Chapter 7, Program, p. 82

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Andrew Tobias photo

“Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby recoils in horror at the prospect of automatic coverage ( including, when it was first proposed, Social Security), no matter how efficient it may be. Automatic coverage eliminates sales commissions and profit.”

Andrew Tobias (1947) American journalist

Source: The Invisible Bankers, Everything The Insurance Industry Never Wanted You To Know (1982), Chapter 4, Tell Us The Odds, p. 63-64.

Frank Chodorov photo
Isaac Asimov photo

“SWA Magazine: Talking about spacecraft, what do you think about the shuttle program?
Asimov: Well, I hope it does get off the ground. And I hope they expand it, because the shuttle program is the gateway to everything else. By means of the shuttle, we will be able to build space stations and power stations, laboratory facilities and habitations, and everything else in space.
SWA Magazine: How about orbital space colonies? Do you see these facilities being built or is the government going to cut back on projects like this?
Asimov: Well, now you've put your finger right on it. In order to have all of these wonderful things in space, we don't have to wait for technology - we've got the technology, and we don't have to wait for the know-how - we've got that too. All we need is the political go-ahead and the economic willingness to spend the money that is necessary. It is a little frustrating to think that if people concentrate on how much it is going to cost they will realize the great amount of profit they will get for their investment. Although they are reluctant to spend a few billions of dollars to get back an infinite quantity of money, the world doesn't mind spending $400 billion every years on arms and armaments, never getting anything back from it except a chance to commit suicide.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

An Interview with Isaac Asimov (1979)

John F. Kennedy photo

“It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough jobs or enough profits.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)" (14 December 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx<!-- Public Papers of the President: John F. Kennedy, 1962 -->
1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York (549)

Adam Smith photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“Anybody can reduce taxes, but it is not so easy to stand in the gap and resist the passage of increasing appropriation bills which would make tax reduction impossible. It will be very easy to measure the strength of the attachment to reduced taxation by the power with which increased appropriations are resisted. If at the close of the present session the Congress has kept within the budget which I propose to present, it will then be possible to have a moderate amount of tax reduction and all the tax reform that the Congress may wish for during the next fiscal year. The country is now feeling the direct stimulus which came from the passage of the last revenue bill, and under the assurance of a reasonable system of taxation there is every prospect of an era of prosperity of unprecedented proportions. But it would be idle to expect any such results unless business can continue free from excess profits taxation and be accorded a system of surtaxes at rates which have for their object not the punishment of success or the discouragement of business, but the production of the greatest amount of revenue from large incomes. I am convinced that the larger incomes of the country would actually yield more revenue to the Government if the basis of taxation were scientifically revised downward. Moreover the effect of the present method of this taxation is to increase the cost of interest. on productive enterprise and to increase the burden of rent. It is altogether likely that such reduction would so encourage and stimulate investment that it would firmly establish our country in the economic leadership of the world.”

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)

Joseph von Fraunhofer photo
Thomas Gainsborough photo

“There is a branch of painting next in profit to Portrait and quite within your power without any more drawing them I'm answer for you having, which is Drapery & Land-skip.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in: Undated letters to Jackson, in The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. Mary Woodall, 1961
undated, Undated letters to William Jackson

Hendrik Werkman photo

“At a given moment there comes a time that you kick off everything, the whole mess and relieved you are walking further the path. Then the temptations come: Shouldn't I do this in another way, shall I go back and start to accept that I am a fool. Then bite your teeth firmly and say to yourself: no, stupid fool, don't go back, because what you will lose is profit.”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): Er komt dan op een gegeven ogenblik een tijd dat je alles, de hele rotzooi van je aftrapt en opgelucht de verdere weg bewandelt. Dan krijg je de verleidingen: zal ik dat toch maar niet anders doen, zal ik omkeren en gaan inzien dat ik een stommeling ben. Bijt dan maar op de tanden en zeg tegen jezelf: nee, stommeling, niet terug, wat je verliest is winst.
Quote of Werkman, 1940's; as cited in 'Kwartierstaat', ed. Hartog, Van der Ley and Poortinga, Archief 3, Gebroeders & Cie, Amsterdam, (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek) unpaged
1940's

Didier Sornette photo

“Indeed, the financial world is such that any insight is almost immediately used to trade for a profit.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 5, Modeling Financial Bubbles And Market Crashes, p. 136.

Fulton J. Sheen photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Marvin Bower photo
Denis Healey photo
Kent Hovind photo
Karl Barth photo
John Oliver photo

“When your rainy day fund is so big you've got to check it for swimming cartoon ducks, you might not be a non-profit anymore.”

John Oliver (1977) English comedian

Last Week Tonight (8 June 2014)
Last Week Tonight (2014&ndash;present)

“The role of officials today is to upset the laws, to stir up lawsuits, to annul agreements, to devise delays, to suppress the truth, to encourage falsehood, to follow profit, to sell justice, to attend closely to exacting money, to practise cunning.”
Officium officialium, quorum te numero aggregasti, hodie est, jura confundere, suscitare lites, transactiones rescindere, innectere dilationes, suprimere veritatem, fovere mendacium, quaestum sequi, aeqitatem vendere, inhiare exactionibus, versutias concinnare.

Peter of Blois French poet and diplomat

Letter 25, to the Judicial Vicar of the Bishop of Chartres, in J. A. Giles (ed.) Petri blesensis bathoniensis archidiaconi opera omnia (Oxonii: J. H. Parker, 1846-7) vol. 1, p. 91; translation from Walter Bower and D. E. R. Watt (eds.) Scotichronicon (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987) vol. 7, p. 61.